Can one act “as if” there were free will?

Julian Sanchez has some lucid thoughts about an ongoing discussion at the Daily Dish regarding free will:

We can say something similar about the folks who weigh in with dire concerns about what the rejection of free will means for moral judgment. Our particular intuitions about its content may benefit from theoretical reflection, but it’s just backwards to suggest that the “wrong” answer to a metaphysical question about agency or the nature of the mind could somehow require us to throw out the whole language of value and meaning. And while it would require a long post of its own to really cash this out, I think it’s a good sign that something’s wrong with your value theory if it does depend in this crucial, systemic way on the answer we give here.

-John

Related posts:

  1. Not all choices are free
  2. The myth of a “national security” limitation on free speech
  3. Free market journalism

December 22, 2009 · Filed Under Free choice, John

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  • Editors

    Jacob Bronsther is a law student at NYU, a former Fulbright Scholar to Mauritius, and a graduate of Cornell University. He has an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

  • Sam Gill is a consultant in Washington and a graduate of the University of Chicago. He studied Political Theory at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

  • Marc Grinberg is a Presidential Management Fellow with the U.S. government and a graduate of Princeton University. He earned an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

  • John Rood is the founder of Next Step Test Preparation and a graduate of Michigan State University. He has an AM in Political Theory from the University of Chicago.

  • Luke Freedman is a student at Carleton College, pursuing a double major in Philosophy and Political Science.


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