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Philosophers

Mortimer Adler
Rogers Albritton
Alexander of Aphrodisias
Samuel Alexander
William Alston
Anaximander
G.E.M.Anscombe
Anselm
Louise Antony
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
David Armstrong
Harald Atmanspacher
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J.L.Austin
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Alexander Bain
Mark Balaguer
Jeffrey Barrett
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Robert Bishop
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Susanne Bobzien
Emil du Bois-Reymond
Hilary Bok
Laurence BonJour
George Boole
Émile Boutroux
Daniel Boyd
F.H.Bradley
C.D.Broad
Michael Burke
Lawrence Cahoone
C.A.Campbell
Joseph Keim Campbell
Rudolf Carnap
Carneades
Nancy Cartwright
Gregg Caruso
Ernst Cassirer
David Chalmers
Roderick Chisholm
Chrysippus
Cicero
Randolph Clarke
Samuel Clarke
Anthony Collins
Antonella Corradini
Diodorus Cronus
Jonathan Dancy
Donald Davidson
Mario De Caro
Democritus
Daniel Dennett
Jacques Derrida
René Descartes
Richard Double
Fred Dretske
John Dupré
John Earman
Laura Waddell Ekstrom
Epictetus
Epicurus
Austin Farrer
Herbert Feigl
Arthur Fine
John Martin Fischer
Frederic Fitch
Owen Flanagan
Luciano Floridi
Philippa Foot
Alfred Fouilleé
Harry Frankfurt
Richard L. Franklin
Bas van Fraassen
Michael Frede
Gottlob Frege
Peter Geach
Edmund Gettier
Carl Ginet
Alvin Goldman
Gorgias
Nicholas St. John Green
H.Paul Grice
Ian Hacking
Ishtiyaque Haji
Stuart Hampshire
W.F.R.Hardie
Sam Harris
William Hasker
R.M.Hare
Georg W.F. Hegel
Martin Heidegger
Heraclitus
R.E.Hobart
Thomas Hobbes
David Hodgson
Shadsworth Hodgson
Baron d'Holbach
Ted Honderich
Pamela Huby
David Hume
Ferenc Huoranszki
Frank Jackson
William James
Lord Kames
Robert Kane
Immanuel Kant
Tomis Kapitan
Walter Kaufmann
Jaegwon Kim
William King
Hilary Kornblith
Christine Korsgaard
Saul Kripke
Thomas Kuhn
Andrea Lavazza
Christoph Lehner
Keith Lehrer
Gottfried Leibniz
Jules Lequyer
Leucippus
Michael Levin
Joseph Levine
George Henry Lewes
C.I.Lewis
David Lewis
Peter Lipton
C. Lloyd Morgan
John Locke
Michael Lockwood
Arthur O. Lovejoy
E. Jonathan Lowe
John R. Lucas
Lucretius
Alasdair MacIntyre
Ruth Barcan Marcus
Tim Maudlin
James Martineau
Nicholas Maxwell
Storrs McCall
Hugh McCann
Colin McGinn
Michael McKenna
Brian McLaughlin
John McTaggart
Paul E. Meehl
Uwe Meixner
Alfred Mele
Trenton Merricks
John Stuart Mill
Dickinson Miller
G.E.Moore
Thomas Nagel
Otto Neurath
Friedrich Nietzsche
John Norton
P.H.Nowell-Smith
Robert Nozick
William of Ockham
Timothy O'Connor
Parmenides
David F. Pears
Charles Sanders Peirce
Derk Pereboom
Steven Pinker
Plato
Karl Popper
Porphyry
Huw Price
H.A.Prichard
Protagoras
Hilary Putnam
Willard van Orman Quine
Frank Ramsey
Ayn Rand
Michael Rea
Thomas Reid
Charles Renouvier
Nicholas Rescher
C.W.Rietdijk
Richard Rorty
Josiah Royce
Bertrand Russell
Paul Russell
Gilbert Ryle
Jean-Paul Sartre
Kenneth Sayre
T.M.Scanlon
Moritz Schlick
Arthur Schopenhauer
John Searle
Wilfrid Sellars
Alan Sidelle
Ted Sider
Henry Sidgwick
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
J.J.C.Smart
Saul Smilansky
Michael Smith
Baruch Spinoza
L. Susan Stebbing
Isabelle Stengers
George F. Stout
Galen Strawson
Peter Strawson
Eleonore Stump
Francisco Suárez
Richard Taylor
Kevin Timpe
Mark Twain
Peter Unger
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
C.F. von Weizsäcker
William Whewell
Alfred North Whitehead
David Widerker
David Wiggins
Bernard Williams
Timothy Williamson
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Susan Wolf

