Akratic Compatibilism and All Too Human Psychology

J. Christopher Maloney

doi:10.5771/9781666919493

Summary

Do we have free will? How could we have the psychological leeway to choose and act otherwise than we do? The sum of history and the laws of science, including psychology, deterministically imply all events, including each of our actions. Is nature’s iron determination of deliberation compatible with the will’s freedom? The philosophers who answer affirmatively, both classical and current, assume that either the ultimate scientific laws or the grand historical record—or both—are merely contingent. By proceeding to infer the contingency of lawfully determined actions, these compatibilists would secure the leeway presumably requisite for the will’s liberty. Akratic Compatibilism and All Too Human Psychology: Almost Enough Is Free Will Enough argues, however, that they may be dead wrong about the modality of nature’s laws and history’s plasticity. Might the laws be necessary, and history absolutely fixed? Nevertheless, J. Christopher Maloney posits, we would yet be free. For psychology ordains volitional conflict: sometimes we akratically will to be able to act otherwise than we irresistibly do. Being akratic by nature, we asymptotically resist even a necessitating psychology’s governance. That Sisyphean resistance against the laws of cognition almost achieves the will’s liberating leeway. Nevertheless, almost free is free enough for deliberators as weak-willed as we.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2023
ISBN-Print: 978-1-6669-1948-6
ISBN-Online: 978-1-6669-1949-3
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 182
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgments No access
1. Notes No access
1. Caveat lector! No access
2. 1. A Word about Freedom of the Will No access
3. Determinism, Dainty or Stern No access
4. 1. Sopranos Cantando con Lewis No access
  2. 1. Lehrerian Leeway No access
    2. Lehrerian Preference No access
    3. Lehrerian Preferential Hierarchies No access
    4. Lehrerian Power preference No access
    5. Lehrerian Ultimate Preference No access
  3. Contraltos Cantando con Frankfurt No access
5. Determinism Determined No access
6. Notes No access
1. Akratic Compatibilism Confessed but Defense Deferred No access
2. Authorization and The Laws of Cognition No access
3. The Logic of “Almost” No access
4. Context of Occurrence No access
5. Social Context No access
6. Phenomenal Context No access
7. Cognitive Context No access
8. Mathematical Context No access
9. Notes No access
1. Lessons from Strawson and Newman No access
2. Lessons from Spartacus and Augustine No access
3. Charitable Assessment No access
4. Freedom’s Proliferation: Lessons from Rosa Parks and Bill Mazeroski No access
5. Notes No access
1. 1. 1. Fallible Imagination No access
    2. Conceivability and Possibility No access
    3. Wily Nature No access
2. Addiction No access
3. 1. Personal Achievement No access
  2. A Little More on Luck and Achievement No access
  3. Collective Achievement No access
4. Notes No access
Bibliography No access Pages 151 - 172
Index No access Pages 173 - 180
About the Author No access Pages 181 - 182