Free Will Research Articles

Manipulation Cases in Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Part 1: Cases and Arguments.

A common style of argument in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is the Manipulation Argument. These tend to begin with a case of an agent in a deterministic universe who is manipulated, say, via brain surgery, into performing some action. Intuitively, this agent is not responsible for that action. Yet, since there is no relevant difference, with respect to whether an agent is responsible, between the manipulated agent and a typical agent in a deterministic universe, responsibility is not compatible with the truth of determinism. This paper introduces some key types of manipulation cases, the schema for a manipulation argument against compatibilism, the hard-line/soft-line categories of responses to manipulation arguments, and various issues that have become important in discussions of manipulation cases and arguments.

Free Will, Work Motivation and Optimism

This study investigated the relationship between beliefs in free will, work motivation, and optimism in a sample of 54 employed adults. A 45-item questionnaire, which included the Free Will subscale of the FAD-Plus, the Work Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale (WEIMS), and the Optimism and Pessimism Scale (OPS-C), was used to determine whether belief in free will is linked to higher levels of motivation and a more optimistic outlook. The results indicated a moderate, positive correlation between free will beliefs and work motivation (r = 0.2815, p < 0.05), indicating that individuals who perceive themselves as autonomous and in control of their actions tend to be more motivated in their work. However, the relationship between free will beliefs and optimism were weak and non-significant (r = 0.1745, p = 0.206944), suggesting that free will may not directly impact an individuals optimism.

TRANSGRESSION, DESTINY AND FREE WILL

TRANSGRESSION, DESTINY AND FREE WILL

The Many Faces of Birthing Freedom

Abstract What would birth be like in a feminist world? In this essay, I explore this question, asking what feminist freedom means in relation to birthing. Engaging in an imaginative inquiry that is rooted in respect for plurality, I explore the multifaceted dimensions of what we, as feminists, are fighting for in relation to birth. Building on a diverse array of feminist theories and philosophies of freedom (including the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Drucilla Cornell, and Marilyn Frye) and inspired by the work of Iris Marion Young on the five faces of oppression, I outline five faces of birthing freedom, namely: (1) freedom from oppression, (2) freedom to labor, (3) freedom to be-in-relation, (4) freedom from violence, and (5) freedom to imagine. I argue that these faces are all necessary conditions for the realization of birthing freedom. At the same time, the five faces of birth freedom that I outline here are only provisional and are grounded in my specific standpoint. My approach recognizes plurality and is not meant to be exhaustive but rather hopes to spark imaginings, invite extensions and revisions, and initiate conversations.

Assessing the measurement invariance of Free Will and Determinism Plus scale across four languages: a registered report.

Free will is assumed to be the core of an individual's self-concept. Belief in free will has been studied extensively and was found to be correlated with many behavioural and psychological outcomes. Although developed and validated in the West, the Free will and Determinism Plus (FAD-Plus) scale has been translated, used, and interpreted as a measurement of free will beliefs in multiple cultures. However, the cross-cultural measurement invariance of FAD-Plus has not been examined. Given the cultural differences in understanding the concept of 'free will', items of FAD-Plus may have different interpretations in different cultures, which may compromise its cross-cultural measurement invariance. To provide empirical evidence for the lack of cross-cultural measurement invariance, we collected data in China and analyzed these data together with open datasets of FAD-Plus in three other languages: Japanese, French and English. We only found partial measurement invariance between the Chinese and English datasets, as well as the Japanese and English datasets. These results provided the first assessment of cross-cultural measure invariance of FAD-Plus. We discussed the potential implications of the current study for future studies in the field.

Folk Intuitions About Free Will and Moral Responsibility: Evaluating the Combined Effects of Misunderstandings About Determinism and Motivated Cognition.

In this study, we conducted large-scale experiments with novel descriptions of determinism. Our goal was to investigate the effects of desires for punishment and comprehension errors on people's intuitions about free will and moral responsibility in deterministic scenarios. Previous research has acknowledged the influence of these factors, but their total effect has not been revealed. Using a large-scale survey of Japanese participants, we found that the failure to understand causal determination (intrusion) has limited effects relative to other factors and that the conflation of determinism and epiphenomenalism (bypassing) has a significant influence, even when controlling for other variables. This leads to the increased prevalence of incompatibilist responses. Furthermore, our results demonstrated a close association between the attribution of free will/responsibility and retributive desire. While further research is needed to establish the causal relationship between these factors, this association is consistent with Cory Clark and colleagues' study that increased desire contributes to increased compatibilist responses and their claim that a definitive intuition about free will may be elusive.