Scientists

David Albert
Michael Arbib
Walter Baade
Bernard Baars
Jeffrey Bada
Leslie Ballentine
Marcello Barbieri
Gregory Bateson
Horace Barlow
John S. Bell
Mara Beller
Charles Bennett
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Susan Blackmore
Margaret Boden
David Bohm
Niels Bohr
Ludwig Boltzmann
Emile Borel
Max Born
Satyendra Nath Bose
Walther Bothe
Jean Bricmont
Hans Briegel
Leon Brillouin
Stephen Brush
Henry Thomas Buckle
S. H. Burbury
Melvin Calvin
Donald Campbell
Sadi Carnot
Anthony Cashmore
Eric Chaisson
Gregory Chaitin
Jean-Pierre Changeux
Rudolf Clausius
Arthur Holly Compton
John Conway
Jerry Coyne
John Cramer
Francis Crick
E. P. Culverwell
Antonio Damasio
Olivier Darrigol
Charles Darwin
Richard Dawkins
Terrence Deacon
Lüder Deecke
Richard Dedekind
Louis de Broglie
Stanislas Dehaene
Max Delbrück
Abraham de Moivre
Bernard d'Espagnat
Paul Dirac
Hans Driesch
John Eccles
Arthur Stanley Eddington
Gerald Edelman
Paul Ehrenfest
Manfred Eigen
Albert Einstein
George F. R. Ellis
Hugh Everett, III
Franz Exner
Richard Feynman
R. A. Fisher
David Foster
Joseph Fourier
Philipp Frank
Steven Frautschi
Edward Fredkin
Benjamin Gal-Or
Howard Gardner
Lila Gatlin
Michael Gazzaniga
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen
GianCarlo Ghirardi
J. Willard Gibbs
James J. Gibson
Nicolas Gisin
Paul Glimcher
Thomas Gold
A. O. Gomes
Brian Goodwin
Joshua Greene
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Mark Hadley
Patrick Haggard
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Hyman Hartman
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William R. Klemm
Christof Koch
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Günther Witzany
Stephen Wolfram
H. Dieter Zeh
Semir Zeki
Ernst Zermelo
Wojciech Zurek
Konrad Zuse
Fritz Zwicky

Presentations

Biosemiotics
Free Will
Mental Causation
James Symposium
 
Philosophers

Mortimer Adler
Rogers Albritton
G.E.M.Anscombe
Anselm
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
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
David Chalmers
Roderick Chisholm
Chrysippus
Cicero
Randolph Clarke
Samuel Clarke
Anthony Collins
Diodorus Cronus
Donald Davidson
Mario De Caro
Democritus
Daniel Dennett
René Descartes
Richard Double
Emil du Bois-Reymond
Fred Dretske
John Earman
Laura Waddell Ekstrom
Epictetus
Epicurus
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
William James
Lord Kames
Robert Kane
Immanuel Kant
Tomis Kapitan
Jaegwon Kim
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
Storrs McCall
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
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
William Whewell
Alfred North Whitehead
David Widerker
David Wiggins
Bernard Williams
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Susan Wolf

Scientists
Eleonore Stump

Eleonore Stump is a specialist in medieval philosophy who has compared Thomas Aquinas's views on free will with those in the contemporary debates and tentatively decided he was a libertarian. (Aquinas was, of course, a compatibilist with respect to God's foreknowledge.) In her comparisons, Stump exhibits her own incompatibilist position.

Stump speculates about a natural dualism that is not an extreme Cartesian dualism - one that depends on a metaphysical mental substance - but one that is an emergent property at the system level. She argues that Aquinas' dualism, which takes the soul to be the form of the body, can accept the characterization of the mental as correlated with the physical because the mind is implemented in configurations of the physical.

But this may imply that the mental state is the causal outcome of the physical state, so Stump develops her own version of the standard two-part argument against free will.

Excerpts from "FREEDOM: Action, Intellect, and Will"
(Chapter 9 of Aquinas, Routledge, 2003, pp.300-306)

Libertarianism and causal determination

Libertarian free will is sometimes characterized in this way:

(L) an act of will, such as a decision, is free only if
[1] "the decision [is] not ... causally determined, and ...
[2] the agent could have avoided making it."
As we have seen, Aquinas does not accept the second conjunct of (L), (L2). Because of the implications of Frankfurt-type counterexamples, many contemporary philosophers also suppose that (L2) is too strong. So perhaps (L2) is not a necessary condition for libertarian free will. But what about (L1), the claim that a decision is free only if the decision is not causally determined?

