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Core Concepts
Adequate Determinism Agent-Causality Alternative Possibilities Causa Sui Causality Certainty Chance Chance Not Direct Cause The Cogito Model Compatibilism Comprehensive Compatibilism Conceptual Analysis Control Could Do Otherwise Creativity Default Responsibility De-liberation Determination Determination Fallacy Determinism Disambiguation Either Way Ethical Fallacy Experimental Philosophy Extreme Libertarianism Event Has Many Causes Frankfurt Cases Free Choice Freedom of Action "Free Will" Free Will Axiom Free Will in Antiquity Free Will Mechanisms Free Will Requirements Free Will Theorem Future Contingency Hard Incompatibilism Illusion of Determinism Illusionism Impossibilism Incompatibilism Indeterminacy Indeterminism Infinities Laplace's Demon Libertarianism Liberty of Indifference Libet Experiments Luck Master Argument Modest Libertarianism Moral Necessity Moral Responsibility Moral Sentiments Mysteries Naturalism Necessity Noise Non-Causality Nonlocality Origination Paradigm Case Pre-determinism Predictability Probability Pseudo-Problem Random When?/Where? Rational Fallacy Responsibility Same Circumstances Scandal Science Advance Fallacy Second Thoughts Semicompatibilism Separability Soft Causality Special Relativity Standard Argument Taxonomy Temporal Sequence Tertium Quid Torn Decision Two-Stage Models Ultimate Responsibility Uncertainty Up To Us Voluntarism Philosophers Mortimer Adler Rogers Albritton Alexander of Aphrodisias G.E.M.Anscombe Anselm Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Armstrong Augustine J.L.Austin A.J.Ayer Alexander Bain Mark Balaguer William Belsham Henri Bergson Isaiah Berlin Bernard Berofsky Susanne Bobzien George Boole Émile Boutroux F.H.Bradley C.D.Broad C.A.Campbell Joseph Keim Campbell Carneades Ernst Cassirer Roderick Chisholm Chrysippus Cicero Randolph Clarke Samuel Clarke Anthony Collins Diodorus Cronus Donald Davidson Democritus Daniel Dennett René Descartes Richard Double Emil du Bois-Reymond Fred Dretske John Earman Laura Waddell Ekstrom Epictetus Epicurus Herbert Feigl John Martin Fischer Owen Flanagan Luciano Floridi Philippa Foot Alfred Fouillée Harry Frankfurt Richard L. Franklin Michael Frede Carl Ginet H.Paul Grice Nicholas St. John Green Ian Hacking Ishtiyaque Haji Stuart Hampshire W.F.R.Hardie R.M.Hare Georg W.F. Hegel Martin Heidegger R.E.Hobart Thomas Hobbes David Hodgson Shadsworth Hodgson Ted Honderich Pamela Huby David Hume Ferenc Huoranszki William James Lord Kames Robert Kane Immanuel Kant Tomis Kapitan William King Christine Korsgaard Keith Lehrer Gottfried Leibniz Leucippus Michael Levin C.I.Lewis David Lewis Peter Lipton John Locke Michael Lockwood John R. Lucas Lucretius James Martineau Hugh McCann Colin McGinn Michael McKenna Paul E. Meehl Alfred Mele John Stuart Mill Dickinson Miller G.E.Moore Thomas Nagel Friedrich Nietzsche P.H.Nowell-Smith Robert Nozick William of Ockham Timothy O'Connor David F. Pears Charles Sanders Peirce Derk Pereboom Steven Pinker Karl Popper H.A.Prichard Hilary Putnam Willard van Orman Quine Frank Ramsey Ayn Rand Thomas Reid Charles Renouvier Nicholas Rescher C.W.Rietdijk Josiah Royce Bertrand Russell Paul Russell Gilbert Ryle T.M.Scanlon Moritz Schlick Arthur Schopenhauer John Searle Wilfrid Sellars Henry Sidgwick Walter Sinnott-Armstrong J.J.C.Smart Saul Smilansky Michael Smith L. Susan Stebbing George F. Stout Galen Strawson Peter Strawson Eleonore Stump Richard Taylor Kevin Timpe Peter van Inwagen Manuel Vargas John Venn Kadri Vihvelin Voltaire G.H. von Wright David Foster Wallace R. Jay Wallace W.G.Ward Ted Warfield Roy Weatherford Alfred North Whitehead David Widerker David Wiggins Bernard Williams Ludwig Wittgenstein Susan Wolf Scientists Michael Arbib Bernard Baars John S. Bell Charles Bennett Margaret Boden David Bohm Neils Bohr Ludwig Boltzmann Emile Borel Max Born Stephen Brush Leon Brillouin Thomas Buckle Donald Campbell Anthony Cashmore Eric Chaisson Jean-Pierre Changeux Arthur Holly Compton John Conway E. H. Culverwell Charles Darwin Abraham de Moivre Paul Dirac John Eccles Arthur Stanley Eddington Albert Einstein Paul Ehrenfest Richard Feynman Michael Gazzaniga GianCarlo Ghirardi Nicolas Gisin Thomas Gold A.O.Gomes Joshua Greene Jacques Hadamard Patrick Haggard Augustin Hamon Sam Harris Martin Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg William Stanley Jevons Pascual Jordan Simon Kochen Stephen Kosslyn Rolf Landauer Alfred Landé Pierre-Simon Laplace David Layzer Benjamin Libet Josef Loschmidt Ernst Mach Henry Margenau James Clerk Maxwell Ernst Mayr Jacques Monod Roger Penrose Steven Pinker Max Planck Henri Poincaré Adolphe Quételet Jerome Rothstein Erwin Schrödinger Claude Shannon Dean Keith Simonton Herbert Simon B. F. Skinner Henry Stapp Antoine Suarez Leo Szilard William Thomson (Kelvin) John von Neumann Daniel Wegner Steven Weinberg Norbert Wiener Eugene Wigner E. O. Wilson Ernst Zermelo |
Chance NOT the Direct Cause of Human Action
Chance cannot directly cause our actions. We cannot be responsible for random actions.
