Which of the following is an example of scientific realists criticisms of constructive

empiricism?

Constructive empiricism lacks an explanation of why our scientific theories are successful
at predicting novel phenomena.

Correct
The scientific realist can explain why some theories make successful predictions about
novel phenomena since they argue that those theories postulate unobservable entities that
actually exist. The existing unobservable entities, which our scientific theories help us
understand, are the causes of the novel phenomena. If, like the constructive empiricist, we
suspend our belief in unobservable entities then it seems that we have no explanation for
why some theories successfully predict novel phenomena.

The constructive empiricist does have an explanation for why scientists construct the
theories they do because they argue that scientists construct theories that save the
phenomena.

8.
Which of the following is an instance of Inference to the Best Explanation?

The existence of the Higgs boson provides the best explanation for a certain set of
observational data provided by the Large Hadron Collider at Cern. Therefore, the Higgs
boson exists.

Correct
Inference to the best explanation involves inferring what would, if true, provide the best
explanation for the data.

9. .
Why do scientific realists appeal to the distinction between unobservables and
unobserved observables in arguing against constructive empiricism?

Realists hold that we use the same inferential practices to infer the existence of
unobserved but observable things (such as dinosaurs) as we use to infer the existence of
unobservable things (such as electrons). As such, if we are warranted in believing in the
former then we are warranted in believing in the latter.
Correct
According to realists, we seem to use the same process of inference to the best
explanation to infer the existence of, say, dinosaurs from the fossil record as we do to infer
the existence of, say, electrons from various experimental results. Dinosaurs, although
unobserved, are observable things, whereas electrons are not observable things. The
realist argues that if inference to the best explanation provides warrant for belief in
dinosaurs then it would provide warrant for belief in electrons

(Check screenshots)
Do We Have Free Will? Does it Matter?

What is determinism?

This lecture is about free will and

determinism. The plan for the lecture is that I'm

going to start by explaining what determinism is and why it's a problem. And then I'm going
to talk about

the three main responses that philosophers have given. The first response is libertarianism,

which is to say that we do have free will. The second response is compatibilism,

which says that we don't have free will, but it doesn't matter. And the third response is

called hard determinism, and it says we don't have free will and

it does matter, so I'll come back to that. Let's start by talking

about what determinism is.

Determinism is sometimes called mechanism, and it's the idea that everything

that happens is determined. That is to say, fixed completely by the physical conditions that
preceded it. So think about an example. Imagine that I throw

something across the room. The exact way that I throw it determines

the exact way that it's going to land. Everything about the way that

the object moves is fixed by the physical conditions

that preceded the motion. So there isn't anything random. It's random in one sense, it's
random in the sense that I

can't tell where it's going to land. So for my point of view, it's random, but it isn't random
from the point of view of the universe, if you like. So, here's a useful distinction. We can
think of uncertainty about
the way things are as being uncertainty from our point of view. There's all kinds of

things that I don't know. But that doesn't mean that there

isn't a way that they are and a way that they're going to be. There is also what we might

call metaphysical uncertainty. So, metaphysical uncertainty is

uncertainty that's in some way in the fabric of the universe. A genuine chanciness or

randomness that's in the world, not just in my lack of knowledge of the world. What
determinists say is that there's

no genuine chanciness in the world. That the way things are going to happen is determined
by everything

that's happened before. Now, of course we don't know it, but

it nonetheless is the case that there's a certain way that things

are going to happen. Now, this applies to us too. So I think it's fairly easy to see how it
applies to physical objects. Think about baking a cake. If your cake doesn't rise, you know
there's some explanation. And if your cake does rise, you know there's some explanation.

There's always an explanation for why things happen in the physical world. It's slightly less
easy to see how it applies to us. So, I'm going to talk for a minute about determinism
applied to people in particular. So think about the nature of human action. When I do
something, so when I raise my hands like this, I've caused that action in some sense. In
this particular case, I caused it by making a decision. Action caused by a decision I
decided I'm going to raise my arm. And I'm going to raise my

arm in order to make a point in a lecture that I'm giving

about free will and determinism. So that's the cause of my action. But then we can think

about the further reaching background causes and how this came to happen. My decision
was caused by lots of background conditions. So, starting with the very close ones,

I decided to raise my arm in order to make a point because

I'm in the middle of giving this lecture. But, of course, I'm in the middle of

giving this lecture for reasons that are to do with my job, and my personality,

and the situation that I'm in now. And all of those things have causes too. So the situation
that I'm in now and my job are of course
caused by past decisions. My past decisions are caused by

the kind of person that I am, and the kind of person that I am is

a very complicated thing caused by genes, the environment, my upbringing,

my parents' decisions, and so on. So these are external circumstances. These are things
outside of me,

so I"m a determined being too. In the end, a simple decision,

like to raise my arms, comes from things that

are completely outside me. And causal chains that started a long,

long time ago.

