Free Will.

Think - Simon Blackburn
Chapter 3 - Free Will

The Bonds of fate
- We regard ourselves as free agents
- We appear to be conscious about our freedom
- Freedom brings responsibility, and those who abuse it, blame and punishment
- moral reaction imposed because ‘we could have done otherwise’
- Could this consciousness be an illusion?
- Lucretius - past controls the present + future, can’t control the past + its control over the present + future. Therefore, can’t control the future.
- DETERMINISM
- If we accept this argument, we are HARD DETERMINISTS, they think freedom + determinism are incompatible.
- Deny this? Quantum physics give some hope, as they appear random… we don’t like randomness…
- If determinism holds, we lose freedom + responsibility.
If determinism does not hold, but some events ‘just happen’, and then, equally, we lose freedom and responsibility.

Fig trees and waterfalls
 - Schopenhauer waterfalls, causal steps for water to boil, waves… - similar Wittgenstein… Autumn leaf - criticise an argument, cannot be conscious of something’s absence, e.g when I speak, I am not conscious of the causal structures that make it possible to speak. - mind-body dualism - introduces the controlling soul. - how do we understand the freedom of the soul??? - entire problem of mind-brain interaction Pulling yourself together - compatabalism -according to Kant, he dismissed it as it only gives us the freedom of clockwork. Puppets and Martians -