PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Bachelor of Philosophy: Free Will and Determinism 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Clarence Darrow's famous 1924 defense of Leopold and Loeb argued they could not be held morally responsible because their actions were the product of heredity and environment. Which philosophical position does this defense implicitly endorse?
- Libertarianism
- Compatibilism
- Hard determinism (Correct answer)
- Agent causation
Correct answer: Hard determinism
Darrow's argument mirrors hard determinism: if all actions are causally necessitated by factors outside the agent's control, traditional blame is unjustified.
Question 2: In moral philosophy, 'basic desert' moral responsibility refers to which specific notion?
- Desert based on social utility or future consequences
- Deserving praise or blame in a way that is intrinsically fitting, independent of consequences (Correct answer)
- Desert grounded in legal statutes and social contracts
- The idea that all agents naturally deserve equal treatment
Correct answer: Deserving praise or blame in a way that is intrinsically fitting, independent of consequences
Basic desert holds that agents can deserve reward or punishment as an end in itself, not merely for instrumental social reasons—a notion skeptics like Pereboom deny.
Question 3: What is 'global' versus 'local' skepticism about free will?
- Global skepticism denies all free will; local skepticism denies it only in cases of addiction or compulsion (Correct answer)
- Global skepticism applies across all possible worlds; local skepticism applies only to the actual world
- Global skepticism targets moral responsibility; local skepticism targets metaphysical freedom
- Global skepticism is compatibilist; local skepticism is incompatibilist
Correct answer: Global skepticism denies all free will; local skepticism denies it only in cases of addiction or compulsion
Global skeptics deny we ever have free will or moral responsibility; local skeptics accept free will in general but carve out exceptions for coercion, addiction, or mental illness.
Question 4: Hieronymus (Nina) Strawson's challenge to P.F. Strawson's reactive attitudes approach argues that reactive attitudes themselves may be unreliable guides to genuine responsibility because of what feature?
- They evolved for social coordination rather than tracking moral truth (Correct answer)
- They depend on libertarian metaphysics that is empirically unsupported
- They cannot be distinguished from compelled emotional responses
- They only apply to legal rather than moral contexts
Correct answer: They evolved for social coordination rather than tracking moral truth
A common naturalistic critique of P.F. Strawson is that reactive attitudes may be evolutionary adaptations for social cohesion rather than accurate indicators of genuine desert.
Question 5: The 'rollback argument,' proposed by van Inwagen, is designed to show that indeterminism in action does not help the libertarian because any indeterminist process would be equivalent to which of the following?
- A deterministic computer simulation
- A coin flip or random lottery, not genuine agent control (Correct answer)
- An exercise of agent causation at the quantum level
- A choice that satisfies the Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Correct answer: A coin flip or random lottery, not genuine agent control
Van Inwagen's rollback argument asks us to imagine replaying a decision many times: indeterminist outcomes would distribute like chance, not like exercises of rational agency.
Question 6: Compatibilist philosopher Michael Smith argues that free action requires the agent to act from which of the following?
- Desires that are causally isolated from prior events
- A desire that the agent would have if they were fully rational and informed (Correct answer)
- Desires that are undetermined by brain states
- Desires endorsed only by the agent's second-order volitions
Correct answer: A desire that the agent would have if they were fully rational and informed
Smith's dispositional theory holds that free action tracks what a fully rational and informed version of the agent would desire, grounding freedom in rational sensitivity.
Question 7: What is the primary target of the 'zygote argument' put forward by Alfred Mele against compatibilism?
- It shows that determinism entails that even one's initial character was not self-made (Correct answer)
- It proves that genetic determinism is stronger than environmental determinism
- It demonstrates that quantum indeterminacy is insufficient for libertarian free will
- It argues that moral responsibility begins only after the age of rational maturity
Correct answer: It shows that determinism entails that even one's initial character was not self-made
Mele's zygote argument contends that if a being designed your character at the zygote stage, you lack moral responsibility—yet determinism implies something analogous for all agents.
PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Bachelor of Philosophy: Free Will and Determinism 5
Clarence Darrow's famous 1924 defense of Leopold and Loeb argued they could not be held morally responsible because their actions were the product of heredity and environment.
Which philosophical position does this defense implicitly endorse?