So, I figured that I need to do more than simply reading this summer and start writing. Hopefully, I can get out a good enough paper to send off to grad schools after a few months of editing. At any rate, I'll start posting bits of what I'm working on here on the off chance that someone has sources to direct me to, or on the good chance that my logic is flawed.
What I'm working on first is a defense of libertarian free will (LFW), based largely on Scotus' thought. I've been thinking on and off about this for some time, so I'd like to try ironing it out. I will differentiate between the formal and material aspects of my proposal. On the one hand, under LFW the will must (at least sometimes, this can be highly qualified) be able to do otherwise than it does in order to be free. On the other hand, critics of LFW often point out that simply having more choices doesn't make one free. I'd like to incorporate both insights here: the principle of alternate possiblites (PAP) is necessary for freedom but not what actually constitutes said freedom.
The first step is to show why LFW cannot be explained rationally. This unexplainability further I believe can be rationally shown. This would make it simply a brute fact. I further will look at Scotus' notion of superabundance to further specify what sort of indeterminacy the will has, but again this cannot truly explain the matter.
To start trying to get an idea of what the will is, it is helpful to look at cases in which the will is used. This will form the content of free will, or at least suggest it. I will look at Scotus' ethics and the place of harmony in it, Scotus' differentiation between the affection for justice and the affection for the advantageous, and the way in which Scotus incorporates elements of virtue ethics. In all of these there will be places that simply cannot be fully rationally explained (otherwise, the point above would be contradicted), but which can point to places in experience where we can get an impression of how the will works.
In the end, I do not have a argument to prove LFW, merely a defense that it is not open to charges that are routinely brought against it. I do not think it unreasonable to expect that some things cannot be rationally analyzed, nor do I find it objectionable that a philosophical concept should be grounded in experience. Once these two principles are accepted (and I intend to provide some support for them), there is room for some understanding of LFW.
1 comment:
Is one of the criticisms you'll be tackling that it is difficult to formulate what it means to self-determine one's actions?
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