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Single Idea 5344
[filed under theme 16. Persons / F. Free Will / 1. Nature of Free Will
]
Full Idea
Free will is said to give us self-control, self-expression, individuality, reasons-sensitivity, rational deliberation, rational accountability, moral accountability, the capacity to do otherwise, unpredictability, and political freedom.
Gist of Idea
Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living
Source
Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.104)
Book Ref
Flanagan,Owen: 'The Problem of the Soul' [Basic Books 2003], p.104
A Reaction
Nice list. His obvious challenge is to either say we can live happily without some of these things, or else show how we can have them without 'free will'. Personally I agree with Flanagan that we meet the challenge.
The
30 ideas
from Owen Flanagan
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5332
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People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this
[Flanagan]
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5333
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Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be
[Flanagan]
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5334
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We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom
[Flanagan]
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5335
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Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle
[Flanagan]
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5336
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Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing
[Flanagan]
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5338
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Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling
[Flanagan]
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5339
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Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them
[Flanagan]
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5340
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Explanation does not entail prediction
[Flanagan]
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5341
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Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system
[Flanagan]
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5342
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Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser
[Flanagan]
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5343
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People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free
[Flanagan]
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5344
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Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living
[Flanagan]
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5345
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We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way
[Flanagan]
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5346
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In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible
[Flanagan]
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5347
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Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation
[Flanagan]
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5348
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Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character'
[Flanagan]
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5349
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For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion
[Flanagan]
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5350
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The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE
[Flanagan]
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5351
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We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same
[Flanagan]
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5352
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The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds'
[Flanagan]
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5353
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The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography
[Flanagan]
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5354
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We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living
[Flanagan]
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5355
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Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason
[Flanagan]
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21830
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For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics
[Flanagan]
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21831
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Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it
[Flanagan]
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21832
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Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom
[Flanagan]
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21834
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Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be
[Flanagan]
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21833
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Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience
[Flanagan]
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21837
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Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices
[Flanagan]
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21835
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We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish
[Flanagan]
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