L1 is the standard Determinist Objection to free will
In connection with (L1), it is important to ask what theory of mind a libertarian account of free will is to be embedded in. Suppose we assume, as perhaps most theories of mind now do, that there is some sort of correlation between a mental state and a set of neural firings. This will be a one—many correlation: there will need to be many neural firings to produce one mental state. The mental state of recognizing a girl across a crowded room as your daughter, for example, requires the firing of neurons from the retina through the superior colliculus, the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus, and various parts of the visual cortex, and into those parts of the brain specialized for memory and the recognition of faces. The entire causal sequence of many neural firings is required to produce one mental state, which is an effect of the sequence.

This characterization of the mental state as causally brought about by a series of neural firings does not presuppose any particular sort of correlation between the mental and the physical. It is compatible with either type-type or token-token identity theories, but it does not presuppose either of them. By saying that mental states are correlated with neural sequences, I mean to make only a vague association between mental states and neural sequences, compatible with various theories of relations between mind and brain. Those who think that the mental is identical to the physical can suppose that the mental states and the neural sequences are correlated because the mental states are the neural sequences. Non-reductive materialists can take the correlation as some version of emergence or supervenience. As far as that goes, even dualists such as Aquinas, who takes the soul to be the form of the body, can accept this characterization of the mental as correlated with the physical in virtue of the mind's being implemented in configurations of the physical. Only the most extreme versions of Cartesian substance dualism will reject it. On an extreme version of Cartesian dualism — which Descartes himself may have held — some mental states, such as thinking and willing, go on only in the immaterial soul and are not mirrored by or correlated with brain processes.

On any theory of the mind, including Aquinas's, that sees a stronger tie between mind and body than extreme Cartesian dualism, there will be some sort of correlation (up to and including identity) between mental processes and brain processes. On such non-Cartesian theories, however exactly we interpret the correlation between a physical state and a mental state, the mental state is a causal outcome of physical states.

If (L1) is right, however, only those mental acts which are not so much as correlated with patterns of neural firings can count as free. But then libertarianism could be held only by extreme Cartesian dualists. And, clearly, there are committed libertarians who reject any form of Cartesian dualism. So (L1) is also too strong; to avoid making libertarianism a theory only extreme Cartesian dualists can hold, it needs to be revised. Because libertarians identify themselves at least in part by their opposition to compatibilism, libertarianism does need to rule out as non-free mental or bodily acts that are causally determined by something outside the agent. The claim that a free act is the outcome of a causal chain which originates in some cause external to the agent's own intellect and will is incompatible with libertarian free will. But the mere claim that a free act is the outcome of a causal chain is not.

A more reasonable version of the relevant necessary condition for libertarianism is therefore this:

(L1') a decision is free only if it is not the outcome of a causal chain that originates in a cause outside the agent.
An objection

At this point someone may object. If we bring contemporary theories of the nature of the mind into the discussion of Aquinas's theory of free will, the objector will argue, then (unless we accept extreme Cartesian dualism) no volition can be free in the sense specified in (Ll'). So, insofar as Aquinas's account centrally includes (L1'), it can be shown to be false. For ease of discussion we can put the objector's point in contemporary terms by taking the physical states with which the mental is correlated to be neural states. Then the objector's point can be formulated this way:

(O)
(1) there are no uncaused neural events, and
(2) the chain of causation eventuating in a human action will be traceable ultimately to something outside the agent.
So if mental states are causally determined by neural states, they will also be determined, more remotely, by causes outside the agent, contrary to the stipulation in (L1').

If correct, this objection, which presupposes that the mental is embedded in a complete causal nexus governing the whole realm of the physical, is fatal to Aquinas's theory of free will since on Aquinas's theory nothing outside the agent exercises efficient causality on the will. So the objection is worth considering in some detail.

The objector will perhaps meet little opposition regarding (O1), the claim that all neural events are caused. Is he also right in (O2), the claim that the chain of causation for neural events will lead outside the agent? Are all brain processes causally determined, ultimately, by something outside the agent? We might suppose that they would have to be.

O2 is the standard Determinist Objection, cf. Peter van Inwagen's Consequence Argument
Otherwise, it would seem, brain events would be insulated from the physical interactions of the surrounding extra-bodily environment. Or, to put the point in terms more suitable to Aquinas's account, if nothing in nature exercises efficient causality on the will, then it looks as if the causal nexus of events is incomplete or even magically interrupted at the level of the will (or the intellect and the will).

