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    Carmelics

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    Compatibilists like van Inwagen's interlocutors distingui... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Ascribing to humans the power to have broken the laws of nature (in the sense that their different choices would have made Maxwell's equations non-laws) is counterintuitive and not directly supported by Humeanism.

    Compatibilists like van Inwagen's interlocutors distinguish the ability to render a law false from the ability to act such that, had one so acted, a regularity would not have been a law.

    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Laws of nature describe what is actually the case in closed systems, not what must be metaphysically necessary.
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    • 2.An agent can have freedom to act otherwise without having power to alter fundamental physical laws themselves.
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    • 3.The distinction preserves ordinary intuitions about moral responsibility while accepting deterministic physics.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.This distinction relies on a counterfactual that seems metaphysically incoherent: laws differing while physics remains the same.
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    • 2.If deterministic laws entail all future states from initial conditions, the ability to act otherwise is illusory under either interpretation.
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    • 3.The distinction obscures rather than resolves whether agents possess the ultimate control required for genuine responsibility.
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    Key Terms

    Compatibilists(as used in philosophy of free will)
    Philosophers who believe that free will and determinism (the idea that everything is predetermined) can both be true at the same time, rather than being opposites.
    Interlocutors(Platonic dialogues)
    The person or group of people to whom Socrates was talking in Plato's dialogues, who propose definitions or views that Socrates challenges.
    Render a law false(describing one ability being discussed in the debate)
    To make a scientific law (like the law of gravity) stop being true—essentially, to break or violate it.
    regularity(Violated in de Finetti's lottery when each ticket is assigned probability 0)
    The property of a probability function whereby every possible event (every non-empty set of outcomes) receives positive probability
    van Inwagen(as a philosopher being cited as a necessitarian)
    Peter van Inwagen is a contemporary American philosopher who studies questions about what exists, what it means to exist, and whether God must exist.

    Connections

    1 topic

    Free Will & Foreknowledge1 linked

    Related

    An agent can have freedom to act otherwise without having power to alter fundame...Ascribing to humans the power to have broken the laws of nature (in the sense th...If deterministic laws entail all future states from initial conditions, the abil...Laws of nature describe what is actually the case in closed systems, not what mu...
    +3 moreShow less
    The distinction obscures rather than resolves whether agents possess the ultimat...The distinction preserves ordinary intuitions about moral responsibility while a...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    This distinction relies on a counterfactual that seems metaphysically incoherent...