So-Far Incompatibilism and the So-Far Consequence Argument

2006 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Stephen Hetherington
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
Essential Point ◽  
Consequence Argument ◽  
Alfred Mele ◽  
The Core ◽  
Freedom Of Action

The consequence argument is at the core of contemporary incompatibilism about causal determinism and freedom of action. Yet Helen Beebee and Alfred Mele have shown how, on a Humean conception of laws of nature, the consequence argument is unsound. Nonetheless, this paper describés how, by generalising their main idea, we may restore the essential point and force (whatever that might turn out to be) of the consequence argument. A modified incompatibilist argument — which will be called the consequence argument — may thus be derived.

scholarly journals For whom does determinism undermine moral responsibility? Surveying the conditions for free will across cultures

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivar Hannikainen ◽  
Edouard Machery ◽  
David Rose ◽  
Paulo Sousa ◽  
Florian Cova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Ultimate Source ◽  
And Control ◽  
Alternate Possibilities

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions.

scholarly journals Integration Development of Urban Agglomeration in Central Liaoning, China, by Trajectory Gravity Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 698
Author(s):  
Ruren Li ◽  
Shoujia Li ◽  
Zhiwei Xie
Keyword(s):  
Gravity Model ◽  
Gravitational Force ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Correlation Coefficients ◽  
Urban Agglomeration ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
The Core ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Two Indices ◽  
Spatial Trajectory

Integration development of urban agglomeration is important for regional economic research and management. In this paper, a method was proposed to study the integration development of urban agglomeration by trajectory gravity model. It can analyze the gravitational strength of the core city to other cities and characterize the spatial trajectory of its gravitational direction, expansion, etc. quantitatively. The main idea is to do the fitting analysis between the urban axes and the gravitational lines. The correlation coefficients retrieved from the fitting analysis can reflect the correlation of two indices. For the different cities in the same year, a higher value means a stronger relationship. There is a clear gravitational force between the cities when the value above 0.75. For the most cities in different years, the gravitational force between the core city with itself is increasing by years. At the same time, the direction of growth of the urban axes tends to increase in the direction of the gravitational force between cities. There is a clear tendency for the trajectories of the cities to move closer together. The proposed model was applied to the integration development of China Liaoning central urban agglomeration from 2008 to 2016. The results show that cities are constantly attracted to each other through urban gravity.

A Lost Lesson in Keith Lehrer’s Reply to the Consequence Argument

2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-558
Author(s):  
Michael McKenna
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Consequence Argument ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Positive Account

Abstract In this article, the author examines Keith Lehrer’s response to the Consequence Argument. He argues that his response has advantages over David Lewis’s. Contrary to what Lewis suggests in a footnote, Lehrer’s assessment of an ability to affect the laws of nature in deterministic settings is largely the same as Lewis’s. However, Lehrer’s position has an advantage that Lewis’s lacks. Lehrer integrates his proposal within a positive account of freedom, and this helps to explain how it could be that an agent is able to do otherwise in deterministic settings in such a way that if she did, some law of nature would be different.

Free Will and the Burden of Proof

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-63
Author(s):  
William G. Lycan
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Burden Of Proof ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
Consequence Argument ◽  
Philosophical Assumption ◽  
Set Up

Moore’s method is deployed in favor of the compatibility of free will with causal determinism. It is pointed out that the compatibilism issue has always been set up prejudicially: the compatibilist has been required to offer an analysis of “free action” that both is correct and exhibits the compatibility with determinism. This chapter argues that according to sound dialectical procedure, but contrary to tradition, the incompatibilist bears the burden of proof, and that an incompatibilist argument will contain a bare philosophical assumption that should be rejected on Moorean grounds. (Moreover, a compatibilist not only need not but should not attempt an analysis of “free action.”) All this is illustrated by a close examination of the impressive “Consequence argument” for incompatibilism.

scholarly journals On derivative consequence argument

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 66-68
Author(s):  
D. N. Razeev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Critical Remark ◽  
Consequence Argument

The article gives critical remarks to the derivative consequence argument proposed by Bogdan Faul. The first critical remark concerns the ontological status of the laws of nature, the second remark deals with the term «physicalism». It is demonstrated that conceptual vagueness of the terms used by B. Faul in his article undermines the validity of the proposed derivative argument

scholarly journals Heterogeneity among estimates of the core genome and pan-genome in different pneumococcal populations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andries J van Tonder ◽  
James E Bray ◽  
Keith A Jolley ◽  
Sigríður J Quirk ◽  
Gunnsteinn Haraldsson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bacterial Population ◽  
Core Genome ◽  
Bacterial Species ◽  
Essential Point ◽  
Genetic Lineages ◽  
The Core ◽  
Pan Genome ◽  
Single Dataset ◽  
Genomic Regions ◽  
Core Genes

