Friday, July 28, 2017

Free Will, Determinism, Deliberation

Because of the eschatological scale of the tradition debate, Free Will and Determinism are typically regarded as absolutely disjoint, though Kant shows that they might also be not incompatible.  Now, in ordinary contexts, behavior is easily interpreted as either self-motivated or the product of circumstances.  However, the absolute heterogeneity that even Kant accepts does not hinder the ordinary judgment that behavior can be the resultant of a combination of internal and external influences, calculated just like any combination of Forces.  On that basis, when called for, a judgment of a specific event in terms of Voluntary vs. Involuntary usually reflects a determination as to which of the influences is the stronger in the situation, e. g. a guilty verdict when a tough upbringing does not quite explain the violence of an assault.  That a procedure in those terms might be considered impossible at the eschatological level is perhaps a reflection of the irrelevance of the debate at that level, i. e. if either absolute Free Will or absolute Determinism is correct, there is nothing to deliberate in mundane judgments.

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