PHIL102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Mind Control, Hard Determinism, Incompatibilism

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Philosophy at St Joseph's College
• Course: PHIL102
• Professor: Phil Corkum

Document Summary

We have choice of action: for many actions we might have acted differently determinism. Everything that happens must happen this way incompatibilism free will and determinism are incompatible. Responses: hard determinism free will=false, determinism and incompatibilism are true libertarianism/indeterminism free will=true, incompatibilism=true, determinism=false compatibilism free will and determinism are true, incompatibilism is false. Free will (simple) freedom of choice of action. An act of choosing is perhaps necessary but insufficient: to be a genuine choice, there must be alternative possible actions: we might have acted differently. Agent"s action in chosen but the choice doesn"t originate in her. Determinism (simple) freedom is characteristic of people and perhaps other animals but seemingly not of the inanimate world yet our freely chosen actions bring about changes in the inanimate world, and are affected by it. A traditional worry for fitting freedom into the world is the belief that the world is deterministic. Everything that happens must happen that way.