Abstract
First published in 1973 and reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events, Donald Davidson’s “Freedom to Act” (Davidson 1973) includes an important defense and discussion of the now common view that freedom to act is a causal power. The article begins, however, with a quick dismissal of incompatibilism, the thesis that freedom and determinism are incompatible.1 Speaking of “those who believe they can see, or even prove, that freedom is inconsistent with the assumption that actions are causally determined” Davidson says that:
I will not be directly concerned with such arguments, since I know of none that is more than superficially plausible. Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Moore. Schlick, Ayer, Stevenson, and a host of others have done what can be done, or ought ever to have been needed, to remove the confusions that can make determinism seem to frustrate freedom. (Davidson 1973, p. 63).
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References
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Warfield, T.A. (1999). Donald Davidson’s Freedom. In: de Caro, M. (eds) Interpretations and Causes. Synthese Library, vol 285. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9227-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9227-7_5
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