Posted: Nov 24, 2014 3:03 pm
Discussions of free will are not helped by the fact that the concept involves two quite different questions:
1) Can I justify my feeling that I freely choose my own actions and this is not some sort of illusion?
2) Am I morally responsible for my apparently free choices.*
If you answer 'no' to (1) you will presumably have to answer 'no' to (2). And plenty of people would answer 'yes' to both.
But it is quite possible to answer 'yes' to (1) on compatibilist grounds but still to think that moral responsibility requires the kind of power of ultimate origination of one's actions that is compatible with neither determinism nor indeterminism.
In other words, if there was ever a situation where I could not have behaved differently, that ought to get me off the hook morally, but nonetheless the choices I make are still mine. I can't ultimately choose who I am, but neither can I deny who I am.
* Question (2) tends to dominate professional philosophical discussion of free will, whereas question (1) seems to dominate Internet message boards. I'm not sure what that says...
1) Can I justify my feeling that I freely choose my own actions and this is not some sort of illusion?
2) Am I morally responsible for my apparently free choices.*
If you answer 'no' to (1) you will presumably have to answer 'no' to (2). And plenty of people would answer 'yes' to both.
But it is quite possible to answer 'yes' to (1) on compatibilist grounds but still to think that moral responsibility requires the kind of power of ultimate origination of one's actions that is compatible with neither determinism nor indeterminism.
In other words, if there was ever a situation where I could not have behaved differently, that ought to get me off the hook morally, but nonetheless the choices I make are still mine. I can't ultimately choose who I am, but neither can I deny who I am.
* Question (2) tends to dominate professional philosophical discussion of free will, whereas question (1) seems to dominate Internet message boards. I'm not sure what that says...