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Philosophers

Mortimer Adler
Rogers Albritton
Alexander of Aphrodisias
Samuel Alexander
William Alston
Anaximander
G.E.M.Anscombe
Anselm
Louise Antony
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
David Armstrong
Harald Atmanspacher
Robert Audi
Augustine
J.L.Austin
A.J.Ayer
Alexander Bain
Mark Balaguer
Jeffrey Barrett
William Barrett
William Belsham
Henri Bergson
George Berkeley
Isaiah Berlin
Richard J. Bernstein
Bernard Berofsky
Robert Bishop
Max Black
Susanne Bobzien
Emil du Bois-Reymond
Hilary Bok
Laurence BonJour
George Boole
Émile Boutroux
Daniel Boyd
F.H.Bradley
C.D.Broad
Michael Burke
Lawrence Cahoone
C.A.Campbell
Joseph Keim Campbell
Rudolf Carnap
Carneades
Nancy Cartwright
Gregg Caruso
Ernst Cassirer
David Chalmers
Roderick Chisholm
Chrysippus
Cicero
Tom Clark
Randolph Clarke
Samuel Clarke
Anthony Collins
Antonella Corradini
Diodorus Cronus
Jonathan Dancy
Donald Davidson
Mario De Caro
Democritus
Daniel Dennett
Jacques Derrida
René Descartes
Richard Double
Fred Dretske
John Dupré
John Earman
Laura Waddell Ekstrom
Epictetus
Epicurus
Austin Farrer
Herbert Feigl
Arthur Fine
John Martin Fischer
Frederic Fitch
Owen Flanagan
Luciano Floridi
Philippa Foot
Alfred Fouilleé
Harry Frankfurt
Richard L. Franklin
Bas van Fraassen
Michael Frede
Gottlob Frege
Peter Geach
Edmund Gettier
Carl Ginet
Alvin Goldman
Gorgias
Nicholas St. John Green
H.Paul Grice
Ian Hacking
Ishtiyaque Haji
Stuart Hampshire
W.F.R.Hardie
Sam Harris
William Hasker
R.M.Hare
Georg W.F. Hegel
Martin Heidegger
Heraclitus
R.E.Hobart
Thomas Hobbes
David Hodgson
Shadsworth Hodgson
Baron d'Holbach
Ted Honderich
Pamela Huby
David Hume
Ferenc Huoranszki
Frank Jackson
William James
Lord Kames
Robert Kane
Immanuel Kant
Tomis Kapitan
Walter Kaufmann
Jaegwon Kim
William King
Hilary Kornblith
Christine Korsgaard
Saul Kripke
Thomas Kuhn
Andrea Lavazza
Christoph Lehner
Keith Lehrer
Gottfried Leibniz
Jules Lequyer
Leucippus
Michael Levin
Joseph Levine
George Henry Lewes
C.I.Lewis
David Lewis
Peter Lipton
C. Lloyd Morgan
John Locke
Michael Lockwood
Arthur O. Lovejoy
E. Jonathan Lowe
John R. Lucas
Lucretius
Alasdair MacIntyre
Ruth Barcan Marcus
Tim Maudlin
James Martineau
Nicholas Maxwell
Storrs McCall
Hugh McCann
Colin McGinn
Michael McKenna
Brian McLaughlin
John McTaggart
Paul E. Meehl
Uwe Meixner
Alfred Mele
Trenton Merricks
John Stuart Mill
Dickinson Miller
G.E.Moore
Thomas Nagel
Otto Neurath
Friedrich Nietzsche
John Norton
P.H.Nowell-Smith
Robert Nozick
William of Ockham
Timothy O'Connor
Parmenides
David F. Pears
Charles Sanders Peirce
Derk Pereboom
Steven Pinker
U.T.Place
Plato
Karl Popper
Porphyry
Huw Price
H.A.Prichard
Protagoras
Hilary Putnam
Willard van Orman Quine
Frank Ramsey
Ayn Rand
Michael Rea
Thomas Reid
Charles Renouvier
Nicholas Rescher
C.W.Rietdijk
Richard Rorty
Josiah Royce
Bertrand Russell
Paul Russell
Gilbert Ryle
Jean-Paul Sartre
Kenneth Sayre
T.M.Scanlon
Moritz Schlick
John Duns Scotus
Arthur Schopenhauer
John Searle
Wilfrid Sellars
David Shiang
Alan Sidelle
Ted Sider
Henry Sidgwick
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Peter Slezak
J.J.C.Smart
Saul Smilansky
Michael Smith
Baruch Spinoza
L. Susan Stebbing
Isabelle Stengers
George F. Stout
Galen Strawson
Peter Strawson
Eleonore Stump
Francisco Suárez
Richard Taylor
Kevin Timpe
Mark Twain
Peter Unger
Peter van Inwagen
Manuel Vargas
John Venn
Kadri Vihvelin
Voltaire
G.H. von Wright
David Foster Wallace
R. Jay Wallace
W.G.Ward
Ted Warfield
Roy Weatherford
C.F. von Weizsäcker
William Whewell
Alfred North Whitehead
David Widerker
David Wiggins
Bernard Williams
Timothy Williamson
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Susan Wolf

