Exam 6: Freedom

Kierkegaard called karma the sickness unto death.

Indeterminacy guarantees free will.

The Western concept of "nihilism" is similar to the Eastern concept of "nothingness."

__________ is the view that our every action (and every event in the universe) is known, if not also caused in advance, by God.

Most contemporary philosophers believe in soft determinism, the view that human freedom and determinism are compatible positions.

Kant denied determinism.

_____________ presented a similar but more joyous sentiment on the importance of freedom than Dostoyevsky.

Sir Arthur Eddington advanced the claim that every event in the universe was predictable.

Does it make sense to praise or blame someone for something that person had no control over? If she couldn't do otherwise, would there be any justification for accolades or punishment? Discuss the correlation between moral responsibility and free will.

__________, or freedom, is not a freedom of the self or the individual. In fact, it is a freedom from the self and the individual, achieved only when there is no longer a self at all.

Mill began by rejecting determinism and the idea that all human actions were "necessary and inevitable" given their causes.

The philosopher __________ had such confidence in the Newtonian system that he claimed that if he knew the location and motion of every object in the universe, he could predict the location and motion of every object in the universe at any time in the future.

_____________ was a hard determinist.

The basis of __________ or __________ is that we somehow carve a space within determinism for those actions that we insist on calling "free" and for which we hold ourselves and other people responsible.

_____________ defended the hard determinist viewpoint so uncompromisingly that he shocked even his colleagues as well as many traditionalists.

Indeterminism claims that not every event has its sufficient natural cause; however, indeterminism still does not leave room for ____________________ because random, uncaused events are not caused by agents either.

Sartre was a defender of __________.

A sufficient cause is incapable of bringing the event about by itself.

_____________, who uses Freud and psychoanalysis as the basis for his claim that all our acts are compelled and not free, insofar as all our acts are brought about by a set of psychological determinants over which we have no control.

Kant claimed that the basic rule of determinism, _______________, was one of the rules by which we must interpret every experience.