FREEDOM, POWER AND CAUSATION

• Authors: Pink Thomas
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Freedom or control of how we act is often and very naturally under-stood as a kind of power—a power to determine for ourselves how we act. Is freedom conceived as such a power possible, and what kind of power must it be? The paper argues that power takes many forms, of which ordinary causation is only one; and that if freedom is indeed a kind of power, it cannot be ordinary causation. Scepticism about the reality of freedom as a power can take two forms. One, found in Hume, now often referred to as the Mind argument, assumes incompatibilism, and concludes from incompatibilism that freedom cannot exist, as indistinguishable from chance. But another scepticism, founds in Hobbes, does not assume incompatibilism, but assumes rather that the only possible form of power in nature is ordinary causation, concluding that freedom cannot for this reason exist as a form of power. This scepticism is more profound—it is in fact presupposed by Hume’s scepticism—and far more interesting, just because freedom cannot plausibly be modelled as ordinary causation.

Keywords

EN

CAUSATION; COMPATIBILISM; FREEDOM; HUME; LAW OF NATURE; POWER; SCEPTICISM

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 141 – 168

Contributors

author

Pink Thomas

• King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26109