But the objector's way of looking at things, which will perhaps seem obviously right to many people, rests on philosophical convictions that include both reductionism and determinism, its well as the assumption of causal completeness at the microlevel. Although reductionism comes in many forms, its different forms share a common attitude: all the sciences are reducible to physics, and all scientific explanation is ultimately formulable solely in terms of the microstructural. But this attitude discounts the importance of form, as Aquinas thinks of it (or levels of organization, as contemporary philosophers of biology tend to say). It also discounts the causal efficacy things have in virtue of their form or level of organization. (This feature of reductionism perhaps helps explain why it has come under special attack in philosophy of biology. Biological function is frequently a feature of the way in which the microstructural components of something are organized, rather than of the intrinsic properties of the microcomponents themselves.)

[If reductionism is false], if Aquinas's attitude towards the ontological importance of form is correct, then (O2) is false. Consequently, it cannot count as a reason for rejecting (L1') , and Aquinas's account of free will as dependent on an agent's ability to initiate a causal chain leading to action is not undermined by the objection.

Aquinas among the libertarians

Of course, (L1') is not sufficient, on Aquinas's account or on the views of contemporary libertarians, for libertarian free will. What else is to be added, if it is not some version of PAP?

Origination of causes in the mind is Aristotle's "up to us" (ἐφ ἡμῖν)
For Aquinas, human freedom is vested in human cognitive capacities and in the connection of the will to those capacities. As long as human acts originate in those faculties, those acts count as free, even if the agent could not have done otherwise in the circumstances or the act of will is necessitated by natural inclinations of the intellect and the will. On Aquinas's account, the causal chain culminating in a free mental or bodily act cannot originate in a cause extrinsic to the agent just because it must have its ultimate source in the proper functioning of the agent's own intellect and will.

What is sufficient for libertarian free will, then, on Aquinas's account, is that the ultimate source of an action be the agent's own will and cognitive faculties. Since this condition entails (L1'), we can reformulate the characterization of libertarianism in this way:

(L') an act is free if and only if the ultimate cause of that act is the agent's own will and intellect.
here is the standard, but flawed, Randomness Objection to free will
This understanding of human freedom also helps explain why acts generated randomly are no more free than acts brought about by causes extrinsic to the agent. Random acts do not have their ultimate source in the agent's own intellect and will, any more than acts brought about by causes extrinsic to the agent.

Some contemporary philosophers share Aquinas's basic intuition about the nature of freedom. For example, John Martin Fischer's account of moral responsibility is like Aquinas's account of free actions in this respect: Fischer thinks that moral responsibility is a function of an agent's reasons-responsive mechanism. And one way of understanding the point of contention between compatibilists and libertarians of any sort is in terms of this question:

(Q) Is it possible for the mind (or the brain) to be a reasons-responsive mechanism if the only candidates for the origin of mental events (or neural events) are random accidents or causes outside the agent?
A compatibilist will answer (Q) in the affirmative; a libertarian such as Aquinas will answer it in the negative.

Part of what makes it hard to adjudicate between compatibilists and libertarians here is that we are so far from understanding how the brain (or the mind implemented in matter) can be a reasons-responsive mechanism at all, on anybody's theory of mind. Except for extreme Cartesian dualists, most contemporary philosophers suppose that the brain does constitute a reasons-responsive mechanism, but it is hard to see how a biological organ such as the brain can respond to reasons or process information. Neurobiologists are in no position to give anything other than promissory notes on this subject, and the best philosophical attempts are ultimately unpersuasive even if ingenious. But unless we understand how a biological organ such as the brain can be an information-processor or a reasons-responsive mechanism, we will not be able to give a neurobiological account of our cognitive functioning which successfully adjudicates the different answers to (Q) given by compatibilists and libertarians, such as Aquinas.

Looked at from the point of view of philosophy, compatibilism appears to be a sort of codicil to reductionism and determinism. If all macrophenomena are reducible to microstructural phenomena and If' there is a complete causal story to be told at the microlevel, then if we as macroscopic agents are free with respect to any of our actions, that freedom has to be not only compatible with but in fact just a function of the complete causal story at the microlevel. On the other hand, if the metaphysical attitudes of Aquinas are right, compatibilism is an unnecessary concession, an attempt to preserve what we commonly believe about our control over our actions in the face of a philosophically mistaken and scientifically premature commitment to reductionism and determinism.

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