Free will and moral responsibility

Question 1

Aristotle

Answer 1

‘Actions only qualify for praise or blame if they are under-taken voluntarily under your own free will.’

Question 2

Spinoza

Answer 2

Belief in free will not the same as having free will.

Ignorant to causes acting upon us.

Question 3

John Hospers - deserved it

Answer 3

‘he deserves it’, we say righteously as if we were moral and he immoral, when in fact, we are lucky and he is unlucky.’

Question 4

d’Holbach - fly

Answer 4

‘Man who thinks himself free, is a fly who imagines he has the power to move the universe, while is himself unknowingly carried along by it.’

Question 5

B.F. Skinner

Answer 5

‘We believe in free will because we know about our behaviour but we don’t know about its causes.’

Question 6

Clarence Darrow

Answer 6

‘They killed him because they were made that way.’

Question 7

Carl Jung

Answer 7

‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’

Question 8

Jean Paul Sartre

Answer 8

‘To be free is to be condemned to be free.’

Question 9

Hume - freedom is…

Answer 9

‘power of acting or not acting, according to the determination of the will… this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains.’

Question 10

Hume - People’s actions are judged if…

Answer 10

‘they are indications of the internal character, passions and affections.’