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"free will"
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Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity
Do human beings ever act freely, and if so what does freedom mean? Is everything that happens antecedently caused, and if so how is freedom possible? Is it right, even for God, to punish people for things that they cannot help doing? This volume presents the famous seventeenth-century controversy in which Thomas Hobbes and John Bramhall debate these questions and others. The complete texts of their initial contributions to the debate are included, together with selections from their subsequent replies to one another and from other works of Hobbes, in a collection that offers an illuminating commentary on issues still of concern to philosophers today. The volume is completed by a historical and philosophical introduction that explains the context in which the debate took place.
eBook
Investigating the relationships of free will belief, presence of meaning in life, and self-consciousness with authenticity: a mixed-methods study
Authenticity refers to personality and situational characteristics that enhance the psychological well-being of individuals. Authenticity develops under the influence of various factors. Drawing on the Theory of Existential Psychotherapy (EPT) framework, the present study aimed to investigate the extent to which free will belief, self-consciousness, and presence of meaning in life predict authenticity. The researchers used a mixed-method design to examine the relationship between these predictors and authenticity. The sample consisted of 505 participants, with 455 in the quantitative design and 50 in the qualitative design. The quantitative analyses revealed a positive association between presence of meaning in life and self-consciousness with authenticity. The findings suggest that self-consciousness mediates the relationship between presence of meaning in life and authenticity, and between free will belief and authenticity, with a full mediating effect for free will belief and a partial mediating effect for presence of meaning in life. The qualitative analyses elucidated the relationships between
free will belief-authenticity
,
life meaning-authenticity
,
self-consciousness-authenticity
, and
free will belief-presence of meaning in life-self-consciousness-authenticity
. Overall, the findings indicate that the factors investigated, in line with the theoretical framework proposed in EPT, can enhance authenticity.
Journal Article
Life, its origin, and its distribution: a perspective from the Conway-Kochen Theorem and the Free Energy Principle
We argue here that the Origin of Life (OOL) problem is not just a chemistry problem but is also, and primarily, a cognitive science problem. When interpreted through the lens of the Conway-Kochen theorem and the Free Energy Principle, contemporary physics characterizes all complex dynamical systems that persist through time as Bayesian agents. If all persistent systems are to some - perhaps only minimal - extent cognitive, are all persistent systems to some extent alive, or are living systems only a subset of cognitive systems? We argue that no bright line can be drawn, and we re-assess, from this perspective, the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation. We conclude that improving our abilities to recognize and communicate with diverse intelligences in diverse embodiments, whether based on familiar biochemistry or not, will either resolve or obviate the OOL problem.
Journal Article
Free will beliefs predict attitudes toward unethical behavior and criminal punishment
Do free will beliefs influence moral judgments? Answers to this question from theoretical and empirical perspectives are controversial. This study attempted to replicate past research and offer theoretical insights by analyzing World Values Survey data from residents of 46 countries (n = 65,111 persons). Corroborating experimental findings, free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors and support for severe criminal punishment. Further, the link between free will beliefs and intolerance of unethical behavior was moderated by variations in countries’ institutional integrity, defined as the degree to which countries had accountable, corruption-free public sectors. Free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors for residents of countries with high and moderate institutional integrity, but this correlation was not seen for countries with low institutional integrity. Free will beliefs predicted support for criminal punishment regardless of countries’ institutional integrity. Results were robust across different operationalizations of institutional integrity and with or without statistical control variables.
Journal Article
Belief in free will affects causal attributions when judging others’ behavior
Free will is a cornerstone of our society, and psychological research demonstrates that questioning its existence impacts social behavior. In six studies, we tested whether believing in free will is related to the correspondence bias, which reflects people’s automatic tendency to overestimate the influence of internal as compared to external factors when interpreting others’ behavior. All studies demonstrate a positive relationship between the strength of the belief in free will and the correspondence bias. Moreover, in two experimental studies, we showed that weakening participants’ belief in free will leads to a reduction of the correspondence bias. Finally, the last study demonstrates that believing in free will predicts prescribed punishment and reward behavior, and that this relation is mediated by the correspondence bias. Overall, these studies show that believing in free will impacts fundamental social-cognitive processes that are involved in the understanding of others’ behavior.
Journal Article