1. Free Will and Determinism

2. Suppose you create a super-sophisticated robot that is able to interact with the world as a human would.
Suppose further that you send this robot out to the store and along the way it murders someone.
Who should the police arrest for murder – you or the robot?

3. Free Will:
Circumstantial Freedom
Metaphysical Freedom

4. Key Terms:
Hard Determinism: the claim that since every event has a cause, we have no free will and thus no moral responsibility.
Libertarianism: the claim that we have free will and determinism is false.
Compatibilism (or soft determinism): the claim that determinism is true, however we are morally responsible for our actions.

5. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
The “will-to-life” is the primary motivating force.
Actions result from a drive to reproduce.
Such actions also produce great suffering.

6. Arguments for Determinism
Every event results from prior causes.
Human thoughts and actions are events.
Thus, human thoughts and actions result from prior causes.

7. If determinism is true, then we have no moral responsibility.
Therefore, we have no moral responsibility.

8. Questions:
What is the best predictor that a person will become schizophrenic?
What is the best predictor that a person will be left-handed?
What is the best predictor that a person will be of a certain sexual orientation?
What is the best predictor that a person will have a learning disability?

9. The Case of Jim Lewis and Jim Springer:
Jim L. and Jim S. were separated at birth and reunited 39 years later. They both had the following similarities:
Both had been named James by their adoptive parents.
Both had been married twice.
Both of their first wives were named Linda.
Both of their second wives were named Betty.
Both of them gave near identical names to their sons: James Allan and James Alan.
Both had a hobby of making miniature dollhouse furniture.

10. The Three Laws of Behavioral Genetics:
All human behavioral traits are heritable.
The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of the genes.
A substantial portion of the variation in behavioral traits is not accounted for by our genes or families.

11. “If anything that parents do affects their children in any systematic way, then children growing up with the same parents will turn out more similar than children growing up with different parents. But they don’t.”
- Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate

12. Theological Determinism:
If God is all-knowing, then there is no free will.
Does God have free will?
If God is omniscient, does it follow that God is not free?

13. Peter Paradox
Led Zeppelin Paradox
Predeterminism or fatalism vs. determinism

14. Libertarianism:
Agency Theory: claims that there are two types of causation, namely, event causation and agent causation (wherein we have free will.).
Indeterminism: the claim that some events are not caused.

15. Sartre’s Radical Existential Freedom:
The claim that we are 100% free to form our own essences.
“Existence precedes essence.”

16. Compatibilism:
Human actions are 100% determined.
We have the type of freedom to be morally responsible.

17. Free acts are caused by internal psychological states of the agent.
2. The example of Jones and Gandhi going without food for a week.
3. The free will & determinism debate is a verbal problem.

18. The principle of alternative possibilities: "a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise."
Jones4: He could not have done otherwise but is still morally responsible.
Smith has the power to force Jones to act in a certain way even though Jones will act in that way.

19. Frankfurt’s Hierarchical Compatibilism:
First-order desires: directed toward objects or states of affairs.
Second-order desires: directed toward desires of objects or states of affairs.
Second-order volitions: acting on second-order desires.

20. Moral Luck
The Case of Jessica Dubroff, the 7-year-old Pilot
Toxoplasma Parasite
Malfunctioning ATM’s
Films:
Groundhog Day
Donnie Darko
A Clockwork Orange