Introduction to Philosophy

21 February 2001

I. Freedom

A. Paradigm examples

B. Freedom and responsibility

1. If you are responsible for an act, then you performed it freely.

2. The kind of freedom in which we’re interested is deeply conditioned by the connection to responsibility, especially moral responsibility.

II. Campbell

A. Characterization of freedom (as a precondition for moral responsibility)

1. Pertains to inner acts

2. Pertains to acts of which agent is sole author

a. Are there any acts of which you are the sole author?

b. What about built-in personality traits?

c. Apparently, they are not involved in every act.

d. Moral effort

3. Presupposes that the agent ‘could have done otherwise’

B. Concerning ‘could have done otherwise’

1. Categorical or hypothetical?

2. Hypothetical: ‘could have done otherwise if you had chosen otherwise.’ Response: raises the same issue again, one level back. Are you free to satisfy the ‘had chosen otherwise’?

C. Constructive defense of freedom

1. Narrow area of application

a. Resisting temptation

b. But there are some free acts that do not involve resisting temptation

2. Evidence of our own experience. We seem to be free: we seem to make decisions of which we are the sole author, and which are such that we could have made a different decision.

D. Deterministic counter-arguments

1. Doesn’t this free will imply (unacceptably) unpredictability?

2. Aren’t actions that are not the product of the agent’s character meaningless?