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Freewill, Determinism and the Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

R.L. Franklin
R.L. Franklin*
Affiliation:
University of New England, Armidale, Australia

Extract

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Philosophers and others have often debated whether we have freewill: i.e. whether (in a sense I shall try to elucidate) our power to choose between X and Y is radically undetermined, so that if we choose X we yet might have chosen Y, and vice versa. My concern is not with that question but with a hypothetical one which arises from it: if we had such freewill, what implications, if any, would, that fact have for the sciences. My argument concentrates on the social sciences, since the phenomena with which they deal inevitably involves human choice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 31 , Issue 123 , June 1983 , pp. 50 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

Berlin, I., Two Concepts of Liberty, Oxford, 1958.Google Scholar
Brodbeck, May (ED.), Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, London and New York, 1968.Google Scholar
Eccles, J.C., The Neurophysiological Basis of Mind, Oxford, 1953.Google Scholar
Franklin, R.L., Freewill and Determinism, London and New York, 1968.Google Scholar
Popper, K.R., “Indeterminism in Quantum Physics and in Classical Physics”, British Journal of Philosophy of Science, Vol. I, 1950.Google Scholar