Scientists

David Albert
Michael Arbib
Walter Baade
Bernard Baars
Jeffrey Bada
Leslie Ballentine
Marcello Barbieri
Gregory Bateson
Horace Barlow
John S. Bell
Mara Beller
Charles Bennett
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Susan Blackmore
Margaret Boden
David Bohm
Niels Bohr
Ludwig Boltzmann
Emile Borel
Max Born
Satyendra Nath Bose
Walther Bothe
Jean Bricmont
Hans Briegel
Leon Brillouin
Stephen Brush
Henry Thomas Buckle
S. H. Burbury
Melvin Calvin
Donald Campbell
Sadi Carnot
Anthony Cashmore
Eric Chaisson
Gregory Chaitin
Jean-Pierre Changeux
Rudolf Clausius
Arthur Holly Compton
John Conway
Jerry Coyne
John Cramer
Francis Crick
E. P. Culverwell
Antonio Damasio
Olivier Darrigol
Charles Darwin
Richard Dawkins
Terrence Deacon
Lüder Deecke
Richard Dedekind
Louis de Broglie
Stanislas Dehaene
Max Delbrück
Abraham de Moivre
Bernard d'Espagnat
Paul Dirac
Hans Driesch
John Eccles
Arthur Stanley Eddington
Gerald Edelman
Paul Ehrenfest
Manfred Eigen
Albert Einstein
George F. R. Ellis
Hugh Everett, III
Franz Exner
Richard Feynman
R. A. Fisher
David Foster
Joseph Fourier
Philipp Frank
Steven Frautschi
Edward Fredkin
Benjamin Gal-Or
Howard Gardner
Lila Gatlin
Michael Gazzaniga
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen
GianCarlo Ghirardi
J. Willard Gibbs
James J. Gibson
Nicolas Gisin
Paul Glimcher
Thomas Gold
A. O. Gomes
Brian Goodwin
Joshua Greene
Dirk ter Haar
Jacques Hadamard
Mark Hadley
Patrick Haggard
J. B. S. Haldane
Stuart Hameroff
Augustin Hamon
Sam Harris
Ralph Hartley
Hyman Hartman
Jeff Hawkins
John-Dylan Haynes
Donald Hebb
Martin Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
John Herschel
Basil Hiley
Art Hobson
Jesper Hoffmeyer
Don Howard
John H. Jackson
William Stanley Jevons
Roman Jakobson
E. T. Jaynes
Pascual Jordan
Eric Kandel
Ruth E. Kastner
Stuart Kauffman
Martin J. Klein
William R. Klemm
Christof Koch
Simon Kochen
Hans Kornhuber
Stephen Kosslyn
Daniel Koshland
Ladislav Kovàč
Leopold Kronecker
Rolf Landauer
Alfred Landé
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Karl Lashley
David Layzer
Joseph LeDoux
Gerald Lettvin
Gilbert Lewis
Benjamin Libet
David Lindley
Seth Lloyd
Werner Loewenstein
Hendrik Lorentz
Josef Loschmidt
Alfred Lotka
Ernst Mach
Donald MacKay
Henry Margenau
Owen Maroney
David Marr
Humberto Maturana
James Clerk Maxwell
Ernst Mayr
John McCarthy
Warren McCulloch
N. David Mermin
George Miller
Stanley Miller
Ulrich Mohrhoff
Jacques Monod
Vernon Mountcastle
Emmy Noether
Donald Norman
Alexander Oparin
Abraham Pais
Howard Pattee
Wolfgang Pauli
Massimo Pauri
Wilder Penfield
Roger Penrose
Steven Pinker
Colin Pittendrigh
Walter Pitts
Max Planck
Susan Pockett
Henri Poincaré
Daniel Pollen
Ilya Prigogine
Hans Primas
Zenon Pylyshyn
Henry Quastler
Adolphe Quételet
Pasco Rakic
Nicolas Rashevsky
Lord Rayleigh
Frederick Reif
Jürgen Renn
Giacomo Rizzolati
A.A. Roback
Emil Roduner
Juan Roederer
Jerome Rothstein
David Ruelle
David Rumelhart
Robert Sapolsky
Tilman Sauer
Ferdinand de Saussure
Jürgen Schmidhuber
Erwin Schrödinger
Aaron Schurger
Sebastian Seung
Thomas Sebeok
Franco Selleri
Claude Shannon
Charles Sherrington
Abner Shimony
Herbert Simon
Dean Keith Simonton
Edmund Sinnott
B. F. Skinner
Lee Smolin
Ray Solomonoff
Roger Sperry
John Stachel
Henry Stapp
Tom Stonier
Antoine Suarez
Leo Szilard
Max Tegmark
Teilhard de Chardin
Libb Thims
William Thomson (Kelvin)
Richard Tolman
Giulio Tononi
Peter Tse
Alan Turing
C. S. Unnikrishnan
Francisco Varela
Vlatko Vedral
Vladimir Vernadsky
Mikhail Volkenstein
Heinz von Foerster
Richard von Mises
John von Neumann
Jakob von Uexküll
C. H. Waddington
John B. Watson
Daniel Wegner
Steven Weinberg
Paul A. Weiss
Herman Weyl
John Wheeler
Jeffrey Wicken
Wilhelm Wien
Norbert Wiener
Eugene Wigner
E. O. Wilson
Günther Witzany
Stephen Wolfram
H. Dieter Zeh
Semir Zeki
Ernst Zermelo
Wojciech Zurek
Konrad Zuse
Fritz Zwicky

