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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 |
Free Will Axiom
Many philosophers and scientists claim that one cannot work at all without the assumption of freedom. To do otherwise is to admit that we have no control over anything that happens, because it is "happening to us", not happening because it "depends on us."
René Descartes famously divided the world into mind (the ideal realm of thoughts) and body (the material world). The physical world is a deterministic machine, but our ideas and thoughts can be free (undetermined) and can change things in the otherwise pre-determined material world (through the pineal gland in the brain, he thought).
Descartes wrote in 1644
The freedom of the will is self-evident. There is freedom in our will, and that we have power in many cases or withhold our assent at will, is so evident that it must be counted among the first and most common notions that are innate in us.In his 1874 book Principles of Science, the great logician and economist William Stanley Jevons is unequivocal that scientists have a freedom to hypothesize. In a section entitled Freedom of Theorizing, he declares It would be a complete error to suppose that the great discoverer is one who seizes at once unerringly upon the truth, or has any special method of divining it. In all probability the errors of the great mind far exceed in number those of the less vigorous one. Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at truth are among the first requisites of discovery; but the erroneous guesses must almost of necessity be many times as numerous as those which prove well founded. The weakest analogies, the most whimsical notions, the most apparently absurd theories, may pass through the teeming brain, and no record may remain of more than the hundredth part. There is nothing intrinsically absurd except that which proves contrary to logic and experience. The truest theories involve suppositions which are most inconceivable, and no limit can really be placed to the freedom of framing hypotheses.We know that William James read Jevons. In 1880, he credited Jevons with explaining the creativity of the genius as dependent on random hypotheses. James said, "To Professor Jevons is due the great credit of having emphatically pointed out how the genius of discovery depends altogether on the number of these random notions and guesses which visit the investigator's mind. To be fertile in hypotheses is the first requisite, and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next."But James said explictly that he learned to affirm his freedom as a starting point from the French philosopher Charles Renouvier. In an 1876 review of Renouvier's Essais de Critique Générale, James quoted Renouvier, "Let our liberty pronounce on its own real existence," and said {Freedom] and necessity being alike indemonstrable by any quasi-material process, must be postulated if taken at all.He quoted Renouvier again, "I prefer to affirm my liberty and to it by means of my liberty. . . .My moral and practical certitude begins logically by the certitude of my freedom, just as practically my freedom has always had to intervene in the constitution of my speculative certitude."So for James it was an axiom, a starting point, that his will was free. As his first act of freedom, he said, he chose to believe his will was free. In his diary entry of April 30, 1870, he wrote, "I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will — 'the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts' — need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present — until next year — that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."The philosopher John Searle says: The problem of free will is unusual among contemporary philosophical issues in that we are nowhere remotely near to having a solution. I can give you a pretty good account of consciousness, intentionality, speech acts and of the ontology of society but I do not know how to solve the problem of free will. Well, why is that important? There are lots of problems we do not have solutions to. The special problem of free will is that we cannot get on with our lives without presupposing free will. Whenever we are in a decision-making situation, or indeed, in any situation that calls for voluntary action, we have to presuppose our own freedom.The scientist Nicolas Gisin says: I know that I enjoy free will much more than I know anything about physics. Hence, physics will never be able to convince me that free will is an illusion. Quite the contrary, any physical hypothesis incompatible with free will is falsified by the most profound experience I have about free will.The scientist Antoine Suarez says: Free Will is an axiom, like the Free Will Theorem of Conway and Kochen.Conway and Kochen claim that if experimenters have free will, then so do the elementary particles (of which experimenters are made). This is the reverse of Arthur Stanley Eddington, who said that the freedom (quantum indeterminacy) of the elementary particles cracked opened a door for human freedom. Eddington said, "The revolution of theory which has expelled determinism from present-day physics has therefore the important consequence that it is no longer necessary to suppose that human actions are competely predetermined. Although the door of human freedom is opened, it is not flung wide open; only a chink of daylight appears."American philosopher Henry Allison said, "To take oneself as a rational agent is to assume that one's reason has a practical application or, equivalently, that one has a will. Moreover, one cannot assume this without already presupposing the idea of freedom, which is why one can act, or take oneself to act, only under this idea. It constitutes, as it were, the form of the thought of oneself as a rational agent." For Teachers
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