PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Bachelor of Philosophy: Free Will and Determinism 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which philosopher argued in 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding' that liberty is simply acting according to the determinations of the will, making freedom compatible with necessity?
- Immanuel Kant
- David Hume (Correct answer)
- John Locke
- Thomas Hobbes
Correct answer: David Hume
Hume defined liberty as the power to act or not act according to the will's determination, making compatibilism central to his empiricism.
Question 2: P.F. Strawson's influential paper 'Freedom and Resentment' (1962) argued that free will debates should focus primarily on which of the following?
- The causal structure of the universe
- Reactive attitudes such as gratitude and resentment (Correct answer)
- Neurological correlates of decision-making
- The logical form of counterfactual conditionals
Correct answer: Reactive attitudes such as gratitude and resentment
Strawson shifted focus to the reactive attitudes we adopt toward people as participants in moral relationships, grounding free will in interpersonal practice.
Question 3: The 'Consequence Argument,' developed by Peter van Inwagen, concludes that if determinism is true, then our actions are consequences of laws of nature and events in the remote past. What does van Inwagen conclude from this?
- Compatibilism is trivially true
- We have no control over these consequences and thus lack free will (Correct answer)
- Determinism and free will are logically equivalent
- The laws of nature can be suspended by rational agents
Correct answer: We have no control over these consequences and thus lack free will
Van Inwagen's Consequence Argument concludes that if determinism holds, no one has power over the past or the laws, so no one has power over their actions.
Question 4: What is 'agent causation' as defended by Roderick Chisholm and Timothy O'Connor?
- The idea that agents are caused to act by prior mental events
- The view that agents as substances are irreducible causes of their own actions (Correct answer)
- A form of compatibilism based on higher-order desires
- The claim that free actions are caused by random quantum events
Correct answer: The view that agents as substances are irreducible causes of their own actions
Agent causation holds that the agent itself—not merely prior events—is the direct cause of action, posited as a solution to the luck objection against libertarianism.
Question 5: Harry Frankfurt's thought experiment featuring a neuroscientist who can intervene in decisions was designed primarily to challenge which principle?
- The Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) (Correct answer)
- The Causal Closure of the Physical
- The Principle of Sufficient Reason
- Van Inwagen's Consequence Argument
Correct answer: The Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP)
Frankfurt Cases are designed to show that moral responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise, targeting the Principle of Alternative Possibilities.
Question 6: In the context of free will, what does the term 'sourcehood' refer to?
- The causal origin of an action in the agent's own character or reasons (Correct answer)
- The neural source of motor commands in the brain
- The historical cause of the universe's initial state
- The logical source of valid inference rules
Correct answer: The causal origin of an action in the agent's own character or reasons
Sourcehood concerns whether an agent is the genuine originating source of their action, contrasted with 'leeway' (having alternatives) as a distinct freedom condition.
Question 7: Derk Pereboom's 'four-case argument' is intended to show that moral responsibility is undermined even without determinism by using a series of cases with increasingly familiar causal structures. What position does Pereboom defend?
- Hard compatibilism
- Hard incompatibilism (Correct answer)
- Libertarianism via agent causation
- Classical compatibilism
Correct answer: Hard incompatibilism
Pereboom is a hard incompatibilist who argues that we lack the kind of free will required for basic desert moral responsibility in all four cases.
PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Bachelor of Philosophy: Free Will and Determinism 2
Which philosopher argued in 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding' that liberty is simply acting according to the determinations of the will, making freedom compatible with necessity?