I'll come back to the way in which we might think that persons are different. But for now,
let's think of persons as part of the physical world, as being caused like other things. And
decisions and psychologies are very, very complicated, but determinists say they are part
of that enormous causal chain. So, if I'm determined, if my decisions are caused by past
decisions, which are caused by my personality, which is caused by my genes, by the
environment, by my upbringing, and so on. Then it seems like there's an important sense in
which I'm not free, I'm not a free agent, I'm not making my own decisions. Okay, before I go
on, I want to make a couple of clarifications. So, here are some possible confusions that it's
very important to avoid. So, first of all, you'll might have

heard the idea of fate or fatalism. It's really important to distinguish

determinism from the idea of fate, so here's a few differences.

1. First, when we think about fate, we think about one unavoidable outcome. So, for
example, in Macbeth, the witches say that Macbeth will be killed by someone not
born of woman. So that's one big thing that's going to happen to Macbeth. But that's
compatible with him being free in other ways, making his own decision in other
ways, with his freely trying to avoid the fate. So the only bit that's fixed in this story
is the fate. Whereas what determinism says, is that every micro-detail is fixed.
Everything is fixed, not at a level of description that we're generally interested in,
which is the big things. Everything is fixed at the micro-level, the tiniest thing,
because all these things are part of a massive chain of cause and effect. Nothing
escapes that chain.
Fate is one unavoidable outcome, but determinism is at the micro leve
 2. A second difference between fate and determinism is that fate is usually thought of
as

being brought about by a conscious agent. Like the witches in Macbeth, for example.
Whereas determinism is just

the blind forces of nature, the idea behind determinism is just,

we live in a natural world, a world with nothing metaphysical or

magical in it. It's a physical world, and

in that physical world, everything happens on strict causal lines. So there's no plan behind
determinism, it's just that what's going to

happen is going to happen. There's no meaning or conscious decision.

3. A third clarification is that fate seems

to be able to happen in different ways. So, you might be avoid

meeting your fate in one way, only to meet it in a different way. But determinism is
absolutely fixed. There's only one future, there's only one way that things can go.

So why worry about determinism? Why does it matter? Well, it matters because it seems
as though if what we do is determined, then in a sense, we're not free, we're not making
our own decisions. Everything that happens is what was always going to happen, including
the things that I decide to do, including the efforts that I make. Including the things that we
think of ourselves as deserving. There are things that were always going to happen.

So ideas, like desert, praise, blame, moral responsibility in general, seem to dissolve. It
seems as if none of this stuff is worth thinking about anymore, because we're just part of
this massive causal chain. We're just dominoes, waiting to be knocked over by the next
domino in the chain. Before I get on to talking about the responses that philosphers have
given, it might be worth pausing just to summarize where we are so far.

So here's what I've said:

Causes work in a deterministic way. Everything about the effect is explained by the nature
of the cause. The physical world is a massive chain of cause and effect
That's something that we accept about the physical world. And it seems that if we're part
of

the physical world, it applies to us too. (we are part of a massive chain of cause and
effect)

In that case, we're not free. And if we're not free, it seems hard

to make sense of moral responsibility. In the next section of the lecture, I'll

talk about how philosophers have tried to make sense of moral responsibility.

LIBERTARIANISM

So let's talk about the possibility that we really are free. First of all, it's worth clearing up
another possible confusion, so it feels as if we're free, it certainly feels as if we're free. I
don't feel as if my decisions are being caused by something outside myself. And we can
experiment with ourselves, we can try to wait and see what we're going to decide to do, but
of course that doesn't work. We can't wait and see what we're going to decide to do, we
have to do it. And that feeling, that consciousness that we have to make the decision, we
have to work at it,

we have to actively do something is what determinists call

the illusion of free will. It's certainly something we experience, but of course we could be
wrong.