Митрополит Антоний (Храповицкий) между Кантом и французским спиритуализмом

Today there is no need to prove the importance of I. Kant’s ideas for Russian religious-philosophical thought. A considerable amount of serious recent academic research confirms this obvious truth. At the same time, the field of Russian academic theology is much less developed in this respect, although Kant’s presence in it, both as an opponent demanding an answer from the “theological faculty” and as a source of fruitful ideas, is no less obvious. In particular, Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky’s extramural dialogue with Kant remains unexplored to this day. Meanwhile, as early as in his master’s thesis “Psychological Evidence in favour of Free Will” Anthony devotes an entire chapter to criticism of Kant's “Critiques”, and later, in his articles of the 90s, he addresses Kant’s “Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason”. This work attracted the attention of Russian theologians more than once. In particular, an answer to Kant’s Christological challenge was already sought by St Innocent of Kherson. Relying by default on his work, however, Metropolitan Anthony concentrates more on an attempt to complete the Kantian idea of moral duty with the idea of love as a divine power that wills and transforms the world. Here he finds unexpected, at first glance, allies in the person of the French spiritualists Ch. Secrétan and A. Fouillée. The latter, in their turn, relied to a considerable extent in their philosophical constructions on French Augustinianism of the 17th century with its ideas of pure or selfless love, ideas that were peculiarly refracted in the autonomous morality of Kant himself. As a result, in the Christological concept of redemptive compassionate love proposed by Metropolitan Anthony, we recognise the ideas of Bl. Augustine, the forefather of Modern philosophy, which have gone through many philosophical iterations.

Democracy and freedom from the point of view of karls poper

This study deals with the philosophy of freedom and democracy by Karl Popper. Popper discusses the causes of the emergence of establishing a government from the perspective of democracy and freedom of elections. The main issue of the study is whether the emergence of government depends of man’s ability, and freedom and security of society. Popper believes that all the individuals are equal in front of the law because the legal states do not differentiate among the individuals who are equal in origin, language, culture, and gender. The state should also defend the land and control the military and economic sources. The democracy which is a political system depending on using rationality in politics or any other field needs an open society as political parties are tools for establishing governments. Popper believes that the wider the freedom is, it will be better for the government. Popper talks about democracy that no government is established without freedom and democracy. A dictator is a person who can be a president and calls for democracy and freedom of expression, but he rejects the other types of democracy because democracy has been known for rejecting dictatorship. In noocracy system, authority is given to a person, not for all, thus a president isn’t selected. To achieve secure and stable society, the government uses two types of elections, they are in the society and in the parliament. However, parliamentary elections are the most important ones topple the dictatorship without blood shedding.

Commentary: Stumbling upon Indirect Self-Enhancement in Free Will Beliefs

Commentary: Stumbling upon Indirect Self-Enhancement in Free Will Beliefs

Stumbling upon Indirect Self-Enhancement in Free Will Beliefs

Stumbling upon Indirect Self-Enhancement in Free Will Beliefs

Kant’s Early Critics on Freedom of the Will ed. by Jörg Noller and John Walsh (review)

Kant’s Early Critics on Freedom of the Will ed. by Jörg Noller and John Walsh (review)

Socinianism and Free Will

Socinianism and Free Will

Free Will and the Paradox of Predictability

In recent literature there has been increased interest in the so-called “paradox of predictability” (PoP) which purportedly shows that a deterministic universe is fundamentally unpredictable, even if its initial state and governing laws are known perfectly. This ostensible conclusion has been used to support compatibilism, the thesis that determinism is compatible with free will: supposedly, the PoP reveals that the nature of determinism is misunderstood and actually allows freedom, hence also free will. The present paper aims to disprove this conclusion and show that the PoP has absolutely no implication concerning the predictability of deterministic systems and the nature of determinism. Its paradoxy arises from a confusion between mental and physical notions in its formulation (the PoP tacitly premises a mental arbiter with respect to whom notions such as prediction and signification have meaning) and disappears once it is expressed in purely physical language. Ultimately, the PoP demonstrates not that prediction is impossible under determinism, but merely the obvious fact that it is impossible to predict while simultaneously acting so as to disprove one’s own prediction. The related issue of the impossibility of self-prediction is also discussed.

