Tag: compatibilism

What Does Neuroscience Tell About Free Will? The Libet and Other Experiments, and Interpretations

Introduction and Context: How do you think we “decide” to act? The common sense (and our experience) explanation is we (1)  make a conscious decision to do something (2) our brain activates whatever neuro-pathways are required for the action, the (3) we perform the action.  Libet’s famous experiments give strong evidence showing that this is […]

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X-Phi and The Freewill Determinism Debate: Are We Natural Compatibilists or Incompatibilists?

Introduction and ContextSo far in the free will vs determinism debate we’ve looked at the two major positions (libertarian free will and causal determinism), two interpretations of the debate (compatibilism and incompatibilism), and two positions on the relationship between the free will debate and moral responsibility (Strawson’s Basic Argument and Frankfurt’s compatibilism).  All the positions […]

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Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person: Frankfurt

Introduction and ContextUp until now we’ve looked at a quick overview of the free will vs causal determinism debate.  Aside from the two basic positions–causal determinism and libertarian free will, there are two other “meta-positions”: compatibilism and incompatibilism which are basically attitudes toward the debate.  Incompatibilists say that causal determinism and free will are mutually […]

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Overview of Freewill Vs Determinism

Introduction and ContextThe debate over the degree to which we have control (if any at all) over our actions is one of the longest debated topics in philosophy and there isn’t much reason to think it will end any time soon. The debate is known as the freewill-determinism debate.Before proceeding lets quickly define some of […]

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