http://www.rcbc.edu/BaronOne
Rowan College Blackboard
https://rcbc.blackboard.com/
Orai - Public Speaking App, 2:07
https://youtu.be/_dVgzS5fP5o
https://www.slideshare.net/PhilosophicalInvestigations/free-will-and-determinism
Each group will answer their appointed questions next Thursday. Each group should take no more than ten minutes each for their presentation. If the ideal group arrangement is met we will have four members in each group; thus, each colleague with have two minutes to present for a total of eight minutes leaving two minutes for questions and answers.
Before the group presents on Thursday (send by Tuesday) in the subject line of an email identify their selection from Part 5: Free Will, Thomas Nagel, etc.; in the body of the email list the students who answered and discussed their assignment and attach any materials presented (PowerPoint, Snap chat, etc.). Designate one person from your group for this task.
After the organizational meetings during class if you have not been assigned to
a group be prepared to answer a question if someone is absent.
It is important that you attend class, arrive on time, and work cooperatively
with a group to earn discussion credit for participation.
Pick out three last names from the "magical cup of knowledge" (and, unless you picked out your own last name), call the names out so your colleagues can see you, return the last names to the bottom of the stack, and hand it to the next person until everyone is paired with three colleagues. If you have already been partnered with a colleague just hand the stack of names to the next person. Finally, find your colleagues for the Discussion today and answer the questions.
Each of the textbook selections in Part 5, Free Will, should have four questions (check and if not, assign two colleagues to one question). You should be paired with three other colleagues for a total of four in a group. Each colleague should be prepared to answer a question in the selection assigned. Each group will arrange who will answer which question within their group.
Free WillThomas Nagel
Free Will and Determinism
W. T. Stace
Freedom or Determinism?
Steven M. Cahn
The Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Harry Frankfurt
The Capacities of Agents
Neil Levy
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume
The Dilemma of Determinism
William James
Compatibilism: Crash Course Philosophy #25, Stop, 8:02
As we continue explore free will, today Hank considers a middle ground between hard determinism and libertarian free will: compatibilism. This view seeks to find ways that our internally motivated actions can be understood as free in a deterministic world. We’ll also cover Frankfurt Cases (we have a selection by Frankfurt in Part 5: The Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Harry Frankfurt) and Patricia Churchland’s rejection of the free-or-not-free dichotomy and her focus on the amount of control we have over our actions.
Was that man's really horrible behavior a matter of free will? Or, was it determined: by what turned out to be a medical condition? Was it neither, both?
What are two options?
What is the third option?
What is soft determinism?
What do compatibilists say?
How are examples about mental illness or alcohol instructive?
What is Harry Frankfurt's challenge? What are these called?
Are you responsible without being able to do otherwise?
What does Churchland point out? How much control do I have?
What do libertarians point out?
https://youtu.be/KETTtiprINU
Libertarian Free Will - the belief that some actions are freely chosen.
Hard Determinism - the belief that all events are caused by past events such that nothing other than what does occur could occur.
Compatibilists believe, somewhat like hard determinists, that the universe operates with law-like order, and that the past determines the future.
Compatibilists say that action is determined--that is, it couldn't not happen--but when the action of an agent is self-determined or determined by causes internal to themselves, the action should be considered free.
Internal factors vs. External factors
Deterministic Nature of the Universe vs. Subjective Feeling of Freedom
Feeling free = having control
Free Will
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel (born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University in the NYU Department of Philosophy, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics.
Nagel is well known for his critique of material reductionist accounts of the mind, particularly in his essay "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), and for his contributions to deontological and liberal moral and political theory in The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and subsequent writings. Continuing his critique of reductionism, he is the author of Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against a reductionist view, and specifically the neo-Darwinian view, of the emergence of consciousness.
Freedom of Will, the issue that Nagel addresses, 5:13
- Free will, determinism, and predetermination are encountered by Perceiving Reality. The structure of our "I" is explained as embedded within four factors that determine our characteristics and behavior from within our genes and from our environment.
Why don't we know which of our actions are actually free?
What are the four factors?
What can we learn from a seed of wheat?
What is our single point of freedom?
Kabbalah (Hebrew: קַבָּלָה, literally "parallel/corresponding," or "received tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline, and school of thought that originated in Judaism.
https://youtu.be/UJj6PzyOucU
We are blind to the laws and forces that manage us.
Four factors: first factor, the bed, second factor, the cause and effect that stem from itself, thirdly, the inner cause and effect and how well the stalk of wheat grows depends on specific external factors that work directly on its essence, finally our family and upbringing.
