I sketch a more-or-less compatibilist solution to the free will/determinism problem, defining free will as that which an agent must exhibit in order to be legitimately held accountable for his/her actions. Based on this definition it would seem that, judging by fairly widespread social conventions, free will consists in a series of capacities, such as the ability to respond rationally to information. I argue that these capacities are not undermined by the potential truth of universal determinism, but I would like. not to settle for a compatibilism that stops at the recognition of that fact. After all, why should we feel obliged to reconcile our free will with metaphysical determinism? I argue that the deterministic character of the universe is not so much a discovery that has been made by scientists as it is a methodological presupposition that is mandatory for doing science in the first place. With that in mind, determinism is, at its core, an epistemic notion and not an ontological one. My guiding idea is that free will exists insofar as it is a category mistake to conceive of the futures of intentional systems (like human beings) as facts of nature. I take "nature" to be that which is the subject of scientific research and therefore necessarily objective, where a fact's being objective consists in it being the way it is regardless of what anyone thinks about it. The future of any individual does not meet these criteria (that is, it is not a fact of nature) because one's future (unlike, say, the chemical composition of water) is not something that is the way it is regardless of what one thinks about it. We form different attitudes toward different futures and these attitudes contribute to our behavior. Since "deterministic" is a property predicated of events in nature, it is a category mistake to apply the term outside of that domain.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2004. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 243-250).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2004. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 243-250).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2004. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 243-250).

No description available.

This paper puts forth the thesis that free will skeptics should be motivated to develop revisionisteliminativist accounts of free will. As a starting point for this argument, it discusses and expands upon Shaun Nichols (2007) modeling of our reactive attitudes in narrow and widepsychological profiles. Utilizing this descriptive and prescriptive thesis, the paper then puts forthtwo main claims: 1. that revisionism is likely to produce our best descriptive accounts of free willbeliefs, and 2. that it is plausible that eliminativist revisionist is likely to produce our best prescriptive account of free will, as it is can capture some of the value in our “narrowpsychological profile” in ways its conventional counterpart is unable to. It is then argued that these two claims, in combination with the normative influence of free will beliefs, should provide sufficient motivations to develop eliminativist revisionist accounts of free will.

Retributive attitudes are deeply held and widespread in the general population and most legal systems incorporate retributive elements. It is probably also the dominant theory of punishment among contemporary philosophers of criminal justice. However, retributivism relies on conceptions of free will and responsibility that have, for millennia, fundamentally divided those who have thought seriously about the subject. Our legal system upholds the principle that the responsibility of the offender has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, before the accused can be punished. In view of the intractable doubts surrounding the soundness of retributivism’s very conception of responsibility, my thesis argues that it is ethically dubious to punish individuals for solely retributive reasons. Instead, my thesis proposes that a person should only be punished if the main theories of punishment agree that punishing that person is appropriate – I call this ‘the convergence requirement’. This approach, I argue, is in accordance with the considerations underlying the beyond reasonable doubt standard. In addition to considering the question of ‘whom to punish’ my thesis considers what methods of responding to criminal behaviour are acceptable. In particular, it attempts to explain, without appealing to the contested notions of free will or retributive desert, what is problematic about ‘manipulative’ methods of dealing with criminal offenders (focussing in particular on the possibility of modifying their behaviour through neurological interventions). The final part of this thesis also gives an overview of some of the practical implications for Scots criminal law of taking doubts about free will and retributivism seriously. Given the severe treatment that offenders undergo within the Scottish penal system (e.g. deprivation of liberty, stigma) and the high rate of recidivism, it is important to consider whether our current penal practices are justified, what alternatives are available and what goals and values should guide attempts at reforming the system.

No description available.

Research suggests that intuitions about thought experiments are vulnerable to a wide array of seemingly irrelevant factors. I argue that when arguments hinge on the use of intuitions about thought experiments, research on the subtle factors that affect intuitions must be taken seriously. To demonstrate how failing to consider such psychological influences can undermine an argument, I discuss Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. I argue that by failing to consider the impact of subtle psychological influences such as order effects, Pereboom likely mis-identifies what really leads us to have the intuitions that we have about his cases, and this in turn undermines his argument for incompatibilism. Last, I consider objections and discuss how to empirically test my hypothesis.