Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2010. / Includes abstract. Title from first page of PDF file (viewed May 19, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2005. / Thesis directed by Alvin Plantinga and Thomas Flint for the Department of Philosophy. "December 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 384-404).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Iowa, 2006. / Supervisor: David Klemm. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 3441-344).

This thesis aims to provide a coherent account of free will and practical grounds to prefer it. Its goal is to develop a pragmatic understanding of agency by which to hold individuals morally accountable. The paper begins with a critique of P.F. Strawson, whose seminal paper “Freedom and Resentment” bypasses the question of free will altogether in its claims about morality. Subsequently, it proceeds to a defense of incompatibilism that traces an argument through the existing literature. From this position, it claims that neither Strawson nor traditional compatibilists can provide an account of morality that is reliable or well enough defined to play the role required of it. Instead of being left with hard determinism, however, Kant opens the door to a metaphysics that exists outside of our epistemological limits. Rather then derive an account based on this metaphysics, the necessary characteristics of a free will are derived from an account of morality and proven to be possible using Kantian epistemology. The paper concludes by positing three distinct reasons to prefer a free will framework to a deterministic framework, provided our inability to answer the question empirically. These draw on Pascal’s Wager, William James’ “The Will to Believe,” and inference to the best explanation.

Scientific research on free will was started by Libet et al. (1982). They detected that thereadiness potential (RP) proceeded urges with up to 350ms. One interpretation of the RP wasthat it represented motor planning. The research progress of antecedent brain activity inrelation to conscious urges is investigated by looking at contemporary studies. How differentassumptions and definitions of the free will concept influences interpretation of these studiesis also discussed. The evidence is in favor that the RP is not representing motor planning.Antecedent activity has been detected with numerous technologies, most notably fMRIclassifiers which have been used to predict decisions in advance. Scrutiny of these resultsreveals that the experimental setups are dependent on time-locking trials which may construethe results. It is shown that predictions based on probabilistic antecedents can be interpretedin numerous ways. The review shows that free will positions differ from each other onseveral factors, such as whether free will is either-or or exists on a spectrum. Some notablepositions are not dependent on antecedent activity at all. The notion of control is one of thepivotal factors deciding if a subject experience free will, not if they are the causer per se.Future discussion will be improved by systematizing the differences between the free willpositions and communicating them clearly. Convergent evidence points at the explanatorymodel of free will being a cognitive feeling – A feeling which reports ownership over actionsbut does not cause them.

abstract: This dissertation puts forth an account of moral responsibility. The central claim defended is that an agent's responsibility supervenes on the agent's mental states at the time of the action. I call the mental states that determine responsibility the agent's quality of will (QOW). QOW is taken to concern the agent's action, understood from an internal perspective, along with the agent's motivations, her actual beliefs about the action, and the beliefs she ought to have had about the action. This approach to responsibility has a number of surprising implications. First, blameworthiness can come apart from wrongness, and praiseworthiness from rightness. This is because responsibility is an internal notion and rightness and wrongness are external notions. Furthermore, agents can only be responsible for their QOW. It follows that agents cannot be responsible for the consequences of their actions. I further argue that one's QOW is determined by what one cares about. And the fact that we react to the QOW of others with morally reactive emotions, such as resentment and gratitude, shows that we care about QOW. The reactive attitudes can therefore be understood as ways in which we care about what others care about. Responsibility can be assessed by comparing one's actual QOW to the QOW one ought to have had. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Philosophy 2011

abstract: The following thesis document entitled, "A 'Reasonable Reader of Poetry's' Briefed Introduction: A Sam Harris Application on the Lack of Authorship in Poetry and Poems" explores the concept of writing itself applied to the world of poetry. This document uses Sam Harris' critique and redefinition of free will as an illusion applied to authorship and the concept of self within poetry. This thesis upholds Sam Harris' application of the illusion of free will against and within conventions of experimental poetry to do with the persona poem, deviated syntax, memory, Confessionalist poetry, and so on. The document pulls in examples from Modernist poetry, Confessionalist poetry, prose poetry, contemporary poetry, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and experimental poetry. This thesis ends with the conclusion that further research needs to be done with regard to how this lack of authorship applies to copyright law within the poetry field. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Creative Writing 2015

