PHIL-020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Causality
19 Nov 2016
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The absence of free will: any time you try to isolate a part of a sequence to explain a sequence, you have to also explain what caused the sequence in the first place. There indefinite causal > effects that lead up to that part. However, there are some things that cannot be explained in terms of other causal actions (this can be due to free will) Causal-actions, involving not just humans but all events in the universe are determined by these relationships: Biological (ex: my brain made me do this action) Coercive/local (ex: someone forced someone to do sth) Physics (ex: physics governs me, and so physics made me do sth) When you think of yourself as free-willed, making free choices > you are speaking of yourself in analogy with god. Descartes says that the fact that we can think of ourselves implies that we are not fundamentally physical things.
