Free Will And Racism

For Taylor: Answer all questions in complete sentences. 294-303

1. What pieces of data does Taylor think we must account for in debates about free will? Why does he think they are significant?

“ I sometimes deliberate, with the view to making a decision; a decision, namely, to do this thing or that.”

“Whether or not I deliberate about what to do, it is sometimes up to me what I do.”

He says that it is harder for him to doubt something deliberate, and the idea that he can have opportunities that are up to him to decide that fate of an outcome. He goes on to say that we must be wiser with our principles and start adjusting our theories to our data and avoid tailoring our data to our theories.

2. Define soft determinism. Then, why does Taylor

2. Why does Dennett think that we should give up the “traditional notion of free will,” and why does he think it would be good to do so?

Responsibility, must be put down though we ought to change the definition notions. We want to be held responsible by society.

People choose to take responsibility, to gain something through our deterministic nature.

We must remove the absolutes.

For Gregg Caruso, “The Dark Side of Free Will”

1. What does he mean by calling himself an optimistic skeptic with respect to free will?

Who we are and what we do are factors that are beyond our control and through this, will limit our moral responsibility.

2. According to Caruso, if there is no free will could it still be justified to detain dangerous people? Why? What would need to happen in this detention?

He claims that it can.

We can detain for the safty of soceity and design this to treat the individual by their needs and in doing so there would be no form of punishment.

We need to lower the causes for crime and prevent it in the first place. We also need to decrease the punishment.

3. What is “just world belief?” Why does he think it is a false way to view the

Blame the victim approach

He belives that this is false, because it shows that those blame the people who have misfortune.

They blame the poor and praise the rich.

Legal systems and the world, for example will blame the rape victim (innocent) and in turn them into the problem.

For Robert Speth, “So There Is No Free Will. Now What?”

1. What evidence does Speth mention in defense of the claim that we do not have free will? In particular, why does he think our decisions are not under our conscious control?

We are a product of our genes.

We have epigenes.

Involuntary muscle responses.

Intricatei inner workings of 86 billion neuron and complexity of other cells.

Nature and Nurture are correlated.

Under consciousness, the brain operates the same as the neurons in our body.

Field Experiment defense

FMRI changes can predict a human prediction before the person makes a conscious decisions

2. Even though he thinks we do not have free will, why does he think we have to act as if we had free will?

We must hold onto the illusion, because we are theoretically predictable.

This doesn't omit the other 20% of our unpredictably.

We are intrinsically social species and as a result, we have various chemical balances that cause us to feel and