Module 5: Freedom

Why Does Freedom Matter to Philosophers?

• They care that individuals have the ability to think for themselves and they don’t want that freedom to be infringed upon

• The connection between freedom and responsibility

  • if I’m not free, can I be held responsible for those actions?

• The connection between freedom and oppression

Free Will vs Determinism

• Most people believe that we have free will

• Some believe we’re controlled by an external force (determinists)

  • fall into two camps (optimist and pessimist)

Self-Control and Free Will (Patricia Churchland)

• When is it appropriate to punish?

• Criminal law has developed to try to become more acceptable and punish only when it’s appropriate.

  • He must have know what he was doing was wrong and he had to have been in control.

  • Control = responsibility

• Are we ever really in control?

  • Decisions and choices are caused by the conditions in the brain (a causal machine)

• All mammals have the capacity for self control

  • It is often learned with reward structures in the brain (causal)

  • there are genetic differences between animals that demonstrate self control and those that don’t

• External factors can effect it, like mood or motivation

• Self control can be hindered by drugs

• Being an adolescent and being in a group that increases risk taking

P._F._Strawson_Freedom_&_Resentment.pdf

Strawson Unpacked

• Pessimistic/Optimistic/Moral Skeptic views on determinism

  • Pessimism: if its true our actions are predetermined, then we cannot be held responsible for our actions, nor is it morally obligatory to act ethically towards you

  • Optimism: the concepts of moral responsibility and moral obligation are still helpful even if my actions are predetermined

    • responsibility is useful

  • skeptic: notions of moral guilt, blame and responsibility are inherently confused whether determinism is true or not.

• “If someone treads on my hand accidentally, while trying to help me, the pain may be no less acute than if he treads on it in contemptuous disregard of my existence or with a malevolent wish to injure me. But I shall generally feel in the second case a kind and degree of resentment that I shall not feel in the first.”

• Resentment

  • Arises when we feel injured by the actions of another

  • what considerations might be expected for us to change our resentments

    • conditions such as “he didn’t mean to,” “He didn’t know,” “he had to,” or “he was pushed”

  • Invite us to see the participant as not fully responsible, but still hold participant attitude towards them.

• Reactive Stance v Objective Stance

  • Reactive: “He wasn’t himself,” “He has been under very great strain recently”

    • doesn’t work because he is still seen as an agent

    • depends on good will or absence of ill will

    • make demands interpersonally for regard

  • Objective: “He was hypnotized,” “He’s only a child,” “He’s schizophrenic”

    • no longer being capable of moral responsibility in the same way

• Moral Community

  • We hold reactive attitudes to members of the moral community

  • not being a member of the moral community is a reason to not hold someone responsible but can also be a reason for you to be institutionalized

• Pessimism and determinism

  • pessimism implies taking an objective stance

  • just cogs in a machine

  • Strawson on pessimism

    • “while it might theoretically be true, its practically inconceivable”

    • the human commitment to interpersonal relationships is so pervasive that even if determinism is correct, there are still reasons to hold others responsible

    • it is at the heart of ethics and the heart of our moral communities

Freedom and Madness

• oppressed groups have been deemed mad more often than others

• we seek to control those who we think aren’t free agents

• responsibility without blame

• Willowbrook State School was exposed for mistreating those with disabilities in 1972 by Geraldo Rivera