FEELING FREE =/= BEING FREE

So it could be that it feels as though we're free, but we're not. And so the fact that we feel
as if

we're free isn't a good argument that we are free. We're going to need something else.
We're going to need something more. Here's another attempt that doesn't work. So an
obvious point to make about

determinism is that it's not true. Not everything is determined, there is

indeterminacy at the quantum level. So sometimes a particle goes

off in one direction or another without there

being any cause at all. In other words, where it goes one way or

the other is not explained by the cause. And yet, I said earlier,

determinism is the view that everything about the effect is explained by the cause. So,
there we go, determinism's false. Unfortunately, this is not a good solution to our problem.
So first of all, it's true that determinism isn't quite accurate as I've described it. And this is
why philosophers sometimes like to call it mechanism instead of determinism. So the name
mechanism

captures better the idea that the real point isn't that

everything's determined, the real point is that everything's mechanistic, everything

is happening according to blind forces. So here's why that's not a helpful answer in the
current situation. What we're worried about here is our decisions. It's whether we are free
as agents, and what we're looking for is autonomy. We're looking for us being autonomous
agents, making our own decisions. We're not looking for quantum indeterminacy. So if our
acts are, in the end, random, if it's just random body movements,

random thoughts, random decisions, then we're not

autonomous, we're not proper agents. We're not controlling our behavior the way we think
we are when we

feel like we have free will. So the question of quantum indeterminacy

is really a red herring here.

So here's what philosophers do say, libertarians argue that we really are free, that we really
do have free will. What they say is that we are causes outside of the usual causal chain.
They say that although we

cause things in the usual way, the way in which we are caused,

is very different. Agents, libertarians, say,

are capable of agent causation. A special kind of causation that's free, that originates in the
agent. Here's one way that that idea has been presented. It's presented in a religious
context. And you might think that that solves the problem. That if you say, we were made by
deity, and that deity gave us free will, gave us this special kind of causation, then that's all
we need to say.
Here's two problems from a philosophical point of view about that way of looking at things.
First, it's not explanatory. So philosophers like answers that give an explanation, but this
answer doesn't

give an explanation. It just says the deity gave us free will. It doesn't explain how that might
work or how it's compatible

with the natural world. So even philosophers who are religious avoid appealing directly to a
deity in

defending Libertarianism.

The second problem is that it leads

into a version of what's known as the problem of evil. So if a deity who's omniscient and

omnipotent gave us free will, then that deity knew what we were

going to do, and had control over it. And so, in the end, the deity's responsible for
everything that we do, including the bad things. So it creates another problem,

a different problem, but another serious philosophical problem. So philosophical libertarians

particularly contemporary ones, but stretching back in history too, tend to avoid appealing
to religion when they argue for libertarianism. Instead they try to give an explanation of the
way in which we are a special cause.

Here are two problems with the libertarian attempt to explain agent causation. First of all,
whatever they say it's going to be very

hard to reconcile with the natural world. So, if we're part of the natural world,

then surely we operate as causes in it just like anything else,

and if we're not operating like

natural causes then what are we? It begins to seem that we're something

else, something supernatural. So, take for example, Kant's version of this story. Kant says,
well we are in the natural world, in so far as we have noumenal selves, that's just the
physical part of us that's in the natural world, and those noumenal cells are subject to

cause and effect just like anything else. But, Kant says,
we also have phenomenal selves, the thinking part of our self and

that part is really free. Kant says, that we really

are the originator of our own thoughts. So that's a very ambitious metaphysics. That's a
way of saying,

that there are two different parts of us, a physical part and a non-physical part.

The second problem with libertarianism,

is that it turns out that it's quite hard to make sense of acting for

reasons on this picture. So, here's how the problem arises. Think about what happens
when we act. When I do something I do it for a reason. I have an explanation for

what I do in my own mind. So my acts are not random, I have reasons. So if we take away
the background cause,

if we say, no, my act just originates in me and it isn't determined, then we have to ask,

well what was the reason you did it? What was the reason for the act? And as soon as we
bring back the reason, we seem to be back to saying that there

is a cause for the act after all. So, for example, the philosopher

Robert Kane, runs into trouble here. He says that,

at moments where the reasons aren't clear, we're capable of totally free action. He calls
these self-forming actions,

and these actions, he says, don't come from prior causes. But the problem is,

if they don't come from prior causes, i.e, reasons Where do they come from? It seems that
they must be random, it seems that the decision you

make is just a matter of luck. And now we're back to the problem that

applies the quantum indeterminacy, which is just, this isn't what we wanted,

what we wanted here was autonomy, we didn't want randomness.

I'll summarize what I've

said about libertarianism. Libertarians argue that we

are a special sort of cause, that we're in some way

outside of the causal chain. The problems with this, in brief, are:

1. It is hard to reconcile the view with a naturalistic outlook

2. It is hard to make sense of acting for reasons

If we're outside of the causal chain it seems we're not part of the natural world and

if we're outside of the causal chain, it's hard to make sense of acting for

reasons.

COMPATIBILISM

The next attempt to solve

the problem of free will and determinism is compatibilism.

Compatibilism is the view that although

we don't have metaphysical free will, we are determined. It doesn't matter. We nonetheless
have moral responsiblity. We have the thing that matters.

