Sunday, May 26, 2013

Free Will revisited

Module 2 has a lot of content - it includes Moral Truth, Justice and Free Will. This is probably too much for one week, but I have done my best to keep up.

I covered Free Will in the Introduction to Philosophy and the Metaphysics courses (although each looked at different philosophers' views). My views about Free Will have not changed significantly having done some more reading and thinking. In summary, I am a libertarian and believe that intellectually mature humans have free will.

I do not believe that compatibilism is logically consistent, I think compatibilists should get off the fence and choose.

I don't believe that determinism is consistent with our understanding of what it is to be human. I don't fully "understand" what determinism is because it does not explain the way the world is. Determinism is not an explanation of how humans behave, it is a reductio ad absurdum based on false premises. I believe that the arguments in favour of determinism are often confused, and do not take into account the role of rationality and consciousness. Everybody behaves as though libertarianism is true, without free will there can be no moral responsibility and in fact there can be no morality. Given that, for me, morality exists, I have to conclude that libertarianism is true.

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