Cover of The Journal of Philosophy
>> Go to Current Issue

The Journal of Philosophy

Volume 112, Issue 7, July 2015
Taking Stock of Freedom: A Symposium Honoring Bernard Berofsky

Table of Contents

Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-4 of 4 documents


1. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 112 > Issue: 7
Alfred R. Mele Luck, Control, and Free Will: Answering Berofsky
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article answers a question about luck, control, and free will that Bernard Berofsky raises in Nature’s Challenge to Free Will. The article focuses on a positive element of a typical libertarian view: namely, the thesis (LFT) that there are indeterministic agents who sometimes act freely when their actions—and decisions in particular—are not deterministically caused by proximal causes. LFT is the target of what I call “the problem of present luck”—indeterministic luck at the time of decision. The bearing of such luck on LFT is explored.
2. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 112 > Issue: 7
Susan Wolf Character and Responsibility
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Many philosophers have been persuaded that if we don’t create our own characters, we cannot be responsible for acts that flow from our characters; they also raise doubts about whether acts that do not flow from our characters can fairly be attributed to us. Both these concerns, however, reflect a simplistic and implausible conception of character and of its relation to our actions and our selves. I suggest a different relationship between character and responsibility: We can be responsible for acts that are in character and also for acts that are out of character, but to be capable of being responsible at all is closely related to the capacity to have a character. I relate this capacity to the exercise of active intelligence—a capacity that is manifested in actions in or out of character, but not in the display of many psychological conditions or disorders.
3. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 112 > Issue: 7
Bernard Berofsky Freedom as Creativity
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Determinism poses a prima facie problem about free will only if the latter is understood as counterfactual power, understood categorically, rather than self-determination. A key premise of the defense of incompatibilism provided by the Consequence Argument, namely, that laws are unalterable, presupposes that laws include more than the fundamental laws of physics. This premise is challenged by appeal to actual cases. The necessitarian assumptions embodied in that premise can be successfully challenged by a new and improved version of the regularity theory. Other defenses of the latter, including a defense of Humean Supervenience, are offered. The picture that the compatibilist offers of a decision maker, in part responsible for the laws of psychology, unconcerned about the deterministic or indeterministic nature of the world, is of a more creative individual than the incompatibilist, for whom one’s freedom depends upon the nature of a world about which one has no control.
4. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 112 > Issue: 7
New Books: Anthologies
view |  rights & permissions | cited by