CLASS NOTES FROM TUESDAY 2/19/02

- Midterm #2 will be on Tuesday the 26th

-Study Guides for second midterm will be passed out on Thursday(hopefully)

-Additional Readings from Abel for week 6: pages 285-292 & 309-316


-DETERMINISM: There are no free acts

-LIBERTARIANISM: There are some free acts

-(Soft Determinism/ Compatibilism for Thurs.)

-A free act = an act in which the agent could have done otherwise (given the same circumstances)

-Discussion of free will- Can we really make free choices? Introduction of an example of a person who shoots up then robs a convenience store. Could that person have done otherwise given a second chance or are we bound by our upbringing and how it shapes our personality and circumstances later in life.

- Psychology essentially boils down to physics:Psychology->biology->chemistry-> physics.

-Determinism (arguments in favor):
1. From physics (Baron D’holbach)- Matter is determined (obeys the laws of cause and effect) given the same antecedent conditions, same result in scientific experiments. We are material beings; therefore we are determined.

-returning to previous example; given an alcoholic abusive father, a prostitute for a mother, abandonment, and negative influences, the same result occurs repeatedly: shoot up and rob 7-11.

-Charles Manson- should he be accountable for what he did or was it just a product of cause and effect?

-How can/should this effect our criminal justice system, what changes should be made?

-Objections to Above Argument:
1.Matter is not determined. –Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: You can determine the speed or the location of an electron, but not both. Matter behaves in indeterministic ways. Probability vs.exactness. Matter behaves like the weather.

2. Maybe we are not purely material beings, so our soul is what gives us free will.

-Libertarianism (Ordinary free will)
Argument (in favor) from Indeterminism in physics: matter is not determined, we are material beings, there fore we are not determined.

-Objections: 1. Random does not equal free; there are Random acts and Determined acts, and free will falls somewhere in between. 2. The Macro-Micro Problem: from a microscopic perspective things look random, and the macroscopic perspective looks determined.

- Just because indeterminism is true at the micro level, doesn't mean that it is true at the macro level. (Determinist view)

-3. Maybe your souls determined even if your body isn’t.