PP270 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Ultimate Origins, Walden Two, Hard Determinism
What is Freedom?
- Surface freedoms
- The ability to satisfy one’s desires
- Freedoms of action
- We can lack freedom even when we possess surface freedoms
- What if what we desired is shaped by factors beyond our control?
- We have surface freedoms without having real freedom
- Therefore there is a deeper level of freedom than just surface freedoms
- Brave New World and Walden Two have surface freedoms only
- Deep freedom
- The ability to satisfy one’s desires and have control over those desires
- Freedoms of will
- What we desire should not be controlled by outside forces
- Deep freedom and responsibility connection
- Deep freedom seems to be more relevant to questions of moral responsibility
- E.g., You poison someone accidentally, you did not desire to harm the
person, therefore you cannot be held morally responsible
- E.g., Man murders someone and desired to kill the man, but was
physically, psychologically and sexually abused as a child, therefore
should he be morally responsible?
- Because of his upbringing, he may not have control over his
desires
- Are we free? → the most important philosophical question
Formulating The Problem
- Are our actions and desires determined by forces beyond our control?
- Determining conditions
- Divine omniscience and predestination
- Heredity and environment
- Unconscious motivations
- Psychological and social conditioning
- Laws of nature or laws or physics
Determinism
- Antecedent conditions are sufficient for the occurrence of every choice or action
- Our choices or actions are therefore necessary or unavoidable given the
determining conditions
- Causal determinism
- Every event has a cause for its occurrence
- Causation is a nomological relation (nomos = law)
- An effect is unavoidable given the occurrence of its cause
- It only seems that we have many options, or free will
- There are no open alternatives or alternative possibilities
- We do not deliberate and choose
Free Will
- Free will assumes that we have many choices
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Document Summary
We can lack freedom even when we possess surface freedoms. We have surface freedoms without having real freedom. Therefore there is a deeper level of freedom than just surface freedoms. Brave new world and walden two have surface freedoms only. The ability to satisfy one"s desires and have control over those desires. What we desire should not be controlled by outside forces. Deep freedom seems to be more relevant to questions of moral responsibility. E. g. , you poison someone accidentally, you did not desire to harm the person, therefore you cannot be held morally responsible. Because of his upbringing, he may not have control over his. (cid:553)are we free? (cid:554) the most important philosophical question desires. Laws of nature or laws or physics. Antecedent conditions are sufficient for the occurrence of every choice or action. Our choices or actions are therefore necessary or unavoidable given the determining conditions. Every event has a cause for its occurrence.
