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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Free will is incompatible with causal determinism.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.The ability to act otherwise required for free will is a conditional ability: one could have done otherwise if one had chosen differently.
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    • 2.Determinism is compatible with the truth of such conditionals, since a different prior choice would have deterministically produced a different action.
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    • 3.Therefore, determinism does not eliminate the relevant sense of 'could have done otherwise' needed for moral responsibility (G.E. Moore, Schlick, Ayer).
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.What grounds moral responsibility is not the absence of causal determination but whether the action flows from the agent's own reasons-responsive mechanism (Fischer & Ravizza).
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    • 2.A causally determined agent whose deliberative processes track and respond to reasons is not relevantly unfree, since the causal chain runs through the self rather than bypassing it.
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    • 3.The Consequence Argument's transfer of non-responsibility principle (β) illicitly treats agent-constitutive causal chains as external constraints equivalent to physical compulsion (Dennett, Wolf).
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Possession of free will requires an ability to act otherwise than one in fact does.
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    • 2.The truth of determinism entails that an agent's actions are the unavoidable consequences of things over which the agent lacks control.
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    • 3.If an agent's actions are the unavoidable consequences of things over which the agent lacks control, then the agent's actions are not up to him.
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