Free will in antiquity is a philosophical and theological concept. One finds scholarly debate on the ‘origin’ of the notionof free will in Western philosophy. Augustine(354–4CE) and Frede in the Stoic Epictetus(c.
55–c. 1CE)). But this debate presupposes a fairlyparticular and highly conceptualized concept of free will, withDihle’s later ‘origin’ reflecting his having a yetmore particular concept in view than Frede. If, instea we look moregenerally for philosophical r. See full list on plato. As should be clear from this short discussion of the history of theidea of free will, free will has traditionally been conceived of as akind of power to control one’s choices and actions.
When anagent exercises free will over her choices and actions, her choicesand actions are up to her. But up to her in what sense? Asshould be clear from our historical survey, two common (andcompatible) are: (i) up to her in the sense that she is ableto choose otherwise, or at minimum that she is abl. Most philosophers theorizing about free will take themselves to beattempting to analyze a near-universal power of mature human beings. But as we’ve noted above, there have been free will skeptics inboth ancient and (especially) modern times.
In this section,we summarize the main lines of argument both for and against thereality of human freedom of will. A large portion of Western philosophical work on free will has beenwritten within an overarching theological framework, according towhich God is the ultimate source, sustainer, and end of all else. It is also commonlypresumed by philosophical theists.
This was the view of Eastern philosophies and religions. Of those, none survives in finished form. For many years the established view of Hume has been that he is aprincipal and founding figure of classical compatibilism, as locatedin the empiricist philosophical tradition that stretches from Hobbes,through Hume, on to Mill, Russell, Schlick and Ayer.
Classicalcompatibilists believe, with libertarians, that we need some adequatetheory of what free action is, where this is understood as providingthe relevant conditions of moral agency and responsibility. Compatibilists, however, reject the view that free action requires thefalsity of determinism or that an action cannot be both free andcausally necessitated by antecedent conditions. According to theclassical compatibilist strategy, not only is freedom compatible withcausal determinism, the absence of causation and necessity would makefree and responsible action impossible. A free action is an actioncaused by the agent, whereas an unfree action is caused by some other,external cause.
Whether an action is free or not depends on the t. What we need to ask now is to what extent the classical interpretationserves to capture the essentials of Hume’s position on this subject? From the perspective of the alternative naturalistic reading there aretwo fundamental flaws in the classical reading: 1. First, and foremost, the classical reading fails to provide any properaccount of the role of moral sentiment in Hume’s understanding of (thenature and conditions) of moral responsibility. Part of theexplanation for this is that the classical interpretation treatsHume’s views on free will in isolation from other parts of hisphilosophical system. In particular, it fails to adequately integratehis discussion of free will with his theory of the passions (T, and). We are more vulnerable to this mistake if we rely too heavily onHume’s discussion “Of liberty and necessity” as presented in theEnquiry.
Secon and related to the first issue, the classical reading suggestsan overly simple, if not crude, account of the relationshi. The next question to consider is whether or not the issues that dividethe classical and naturalistic interpretations are of any contemporarysignificance or interest? The first thing to be said about this isthat from a contemporary perspective, classical compatibilism seemstoo crude an account of both freedom and moral responsibility and veryfew philosophers would still press the claim that incompatibilistprejudices can be explained simply in terms of confusion aboutnecessity arising from a conflation between causation and compulsion. In contrast with this, Hume’s concern with the role andrelevance of moral sentiment for our understanding of the free willproblem anticipatesseveral key features of P. Strawson’s highly influential contribution to the contemporarydebate.
The most striking affinity bet. We have noted that the classical and naturalistic interpretationsdiffer in how they account for the relationship between freedom andresponsibility. According to the classical interpretationresponsibility may be analysed directly in terms of free action, wherethis is understood simply in terms of an agent acting according to herown will or desires. While classical compatibilists reject theincompatibilist suggestion that free and responsible action requiresindeterminism or any special form of “moral causation”they are, nevertheless, both agreed that a person can be heldresponsible if and only if she acts freely. On the naturalisticinterpretation, however, Hume rejects this general doctrine, which wemay call “voluntarism”.
This claim is part ofHume’s more general claim that our indirect. From a critical perspective, it may be argued that there remains asignificant gap in Hume’s scheme as have so far described it. Even if we discard the aspirations of the morality system, anycredible naturalistic theory of moral responsibility needs to be ableto provide some account of the sorts of moral capacity involved inexempting conditions, whereby we deem some individuals andnot others as appropriate targets of moral sentiments or“reactive attitudes”. As it stands, what Hume has to sayon this subject is plainly inadequate. According to Hume, it is anultimate inexplicable fact about our moral sentiments (qua calm formsof the indirect passions of love and hate) that they are alwaysdirected at people, either ourselves or others.
This account leaves usunable say why some people are notappropriate objects ofmoral sentiments (e.g. children, the insane, and so on). There are,however, several available proposals for dealing with this gap. Perhaps the most influential proposal is to adopt. He goes on to argue “that the doctrine ofnecessity, according to my explication of it, is not only innocent,but even advantageous to religion and morality”.
When Hume cameto present his views afresh in the Enquiry (Sec. 8), he wasless circumspect about his hostile intentions with regard to“religion”. They certainly live their lives as if free will were undeniable. WE have endeavoure in a previous article, to set before our readers the first dawn of this controversy, as it appears in the pages of one whose writings. Most of us are certain that we have free will, though what exactly this amounts to is much less certain.
According to David Hume, the question of the nature of free will is “the most contentious question of metaphysics. If this is correct, then figuring out what free will is will be no small task indeed. Minimally, to say that. However, we can suppose a possible conclusion from the work that he has done. I think the strongest place to look is in the Metaphysics.
There, he famously argues that necessity follows from a single. From its earliest beginnings, the problem of free will has been intimately connected with the question of moral responsibility. Most of the ancient thinkers on the problem were trying to show that we humans have control over our decisions, that our actions depend on us, and that they are not pre-determined by fate, by arbitrary gods, by logical necessity, or by a natural causal determinism.
Aristotle and free will?