Does Free Will Remain a Mystery? A Response to Van Inwagen

Griffith, Meghan

doi:10.1007/s11098-005-7778-9

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The agent is a substance, an "unmoved mover," able to influence her choices without being bound by any prior causal influence. The falsity of determinism is required, either because agent causation must involve non-conditional alternative possibilities (leeway incompatibilism), or because exercising free will requires one to be the "ultimate source" of one's actions (source incompatibilism) (Reid, 1788(Reid, /1969Chisholm, 1964;Taylor, 1966;Clarke, 1993Clarke, , 1996Clarke, , 2000Clarke, , 2019O'Connor, 1995O'Connor, , 2002Griffith, 2005Griffith, , 2010Steward, 2012).…”

Section: Agent Causal Incompatibilismmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Neuroscience to Law: Bridging the Gap

Pernu

Elzein

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Since our moral and legal judgments are focused on our decisions and actions, one would expect information about the neural underpinnings of human decision-making and action-production to have a significant bearing on those judgments. However, despite the wealth of empirical data, and the public attention it has attracted in the past few decades, the results of neuroscientific research have had relatively little influence on legal practice. It is here argued that this is due, at least partly, to the discussion on the relationship of the neurosciences and law mixing up a number of separate issues that have different relevance on our moral and legal judgments. The approach here is hierarchical; more and less feasible ways in which neuroscientific data could inform such judgments are separated from each other. The neurosciences and other physical views on human behavior and decision-making do have the potential to have an impact on our legal reasoning. However, this happens in various different ways, and too often appeal to any neural data is assumed to be automatically relevant to shaping our moral and legal judgments. Our physicalist intuitions easily favor neural-level explanations to mental-level ones. But even if you were to subscribe to some reductionist variant of physicalism, it would not follow that all neural data should be automatically relevant to our moral and legal reasoning. However, the neurosciences can give us indirect evidence for reductive physicalism, which can then lead us to challenge the very idea of free will. Such a development can, ultimately, also have repercussions on law and legal practice.

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Section: Agent Causal Incompatibilismmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Neuroscience to Law: Bridging the Gap

Pernu

Elzein

2020

Front. Psychol.

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“…Some versions of the Standard Response appeal to agent causation to explain why Alice's act is not too chancy to be free. For example, Randolph Clarke (2003: 166-167;, Meghan Griffith (2005), and Timothy O'Connor and Jonathan D. Jacobs (2013: 189-190) all assert that Alice's being the agent cause of her act rules out the claim that her act is too chancy to be free, because she is the source of her act in a way appropriate to have freedom-level control over it. 8 As O'Connor puts it:…”

Section: The Standard Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Counterfactuals of Freedom and the Luck Objection to Libertarianism

Hartman¹

2017

Journal of Philosophical Research

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“…Megan Griffith argues that van Inwagen's argument relies on being unclear about the meaning of ‘chanciness’ (Griffith (2005), 266). The reason that Alice's will and actions appear to be a matter of chance is that they are unpredictable.…”

Section: The Nea Reformulatedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Augustine, the origin of evil, and the mystery of free will

Willows¹

2013

Rel. Stud.

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The question of why humanity first chose to sin is an extension to the problem of evil to which the free-will defence does not easily apply. In De libero arbitrio and elsewhere Augustine argues that as an instance of evil, the fall is necessarily inexplicable. In this article, I identify the problems with this response and attempt to construct an alternative based on Peter van Inwagen's free will 'mysterianism'. I will argue that the origin of evil is inexplicable not because it is an instance of evil, but because it is an instance of free will.Religious Studies (2014) 50, 255-269

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Does Free Will Remain a Mystery? A Response to Van Inwagen

Cited by 8 publications

References 3 publications

From Neuroscience to Law: Bridging the Gap

From Neuroscience to Law: Bridging the Gap

Counterfactuals of Freedom and the Luck Objection to Libertarianism

Augustine, the origin of evil, and the mystery of free will

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