How does this argument work? Let's start with Hume. Hume makes a distinction between
being free and being constrained. So he says, we shouldn't contrast being free with being
determined, we should contrast being free with being prevented from doing the things we
want to do.

So on Hume's view, we're free when we

can follow through on our decisions, and we're constrained

when we're in prison, or some other way prevented from

doing the things we want to do. So Hume changes the terms of the debate

and solves the problem in that way. What is he's really saying is look we
shouldn't be thinking about determinism. Determinism just is the case and so there might
be a sense of freedom that's opposed to determinism. But that isn't the interesting sense.
The sense of freedom that we should be interested in is just the totally ordinary sense of
being able to walk

around and do what we want to do. To many this is seemed like

a somewhat lame response. It seems that in changing the subject Hume

really has missed the important point. But I think that there's a really

important insight in what Hume says. And that view is shared with contemporary

compatibilists who build on this insight. The insight is this,

what matters is that we decide what to do. That we are the ones making

decisions about our actions, that's the thing that really matters.

So, here's this argument as it comes from Harry Frankfurt. In a very famous article,
Freedom and the Concept of a Person, published in 1971 Frankfurt gives an
example which philosophers are still discussing today. Here's a version of that
example. So we mentioned that an evil neuroscientist has found some way to
control Neera's decision making. And imagine that Neera is about to vote in an
election. If she votes for candidate A, the neuroscientist will intervene and ensure
that she chooses to vote for B. But if she chooses to vote for B on her own, the
neuroscientist won't intervene. So let's imagine that Neera does decide to vote for
B, she makes the decision on her own, that's what she does, the neuroscientist
doesn't intervene.

What do we think about Neera's responsibility? Most of us would say, she's responsible.
That was her own decision. And that's where Frankfurt says, aha you see. It doesn't matter
that she didn't have any ultimate possibilities. It didn't matter that that's the only thing that
she could do. The only thing that matters in this situation is that Neera, in fact, made her
own decision. So again, the general point here is that making your own mind up because of
your own reasons is what makes you responsible. It's not the fact that you

could have done something else. And so, Frankfurt's point is

determinism doesn't matter. Maybe it's true that we can't do

anything other than what we do, but if we decide to do that. On our own,

that's enough to make us responsible. So determinism doesnt matter

Here's another version of that argument,

this one from Peter Strawson. Strawson points out that as we

go about the world engaging in ordinary interpersonal relationships, we react to people on

the basis of what

we perceive to be their motivations. We react to them on the basis of what we think is their
quality of will as Strawson puts it. What we think they're up to. Are they trying to hurt us?
Are they trying to help us? And it's on the basis of those thoughts

that we praise or blame them, or resent them, or whatever it is. Strawson's point is that it
doesn't really

matter where their quality of will, where their motivations comes from. In particular, it
doesn't matter if

those motivations are determined. What matters is that we think

people have those motivations and that we continue to react to

them with what Strawson calls the reactive attitudes,

things like resentment and gratitude. These are an essential part of

our interpersonal relationships, says Strawson, and these abstract

questions about determinism. Just don't matter. What matters is that somebody really is
trying to hurt us, for example. Strawson makes this clear by talking about excuses. He
points out that to have an excuse is to not have done the thing we think you did, so to not
have been trying to hurt, if we say, I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was blown by the wind,

then we let the person off the hook. We say, in that case, I don't blame you. So Strawson
points out

that that kind of excuse doesn't generalize to

the case of determinism. We can't say I wasn't trying to hurt you,

I was determined. You were still trying to hurt me. It's just that you may have

been determined to do so. But, the bit that matters Strawson

says is the trying to hurt bit. So that's how Strawson

developed Hume's insight. The thing that really matters is

the actual quality of our motivations, not where they come from.

The objection that we might give to a compatibilism of this sort is the same objection that
applies to Hume. Which is just isn't changing the subject. We started to looking for free will
and now you're giving us something a little bit different. You're saying well, we can still react
to each other in these ways and that's fine. But we might just say, look that's not what we
wanted. These reactions aren't justified if determinism is true. So we seem to have a
problem here. Strawson, Frankfurt, Hume are telling us just focus on motivations. Just
focus on the way person is,

but that's not where we started. What we started with was wanting

to know if people are free.

Let me summarize what I've said so

far about compatibilism. Compatibilists say that there are features

of our acts, the way that we behave, the way that we are, that matter. And they matter to
moral responsibility. And they matter even if we don't

have metaphysical free will. The worry about that is that

it doesn't go deep enough. It's offering us a pale shadow

of what we were looking for when we started looking for free will.

