Philosophy - Free Will
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- Created by: Olivia Grace Matthews
- Created on: 17-01-16 18:20
Free Will
- Connects to moral responsiblity
- What you must have in order to be blamed or rewarded for your actions
Do you have free will?
- It is generally accepted that we do
- We choose what to do... or do we?
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Free Will - The Problem
- The cause of an event is what makes it necessary that the event will occur
- When the cause has happened - event must follow
Predicatability
- Whether it has predictive power
- Determinism
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Free Will - Determinism
- Can't always predict everything
- Relies on lots of assumptions
- Abillity to predict results is usually limited. eg. Can't predict weather
Laplace's Demon
- Doesn't want to control = just wants to know
- Has omniscience
- Knows the state of everything
- Knows what effects will be produced
- Knows what will happen in the universe and we are part of that
- No control over what we do eg. being drunk and getting spiked
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Free Will - Hard Determinism
- We DO NOT have free will
- All action is amoral (no morals)
Incompatibilism
- Free will is incompatible with determinism
- Can't have both
Libertarianism
- They are incompatibilists and reject determinism
- Freely chosen actions = special category of event that aren't part of the normal causal order
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Free Will - Physics
- Very deterministic and mathematical
- PROBLEM = Can't predict how things will be measured and we don't have accurate model of human behaviour
- Can't predict young's experimnet so determinism is false
Another Problem
- Can't always collect , store and analyse sufficient information
- In a human beings case this may be impossible
- To predict exact behaviour we'd need a computer that is quicker than the human brain
Some determinists now insist that what matters is that every event has cause even if we can't predict it
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Free Will - Compatibilism
- We can have Free Will even with determinism
The Natural Saint
- A saint is someone who acts virtuously with perfect consistency
Martin Luther (via Dennett)
- Luther said his conscience would not allow it
- Having a good conscience and following it seems to be the essence of moral responsibility
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Free Will - The Evil Neurosurgeon
- Thought experiment by Harry Frankfurt
- Puts a device in your head which forces you to do something you tend to do anyway
- If you are trying to decide.. the device prevents your free choice but say you have pizza of your own free will, the device remains dormant.
- You couldn't have done differently but it seems like this was still your free choice and something you're responsible for
- If you eat pizza because you want to rather than the device making you, you are responsible
- Match between desire and action is what matters
- Intention is a better term than desire
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Free Will - Compatibilism
- What matters is how your actions were determined
- Core intuition that we are free can be preserved
- We have a strong intuition that we have free will
Compatibilism in Practice
Two components to free will:
- Acting in occordance with your intention
- Being free from impediment or influence ( nothing stopping you acting in accordance with your intention)
Problem for Compatibilists = how to get around the intuitive appeal of the principle of alternative possibilities
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Free Will - Counterfactual Conditionals
- A conditional statement about what would have happened had something been different eg. 'if I hadn't brought an umbrella, i would have gotten wet on the home'.
The Problem - Example
- Suppose Danielle is psychologically incapable of wanting to touch blonde fur
- Danielle has to choose between a golden retriever puppy and a black lab
- Danielle does what she wants and picks a black lab
- Compatibalists say Danielle could have done differently because no external force prevented her. Our intuitions however, say Danielle couldn't have done differently
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Free Will - Compatibilism Another Problem
- Compatiblism attributes responsibility when theres the right kind of connection between a motivation and an action.
- Still responsible for actions as they are result of conscience
- Your conscience/motivations are results of your upbringing etc. Therefore can you really be responsible for them?
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