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.

Nietzsche’s Theory of Agency

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-146
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Harry Frankfurt ◽  
Derk Pereboom ◽  
Gary Watson ◽  
The Will ◽  
And Control ◽  
Galen Strawson ◽  
Alternate Possibilities

Nietzsche’s repudiation of free will and moral responsibility is documented throughout his corpus, and his arguments for this conclusion—arguments from his distinctive kind of fatalism, his skepticism about the causal efficacy of the will, and his particular brand of epiphenomenalism about the conscious mental states crucial to deliberation—are shown to undermine both compatibilist and incompatibilist views about free will and moral responsibility by engaging the views of many contemporary philosophers working on these topics, including Harry Frankfurt, Galen Strawson, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, Gary Watson, and others. In particular, the chapter argues that both “alternate possibilities” and “control” views of free will are vulnerable to Nietzsche’s critique. Some empirical evidence is adduced in support of Nietzsche’s view.

Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities

2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kadri Vihvelin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Four Quartets ◽  
Principle Of Alternate Possibilities ◽  
Famous Paper ◽  
Alternate Possibilities

For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.T.S. Eliot, Four QuartetsFew arguments in contemporary philosophy have had more influence than Harry Frankfurt's ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsiblity.’ In that famous paper Frankfurt noted that all parties to the traditional debate about the compatibility of free will and moral responsibility with determinism had subscribed to a common assumption. They had assumed the truth of something Frankfurt called ‘the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ which he expressed as follows:(PAP) A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise.In the traditional debate incompatibilists argued that if determinism is true, then no one can ever do otherwise, while compatibilists argued that there is a morally relevant sense in which even a deterministic agent can do otherwise. Frankfurt proposed to show that PAPis false, thereby undercutting the traditional debate.

Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Bobzien
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Continuum Theory ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
Moral Accountability ◽  
Nature And Nurture ◽  
Main Component ◽  
Autonomous Agency ◽  
Hellenistic Philosophy

This volume assembles nine of the author’s essays on determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility in Western antiquity, ranging from Aristotle via the Epicureans and Stoics to the third century. It is representative of the author’s overall scholarship on the topic, much of which emphasizes that what commonly counts as ‘the problem of free will and determinism’ is noticeably distinct from the issues the ancients discussed. It is true that one main component of the ancient discourse concerned the question how moral accountability can be consistently combined with certain causal factors that impact human behaviour. However, it is not true that the ancient problems involved the questions of the compatibility of causal determinism with our ability to do otherwise or with free will. Instead, we encounter questions about human rational and autonomous agency and their compatibility with preceding causes, external or internal; with external impediments; with divine predetermination and theological questions; with physical theories like atomism and continuum theory, and with sciences more generally; with elements that determine character development from childhood, such as nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with necessity and modal theories generally; with folk theories of fatalism; and also with questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, to virtue and wisdom, to blame and praise. In Classical and Hellenistic philosophy, these questions were all debated without reference to freedom to do otherwise or free will—. This volume considers all of these questions to some extent.

scholarly journals Is regulative control a necessary condition for moral responsibility?

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
Marko Peric
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Sufficient Cause ◽  
Principle Of Alternate Possibilities ◽  
Regulative Control ◽  
The Given ◽  
Alternate Possibilities

Libertarianist concept of free will is based on the principle of alternate possibilities - standpoint which presupposes that an agent has moral responsibility only if, in the given circumstances, he could have done otherwise. The author of this paper tries to review this key principle of libertarianism, and to determine whether the access to alternate possibilities represents necessary or sufficient cause for the assessment of moral responsibility, or neither of that. Finally, based on the consideration of famous Frankfurt?s and Austin-style examples, in this paper is defended a sort of compatibilism, and the main advantages of that kind of free will concept over libertarianism are emphasized.

The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-50
Author(s):  
Susanne Bobzien
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
Alexander Of Aphrodisias

This chapter presents evidence that the ‘discovery’ of the problem of causal determinism and freedom of decision in Greek philosophy is the result of a combination and mix-up of Aristotelian and Stoic thought in later antiquity; more precisely, a (mis-)interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of deliberate choice and action in the light of the Stoic theory of determinism and moral responsibility. The (con-)fusion originates with the beginnings of Aristotle scholarship, at the latest in the early second century CE. It undergoes several developments, absorbing Epictetan, Middle Platonist, and Peripatetic ideas; and it leads eventually to a concept of freedom of decision and an exposition of the ‘free-will problem’ in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Fate and in the Mantissa ascribed to him. The notion of a will originates only with early Christians and in later ancient Platonist thought.

The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem

Phronesis ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Bobzien
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
Alexander Of Aphrodisias

AbstractIn this paper I argue that the "discovery" of the problem of causal determinism and freedom of decision in Greek philosophy is the result of a mix-up of Aristotelian and Stoic thought in later antiquity; more precisely, a (mis-)interpretation of Aristotle's philosophy of deliberate choice and action in the light of Stoic theory of determinism and moral responsibility. The (con-)fusion originates with the beginnings of Aristotle scholarship, at the latest in the early 2nd century A.D. It undergoes several developments, absorbing Epictetan, Middle-Platonist, and Peripatetic ideas; and it leads eventually to a concept of freedom of decision and an exposition of the "free-will problem" in Alexander of Aphrodisias' On Fate and in the Mantissa ascribed to him.

Compatibilism Again

1975 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-514
Author(s):  
David B. Hausman
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Deductive Argument

Lately, the attitude of philosophers generally toward the free will issue has taken what I regard as an inauspicious turn. Where the predominant opinion had been that determinism and freedom were at harmony with one another, today it is incompatibilism which seems to prevail, and new voices raised in defense of libertarianism now offer their promise that problems once thought prohibitive to an acceptance of contra-causal freedom might be surmounted. I shall attempt to show that this recent rejection of compatibilism in fact rests on a mistake, and I shall suggest the outline of a solution to the free will issue which reconciles determinism and freedom.We shall say that an event is nomologically necessary if and only if given a specified set of conditions (the initial conditions) and the actually existing laws of nature, the statement of that event could in principle be deduced as the conclusion of a valid deductive argument having the statement of initial conditions and the statement of the relevant law(s) as premises.

Alternate Possibilities and their Entertainment

Philosophy ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-571
Author(s):  
S. Roush
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Alternate Possibilities

In this paper it is argued that Frankfurt's and Strawson's defenses of compatibilism are insufficient due to neglected features of the role of alternate possibilities in assigning moral responsibility. An attempt is made to locate more adequately the genuine source of tension between free will and determinism, in a crowding phenomenon in the view of an action which our concept of responsibility has not grown up coping with. Finally, an argument is made that due to the nature of belief we can believe the thesis of determinism only if it is false, lending support to incompatibilism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
The Right

This chapter lays out the book’s central question: Assuming agency reductionism—that is, the thesis that the causal role of the agent in all agential activities is reducible to the causal role of states and events involving the agent—is it possible to construct a defensible model of libertarianism? It is explained that most think the answer is negative and this is because they think libertarians must embrace some form of agent-causation in order to address the problems of luck and enhanced control. The thesis of the book is that these philosophers are mistaken: it is possible to construct a libertarian model of free will and moral responsibility within an agency reductionist framework that silences that central objections to libertarianism by simply taking the best compatibilist model of freedom and adding indeterminism in the right junctures of human agency. A brief summary of the chapters to follow is given.

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