The Root Cause

Kevin Winters sent this to ldsphil and I thought it was funny enough to pass along.

Clarifications

I had a philosophy professor who said that 90% of any philosophical debate was coming to an understanding of the language being used in the debate. That is many disagreements are semantic in nature. This isn’t just an appeal to the linguistic turn in philosophy. Just that in discussion connotations and tangents [...]

Revisionist Accounts

I wanted to finally get to the discussion of revisionist accounts of responsibility. I want to start though by getting some preliminaries in order. For one what do we mean by revisionist theories? I take to to be the claim that our general understanding of some theory is in order and needs [...]

Responsibility, Ignorance and our Duty

Sorry to keep harping on the free will debate. I know some aren’t interested. I should have some other posts coming as well as the much promised post on revisionist accounts of responsibility. I sort of wanted to get a lot of this out of my system so I could think about [...]

Quickly - Peircean Generals

I’d written a big post on Peirce’s view of Generals and Universals. After finishing it I decided it just was way too technical and got into too much of Peirce’s metaphysics. So instead of expounding on Peirce’s theories let me offer a brief outline of a cosmology that I think works. I [...]

Detecting Chance

I wanted to make clear why I can’t accept Blake’s view that Libertarian Free Will (LFW) is detectable against chance in the universe. I don’t think I’ve really communicated well what I see to be the problem.

Free Will Origins & Critiques

I want to get to my oft promised discussion on revisionist accounts of responsibility. I think it’s important though to first set the stage by looking at what is going on at a fairly low level. So if you don’t mind let me set up these issues for those not as familiar with [...]

Heidegger vs. Levinas

I’ve read a reasonable amount of Levinas but am anything but a Levinasian. (And the Levinasians love to let me know that) I do think that how I approach philosophy (and Heidegger) is quite influenced by Levinas though. Having said all that it always seemed to me that Levinas’ criticisms of Heidegger [...]

Metaphysics of Agent Libertarian Free Will

I think it would be convenient for further discussion on the free will issue to lay out a bit of what I take to be the metaphysical requirements for currently defensible accounts of Libertarian Free Will. (LFW) I’m here simply ignoring theories, such as Kane’s Event-Libertarian Free Will, that have had significant criticisms [...]

Mormon Free Will Redux

I’ve not posted on free will for a while. (My last main posts were on responsibility and foreknowledge, time and chance, and then Mele II) Over at New Cool Thang there was a discussion about free will that got me thinking about it again.
So let me summarize some of the conclusions I’ve reached [...]

Schelling, Heidegger, Freedom

Not strictly Heidegger but worth reading (and I think ultimately reflective of Heidegger’s own philosophy)

Responsibility, God and Alternative Possibilities

I want to get back to some of the questions about free will and responsibility I was thinking through a couple of months ago. One big question that I don’t think has been addressed sufficiently in an LDS context is semi-compatibilism. I want to hold off on the formal arguments about semi-compatibilism and [...]

Time and Chance

Is there a difference between something being random at time T such that E is a random event at T and the case where there is a randomness determining E at T such that E is random but not generated at time T?
Consider for instance Las Vegas. Slot machines and presumably many other games [...]

Age, Free Will and Mary

One thing that I think has bothered most of us about the FLDS situation is the age. In my other post I noted the distinction between epistemic justification and moral responsibility on the one hand and the ultimate issue of whether something is good. So for instance, I personally would say that it [...]

Mele Part II

This is Mele Part II otherwise known as the post where I take back nearly everything I said only a couple of days ago. You may remember from my last post that I characterized Mele as missing the point. Indeed I basically painted him as a nominalist. Now that I’ve thought about [...]

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