Roll of Referees (original) (raw)

FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM AND ITS MORAL CONSEQUENCES

In this article problems associated with free will and determinism shall be considered, starting by explaining the terms involved, the difficulty (if there is one), and then trying to understand the proposed solutions. The importance of the topic is plain enough: it comes up often, in many contexts, and is one that people can easily understand the relevance of; which is only to say that it isn't just for the philosophers.

Determinism and the Possibility of Morality

Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 2012

The possibility of morality in a causally determined physical world engages philosophers in a serious debate. Many philosophers think that morality is not possible in a world where everything, including human actions, is determined by antecedent causal conditions. However, attempts to reconcile these apparently contradictory views have come forth. What emerges through the debate is that even if all human actions are causally determined, moral commitments are irreplaceable. Therefore, it is argued that causal determination of our thoughts and actions does not change the truth of morality. However, a morality involving determinism seems to rely heavily on the causal efficacy of moral judgments rather than the possibility of a free action. The deterministic morality focuses on human motivation as a cause and ignores the possibility of free choice. Moreover, a deterministic morality is unable to account for the freedom of the will. However, in serious climate of opinion, morality essentially involves moral responsibility based on a free choice and action. Thus, philosophical attempts to reconcile determinism and morality under the assumption of irreplaceable human interpersonal attitudes seem not so convincing. This paper brings forth the philosophical arguments involved; centralizing on the contention that morality cannot be subsumed under determinism.

AN ECLECTIC APPROACH TO THE DOCTRINE OF DETERMINISM

APPON Philosophical Quarterly: A Journal of the Association of Philosophy Professionals of Nigeria, 2024

Are human beings actually free beings? The doctrine of determinism gives a negative response to this question. Determinism therefore claims that humans are not free to act or make choices, since they are always constrained in some way. By so doing, determinism denies human freedom and human moral responsibility. It rejects the idea that humans act freely, or that humans can be regarded as responsible for their actions and inactions. This outright denial of human freedom and human moral responsibility is certainly pregnant with several implications, which this article is aimed at exposing. This article adopts the expository, analytic and critical methods. It begins with a clarification of the concept of determinism and then goes on to discuss five types of determinism, namely: (a) physical, (b) psychological, (c) historical, (d) ethical and (e) theological determinism, respectively. Also, this article discusses two categories of determinism known as soft and hard determinism. Furthermore, this article exposes some implications of determinism for events and humanity. Finally, adopting eclecticism as its theoretical framework, this article proposes that it is best to approach the doctrine of determinism by simply recognising and accepting the fact that there are aspects of humans that are determined, and there are equally aspects of humans that are not determined. By so doing, this article establishes that approaching the doctrine of determinism eclectically is the surest way of accommodating the opposing doctrines of determinism and 'freewillism.'

HARD DETERMINISM AND THE PRINCIPLE OF VACUOUS CONTRAST

Metaphilosophy, 1988

When hard determinists are challenged with the question of what they would be willing to count as a case of morally responsible behavior, they have no example to offer; and it is sometimes claimed that in that case their position is vacuous. But that question is only legitimate within the assumptions of the moral responsibility system; hard determinists are proposing a radically different system in which moral responsibility has no place.

Free Will and Determinism: Resolving the Tension

Open Journal of Philosophy, vol. 4, no. 11, 482-498, 2021

Progress may be made in resolving the tension between free will and determinism by analysis of the necessary conditions of freedom. It is of the essence that these conditions include causal and deterministic regularities. Furthermore, the human expression of free will is informed by understanding some of those regularities, and increments in that understanding have served to enhance freedom. When the possible character of a deterministic system based on physical theory is considered, it is judged that, far from implying the elimination of human freedom, such a theory might simply set parameters for it; indeed knowledge of that system could again prove to be in some respects liberating. On the other hand, it is of the essence that the overarching biological framework is not a deterministic system and it foregrounds the behavioural flexibility of humans in being able to choose within a range of options and react to chance occurrences. Furthermore, an issue for determinism flows from the way in which randomness (e.g. using a true random number generator) and chance events could and do enter human life. Once the implications of that issue are fully understood, other elements fit comfortably together in our understanding of freely undertaken action: the contribution of reasons and causes; the fact that reasons are never sufficient to account for outcomes; the rationale for the attribution of praise and blame.

Free Will and the Soft Constraints of Reason

Ratio, 2006

This paper provides a new compatibilist definition of free will, which is an elaboration of the classic compatibilist view of free will as absence of restriction, with the help of the causal theory of action and some special categories. This new definition enables us to neutralize a very wide range of counterexamples in a systematic and compelling way, including those left unanswered by hierarchical definitions. 1 Freedom: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint, in choice or action. Webster's Dictionary Contemporary compatibilist definitions of free will are usually of two kinds. To the first kind belong restatements of the classical commonsensical view originally sustained by philosophers like Hobbes, Locke and Hume. A good statement of such a view was made by Sidney Hook in the following words: Men are free when their actions are determined by their own will, and not by the will of others, or by factors that lead us to say that their actions were involuntary. To the extent that conditions exist which prevent a man from acting as he wishes (e.g. ignorance, physical incapacity, constraint used upon his body and mind) he is unfree. 2 Definitions like this make freedom wholly compatible with determinism. A decision of will is free, not because it breaks the chains of strict causality, as libertarianists and sceptics believe, but because it is a voluntary one, namely, a decision rightly caused by not being opposed to or independent of the will. According to

Moral Responsibility, Luck, and Compatibilism

In this paper, I defend a version of compatibilism (about determinism and moral responsibility) against luck-related objections. After introducing the types of luck that some take to be problematic for moral responsibility, I consider and respond to two recent attempts to show that compatibilism faces the same problem of luck that libertarianism faces—present (or cross-world) luck. I then consider a different type of luck—constitutive luck—and provide a new solution to this problem. One upshot of the present discussion is a reason to prefer a history-sensitive compatibilist account over a purely nonhistorical structuralist account.

Betting Against Hard Determinism

Res Publica, 2008

The perennial fear associated with the free will problem is the prospect of hard determinism being true. Unlike prevalent attempts to reject hard determinism by defending compatibilist analyses of freedom and responsibility, this article outlines a pragmatic argument to the effect that we are justified in betting that determinism is false even though we may retain the idea that free will and determinism are incompatible. The basic argument is that as long as we accept that libertarian free will is worth wanting, there is a defensible rationale, given the uncertainty which remains as to whether determinism is true or false, to refrain from acting on hard determinism, and thus to bet that libertarian free will exists. The article closes by discussing two potentially decisive objections to this pragmatic argument. Keywords Determinism Á Free will Á Moral responsibility Á Practical reason Á Uncertainty The question now becomes a different one: not about what we know, but about how it is rational to behave given that we do not know. This question is one of practical decision-making against a background of uncertainty. (Richards 2000, p. 34) Göran Duus-Otterström-Winner of the third annual Res Publica Postgraduate Essay Prize, 2007.