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Core Concepts

Adequate Determinism
Agent-Causality
Alternative Possibilities
Causa Sui
Causality
Certainty
Chance
Chance Not Direct Cause
The Cogito Model
Compatibilism
Conceptual Analysis
Control
Could Do Otherwise
Creativity
De-liberation
Determination
Determination Fallacy
Determinism
Disambiguation
Either Way
Ethical Fallacy
Extreme Libertarianism
Event Has Many Causes
"Free Will"
Free Will in Antiquity
Free Will Mechanisms
Free Will Requirements
Future Contingency
Hard Incompatibilism
Illusion of Determinism
Illusionism
Impossibilism
Incompatibilism
Indeterminacy
Indeterminism
Libertarianism
Liberty of Indifference
Luck
Modest Libertarianism
Moral Responsibility
Moral Sentiments
Naturalism
Necessity
Noise
Non-Causality
Predictability
Probability
Pseudo-Problem
Random When?/Where?
Rational Fallacy
Responsibility
Same Circumstances
Science Advance Fallacy
Second Thoughts
Semicompatibilism
Soft Causality
Standard Argument
Temporal Sequence
Tertium Quid
Torn Decision
Two-Stage Models
Ultimate Responsibility
Uncertainty
Up To Us

Philosophers

Mortimer Adler
Rogers Albritton
Alexander of Aphrodisias
G.E.M.Anscombe
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
David Armstrong
Augustine
A.J.Ayer
Mark Balaguer
William Belsham
Isaiah Berlin
Bernard Berofsky
Susanne Bobzien
George Boole
F.H.Bradley
C.D.Broad
C.A.Campbell
Joseph Keim Campbell
Carneades
Ernst Cassirer
Roderick Chisholm
Chrysippus
Cicero
Randolph Clarke
Donald Davidson
Democritus
Daniel Dennett
René Descartes
Richard Double
Fred Dretske
John Earman
Laura Waddell Ekstrom
Epictetus
Epicurus
John Martin Fischer
Owen Flanagan
Philippa Foot
Alfred Fouilleé
Harry Frankfurt
Richard L. Franklin
Carl Ginet
Nicholas St. John Green
Ian Hacking
Ishtiyaque Haji
Stuart Hampshire
Georg W.F. Hegel
Martin Heidegger
R.E.Hobart
Thomas Hobbes
David Hodgson
Shadsworth Hodgson
Ted Honderich
Pamela Huby
David Hume
William James
Robert Kane
Immanuel Kant
Tomis Kapitan
Christine Korsgaard
Keith Lehrer
Gottfried Leibniz
Leucippus
C.I.Lewis
David Lewis
John Locke
John R. Lucas
Lucretius
Hugh McCann
Colin McGinn
Michael McKenna
Alfred Mele
John Stuart Mill
Dickinson Miller
G.E.Moore
Thomas Nagel
Friedrich Nietzsche
P.H.Nowell-Smith
Robert Nozick
William of Ockham
Timothy O'Connor
Charles Sanders Peirce
Derk Pereboom
Steven Pinker
Karl Popper
H.A.Prichard
Willard van Orman Quine
Frank Ramsey
Ayn Rand
Thomas Reid
Charles Renouvier
Nicholas Rescher
Josiah Royce
Bertrand Russell
Paul Russell
Gilbert Ryle
T.M.Scanlon
Moritz Schlick
Arthur Schopenhauer
John Searle
Henry Sidgwick
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
J.J.C.Smart
Saul Smilansky
Michael Smith
Galen Strawson
Peter Strawson
Eleonore Stump
Richard Taylor
Kevin Timpe
Peter van Inwagen
Manuel Vargas
John Venn
Kadri Vihvelin
G.H. von Wright
R. Jay Wallace
Ted Warfield
Roy Weatherford
Alfred North Whitehead
David Widerker
David Wiggins
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Susan Wolf

Scientists

Margaret Boden
Neils Bohr
Ludwig Boltzmann
Max Born
Stephen Brush
Arthur Holly Compton
Abraham de Moivre
John Eccles
Arthur Stanley Eddington
Albert Einstein
Richard Feynman
A.O.Gomes
Joshua Greene
Jacques Hadamard
Martin Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
Pierre-Simon Laplace
David Layzer
Ernst Mach
Henry Margenau
James Clerk Maxwell
Ernst Mayr
Jacques Monod
Steven Pinker
Max Planck
Henri Poincaré
Erwin Schrödinger
Herbert Simon
B. F. Skinner
William Thomson (Kelvin)
John von Neumann
Daniel Wegner
Steven Weinberg

 
Determination Fallacy
The Determination Fallacy is the mistaken idea that just because some of our decisions are determined by our motives and deliberations, it must mean that strict causal determinism or pre-determinism is true.

Philippa Foot in 1957 correctly doubted that the ordinary language meaning of saying our actions are "determined" by motives has the same meaning as strict physical determinism, which assumes a causal law that determines every event in the future of the universe.

Foot notes that our normal use of "determined" does not imply universal determinism.

For instance, an action said to be determined by the desires of the man who does it is not necessarily an action for which there is supposed to be a sufficient condition. In saying that it is determined by his desires we may mean merely that he is doing something that he wants to do, or that he is doing it for the sake of something else that he wants. There is nothing in this to suggest determinism. ("Free Will as Involving Determinism," The Philosophical Review, vol LXVI, (1957), p.441)

The Determination Fallacy is somewhat related to the Science Advance Fallacy, the idea that because science, and especially neuroscience, is discovering more and more contributing causes of actions that we thought were the result of free decisions, that eventually all our decisions will be found to be the consequence of causes not in our control.

It is also somewhat related to the Rational Fallacy, that free decisions must be rational decisions. For many philosophers, reason is the distinguishing characteristic of humanity. For theologians, reason is a gift of God along with the gift of free will.

Another mistaken idea is that our decisions must be moral and our actions good in order to be free. This is another fallacy that we call the Ethical Fallacy.

For Teachers
For Scholars

Chapter 3.7 - The Ergod Chapter 4.2 - The History of Free Will
Part Three - Value Part Five - Problems
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