PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Bachelor of Philosophy: Free Will and Determinism 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Susan Wolf's 'Reason View' of free will holds that free will requires the ability to act in accordance with which of the following?
- One's strongest first-order desire
- Reason, understood as the ability to act on what is truly good (Correct answer)
- Randomly determined choices that bypass prior causes
- Social norms agreed upon by rational contractors
Correct answer: Reason, understood as the ability to act on what is truly good
Wolf argues that freedom is the ability to act in accordance with Reason—to recognize and respond to what is truly good—which is asymmetric: only doing wrong requires the ability to do otherwise.
Question 2: Logical determinism, distinct from causal determinism, is the view that future contingent statements are already true or false. Which ancient puzzle exemplifies this threat to free will?
- Zeno's paradox of the arrow
- The sea battle argument from Aristotle's De Interpretatione (Correct answer)
- The Euthyphro dilemma
- The problem of induction
Correct answer: The sea battle argument from Aristotle's De Interpretatione
Aristotle's sea battle argument questions whether statements about tomorrow's naval battle are already true or false, raising the threat that the future is logically fixed.
Question 3: What is 'semi-compatibilism' as proposed by John Martin Fischer?
- Free will requires some but not all forms of determinism to be false
- Moral responsibility is compatible with determinism even if free will is not (Correct answer)
- Freedom of action and freedom of will are independently compatible with determinism
- Determinism and indeterminism are equally compatible with moral responsibility
Correct answer: Moral responsibility is compatible with determinism even if free will is not
Fischer's semi-compatibilism holds that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism regardless of whether free will itself is, separating the two concepts.
Question 4: The 'Mind Argument' against compatibilism claims that if determinism is false and actions are random, free will is still absent. What does this argument suggest about libertarian free will?
- Libertarianism easily solves the problem of luck
- Indeterminism merely replaces one problem (determinism) with another (luck) (Correct answer)
- Random quantum events are sufficient for genuine agency
- Compatibilism is the only viable option
Correct answer: Indeterminism merely replaces one problem (determinism) with another (luck)
The Mind Argument (or 'luck objection') holds that indeterminist events in the causal chain of action are just lucky, not freely chosen, posing a dilemma for libertarians.
Question 5: Galen Strawson's 'Basic Argument' concludes that true moral responsibility is impossible. Which step is central to his reasoning?
- Moral responsibility requires determinism, but determinism is false
- To be truly responsible for your actions you must be responsible for the mental states that cause them, leading to infinite regress (Correct answer)
- Free will requires libertarian indeterminism, which contradicts physics
- Compatibilist freedom is incoherent because it relies on circular definitions
Correct answer: To be truly responsible for your actions you must be responsible for the mental states that cause them, leading to infinite regress
Galen Strawson argues that since you cannot be ultimately responsible for your character without an impossible infinite regress, true moral responsibility is incoherent.
Question 6: Which term describes the view that both causal determinism and the existence of free will are logically incompatible, requiring that at least one must be false?
- Compatibilism
- Libertarianism
- Incompatibilism (Correct answer)
- Epiphenomenalism
Correct answer: Incompatibilism
Incompatibilism is the thesis that determinism and free will cannot both be true, and is shared by hard determinists, hard incompatibilists, and libertarians.
Question 7: What is the 'manipulation argument' against compatibilism, associated with philosophers like Alfred Mele?
- If a manipulated agent satisfies all compatibilist conditions yet lacks responsibility, those conditions are insufficient (Correct answer)
- Compatibilism can be defended by appealing to the history of manipulation
- Manipulation cases show that determinism entails randomness at the quantum level
- Compatibilists must accept that all human behavior is a form of manipulation
Correct answer: If a manipulated agent satisfies all compatibilist conditions yet lacks responsibility, those conditions are insufficient
Mele and others argue that a person engineered from birth to behave a certain way may meet all compatibilist criteria yet still lack genuine moral responsibility.
PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Bachelor of Philosophy: Free Will and Determinism 3
Susan Wolf's 'Reason View' of free will holds that free will requires the ability to act in accordance with which of the following?