Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:01:30.961Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

My Own Free Will

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

W. F. R. Hardie
Affiliation:
University of Oxford

Extract

The words “free will” have uses in ordinary talk as in “free will offering” and, most commonly, in the expression “of my (your, etc.) own free will.” We all know what states of affairs make this expression applicable, and its standard use is defined by this application. Yet philosophers discuss, or used to discuss, whether the will is free, libertarians saying that it is and determinists denying this. Are they, or were they, asking whether anyone ever acts of his own free will? If so, the question asked was absurd.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1957

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Books and articles mentioned and/or discussed

Ayer, A. J., Philosophical Essays (12, “Freedom and Necessity”) 1954.Google Scholar
Broad, C. D., Inaugural Lecture, “Determinism, Indeterminism and Libertarianism,” 1934 (reprinted in Ethics and the History of Philosophy, 1952).Google Scholar
Campbell, C. A., Scepticism and Construction (Chs. 4 and 5 on “Moral Freedom”) 1931.Google Scholar
Mind, 1951, “Is Free Will a Pseudo-Problem?”Google Scholar
Flew, A. G. N., British Journal of Sociology, 1954. “Crime and Disease.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobart, R. E., Mind, 1934. “Free Will as involving Determination and inconceivable without it.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nowell-Smith, P. H., Ethics (Chs. 19 and 20 “Freedom and Responsibility”) 1954.Google Scholar
Mind, 1948 “Free Will and Moral Responsibility”, 1954 “Determinists and Libertarians.”Google Scholar
Ross, , SirDavid, W.. Foundations of Ethics (X “Indeterminacy and Indeterminism”) 1939.Google Scholar
Schlick, Moritz. Problems of Ethics (Ch. VII “When is a Man Responsible?”) 1931.Google Scholar
Sidgwick, H., Methods of Ethics, Second Edition (Bk. I. ch. 5, “Free Will”) 1877.Google Scholar
Stevenson, C. L., Ethics and Language, (XIV “Avoidability; Indeterminism”) 1945.Google Scholar
Wisdom, J., Problems of Mind and Matter (VIII “Free Will”) 1934.Google Scholar