| Subject: The Case for Free Will |
Author:
An Atheist
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 22:08:30 06/07/01 Thu
In reply to:
lark33i
's message, "explaining our lack of free will" on 07:12:38 06/07/01 Thu
From what you've outlined, lark, I personally do not like Hume's Fork. It sounds like a false dichotomy and exactly how A.J. Ayer argues against free will as being defined as "uncaused" in his paper "Freedom and Necissity". Since I know you love this topic, let me try and do my best to outline Campbell's case for free will (libertarianism) as he wrote in his 1957 paper "Has the Self 'Free Will'?
Campbell defines a free act as an act "of which [the person] is the sole author". An act can rightly be defined as free if the person is the sole determinant - that is, there are no other outside causal influences. Keep in mind that I am arguing for a freedom that can justify moral responsiblity. If what you assert is true, lark, then moral responsibility could not exist.
I cannot doubt and neither can Campbell that heredity, evironment, etc play an enormous role - as you have correctly stated - in what decisions we make. "For, if we are mindful of the influences exerted by heredity and environment, we may well feel some doubt whether there is any act of will of which one can truly say that the self is sole autheor, sole determinant."
What can of act, then, would we be the sole author? What kind of act can we truly call "free"? Well, there is one such thing. It is the decision whether or not to exert Moral Effort, which is "something that is not affected by heredity and environment but depends solely upon the self itself."
When faced in a situation of moral dilemma (and only in these situations), the decision to exert the moral effort to make the correct decision (or not) is something that is in and of itself uncaused. Campbell argues: "Now clearly our character cannot be a factor in determining the decision whether or not to *oppose* our character". Thus we have a case of sole authorship. The decision to make the effort to go against what our personality and the situation might have us do is a clear case of an uncaused act that is not a completely random act as Hume and you seemed to have wrongly assumed. The act may be uncaused, but there are only two chioces on hand: exert or not exert. Nobody will be acting wildly or out of control.
It is not often when we are faced with these moral dilemma, so it is likewise not often when we actually excercise our free will as defined above. When it comes to everyday mundane decisions, the deterministc theory may rightly apply without any harm done to this theory of free will.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
| |
Feedback: 