A Primer on Determinism PDF Download

Author: John Earman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9789027722409
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 298

View

Book Description
The title of this work is to be taken seriously: it is a small book for teaching students to read the language of determinism. Some prior knowledge of college-level mathematics and physics is presupposed, but otherwise the book is suitable for use in an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate course in the philosophy of science. While writing I had in mind primarily a philosophical audience, but I hope that students and colleagues from the sciences will also find the treatment of scientific issues of interest. Though modest in not trying to reach beyond an introductory level of analysis, the work is decidedly immodest in trying to change a number of misimpressions that pervade the philosophical literature. For example, when told that classical physics is not the place to look for clean and unproblematic examples of determinism, most philosophers react with a mixture of disbelief and incomprehension. The misconcep tions on which that reaction is based can and must be changed.

Author: Peter Furlong
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110848302X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

View

Book Description
Explores past and present arguments for and against divine determinism, presenting balanced discussion of a major philosophical and religious debate.

Author: Edwin A. Locke
Publisher: Bookbaby
ISBN: 9781543914221
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
This book shows that the theory of determinism, the doctrine that everything we believe, feel or do is determined by forces outside our control, is false (and actually self contradictory). The book shows that free will is self caused and involves the choice to use our rational faculty or not. Experiments that claim to prove determinism are refuted. The libertarian view that free will is based on randomness is also show to be fallacious. A distinction is made between what free will entails and what its limits are. The book shows that determinists' scorn for people who believe in free will (calling this view folk psychology based on ignorance) is misguided. It is determinists who are victims of a false view of human nature.

Author: John Earman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781402010200
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 190

View

Book Description
Natural and social sciences seem very often, though usually only implicitly, to hedge their laws by ceteris paribus clauses - a practice which is philosophically very hard to understand because such clauses seem to render the laws trivial and unfalsifiable. After early worries the issue is vigorously discussed in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind since ca. 15 years. This volume collects the most prominent philosophers of science in the field and presents a lively, controversial, but well-integrated, highly original and up-to-date discussion of the issue. It will be the reference book in the coming years concerning ceteris paribus laws.

Author: Meghan Griffith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415562198
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 162

View

Book Description
The question of whether humans are free to make their own decisions has long been debated and it continues to be a controversial topic today. In Free Will: The Basics readers are provided with a clear and accessible introduction to this central but challenging philosophical problem. The questions which are discussed include: Does free will exist? Or is it illusory? Can we be free even if everything is determined by a chain of causes? If our actions are not determined, does this mean they are just random or a matter of luck? In order to have the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility, must we have alternatives? What can recent developments in science tell us about the existence of free will? Because these questions are discussed without prejudicing one view over others and all technical terminology is clearly explained, this book is an ideal introduction to free will for the uninitiated.

Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351519107
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

View

Book Description
This volume is a reassessment of free will and, as such, seeks to answer the question: Do humans ever act under the guidance of the will? To determine if humans have free will, Rescher first examines what exactly free will is and how it should function. While the literature on the subject of free will is vast, a good deal still remains to be done to avert obscurity and confusion. Rescher leads the reader through a conceptual web of distinctions that, taken together, provide a satisfying contribution to philosophical thought on free will in general. Rescher sharpens his highly conceptual assessment by making distinctions--between productive (or metaphysical) and moral (or motivational) freedom, free decision and free action, motivational and causal determination of choices, durational events and the instantaneous eventuations that mark their commencements and completions, and between pre-determination and precedence determination. In doing so, he also examines the role of nature, nurture, and free choice. Each of these distinctions defines the characteristics of free will and averts a group of problems and difficulties traditionally ascribed to the doctrine. With these in place, it becomes possible to validate the compatibility between freedom of the will and a certain special mode of determinism. Rescher's conceptual perspective in this age-old debate opens up the prospect of naturalizing free volition through its natural emergence via the same process of evoking development that has seen the emergence of intelligence on the world's stage. That is, only after the conceptual issues are settled, can the question of how things actually stand be answered. This work will be an important reassessment of free will not just because of the author's final conclusion, but because of the issue-illuminating path he takes to get there.

Author: Randolph Clarke
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195306422
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

View

Book Description
This comprehensive study offers a balanced assessment of libertarian accounts of free will. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view from popular objections concerning rationality and diminished control. He subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. Clarke then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates agent causation and nondeterministic event causation. He defends this view from a number of objections but argues that we should find the substance causation required by any agent-causal account to be impossible. Clarke concludes that if a broad thesis of incompatibilism is correct - one on which both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism - then no libertarian account is entirely adequate.

Author: Gábor Hofer-Szabó
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319554867
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 242

View

Book Description
This book collects research papers on the philosophical foundations of probability, causality, spacetime and quantum theory. The papers are related to talks presented in six subsequent workshops organized by The Budapest-Kraków Research Group on Probability, Causality and Determinism. Coverage consists of three parts. Part I focuses on the notion of probability from a general philosophical and formal epistemological perspective. Part II applies probabilistic considerations to address causal questions in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Part III investigates the question of indeterminism in spacetime theories. It also explores some related questions, such as decidability and observation. The contributing authors are all philosophers of science with a strong background in mathematics or physics. They believe that paying attention to the finer formal details often helps avoiding pitfalls that exacerbate the philosophical problems that are in the center of focus of contemporary research. The papers presented here help make explicit the mathematical-structural assumptions that underlie key philosophical argumentations. This formally rigorous and conceptually precise approach will appeal to researchers and philosophers as well as mathematicians and statisticians.

Author: Henrik Walter
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262265034
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 420

View

Book Description
Walter applies the methodology of neurophilosophy to one of philosophy's central challenges, the notion of free will. Neurophilosophical conclusions are based on, and consistent with, scientific knowledge about the brain and its functioning. Neuroscientists routinely investigate such classical philosophical topics as consciousness, thought, language, meaning, aesthetics, and death. According to Henrik Walter, philosophers should in turn embrace the wealth of research findings and ideas provided by neuroscience. In this book Walter applies the methodology of neurophilosophy to one of philosophy's central challenges, the notion of free will. Neurophilosophical conclusions are based on, and consistent with, scientific knowledge about the brain and its functioning. Walter's answer to whether there is free will is, It depends. The basic questions concerning free will are (1) whether we are able to choose other than we actually do, (2) whether our choices are made intelligibly, and (3) whether we are really the originators of our choices. According to Walter, freedom of will is an illusion if we mean by it that under identical conditions we would be able to do or decide otherwise, while simultaneously acting only for reasons and being the true originators of our actions. In place of this scientifically untenable strong version of free will, Walter offers what he calls natural autonomy—self-determination unaided by supernatural powers that could exist even in an entirely determined universe. Although natural autonomy can support neither our traditional concept of guilt nor certain cherished illusions about ourselves, it does not imply the abandonment of all concepts of responsibility. For we are not mere marionettes, with no influence over our thoughts or actions.

Author: Jennifer Daryl Slack
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820450070
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

View

Book Description
"Culture + Technology is an essential guide to the fascinating history of these debates, and offers new perspectives that give readers the tools they need to make informed decisions about the role of technology in our lives. In clear and compelling language, Slack and Wise untangle and expose the cultural assumptions that underlie our thinking about technology, stories so deeply held we often don't recognize their influence. The book considers the perceived inevitability of technological advance and our myths about progress. It also looks at sources of resistance to these stories from the Luddites of the 19th century to the Unabomber in our own time. Slack and Wise help readers sift through the confusions about culture and technology that arise in their own everyday lives."--BOOK JACKET.