Philosophy 101

Introduction to Philosophy

Spring 2005


Arguments for EEE

(Extract, Explain, Evaluate)


1. Pastor Billy Bob has taught me the truth about free will! So now listen and learn. God knows everything that we will ever do. But if He knows what we will do, then we can never do anything else. And so we never act freely. So anyone who believes that we have free will must be an atheist, and deserves to go to you-know-where.


2. Obviously, only an atheist would think that we don’t have free will. Look, God is going to punish all evil-doers, like Hitler. But God would never punish a person for an act that he’s not responsible for. So if people weren’t sometimes morally responsible for their actions, then God would not punish anyone. And people have got to have free will, if they’re morally responsible for their actions.


3. Yesterday in our philosophy class we did this silly experiment. The teacher told us to hold up one finger. When he said ‘Go’, we were all supposed to wiggle our finger to the left, or to the right, or just keep it still. Bobby moved his finger to the right. Suzie moved hers to the left. And Wendy refused to put up her finger at all. It was a pretty dumb experiment, but it still showed something about determinism. All of us heard the same words from the teacher, so the causes of our finger wigglings were just the same. So if those stupid determinists were right, then we all would have done the same thing. Which just goes to show one thing. Determinists don’t understand human nature.


4. Professor Chisholm holds that a person acts freely if, and only if, that person’s action is agent-caused by that person, and has no event-cause. Let us label this statement Chisholm’s thesis. Chisholm seems to be aware that his thesis is controversial. But he appears to be unaware of, or appears not to have considered sufficiently seriously, my devastating critique of his thesis, which has appeared in over a dozen separate articles published over the past seven years, including, most recently, my “Liberating Ourselves from Libertarianism,” Journal of Verbose Philosophy volume 301 (2003), pp. 972-1345. This critique certainly deserves more recognition than it has recently received; perhaps, then, it would be worthwhile repeating it. Imagine that Linda wishes to slap Mary. Linda believes that she can do so, and thus she plans to do so. On a certain day, her plan comes to fruition–she slaps Mary. Let us stipulate that Linda’s beliefs and desires event-cause her slap. Now surely Linda is morally responsible for her act. After all, she wanted to do it! But if she is responsible, then she must have acted freely. Yet according to Chisholm’s misguided thesis, Linda did not act freely. Thus Chisholm’s thesis is conclusively refuted. If proper attention were paid to this simple argument, fewer philosophers would waste their efforts trying to defend libertarian views like Chisholm’s.