Free Will and Determinism

Contents Page, with links

Freedom and Determinism 1

• Do human beings have freewill?
• Ordinarily we think human beings have 'free-will'
• Science and the Principle of Causality
• The Principle of Causality and 'free-will'

Freedom and Determinism 2

• Is the issue of determinism important?
• Back to the Future
• Introducing the notion of the a priori
• Is it possible to think of an 'observer' as outside time?
• The theory that time is a projection
• Some have believed in the possibility of time travel
• Review Quiz

Freedom and Determinism 3

• Cognitive Science
• Evolutionary Placement of the Human Being
• Could Autonomy have Emerged?
• Mechanisms and Autonomy
• The Turing Test
• Emergence

Freedom and Determinism 4

• Historical Materialism
• Some Theories of 'Social Evolution' on a Grand Scale
• Herbert Spencer
• Auguste Compte
• Popper's Criticism of 'Historicism'
• Marxism
• Introduction to Clip from War Games
• Review Quiz

Freedom and Determinism 5

• Introduction
• Compatibilism - one version
• Three Examples of Contrasts
• Digression: importance of analysis and clarity in philosophy
• Types of Constraint
• 'Free' doesn't mean 'Uncaused'
• Compatibilism Related to Other Views
• Hard Determinism v. Compatibilism
• Examination of Compatibilist Argument
• Making a Distinction and Meaning
• Argument for 'Free' not meaning 'Uncaused'.
• An Argument against Compatibilism
• Hypothetical 'Could'
• The Anti-compatibilist Response
• Introduction to Clip from Hamlet
• A Further Issue: do causes compel?
• Review Quiz

Freedom and Determinism 6

• Introduction
• Aside: questions of the meaning of words are always problematic. why?
• Causality - two broad approaches
• Causality: first approach.
• Nothing-behind-the-scenes-ism: can there be patterns in events, but nothing bringing those patterns about?
• Nothing-behind-the-scenes-ism applied to causality
: when you observe billiard balls colliding, what you see is a sequence of events, but not any actual 'push' or 'force'.
• David Hume on Causality
  • -One tempting conclusion: causes are not observable.
  • -David Hume's conclusion: 'cause' means something that can be observed -

    · the concept of cause to be understood as making a remark about patterns among events.

• The Challenge of 'Indeterminate' Physics
• Introduction to the a priori
• Kant on Causality
· (a) the principle of causality is true a priori (b) causality makes it possible to think of an 'external' world.

 

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