Truth in Time Travel: Subversions of Time in An Adventure

This article explores how Frances Lamont and Elizabeth Morison’s An Adventure (1913) disrupts temporal and spatial dichotomies through its supposed representations of time travel. An Adventure presents time as a shifting force that aligns with Bergsonian notions of temporality – specifically the concepts of objective and subjective time as defined in Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution (1911) and “Time and Free Will” (1913). This article also considers how Freudian notions of “condensation” further outline the subjective rendering of time in An Adventure’s surreal journeys back in time to the French Revolution and how the narrative’s subjective presentation of time aligns with Ford Madox Ford’s later theories of literary impressionism, particularly his idea that modernist narratives are composed of “various unordered pictures”. This article ultimately argues that Lamont and Morison’s book benefited from the temporally minded scientific and social climate of the time and used the theoretical groundwork of thinkers like Henri Bergson, Ford Madox Ford and Sigmund Freud as starting points from which they could tell their tale as truth. Specifically, their formal construction of the text as scientific research seeks to consciously obscure the differentiation between fact and fable, effectively positing their nonlinear time slip as truth. If that truth is humored, Lamont and Morison are proposing a more radical conception of time than Bergson – a nonlinear conception of time – a proposition that sits in tension with their use of scientific diction and discourse.

Implementasi Etika Bisnis Islam dalam Meningkatkan Loyalitas Pelanggan Pemasok pada Umkm Pengepul Cabe Jawa Barokah Desa Jambearum Kecamatan Puger Kabupaten Jember

This research aims to determine the Islamic business ethics implemented by MSMEs collecting Javanese Barokah chilies in Jambearum Village, Puger District, Jember Regency and the impact of implementing Islamic business ethics in increasing supplier customer loyalty to MSMEs collecting Javanese Barokah chilies, Jambearum Village, Puger District, Jember Regency. To identify problems and answer research problems, this research uses qualitative research with a case study approach and purposive subject determination techniques. The data collection techniques for this research use active participatory observation, semistructured interviews and documentation. The results of the research concluded that: (1) MSME actors collecting Barokah Javanese chilies in Jambearum Village, Puger District, Jember Regency have implemented the 5 principles of Islamic business ethics in running their business, including: Unity Principle, Equilibrium Principle, Free Will Principle ( Free Will), Principle of Responsibility (Responsibility), Principle of Truth: Virtue and Honesty. (2) The impact of implementing Islamic business ethics in increasing supplier customer loyalty in MSME Java Barokah Chili Collectors, Jambearum Village, Puger District, Jember Regency, has seen customer loyalty expressed by supplier customers with the realization of service quality, customer satisfaction and perceived customer value.

Life without free will: Does it preclude possibilities?

In this partial precis of my recent book ( Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, 2023), I argue against the existence of free will, based on the clarity with which we are nothing more than the sum of the densely intertwined biology, over which we had no control, and its interactions with the environment over which we also had no control. Despite this, the vast majority people, including philosophers and psychologists, believe that free will is compatible with our materialist world. I suggest that this arises from, (a) the intense intuitive feeling of agency experienced when we form an intent and act upon it; (b) the examples of people who effortfully rise above their circumstances (or, conversely, who squander their opportunities) are so powerful and compelling that we decide that tenacity and willpower are not made of biology; (c) misinterpretation of the recent revolutions of chaoticism, emergent complexity, and quantum indeterminacy; and (d) difficulty in reconciling that the future is both deterministic and unpredictable. Finally, I suggest that a rejection of free will, rather than leading to an array of societal and existential ills, would be profoundly liberating.

Free Will in the Era of Neuroscience: A Philosophical Debate on Autonomy

Free Will in the Era of Neuroscience: A Philosophical Debate on Autonomy

Efficacious Grace and Free Will: Taking Aquinas at His Word

Efficacious Grace and Free Will: Taking Aquinas at His Word

Optimizing Portfolio in the Evolutional Portfolio Optimization System (EPOS)

A novel method of portfolio selection is provided with further higher moments, filtering with fundamentals in intelligent computing resources. The Evolutional Portfolio Optimization System (EPOS) evaluates unobtrusive relations from a vast amount of accounting and financial data, excluding hoax and noise, to select the optimal portfolio. The fundamental question of Free Will, limited in investment selection, is answered through a new philosophical approach.

Being Spiritual but Not Religious (SBNR): Testing the Tripartite Meaning in Life Model With Beliefs in Free Will and Determinism as Meaning Frameworks

Being Spiritual but Not Religious (SBNR): Testing the Tripartite Meaning in Life Model With Beliefs in Free Will and Determinism as Meaning Frameworks