Presentations

Biosemiotics
Free Will
Mental Causation
James Symposium
 
Paul Russell

Paul Russell's 1995 book Freedom and Moral Sentiment provided a new interpretation of David Hume's naturalism and moral sentiments. Russell also explored their connection to the reactive attitudes of Peter Strawson.
Russell argues that Hume's arguments for "naturalism" provide a better understanding of Hume's ideas about human freedom than simply identifying his ideas with Thomas Hobbes's "voluntarism." Russell tries to show that for Hume, responsibility is more than just acting with freedom of action, i.e., with no external constraints.

Hume's "natural beliefs" became Kant's transcendental idea that the mind projects "concepts of the understanding" and "forms of perception" on the world.
In his experimental study of man as part of human nature, Hume claimed to see clearly the basis for morality in the moral sentiments that he observed in man. Hume's naturalism is to discover laws of human nature, not by a priori analysis using reason alone, nor by supernatural theological analyses, but because "feelings" in the mind impose "natural beliefs" like causality.

Russell introduces the standard view of Hume's thought - as the principal source for "classical compatibilism" - one that he hopes to correct:

Hume's discussion of the problem of "liberty and necessity" was first presented in the Treatise (II, iii, 1-2) and, then, in a slightly amended form, in the first Enquiry (Sec. 8). It is widely held that what Hume has to say on the subject of the nature and conditions of moral responsibility is very largely limited to these important sections of his work. More specifically, Hume's concern with the problem of moral responsibility is generally interpreted in terms of his discussion of the nature of "liberty," or moral freedom, and the way in which it is related to causation and necessity. From this perspective, once we have acquired a proper grasp of Hume's arguments that show how liberty and necessity are related (i.e. that they are compatible), there is little else to learn from him about the nature and conditions of moral responsibility.

This general perspective on Hume's views on responsibility suggests that Hume, like many other philosophers writing on this subject, believes that the problem of responsibility just is the problem of "free will and determinism". According to this approach, any adequate interpretation and discussion of moral responsibility must begin with, or develop out of, some relevant and appropriate account of the nature of moral freedom. I believe that this perspective on Hume's views on responsibility fundamentally misrepresents his approach.
(Freedom and Moral Sentiment, p.11)

In the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume identified the "voluntarism" of Thomas Hobbes with the liberty of spontaneity. Hume contrasted this with the liberty of indifference, which he took to be synonymous with chance and absence of causes in our actions.

Russell is concerned that as the question of free will and determinism has become clouded in recent years, it is worth noting that Hume had a separate defense for morality. Hume's project to reconcile liberty and necessity depends critically on moral sentiments and Hume's naturalistic account of moral responsibility.

It is of some contemporary importance that Hume continues to be interpreted in this manner. The reason for this is that there is an increasing consensus among philosophers in the field that the classical compatibilist strategy has now been effectively discredited or surpassed by more recent developments in compatibilist thinking. Insofar as Hume continues to be read as holding to the classical compatibilist position, his views will inevitably be judged as of less immediate contemporary interest and significance. In other words, if the classical reading of Hume's compatibilism is indeed correct and it is also true that compatibilist thinking has now advanced well beyond the confines of this general strategy, then we must conclude that Hume's thinking on this subject is now somewhat dated and passé. The crucial question, therefore, is whether or not Hume has been properly interpreted by his commentators.
(Freedom and Moral Sentiment, p.4)

Modern followers of Hume are sometimes called the "new compatibilists," perhaps starting with Peter Strawson, who argued that whether or not determinism is true, we can defend morality on the basis of universal "reactive attitudes" to actions. We cannot fail to assign praise and blame to others. And we feel guilt and pride in our own actions. For some thinkers, this is freedom enough.

Russell is a critic of these "new compatibilists." He is correct that Hume's insight into moral sentiments has made an enormous contribution to the modern debate, especially via Strawson. But by conflating the question of moral responsibility with freedom of the will, many of these modern thinkers, including Russell, commit what we call the ethical fallacy, which confuses all responsibility with moral responsibility. We cannot defend freedom of action simply because we are observed experimentally to act morally. Nor can we say the free will is merely "the control condition for moral responsibility," as has become popular lately.

Some new compatibilist philosophers argue for moral responsibility even if determinism is true. The weakness of their argument is perhaps seen in the fact that some of their incompatibilist skeptic colleagues deny moral responsibility on the very same grounds - the standard two-part argument against free will.

In a more recent work, Russell tries to explain the conflicts in the Treatise of Human Nature between Hume's empiricism - with its skeptical attack on causality and its denial that "ought" can come from "is" - and Hume's naturalism, where Hume defends causality in a transcendent external world and finds the moral sentiments.
The general claim that the project of the Treatise should be understood in terms of "Hume's ambition to be the Newton of the moral sciences" is now a commonplace in introductory textbooks and general histories of philosophy." Moreover, Hume's "Newtonian" project in the Treatise has produced several studies that are devoted to a detailed analysis and exegesis of this aspect of his thought. Even those who accept Kemp Smith's (Hutchesonian) naturalistic interpretation are generally willing to place equal emphasis on Hume's "science of man" as inspired (supposedly) by Newton. There is, however, a fundamental difficulty for views of this kind. How do we reconcile Hume's ambitions to be the Newton of the moral sciences, not only with his skeptical principles, but with a form of "naturalism" that teaches "that reason, as traditionally understood, has no role in human life" — a claim that, on the face of it, sits uncomfortably with Hume's (Newtonian) "scientific" ambitions.

The skeptical/naturalism divide in Hume's intentions gives his whole project a Janus-faced appearance. Indeed, the situation is more problematic than this, since it may be argued that the whole project in the Treatise is actually broken-backed. That is to say, both the skeptical and naturalistic dimensions of Hume's thought seem to be equally essential to what he is trying to achieve but are nevertheless inherently opposed and irreconcilable."
(The Riddle of Hume's Treatise, 2008, p.7)

Russell on Free Will

Russell offers a concise statement of the standard two-part argument against free will.

...the well-known dilemma of determinism. One horn of this dilemma is the argument that if an action was caused or necessitated, then it could not have been done freely, and hence the agent is not responsible for it. The other horn is the argument that if the action was not caused, then it is inexplicable and random, and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent, and hence, again, the agent cannot be responsible for it. In other words, if our actions are caused, then we cannot he responsible for them; if they are not caused, we cannot be responsible for them. Whether we affirm or deny necessity and determinism, it is impossible to make any coherent sense of moral freedom and responsibility.
(Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility, 1995, p.14)
But then Russell attempts to reconcile some chance with otherwise determined actions. His suggestion is very close to a resolution of the Randomness Objection, but we suggest that he should move randomness back into the alternative possibilities and allow both will and action to be adequately determined. Then "will" as an act of determination agrees better with the common sense use of the term.
The success or force of the antilibertarian argument, it seems, depends very largely on a particular interpretation of the libertarian position. Contrary to what compatibilists generally suppose, liberty of indifference and liberty of spontaneity may not be incompatible with each other. What, then, is the alternative interpretation to be considered? According to the antilibertarian argument (on the classical interpretation), if actions were not caused, then it would be unreasonable to attribute them to the agent or hold the agent responsible for them. The target here is liberty of indifference interpreted, on this account, as the view that our actions are uncaused. However, it may be argued that this is not the only position which is available to libertarians or defenders of "free will". They may locate the requisite "break in the causal chain" elsewhere. It is important to distinguish between the following two types of liberty of indifference: a notion of liberty of indifference which suggests that actions are not caused or determined by antecedent conditions and a notion of liberty of indifference which suggests that our willings are not caused or determined by antecedent conditions (our willings being understood as the causal antecedents of action). For convenience, let us call the first liberty of indifference in acting (LIA) and the second liberty of indifference in willing (LIW). Both of these notions of liberty of indifference are vulnerable to well-known objections, but LIA is open to some objections to which the LIW is not liable.

The libertarian may seek to evade the antilibertarian argument by conceding that our actions must be caused by our antecedent willings, thereby rejecting LIA, but refuse to abandon or reject LIW. By rejecting LIA, the defender of "free will" can avoid the main thrust of the antilibertarian argument, namely, that liberty of indifference would render actions random and capricious and would make it impossible to attribute such actions to the agent. Those who accept LIW may, quite consistently, maintain that free action is determined by the antecedent willings of the agent and thus reject any suggestion that they licence random events at the level of action. Any randomness that LIW permits (assuming, as we do, that any alternative metaphysical conception of causation is excluded) occurs only at the level of the determination of the will.

The presence of random events at the level of willing will not prevent an agent from enjoying liberty of spontaneity. Such an agent may well be able to act in accordance with the determinations of her (capricious) will. Nor would it be impossible to attribute actions to such an agent, because it would be her (capricious) motives, desires, and so on, which caused them. Clearly, then, liberty of indifference, interpreted in terms of LIW, is compatible with, and thus need not exclude, liberty of spontaneity. It is true that the actions of an agent who enjoys LIW will be quite unpredictable, and it is also true that her future actions will not be amenable to the conditioning influences of punishments and rewards. In this way, LIW is still liable to other serious criticisms (especially if one interprets responsibility in terms of amenability to the conditioning influence of rewards and punishments). However, the actions of an agent who enjoys LIW share much with those of an agent whose will is necessitated by (external) antecedent causes. Liberty of spontaneity does not require that agents be able to determine their own wills, and it therefore makes little difference, on the face of it, whether our wills are determined by external causes or are merely capricious. In this way, it may be argued that the (classical) antilibertarian argument is not straightforwardly effective against the libertarian position when the notion of liberty of indifference is interpreted in terms of LIW rather than LIA.

It is, perhaps, tempting to suggest that the significance of these observations lies with the fact that they reveal certain limitations of the antilibertarian argument and that they may, therefore, open up new avenues of defence for the libertarian position. I believe that the real interest and significance of these observations lies elsewhere. What they bring to light are certain serious inadequacies in the spontaneity argument. An agent who enjoys LIW may also enjoy liberty of spontaneity, and this is a point that many defenders of classical compatibilism may find rather awkward and embarrassing. It follows from the fact that liberty of spontaneity is compatible or consistent with LIW that we may reasonably hold an individual responsible for actions caused by her capricious, random willings. Clearly, then, there is, in these circumstances, as much, or as little, reason to hold an agent responsible for actions due to a capricious will as there is to hold an agent responsible for actions that are due to a will that is conditioned by antecedent external causes. Both agents may equally enjoy liberty of spontaneity. If we have reason to conclude that LIW constitutes an inadequate foundation for freedom and responsibility, then surely we must also conclude that there is more to freedom and responsibility than liberty of spontaneity. In short, compatibilists must either concede that agents whose actions are due to LIW are nevertheless free and responsible or else acknowledge that the spontaneity argument provides us with an inadequate and incomplete account of freedom and responsibility.
(Freedom and Moral Sentiment, p.18)

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