Control is a concept that has received surprisingly little attention in the philosophy of action and ethics, given its prima facie ties to freedom, responsibility, intentionality and agency more generally. In this collection I take the first step towards an account of agential control: the kind of control that agents commonly exercise over actions, events, and even other agents. In the introduction I give a sketch of the complete thesis on control: characterising agential control as consisting primarily in the restriction or guidance of some process, and secondarily in the continuous monitoring of that same process. I go on to suggest that the primary aspect of control involves an agent’s having the ability to effectively intervene in the process that they are controlling. The collection itself consists of three journal style papers that, whilst not being focussed explicitly on control themselves, begin to fill out the sketch in my introduction: roughly, I think that control requires an ability to intervene (effectively, an ability to do otherwise), I think that ability should be understood as a kind of disposition to effectively intervene in a process should an agent try, and I think that to build a satisfactory conditional account of dispositions we need to appeal to the recently proposed contextualist account of dispositions from David Manley and Ryan Wasserman. The three papers aim to support each of these thoughts: The first paper, ‘The Anti-Akrasia Chip’, presents a counterexample to the well-known Fischer-Ravizza account of guidance control and suggests that what that account lacks is an emphasis on an agent’s being able to effectively intervene in their own behaviour; the second paper, ‘Getting Specific with Manley and Wasserman’, uses a novel counterexample to motivate a particular reading on Manley and Wasserman’s contextualist account of dispositions; and the final paper, ‘Relevant Abilities’, involves a defence of dispositional compatibilism by introducing the notion of a relevant ability: one grounded by the contextualist account of dispositions developed in the previous paper.

Are we morally responsible for what we believe and intend? If so, what is the nature of this responsibility, and how does it differ from our moral responsibility for our outward bodily deeds? How is our moral responsibility for belief and intention grounded in mental action? I argue that we do bear a species of moral responsibility for our beliefs and intentions. But our beliefs and intentions are nonvoluntary—we neither believe nor intend ‘at will.’ This raises a pressing question about how we can be legitimately held accountable for the attitudes. Given that we do not choose our attitudes in the same way we choose to perform ordinary intentional actions, how do we exercise agency in belief and intention? My answer is that responsibility for the attitudes is grounded in a fully intentional yet nonvoluntary form of mental action. This is a thinker’s reasoning to a conclusion in thought (or inferring). Drawing on the work of G.E.M. Anscombe, I argue that reasoning is active because it is constituted by the very species of self-conscious practical knowledge as intentional bodily action. This practical knowledge positions a thinker to answer the justificatory demands that mark our responsibility for the attitudes.

Magister Artium - MA / According to our ordinary conception of voluntary action, our actions are the causal result of conscious intentions. To take a very basic example: I wish to take a sip of coffee, and I therefore reach out and take hold of the mug. However, studies performed by Libet challenge this ordinary conception. What Libet found in his experiments was that the brain initiates voluntary actions and the person becomes consciously aware of an intention to act only some 400 msec after the brain’s initiation; for instance, my brain has already initiated the process of causing my arm to reach out and take hold of the mug some 400 msec before I am aware that I wish to take a sip of coffee. That is, conscious intention doesn’t appear to precede voluntary action at all – it actually follows it (or follows its initiation, at least), and thus Libet’s studies present a serious challenge to our ordinary conception of voluntary action. This project will investigate whether a particular theory of mind – namely, Armstrong’s Central State Materialism – can cope with the challenge posed by Libet’s studies and salvage our ordinary conception of voluntary action. Armstrong’s theory appears promising in this regard because his account of consciousness and introspection as higher-order states seems to allow room that we will become aware of our willings only after those willings are already initiated.