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    Even on a Humean view of laws, it does not automatically ... — Carmelics
    Home/Free Will & Foreknowledge
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Even on a Humean view of laws, it does not automatically follow that humans have the freedom to have done otherwise given certain past states of affairs.

    Free Will & Foreknowledge
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.On a Humean view, laws of nature are exceptionless regularities that are simple and strong, but derive their status partly from what actually occurs.
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    • 2.Human actions being part of what makes the laws be what they are does not entail that humans could have acted differently under the same past conditions.
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    • 3.The claim that if a person had chosen otherwise then Maxwell's equations would not have been laws does not follow directly from a Humean approach to laws of nature.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.On a Humean Best Systems Account (Lewis 1994), laws supervene on the totality of particular facts, including all actual human choices.
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    • 2.If an agent could have chosen otherwise, the best system systematizing that counterfactual history might yield different laws, making 'same laws, different choice' metaphysically incoherent.
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    • 3.Therefore, Humean laws do not constrain agents from without but are partly constituted by their actions, undercutting the claim that Humeanism leaves deterministic unfreedom intact.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Compatibilists like Lewis (1981) distinguish between the ability to act such that the past would have been different and the ability to act such that the laws would have been violated.
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    • 2.On a Humean view, since laws have no governing necessity, an agent's counterfactual choice revises the Humean mosaic rather than 'breaking' a law, making the soft determinist's local-miracle compatibilism more tractable than on governing-laws views.
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    • 3.The supporting argument's premise 3 therefore actually supports compatibilist freedom rather than undermining it, reversing the direction of the original claim.
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    Free Will & Foreknowledge

    Related

    Compatibilists like Lewis (1981) distinguish between the ability to act such tha...Human actions being part of what makes the laws be what they are does not entail...If an agent could have chosen otherwise, the best system systematizing that coun...On a Humean Best Systems Account (Lewis 1994), laws supervene on the totality of...
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    On a Humean view, laws of nature are exceptionless regularities that are simple ...On a Humean view, since laws have no governing necessity, an agent's counterfact...The claim that if a person had chosen otherwise then Maxwell's equations would n...The supporting argument's premise 3 therefore actually supports compatibilist fr...Therefore, Humean laws do not constrain agents from without but are partly const...

    Similar

    Human actions being part of what makes the laws be what they are does ...85%Compatibilism holds that freedom does not require the ability to act o...79%The concept of freedom imposes ends through its laws.77%On such views, questions about determinism and human freedom must be a...77%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: determinism-causal
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    On second thought, however, it is not so surprising that broadly Humean philosophers such as Ayer, Earman, Lewis and others still see a potential problem for freedom posed by determinism. For even if human actions are part of what makes the laws be what they are, this does not mean that we automatically have freedom of the kind we think we have, particularly freedom to have done otherwise given certain past states of affairs. It is one thing to say that everything occurring in and around my body
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit