Browsing by Subject "Free will"

Filter results by typing the first few letters
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The fragility of rationality: George Eliot on akrasia and the law of consequences
    (Taylor&Francis, 2020) Fessenbecker, Patrick
    George Eliot often uses the language of determinism in her novels, but we do not understand her view very well by treating such phrasing as addressing debates about the freedom of will directly. Instead she uses seemingly deterministic terms, like the ‘law of consequences', to depict and analyse a particular problem in moral psychology: those instances where we ourselves make it impossible to act on our own best judgements. When we fail to act on our best judgement, this has downstream effects, since it can produce a gap between prudential rationality and one's all-things-considered judgement. Surveying depictions of this problem in Silas Marner, Adam Bede, and Romola, I argue that it's a revealing problem for Eliot’s larger view, bringing together her objections to consequentialism, her recognition of the fragility of virtue, and her account of the role of sympathy in practical deliberation.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Neuroscience and the free will problem
    (2020-01) Açıköz, Ömer Hamza
    The free will problem examines whether people can control their behaviours or not. This problem is highly debated in philosophy. It is a multidimensional phenomenon and it includes social, ethical and psychological aspects. In this thesis, the free will problem will be analyzed from the philosophical and scientific aspects and it will be accordingly claimed that Libet‘s experiment (1983) was not successful in terms of evaluating the problem. The scientific and philosophical causes of this failure will be analyzed and thus a simplistic, an introductory and an alternative concept of free will shall be proposed in the end.