Free Will and Determinism
W. T. Stace
Walter Terence Stace (17 November 1886 – 2 August 1967) was a British civil servant, educator, public philosopher and epistemologist, who wrote on Hegel, mysticism, and moral relativism. He worked with the Ceylon Civil Service from 1910-1932, and from 1932-1955 he was employed by Princeton University in the Department of Philosophy. He is most renowned for his work in the philosophy of mysticism, and for books like Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) and Teachings of the Mystics (1960). These works have been influential in the study of mysticism, but they have also been severely criticised for their lack of methodological rigor and their perennialist pre-assumptions.
W.T Stace - Soft Determinism, 5:06
https://youtu.be/0usLpyAlO9o
Freedom or Determinism?
Steven M. Cahn
Steven M. Cahn
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/getattachment/f388333a-8e91-4cd2-a99c-6e0e3418ea90/Steven-M-Cahn
The Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Harry Frankfurt
Harry Gordon Frankfurt (born May 29, 1929) is an American philosopher. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, where he taught from 1990 until 2002, and previously taught at Yale University, Rockefeller University, and Ohio State University.
The Capacities of Agents
Neil Levy
Neil Levy
Neil received a PhD in Continental Philosophy in 1995 and a second PhD, this time in analytic philosophy, in 2006. He was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne, from 2002 to 2009. In 2010 he moved to the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, where he was Head of Neuroethics and an ARC Future Fellow. From 2006 onwards, he has held appointments at the University of Oxford, where he is currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor. From 2016, he will be half time at Oxford and half time at Macquarie.
The nature of luck - Neil Levy, podcast, 8:40
Let us consider "Pistol Pete" Maravich's floppy socks.
Peter Press Maravich (June 22, 1947 – January 5, 1988), known by his nickname Pistol Pete, was an American professional basketball player. Maravich was born in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, and raised in the Carolinas. Maravich starred in college at Louisiana State University (LSU) and played for three NBA teams until injuries forced his retirement in 1980. He is the all-time leading NCAA Division I scorer with 3,667 points scored and an average of 44.2 points per game. All of his accomplishments were achieved before the adoption of the three point line and shot clock, and despite being unable to play varsity as a freshman under then-NCAA rules. One of the youngest players ever inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Maravich was cited by the Hall as "perhaps the greatest creative offensive talent in history". In an April 2010 interview, Hall of Fame player John Havlicek said that "the best ball-handler of all time was Pete Maravich"
Are you lucky? What is the nature of luck? What is our understanding of luck? What can we control? Is skill involved? How? Where does the idea of luck come from? Are there unseen forces in the universe? Are forces random? Is luck self-fulfilling? What about superstition? Are athletes superstitious? Do rituals bring luck?
Associate Professor Levy was recently interviewed on ABC 612 Brisbane Afternoons by Kelly Higgins-Devine on the nature of luck.
https://youtu.be/Auj3cc1rtRI
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume, published in English in 1748. It was a revision of an earlier effort, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, published anonymously in London in 1739–40. Hume was disappointed with the reception of the Treatise, which "fell dead-born from the press," as he put it, and so tried again to disseminate his more developed ideas to the public by writing a shorter and more polemical work.
The end product of his labours was the Enquiry. The Enquiry dispensed with much of the material from the Treatise, in favor of clarifying and emphasizing its most important aspects. For example, Hume's views on personal identity do not appear. However, more vital propositions, such as Hume's argument for the role of habit in a theory of knowledge, are retained.
This book has proven highly influential, both in the years that would immediately follow and today. Immanuel Kant points to it as the book which woke him from his self-described "dogmatic slumber". The Enquiry is widely regarded as a classic in modern philosophical literature.
David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Part 1, 2:55
In this two part series, we will examine David Hume’s treatise titled An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In this first lecture, we will discuss Hume’s empirical epistemology and the problem of induction. In the second lecture, we will explore the consequences of Hume’s theory of knowledge.
https://youtu.be/5p7gcRireKk
David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Part 2, 4:49
In this two part series, we will examine David Hume’s treatise titled An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In this first lecture, we will discuss Hume’s empirical epistemology and the problem of induction. In the second lecture, we will explore the consequences of Hume’s theory of knowledge.
https://youtu.be/Sagxx_yVhMU
The Dilemma of Determinism
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labeled him the "Father of American psychology".
Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, James is considered to be one of the major figures associated with the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. A Review of General Psychology analysis, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. He also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, and has even influenced Presidents, such as Jimmy Carter.
Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James, and the diarist Alice James. James wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology, which was a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology, Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy, and The Varieties of Religious Experience, which investigated different forms of religious experience, which also included the then theories on mind-cure.
Who Was William James? (Famous Philosophers), 3:58
William James: Founder of Pragmatism, Father of American Psychology, and One of the Most Influential American Philosophers Of All Time. This video offers a brief introduction to William James's positions.
https://youtu.be/XH0qf2crD9Y
William James, Star Trek's Data, and the Question of Free Will, 2:54
Does Data have free will?
https://youtu.be/Eq7ExAkXErs