Because of quantum mechanics, we now know that indeterminism is true and absolute chance exists in the universe.
Chance can generate random and totally unpredictable alternative possibilities for action, our "Agenda" for the Cogito.
These alternatives are generated from our internal knowledge of practical possibilities. Those that are handed up for consideration may be filtered to some extent by unconscious processes to be "within reason." They may consist of slight variations of past actions we have willed many times in the past.
The selection of one of these possibilities by the will is as deterministic and causal a process as anything that a determinist or compatibilist could ask for, consistent with our knowledge of the physical world. Instead of a strict causal determinism, the world offers only adequate determinism. Consequently, at the very most, the indeterminism or chance involved in the generation of alternative possibilities is just an indirect cause of action, and just one of many causes. One of these possibilities is de-liberated by our causally determined will, so we can say that the action was up to us and that we can accept moral responsibility for it. Some unjustified fears about chance
Through the years, a number of sensible philosophers have panicked at the thought of truly chance events, the dreaded "causa sui."
The Stoic Chrysippus warned in the third century B.C.E.
"Everything that happens is followed by something else which depends on it by causal necessity. Likewise, everything that happens is preceded by something with which it is causally connected. For nothing exists or has come into being in the cosmos without a cause. The universe will be disrupted and disintegrate into pieces and cease to be a unity functioning as a single system, if any uncaused movement is introduced into it."Here is P. H. Nowell-Smith's concern about randomness (Mind, volume 225, January, 1948) The fallacy of [Incompatibilism] has often been exposed and the clearest proof that it is mistaken or at least muddled lies in showing that I could not be free to choose what I do unless determinism is correct. For the simplest actions could not be performed in an indeterministic universe. If I decide, say, to eat a piece of fish, I cannot do so if the fish is liable to turn into a stone or to disintegrate in mid-air or to behave in any other utterly unpredictable manner.J. J. C. Smart is an extreme case of those who believe quantum indeterminism might be a direct cause of action. He is reported to have said: "Indeterminism does not confer freedom on us: I would feel that my freedom was impaired if I thought that a quantum mechanical trigger in my brain might cause me to leap into the garden and eat a slug." Examples of Chance the Direct Cause of Action
Many modern philosophers, even libertarians, conclude that if indeterminism is true our actions will be simply a matter of random chance.
One of the most influential defenders of libertarianism, Peter van Inwagen, has imagined a situation in which God rewinds the universe to exactly the same circumstances a thousand times. He concludes that an agent will act probabilistically instead of in a way adequately determined by character.
Now let us suppose that God a thousand times caused the universe to revert to exactly the state it was in at t1 (and let us suppose that we are somehow suitably placed, metaphysically speaking, to observe the whole sequence of "replays"). What would have happened? What should we expect to observe? Well, again, we can't say what would have happened, but we can say what would probably have happened: sometimes Alice would have lied and sometimes she would have told the truth. As the number of "replays" increases, we observers shall — almost certainly — observe the ratio of the outcome "truth" to the outcome "lie" settling down to, converging on, some value. We may, for example, observe that, after a fairly large number of replays, Alice lies in thirty percent of the replays and tells the truth in seventy percent of them—and that the figures 'thirty percent' and 'seventy percent' become more and more accurate as the number of replays increases. But let us imagine the simplest case: we observe that Alice tells the truth in about half the replays and lies in about half the replays. If, after one hundred replays, Alice has told the truth fifty-three times and has lied forty-eight times, we'd begin strongly to suspect that the figures after a thousand replays would look something like this: Alice has told the truth four hundred and ninety-three times and has lied five hundred and eight times. Let us suppose that these are indeed the figures after a thousand [1001] replays. Is it not true that as we watch the number of replays increase we shall become convinced that what will happen in the next replay is a matter of chance.Now van Inwagen reveals that he thinks that indeterminism directly results in actions. No wonder on his account that "free will remains a mystery!" For Teachers
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