HARD DETERMINISM

Here then is the very last category

of argument that Philosophers give. Some philosophers are hard determinists. They argue
determinism is true, so

we don't have metaphysical free will and we don't have moral responsibility. So for
example, here's an argument
given by Peter Strawson's own son, Galen Strawson who is also a philosopher. Galen
Strawson argues, that we would only be responsible for our acts if we had chosen them
freely./// Our acts come from our character. So we'd only be responsible from our

act if we chosen our character freely. But of course we haven't

chosen our character freely. As I pointed out in the beginning of this

lecture our character comes from our genes, our environment,

our upbringing and so on. Our character is not chosen by us. So Galen Strawson says,
we're not free. In one sense,

the hard determinist is clearly right. And as I said about compatibilism,

compatibilism is changing the subject and the hard determinist

is pointing that out. The hard determinist is saying, look,

I was looking for metaphysical free will. That's the only thing

that I'm going to accept. And the compatibilist is saying,

sorry, you can't have that. So you have to have this lesser

thing instead and put up with that. Compatibilists argue we should put up

with that, that's all there is, and it's totally fine. But the hard determinist insists, no, it's

not fine I need more, I need freewill. So now we're down to a kind of bedrock. The question
is,

what should we be asking for here? And that's a very hard question to answer. Peter
Strawson argues, we should just think about our practical

aims, our practical existence. Galen Strawson insists, no, we should stick to the difficult

question about metaphysical free will.

Here is another observation

about this debate. Hard determinists don't usually make clear how practical they

intend the theory to be. What am I supposed to think

about hard determinism? Am I supposed to actually give up

on praising and blaming people? On holding people morally responsible? On engaging in

interpersonal

relationships in the ordinary way? Well, very few hard determinists say that. That doesn't
seem to be

what they're preaching, and certainly not what they're practicing.

So then, that begs the question, what is the point of this? Why are they insisting

on hard determinism? And it begins to look a little bit like,

what they're really saying is just, we don't have metaphysical free will. But of course, that's
just where we

started, that's what determinism says. And if you accept the naturalistic world

view, then you're very likely to agree, yeah, determinism's true,

so we don't have free will. And the hard determinist hasn't really advanced the debate by

insisting on that point.

SUMMARY

I might give you a quick summary of

everything that I've said in this lecture. So it started with the problem

of determinism and free will. It seems though causes are deterministic, that is to say that
everything that's

in the effect was in the cause. And so there's no room for free will. There's no room for

changing the course of things. Whatever is going to

happen is going to happen. If that's the case, it's hard to

make sense of moral responsibility. It's hard to make sense of

the justification for praising and blaming people. I went on to look at the responses

that philosophers give. The first one is libertarianism. Libertarians say no, we really are
free. We do have free will. The problems for

libertarianism very briefly are, it's hard to reconcile with

a naturalistic worldview. It seems like you're going to

end up committed to some kind of mind-body dualism. Second, it's hard to make

sense of acting for reasons. So if we get rid of the idea of causes

of our behavior, then it looks as though we've inadvertently thrown out the idea

of reasons for our behavior and we're left with random behavior. Which is not what we were
looking for. The second answer that philosophers

give is compatibilism. Compatibilists say,

yes determinism is true and we don't have metaphysical free will,

but it doesn't matter. Determinism is compatible with

us having moral responsibility. And we're morally responsible,

when the act is our act. When what we do comes from our motives,

our desires, our character. And we don't have to take that step

further back in the causal chain, we can just stop there and go,

that's why we praise and blame you. The problem with compatibilism

is that it seems too shallow. It's in some way,

avoided the deep question. It ponders off with something other

than what we started looking for. And that's what motivates the third

position, hard determinism. So hard determinists say

moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism. We would need free will. And
without free will, there's nothing. The issue for hard determinists is,
what's the upshot really supposed to be? Is that really a practical claim? Are they really
suggesting nihilism? That seems unlikely to me. So in that sense I wonder, does hard

determinism really advance the debate at all or just repeating the problem

of determinism and free will. Thanks for listening.

Causes are deterministic, so theres no room for free will

If thats the case, its hard to make sense of moral responsibility

RESPONSES:

Libertarianism:

We are really free

Problem 1: Hard to reconcile with a naturalistic worldview

Problem 2: Hard to make sense of acting for reasons.

Compatibilism:

Determinism is true, and we dont have metaphysical free will.

But it doesnt matter; were still morally responsible for our acrs.

Problem: Avoids the big question,

Hard determinism:

Moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism

Problem: Are they really suggesting nihilism

(It is really practical?)