Free will : a philosophical reappraisal / Nicholas Rescher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rescher, Nicholas.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Free will and determinism.

Physical Description:

xiii, 173 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Publishers, [2009]

Summary:

What If?

Fairness

Theory and Practice of Distributive Justice

In theory and practice, the notion of fairness is far from simple. The principle is often elusive and subject to confusion even in institutions of law; usage and custom. In Fairness, Nicholas Rescher aims to liberate this concept from misunderstandings by showing how its definitive characteristics prevent it from being absorbed by such related conceptions as paternalistic benevolence, radical egalitarianism, and social harmonization. Rescher demonstrates that equality before the state is an instrument of justice, not of social utility or public welfare, and argues that the notion of fairness stops well short of a literal egalitarianism.

Inquiry Dynamics

Epistemology is more than the theory of knowledge. Its range of concern includes not only knowledge proper but also rational belief, probability, plausibility, evidentiation, and not least, erotetics, the business of raising and resolving questions. Aristotle indicated that human inquiry is grounded in wonder; when matters are so out of the ordinary we puzzle about the reason why and seek for an explanation. With increasing sophistication, the ordinary as well as the extraordinary excites the intellect, so that questions gain an increasing prominence within epistemology. Inquiry Dynamics focuses on the phenomena and theory of rational inquiry, focusing on its concern for questions and their management.

Contents:

Introduction

The nature of free will

Requirements of freedom : preeminently deliberation

Free will requires the absence of thought-external determination over choices and decisions

Choice and decision are crucial

Doing and trying

Free action and agent causality

Modes of freedom

Metaphysical and moral freedom

Moral freedom is removed by manipulation and especially by compulsion

Intention and moral standing

Moral freedom of the will involves agent intent and motivation

Ramifications of freedom

Free will requires up-to-the-end revisability but this does not gainsay probabilistic predictability

Issues of revision and control

The counterfactual dimension : "could have done otherwise"

Problem cases : machines and lunatics

Free will as outside causality but compatible with it

Averting the zenonic fallacy of causal regression

Averting predetermination (contrasting predetermination with precedence determination)

The crucial contrast between events and eventuations

Choices and decisions as terminating eventuations

Free will stands outside the stream of natural causality

On freedom and causality

Free will excludes predetermination but not motive determinism

Motivational determinism vs. casual necessitation

Motivations and motives

Freedom from what? Certainly not from one's own motives and reasons : freedom demands motivational determination

Free will requires motivational determinism

Determination by one's autonomous motives is the crux of moral freedom

Compulsion vs. impulsion

Objections to motive determinism can be met

Freedom and motivation

Must an agent choose his motives for a decision to qualify (morally) as free?

Freedom does not require motivational self-construction

Does freedom require self-understanding?

On willing to will : does freedom require the will to be self-endorsing?

Does freedom require the approval of intellect and reason?

Does freedom require self-approved motives?

Buridan's ass : a random willfulness is not freedom

Compatibilism regained : what free will excludes is not agent determination but agent-bypassing nature determination

The explanation of free acts through agent determination

Freedom, responsibility, and "could have done otherwise"

Reasons and motives impel but do not compel

Compatibilism again

Mind-matter partnership

A two-sided coin

The issue of initiative

A pivotal duality

Mind-brain interaction works by coordination, not by causality

Does free will exist? Deliberations pro and con

On evidentiating free will

Is free will unscientific?

So does science counter-indicate free will?

Free-will naturalism and evolution

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-169) and index.

ISBN:

9781412808743

141280874X

OCLC:

229035393