Libertarianism in disguise
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Helen Steward
Abstract
This paper argues that the position on free will which is defended in ‘Freedom: An Impossible Reality’ is not, as Tallis claims, a compatibilist view, but actually a version of libertarianism. While endorsing many aspects of that libertarian view itself, the paper raises questions about how one of the central arguments for Tallis’s view is supposed to work, and queries whether it really follows from the fact that we need to stand apart from nature in a certain sense, in order to develop the kind of abstract knowledge that is constituted by the body of scientific law, that our own actions are not mere manifestations of what Tallis calls the ‘habits of nature’. It is also suggested that while a strong case can be made for many varieties of human exceptionalism, Tallis’s view of animal behaviour may be too simple and that there are examples of animal agency which cannot be explained merely by the associative learning which appears to be the highest grade of animal cognition that Tallis countenances.
References
Lewis, D. (1986). Philosophical papers, Vol II. Oxford University Press. Steward, H. (2012). A metaphysics for freedom. Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Steward, H. (2021). What is determinism?: Why we should ditch the entailment definition. In M. Hausmann & H. Noller (Eds.). Free will: Historical and analytical perspectives (pp. 17–43). London: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-3-030-61136-1_2Search in Google Scholar
Steward, H. (2022). Laws Loosened. In C.J. Austin, A. Marmodoro, & A. Rosselli (Eds.), Powers, time and free will (pp. 161–83). Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature:.10.1007/978-3-030-92486-7_9Search in Google Scholar
© 2022 Institute for Research in Social Communication, Slovak Academy of Sciences
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction a book symposium on Raymond Tallis’s Freedom: An impossible reality
- Disarming causation in the service of agency: Tallis on Hume
- Causation without the causal theory of action
- Free will: Dr Johnson was right
- Jail break: Tallis and the prison of nature
- Free will: An impossible reality or an incoherent concept?
- Libertarianism in disguise
- Freedom: An enactive possibility
- On the importance of a human-scale breadth of view: Reading Tallis’ freedom
- The seemingly ordinary complexity of daily life
- The ontology of freedom
- Freedom. An impossible reality
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction a book symposium on Raymond Tallis’s Freedom: An impossible reality
- Disarming causation in the service of agency: Tallis on Hume
- Causation without the causal theory of action
- Free will: Dr Johnson was right
- Jail break: Tallis and the prison of nature
- Free will: An impossible reality or an incoherent concept?
- Libertarianism in disguise
- Freedom: An enactive possibility
- On the importance of a human-scale breadth of view: Reading Tallis’ freedom
- The seemingly ordinary complexity of daily life
- The ontology of freedom
- Freedom. An impossible reality
