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Students Zone / Questions / Chapter 18: Determinism and Freedom
1. What is a ‘free will’? What reasons are there for believing you have one?
2. ‘If someone is a careless sort of person it is not reasonable to blame her for not taking care.’ ‘Someone should not be praised if he is naturally kind.’ Do you agree with both of these statements? Discuss their implications.
3. Is there any sense in which we can argue that we are free because our actions and choices are expressions of our own character?
4. If in future the advance of science were to make it possible to predict people’s actions, would this show that these actions were not performed freely?
5. How can we distinguish between a cause and a compulsion? What bearing does this have on whether someone is responsible for her actions?
6. ‘A man may surely do as he wills to do, but he cannot determine what he wills.’ (Schopenhauer). Isn’t Schopenhauer right, that if I am not free to want what I want, I am not free to do what I want?
7. ‘All consequences have necessary antecedents, but not all antecedents have necessary consequences.’ Is this an effective argument against hard determinism?
8. Is free will just an illusion?
9. How important is consciousness in settling the question whether we have free will? Is it just the product of physical processes?
10. Explain Searle’s argument for ‘voluntary, intentional human action’. How important is intentionality for the experience of freedom?
11. Discuss the main arguments indeterminists present against the determinist case?
12. John Stuart Mill argues that the moral self manifests itself in the feeling ‘… of our being able to modify our own character if we wish … the feeling of moral freedom which we are conscious of.’ But can’t we argue that the moral self, in turn, is also determined?
13. ‘The problem for determinists and indeterminists alike is that we can’t be responsible for our actions whether determinism is true or false. If it’s true, antecedent circumstances are responsible; if it’s false, nothing is responsible.’ Explain and discuss the importance of this argument for the compatibilist case.
