Download or read book Freedom and Determinism written by Joseph Keim Campbell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A state-of-the-art collection of previously unpublished essays on the topics of determinism, free will, moral responsibility, and action theory, written by some of the most important figures in these fields of study.
Download or read book Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays written by P.F. Strawson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-08-28 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. First published thirty years ago but long since unavailable, Freedom and Resentment collects some of Strawson's most important work and is an ideal introduction to his thinking on such topics as the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology and aesthetics. Beginning with the title essay Freedom and Resentment, this invaluable collection is testament to the astonishing range of Strawson's thought as he discusses free will, ethics and morality, logic, the mind-body problem and aesthetics. The book is perhaps best-known for its three interrelated chapters on perception and the imagination, subjects now at the very forefront of philosophical research. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Paul Snowdon and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson.
Download or read book Free Will A Very Short Introduction written by Thomas Pink and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-24 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day we seem to make and act upon all kinds of free choices - but are these choices really free? Or are we compelled to act the way we do by factors beyond our control? This book looks at free will.
Download or read book Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem written by Mark Balaguer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-01-13 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that the problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, he argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy—in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question.
Download or read book Causes Laws and Free Will written by Kadri Vihvelin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book rescues compatibilists from the familiar charge of 'quagmire of evasion' by arguing that the problem of free will and determinism is a metaphysical problem with a metaphysical solution. There is no good reason to think that determinism would rob us of the free will we think we have.
Download or read book The Problem of Free Will written by Mathew Iredale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we really have freedom to act, or are we slaves to our genes, environment or culture? Regular TPM columnist Mathew Iredale gets to grips with one of the most intractable issues in philosophy: the problem of free will. Iredale explores what it is about the free will problem that makes it so hard to resolve and argues that the only acceptable solution to the free will problem must be one that is consistent with what science tells us about the world. It is here, maintains Iredale, that too many works on free will, introductory or otherwise, fall down, by focusing only on how free will relates to determinism. Iredale shows that there are clear areas of scientific research which are directly and significantly relevant to free will in a way that does not involve determinism. Although these areas of scientific research do not allow us to solve the problem, they do allow us to separate the more plausible ideas concerning free will from the less plausible.
Download or read book Freedom Responsibility and Determinism written by John Lemos and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Lemos' Freedom, Responsibility, and Determinism offers an up-to-date introduction to free will (and associated) debates in an engaging, dialogic format that recommends it for use by beginning students in philosophy as well as by undergraduates in intermediate courses in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and action theory.
Download or read book The Problem of Freedom and Determinism written by Edward D'Angelo and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nature s Challenge to Free Will written by Bernard Berofsky and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a defense of humean compatibilism, which bases the belief in the compatibility of free will and determinism on David Hume's idea that laws do not uphold the existence of necessary connections in nature.
Download or read book Why Free Will Is Real written by Christian List and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A crystal-clear, scientifically rigorous argument for the existence of free will, challenging what many scientists and scientifically minded philosophers believe. Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy and presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world.
Download or read book Determinism Freedom and Moral Responsibility written by Susanne Bobzien and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility brings together nine essays on determinism, freedom and moral responsibility in antiquity by Susanne Bobzien. The essays present the main ancient theories of determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility ranging from Aristotle via Epicureans and Stoics to Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE. The author discusses questions about rational and autonomous human 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 the 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, virtue and wisdom, blame and praise. Historically unified, philosophically profound, and methodologically rigorous, Bobzien's discussions show that in classical and Hellenistic philosophy these topics were all debated without reference to freedom to do otherwise or to free will, and that the latter two notions were fully developed only later.
Download or read book Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science written by New York University. Institute of Philosophy and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Social Theory of Freedom written by Mariam Thalos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of fit between that agent’s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic—it is the logic of fit between one’s aspirations and one’s circumstances, what Thalos calls the logic of agency. The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one’s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one’s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a political one.
Download or read book Freedom Determinism and Responsibility written by Neil Campbell and published by Pearson. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection introduces the central views and issues involved in the philosophical problem of free will. While the selections represent some of the most important works in the field, they are also accessible enough for readers with very little background in philosophy. KEY TOPICS: Includes classical and contemporary readings to give readers a feel both for the history of the problem and how it is confronted by modern philosophers. Includes section-opening introductions that provide more detailed explanations of subsequent readings than most philosophy books.Features a broad historical perspective that is not restricted to the philosophical views of a particular century. Presents diverse views on issues discussed. MARKET: A readable, comprehensive reference for anyone interested in learning about philosophy.
Download or read book On Determinism and Freedom written by Ted Honderich and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most recalcitrant problem of philosophy, free will, laid out and taken beyond unsatisfactory standard solutions by Britain's foremost working philosopher.Determinism comes in many forms, some confused, some inconsistent, some incomplete. Some philosophers maintain that determinism is incompatible with true freedom. And others, that determinism is no threat to our freedom. But are these philosophers really assigning an 'unfreedom' to us and merely pretending that we are responsible for our choices and acts of love and violence?Ted Honderich argues that there are strong reasons to think both positions wrong. Developing from where his earlier work left off, he considers there is a new and more difficult problem of determinism. It too can lead to the thought that we are unfree but morally responsible. As he demonstrates, the hardest and deepest question in philosophy needs a really different answer.
Download or read book The Limits of Free Will written by Paul Russell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Limits of Free Will presents influential articles by Paul Russell concerning free will and moral responsibility. The problems arising in this field of philosophy, which are deeply rooted in the history of the subject, are also intimately related to a wide range of other fields, such as law and criminology, moral psychology, theology, and, more recently, neuroscience. These articles were written and published over a period of three decades, although most have appeared in the past decade. Among the topics covered: the challenge of skepticism; moral sentiment and moral capacity; necessity and the metaphysics of causation; practical reason; free will and art; fatalism and the limits of agency; moral luck, and our metaphysical attitudes of optimism and pessimism. Some essays are primarily critical in character, presenting critiques and commentary on major works or contributions in the contemporary scene. Others are mainly constructive, aiming to develop and articulate a distinctive account of compatibilism. The general theory advanced by Russell, which he describes as a form of "critical compatibilism", rejects any form of unqualified or radical skepticism; but it also insists that a plausible compatibilism has significant and substantive implications about the limits of agency and argues that this licenses a metaphysical attitude of (modest) pessimism on this topic. While each essay is self-standing, there is nevertheless a core set of themes and issues that unite and link them together. The collection is arranged and organized in a format that enables the reader to appreciate and recognize these links and core themes.
Download or read book Four Views on Free Will written by John Martin Fischer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-02-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the concepts and interactions of free will, moralresponsibility, and determinism, this text represents the mostup-to-date account of the four major positions in the free willdebate. Four serious and well-known philosophers explore the opposingviewpoints of libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism,and revisionism The first half of the book contains each philosopher’sexplanation of his particular view; the second half allows them todirectly respond to each other’s arguments, in a lively andengaging conversation Offers the reader a one of a kind, interactive discussion Forms part of the acclaimed Great Debates in Philosophyseries
