white_rabbit: переводы

→Consider a particular action or piece of deliberation in which you engage, and consider everything about the way you are when you to engage in it that leads you to engage in it in the way you do. I will call the particular action or piece of deliberation that you engage in “A, ” and I will call everything about the way you are mentally when you engage in it that leads you to engage in it in the way you do “N. ” I will use URD A (t) and URD N (t) to mean URD for A at time t and URD for N at time t, respectively.

→Recall the two premises mentioned earlier, on which arguments for the incompatibility of free will and determinism have been based. (1) The existence of alternative possibilities (or the agent's power to do otherwise) is a necessary condition for acting freely, or acting "of one's own free will." (2) Determinism is not compatible with alternative possibilities (it precludes the power to do otherwise). We have been focusing on arguments for and against premise x. Premise 1 would appear to be less vulnerable. It simply states the AP, or alternative possibilities, condition—that free will requires alternative possibilities or could have done otherwise—a claim that persons on both sides of the compatibility debate (until recently) have tended to accept. Even most compatibilists in the past were willing to grant that freedom required the power to do otherwise. They assumed their task was to give an analysis or interpretation of this power (conditional or otherwise) that would show it to be compatible with determinism.

→5. MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ALTERNATIVE POSSIBILITIES: FRANKFURT-STYLE EXAMPLES AND Semi-COMPATIBILISM

→These worries about determinism make the second pivotal question of modern free will debates, the Compatibility Question, all the more important. Is free will compatible (or incompatible) with determinism? The free will problem arose historically because it was assumed that there was some kind of conflict between free will and determinism. If it turns out, to the contrary, that determinism is no threat to free will because the two can be reconciled, then worries about determinism would be misplaced. The traditional problem of free will would not only be solved, but in a manner "dissolved," for the supposed conflict with determinism that gave rise to it in the first place would have been shown to be illusory.

→3. THE COMPATIBILITY QUESTION AND ARGUMENTS FOR INCOMPATIBILISM

→2. THE DETERMINIST QUESTION AND MODERN SCIENCE

→The problem of free will arises when humans reach a certain higher stage of selfconsciousness about how profoundly the world may influence their behavior in ways of which they were unaware (Kane 1996: 95-6). Various authors have described this stage of self-consciousness as the recognition of a conflict between two perspectives we may have on ourselves and our place in the universe (P. F. Strawson 1962; Nagel 1986; Bok 1998; Blackburn 1999). From a personal or practical standpoint, we see ourselves as free agents capable of influencing the world in various ways. Open alternatives seem to lie before us. We reason or deliberate among them and choose. We feel it is "up to us" what we choose and how we act; and this means that we could have chosen or acted otherwise—for, as Aristotle succinctly put it, "[W]hen acting is up to us, so is not acting" (1915b: ni3b6). This "up to us-ness" also suggests that the origins or sources of our actions are in us and not in something else over which we have no control—whether that something else is fate or God, the laws of nature, birth or upbringing, or other humans.5

→In the remainder of this introduction, I describe the contours of contemporary free will debates, placing them—and the essays to follow—in historical and dialectical perspective.

→What is often called "the free will issue" or "the problem of free will," when viewed in historical perspective, is related to a cluster of philosophical issues—all of them to be dealt with to some degree in this volume.3 These include issues about (1) moral agency and responsibility, dignity, desert, accountability, and blameworthiness in ethics; (2) the nature and limits of human freedom, autonomy, coercion, and control in social and political theory; issues about (3) compulsion, addiction, self-control, self-deception, and weakness of will in philosophical psychology; (4) criminal liability, responsibility, and punishment in legal theory; (5) the relation of mind to body, consciousness, the nature of action,4 and personhood in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive and neurosciences; (6) the nature of rationality and rational choice in philosophy and social theory; (7) questions about divine foreknowledge, predestination, evil, and human freedom in theology and philosophy of religion; and (8) general metaphysical issues about necessity and possibility, determinism, time and chance, quantum reality, laws of nature, causation, and explanation in philosophy and the sciences. Obviously, this volume does not discuss every aspect of these complex issues, but it does attempt to show how contemporary debates about free will are related to them.

→The focus of the volume is on writings of the past thirty to forty years, an era of reborn interest in traditional issues regarding free will in the context of new developments in the sciences, philosophy, and humanistic studies. While references are frequent throughout this volume to major thinkers of the past who have discussed free will, the emphasis is on recent research.2 Many of the writers of the following essays are long-time contributors to contemporary debates about free will; others are younger scholars who are beginning to make significant contributions. By surveying and evaluating recent writings, the hope is that their essays will serve as a guide to the latest work and a resource for future research.

→THE problem of free will and necessity (or determinism) is "perhaps the most voluminously debated of all philosophical problems," according to a recent history of philosophy.' This situation has not changed at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of a new millennium. Indeed, debates about free will have become more voluminous in the past century, especially in the latter half of it—so much so that it has become difficult to keep up with the latest developments. This handbook was compiled as a remedy in the form of a sourcebook or guide to current work on free will and related subjects for those who wish to keep up with the latest research.

→There is a disputation [that will continue] till mankind is raised from the dead, between the Necessitarians and the partisans of Free Will

→ROBERT KANE

→INTRODUCTION: THE CONTOURS OF CONTEMPORARY FREE WILL DEBATES