Exam 6: Freedom

Fatalism is the view that whatever a person's actions and circumstances, his or her predetermined end is inevitable.

According to the Yoruba philosophy, what determines a person's fate?

Which of the following is assumed when we hold people accountable for their actions?

Explain the concept of predestination. Which is the Islamic conception of predestination? Contrast this view to the Western religious view.

Many philosophers have argued for _____________, the view that human freedom and determinism are compatible positions.

Quantum theory asserts the indeterminacy of __________ particles.

The contemporary American philosopher __________ argued that freedom meant that we are free to choose what we shall do and that our decisions are effective.

The __________ claimed that human freedom is consistent with God's power by distinguishing between two types of action, or causality.

Some feminists understand sexual objectification as the primary process of the subjection of women.

In the ancient Greek tragedy, Oedipus the King, Oedipus and Iocasta behave in a way that exemplified the concept of __________.

Daniel Dennett, argues that determinism is dismissed, in part, because of popular images that associate it with particular "bogeyman" images that he thinks are absurd.

Is it possible to have free will but not freedom?

Discuss Dennett's insight that whenever philosophers or laypeople worry about whether we have free will, they mount illicit arguments (straw man fallacies) that some rival agent is involved. They then show how ludicrous it would be to assume that a rival agent is vying for control of our bodies and minds, thereby taking away our free will (or preventing us from having it in the first place). However, without these "bogymen," as Dennett put it, to anchor the philosophical discussions, the idea of a natural lack of free will would not be so strange. Why did Dennett think agency confound the discussion?

Aristotle's view of __________ means factors unknown to the agent influences his or her choices.

Kierkegaard argued that one is responsible for whatever one was and that self-conscious choice and commitment were the factors that made a person most human.

Many scientists now agree that the concept of "cause" does not apply to certain subatomic particles, making the hard determinist view false.

Hard determinism depends on particular antecedent conditions.

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

Hume defended a soft determinist position.

Would you rather be a gear in a big deterministic machine or some random swerving probabilistic atomic particle in an indeterministic system? If every action (including yours) in the universe is determined, then you don't have freedom. If every action (including yours) in the universe is random, then you don't have freedom. If every action (including yours) is a percentage of each, then you don't have freedom. Is there another alternative that can save your freedom?