TUDOMANYFILOZOFIA SZEMINARIUM, F a r k a s K.

ELTE TTK Tudomanytortenet es Tudomanyfilozofia Tanszek Budapest, Pazmany P. setany 1/A TUDOMANYFILOZOFIA SZEMINARIUM (http://hps.elte.hu/seminar) ________________________________________________ Januar 31 12:30 6. em. 6.54 F a r k a s K a t a l i n Eotvos, Department of Philosophy THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL I think that understanding free will raises a serious problem, and I must admit I have no solution for it. As a matter of fact, nor I have anything particularly novel or original to say about free will. I intend this talk merely as a starting point for discussion (and accordingly, I hope to keep it reasonably short). The problem, in my view, is this: we have free will, but as I shall argue briefly, compatibilist theories of free will - that is, theories which claim that free will and determinism are compatible - are unsatisfactory. This leaves libertarianism: the view that we have free will, and it is incompatible with determinism, therefore determinism must be false. However, the main difficulty has been to understand HOW libertarianism could make the phenomenon of free will intelligible. If we claim - what is only natural - that our beliefs and desires cause our actions, then psychological determinism seems to offer the best interpretation of our ordinary decision-making procedures. The only alternative to deterministic explanation seems to be explanation by randomness or chance - which is hardly what we expect to account for free choice. I shall present a little idea which might point towards a solution - but then again, just like a fair number of proposed solutions, it may easily prove to be a simple relabelling of the problem. Ha mindenki beszel magyarul, akkor az eloadas magyarul lesz! A szeminarium szervezoje: E. Szabo Laszlo -- Laszlo E. Szabo Department of Theoretical Physics Department of History and Philosophy of Science Eotvos University, Budapest H-1518 Budapest, Pf. 32. Phone: (36-1)2090-555/6671 Fax: (36-1)372-2509 Home: (36-1)200-7318 http://hps.elte.hu/~leszabo