{"id":9642,"date":"2012-06-10T16:39:12","date_gmt":"2012-06-10T16:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/06\/10\/my-position-of-free-will\/"},"modified":"2012-06-10T16:39:12","modified_gmt":"2012-06-10T16:39:12","slug":"my-position-of-free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/06\/10\/my-position-of-free-will\/","title":{"rendered":"My Position on Free Will"},"content":{"rendered":"
This from a Norwegian reader:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
I have been enjoying your blog for a couple of years now, and I have to say that I like how your mind works. There are a lot of issues I am thinking about currently regarding philosophy and that didn't change after reading Angus Menuge's book Agents Under Fire<\/em>. If you haven't read that, I strongly recommend you to. He has some very interesting arguments regarding reason, intentionality, agency, reductionism, materialism etc.  <\/span>One issue is bugging me particularly these days, and it is the ever-lasting question of free will. I hope I am not asking too much, but would you be able to tell me what your position about free will is and briefly explain why you hold that position?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
My position, bluntly stated, is that we are libertarianly free.  As far as I'm concerned the following argument is decisive:<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
1. We are morally responsible for at least some of our actions and omissions.<\/span>
2. Moral responsibility entails libertarian freedom of the will.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
3. We are libertarianly free.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
Is this a compelling argument?  By no means.  (But then no argument for any substantive philosophical thesis is compelling. Nothing substantive in philosophy has ever been proven to the satisfaction of all competent practioners.)  One could, with no breach of logical propriety, deny the conclusion and then deny one or both of the premises.  As we say in the trade, "One man's modus ponens<\/em> is another's modus tollens<\/em>."  Any valid argument can be thrown into 'inferential reverse,' the result being a valid argument.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
I of course acccept both premises. That I am morally (as opposed to causally, and as opposed to legally) responsible for at least some of what I do and leave undone I take to be more evident than its negation.  And, like Kant, I see compatibilism as a shabby evasion, "the freedom of the turnspit."  <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
Some will say that free will and moral responsibility are illusions.  I find that incoherent for reasons supplied here<\/a>.  Other posts in the Free Will category<\/a> touch upon some of the more technical aspects of the problem.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
There is a lot of utter rubbish being scribbled by scientists these days about philosophical questions.  Typically, these individuals, prominent in their fields, don't have a clue as to the nature, history, or proper exfoliation of these questions.  Recently, biologist Jerry Coyne has written a lot of crap about free will that I expose in these posts:<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
Jerry Coyne on Why You Don't Really Have Free Will<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
More on Jerry Coyne on Free Will<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
This stuff is crap in the same sense in which most of Ayn Rand<\/a>'s philosophical writings are crap.  The crappiness resides not so much in the theses themselves but in the way the theses are presented and argued, and the way  objections are dealt with.  But if I had to choose between the scientistic crapsters (Krauss, Coyne, Hawking & Mlodinow, et al.) and Rand, I would go with Rand.  At least she understands that what she is doing is philosophy and that philosophy is important and indispensable.  At least she avoids the monstrous self-deception of the scientistic crapsters who do philosophy while condemning it.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This from a Norwegian reader: I have been enjoying your blog for a couple of years now, and I have to say that I like how your mind works. There are a lot of issues I am thinking about currently regarding philosophy and that didn't change after reading Angus Menuge's book Agents Under Fire. If … Continue reading “My Position on Free Will”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[503,301,175,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-credo","category-free-will","category-rand-ayn","category-scientism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}