AbstractBackgroundUnderstanding the structure of a bacterial population is essential in order to understand bacterial evolution, or which genetic lineages cause disease, or the consequences of perturbations to the bacterial population. Estimating the core genome, the genes common to all or nearly all strains of a species, is an essential component of such analyses. The size and composition of the core genome varies by dataset, but our hypothesis was that variation between different collections of the same bacterial species should be minimal. To test this, the genome sequences of 3,121 pneumococci recovered from healthy individuals in Reykjavik (Iceland), Southampton (United Kingdom), Boston (USA) and Maela (Thailand) were analysed.ResultsThe analyses revealed a ‘supercore’ genome (genes shared by all 3,121 pneumococci) of only 303 genes, although 461 additional core genes were shared by pneumococci from Reykjavik, Southampton and Boston. Overall, the size and composition of the core genomes and pan-genomes among pneumococci recovered in Reykjavik, Southampton and Boston were very similar, but pneumococci from Maela were distinctly different. Inspection of the pan-genome of Maela pneumococci revealed several >25 Kb sequence regions that were homologous to genomic regions found in other bacterial species.ConclusionsSome subsets of the global pneumococcal population are highly heterogeneous and thus our hypothesis was rejected. This is an essential point of consideration before generalising the findings from a single dataset to the wider pneumococcal population.

scholarly journals Laws in Philosophy of Info-Computationalism

Proceedings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Shanshan Fan
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
The Core ◽  
Creative Products ◽  
Core Issues

What are laws of nature? This issue has always been one of the core issues of philosophy of science. Info-computationalism uses algorithms and information to explain laws of nature, and analyses its nature from the perspective and invariance, which opens up a new path for laws of nature. Therefore, this paper, based on the theory of info-computationalism, compares them to Cartwright’s concept of laws of nature. It is found that we can follow the laws in computers to understand the laws of nature, and regard the laws of nature as human, metaphorical, prescriptive and creative products.

Neoliberal co-optation, power relations and informality in the Balkan International Relations profession

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-104
Author(s):  
Nemanja Džuverović ◽  
Goran Tepšić
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Academic Standards ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Core ◽  
The University ◽  
Stimulation Of

The article attempts to assess the importance of informal networks in achieving internationally recognised academic standards set in four Balkan countries by the reform of higher education institutions and the International Relations (IR) profession in particular. Starting from the core-periphery division of the Global IR, the authors are examining the results of these reforms by focusing on the neoliberalisation of the university and the professional subordination of peripheral IR communities to the Western-dominated epistemic community (including ‘brain drain’ and recruitment of ‘organic’ intellectuals). Based on the interviews conducted with Balkan IR scholars, the authors conclude that informality is viewed as social capital, that is, a means of acquiring benefits by virtue of personal ties with the ‘gatekeepers’ of core IR. In that respect, interviewees suggest three possible solutions for overcoming the epistemic dependence of the Balkan IR community: development of local standards, stimulation of critical approach and better preparation for international standards, while the authors of the article also propose the fourth possibility: abandoning the core-periphery division, and thinking beyond geopolitical and geocultural divisions – the main idea behind the Global IR project.

Freedom, Knowledge, Belief and Causality

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 132-154
Author(s):  
David Wiggins
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Physical Effect ◽  
The Other ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
The World ◽  
Causal Nexus ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Better Than

When we try to think about the causal nexus and the physical nature of the world as a whole we may be struck by two quite different difficulties in finding room in it to accommodate together (a) knowledge or reasoned belief and (b) causal determinism. (a) may seem to us to exclude (b) and (b) may seem to us to exclude (a). Taking it as a fact that there is knowledge and that knowledge seems to be indefinitely extensible, it has been felt by some philosophers that we can disprove total determinism by showing that if there were laws of nature which purported to govern all movements of matter in the universe there would still be something which even an ‘all-knowing’ predicter could not predict, viz. his own predictions or his own actions; and that given enough knowledge any agent could refute anybody else's predictions of his actions. So it has been thought that the phenomenon of knowledge somehow shows there cannot be laws to govern all movements of matter in the universe. This comfortably anodyne reflection is examined in the second part of the lecture. It elevates human minds and even confers a sort of cosmic importance on them. The other difficulty in making room for both (a) and (b) is in some loose sense the dual of this. Instead of taking knowledge for granted and questioning total determinism, it merely takes causality for granted but then deduces the total impossibility of knowledge. It simply asks: ‘How can we take a belief seriously, or consider it seriously as a candidate to be knowledge, if it is no better than a simple physical effect?’ This is a more pessimistic reflection and I shall begin with it.

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