PHL100Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Hypnosis, Incompatibilism, Compatibilism
Document Summary
Determinism: the view that every event is made necessary by what went before. Compatibilism: determinism is not only compatible with free will, but required by it. Kant"s view: determinism can"t be denied, yet libertarian free will is presupposed by agency. We think determinism isn"t compatible with free will because we haven"t de ned our terms properly. The indeterminist interpretation of freedom is on an illusion. Determinism is presupposed by common-sense views of morality and responsibility. The only meaningful freedom is freedom from interference or compulsion from outside me. So the opposite of freedom is not determinism but constraint. But the opposite of necessity is chance/randomness. A free act cant be the same as a random one. Human motivation is just as much subject to determinism as anything else. Mental causes are no less reliable than physical causes. Hume: we make a mistake about causation + we don"t know what the causes of our mental states are.
