Compatibilism and incompatibilism

In Greg Miller’s Wired article “Did Brain Scans Just Save a Convicted Murderer From the Death Penalty?”, John McCluskey, a prisoner escaped from an Arizona prison, carjacked a retired couple, shot them inside the camping trailer they were towing behind their truck and set the trailer on fire with their bodies still inside. Despite his reprehensible act of crime, John McCluskey’s lawyers successfully convinced the jury that the convict has several brain defects and that his action was a result…

is relatively contentious, but Ayer’s justification of causal determinism incorporated with freedom of volition implements synchronous aspects of both philosophical perceptions and manifests as a logical conclusion to the activities of humans: compatibilism, the abstraction that humans possess the capacity to select subsequent events based upon their actions, but availability of such alternatives is dependent upon anterior options. An individual who is a proponent for unequivocal determinism or…

The thing that sucks is that there is no clear answer, which is the same with most things to do with philosophy. But there are some with stronger arguments. Throughout this essay we will cover free will, Libertarianism, Determinism/Fatalism and compatibilism/soft determinism. Most events are determined however some are not. Through the use analytical procedures to do with these arguments we find that the standpoint of Soft Determinism on free will helps illuminate what exactly is free will and…

What does it mean to have free will. How did we formulate the idea that we as physical being, are free to chose what we wish. Many of people who say we don't, that our path is predetermined before we even chose to take it. There has been many of philosophies on the concept of free will that come and go with time. There is one that deals with the actions of free will and human choice. It is the Philosophy of Determinism, There are many variants of this philosophy, the ones will closely deal with…

statements are compatible if they could both be true. Since compatible means co-possible, events are incompatible if they could not occur together. Compatibilism heavily relies on the thought that something “could” be true (38). That specific thought may not prove accurate, but there is the slight possibility that it could become correct. Compatibilism also states that free will requires no…

Is Harris guilty, it’s a question that has torn my mind. Yes, he is guilty. Yes, he should be punished. Yet, was he morally responsible for the crime? Upon reading the article and learning about his life and how it was always headed in a downward motion. While I want to believe that he had free will and was able to stop the killing if he wanted too. He didn’t have to kill those people, yet causal determinism would argue this. Causal determinism states that every action, belief, and desire is a…

The notion of free will is something we’re all born with, it’s not taught to us. We grow up with the idea that we are in conscious control of all our actions and thoughts. How could we not? It feels like we make all our own decisions, we chose to eat that pie, or go on that run due to eating said pie. Seeing past that veil is something that many people have done, from scientists, to philosophers, even the average citizen. Scientists have performed numerous studies, which provide pretty solid…

Incompatibilism is the theory that we as human beings do not have Free Will. Every little thing that happens in our life is determined by other occurrences in our lives. In response the setting given, someone who is a firm believer would still believe that Free Will does not exist. I believe that might actually strengthen their argument. The fact that in this future setting, scientist have mapped out the entire brain to the point that we can know exactly how you as a person would react to every…

there is such a thing as free will and moral responsibility. For my argument, I believe since everyone has some form of moral responsibility, no one can have full possession of free will. This will be supported through ideas of consequentialism, incompatibilism, and examining human physiology, including neuroscience. To begin discussing about free will, one has…

Incompatibilism and compatibilism are theories about the relationship between determinism and free will. Compatibilism is the idea that free will and determinism can coexist. Incompatibilists deny this by way of two theories; the denial of determinism (libertarianism) and the denial of free will. Determinism is the theory that every event was determined by a previous existing cause. Given the laws of nature and the initial state of the universe, there is only one possible course of history;…