Free Will Poll

[packbat]

This fall at UMD, I'm taking advantage of my 10-credit tuition remission/fourth year of the four year scholarship free registration to take another non-engineering course dear to my heart: PHIL282: Action and Responsibility. I mean, just read the catalog entry!

If what science tells us is true, that every event has a cause, can we still have free will? Does a horrible childhood mitigate a violent criminal's blameworthiness? Is anyone ever truly responsible for anything? This course deals with these problems in ethics, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics, covering such topics as personal agency, free will, and responsibility. The current version of the course will focus on theories of free will and responsibility, and the related phenomena of reactive emotions (like gratitude and guilt) and excuses (e.g., accidents and mistakes).

The required text for the course will be: Robert Kane, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (Oxford), possibly along with further readings containing highlights of contemporary debates over issues of responsibility.

Written requirements will include midterm and final exams, plus regular short writing assignments.

(Incidentally, I've started reading the book - it seems pretty good, and about as easily readable as philosophy can get.)

Now, most of you aren't taking the class. But it occurs to me it'd be interesting anyway to see. (And, after all, my stance could easily change over the semester.)

(Oh, if you're not sure, go ahead and be ambitious and say what you think. If I omitted your stance, of course, that's different.)

[Poll #1043677]

Comments

[alchemi.livejournal.com]

None of this makes any sense to me.

I think I'd go this way: Ultimately people make choices. But those choices are influenced by a million different things ranging from biology to background to mood. When we look at something like behavior, the types of questions we ask tend to be things like "was the person who made the decision morally blameworthy?" or "Are they likely to do it again?"

Focusing too much on an abstract concept of "free will" tends to muddle those questions and provide little value mostly because in the real world not all "will" is equal (and in some cases it is, even if accurate, deceptive to call it "free"). Looking at things like background, context, etc., seems like exactly the type of way to approach a difficult problem. On the other hand assuming that a mantra is one-size-fits-all and refusing to consider context seems intellectually dishonest.

So my answers would be:

• Most sane people have free will in the sense that they ultimately make a choice, but if that is all free will means, it is pretty much a useless concept. If it means enough to be valuable, not everyone has it.
  
• The past influences the future. There can even be direct causes (if you had your leg amputated in 1981, that is why you don't have a leg now!).
  
• I have no clue what the libertarianism section means.
  
• People, generally, are responsible for giving a good faith effort to do the best with what they have. (Exclusive of the objective responsibilities inherent in an civilized society such as not killing, torturing, waterboarding, or voting Republican)

[roaminrob.livejournal.com]

I'm less concerned with the actual question of free will -- much less -- than I am with the consequences of it.

Put simply, the consequences of not having free will is that every crime is justified, every bad choice is excused. There will be no victims, no guilty persons.

Likewise, nobody can aspire to greatness. There is no great human endeavor, no effort above what could be expected of any warm body put in the same place at the same time under the same conditions.

I have few beliefs, in the more religious sense of the word. But, I do believe that the moment that you destroy free will, you will destroy what's left of the potential of the human condition.

So, I've concluded that the actuality of free will is one of the few things that I'm not curious about at all. The idea of free will is what's important.