Video: Introduction to Philosophy Online Class Session — Free Will and Determinism

The following is a video recording of my recent Introduction to Philosophy online class session on free will and determinism. See below for a list of topics covered in this online class session.

Introduction to Philosophy Online Class Session — Free Will and Determinism

Date

April 30, 2020

Instructor

Zachary Fruhling, College of Eastern Idaho

Topics Covered:

• Types of Determinism:

  • Physical Determinism (Laws of Nature):

    • Newtonian Physics and Laplace’s Demon

    • Physical Causal Closure

  • Biological Determinism:

    • Instinct

    • Genetics

  • Psychological Determinism:

    • Behavioral Conditioning

    • Personality Types

  • Cultural/Social Determinism

• Approaches to Free Will:

  • Quantum Indeterminacy

    • Does microscopic indeterminacy manifest itself on a macroscopic scale?

    • The Copenhagen Interpretation

    • Hidden Variables

  • Top-Down Causation

    • Emergence & Non-Reductive Physicalism

  • “The Ability to Have Done Otherwise”

  • Lack of Constraint

• Compatibilism:

  • Can an action be both freely chosen and determined?

  • Being tied to a chair that you want to sit in?

  • Are free actions determined by our minds/choices?

  • What if you are tied to a chair that you want to sit in?

  • Objection to Compatibilism:

    • Compatibilism has too weak a notion of free will.

      • Free will required not just a lack of constraint but mental causation.

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