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Ted Honderich

Ted Honderich. The Man. Born 30 January, 1933 Canadian-born British philosopher Currently chairman of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

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Ted Honderich

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  1. Ted Honderich

  2. The Man • Born 30 January, 1933 • Canadian-born British philosopher • Currently chairman of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. • Main work on five things: determinism’s truth, nature of consciousness and relation to brain, right and wrong in contemporary world, justifications of state punishment and political tradition of conservatism. • His thoughts on determinism are summed up in his work, How Free Are You?: The Determinism Problem.

  3. Determinism • He believes that it and not free will is true. • He considers the suggestion of "near-determinism." He says, "Maybe it should have been called determinism-where-it-matters. It allows that there is or may be some indeterminism but only at what is called the micro-level of our existence, the level of the small particles of our bodies." • Honderich does not claim to have found a solution to the problem of free will or determinism, but he does claim to have confronted the problem of the consequences of determinism. • He is "dismayed" because the truth of determinism requires that we give up "origination" with its promise of an open future, restricting - though not eliminating - our "life hopes.“ • One hope is that we can originate actions affecting our future life. The truth of determinism, which denies the freedom to originate actions, might give rise to a "sad" attitude of "dismay."

  4. Quantum Physics • He makes the point that quantum physics is only concerned with non-spatio-temporal things such as numbers. • Determinism would not therefore imply that quantum physics is determined as these cannot have causes or effects. • Determinism is therefore untouched by such a theory. • Brap.

  5. In/compatibalism? • He does not however agree with either compatibalism or incompatibalism for 3 reasons: • First, he says that moral responsibility is not all that is at stake, there are personal feelings, reactive attitudes, problems of knowledge, and rationalizing punishment with ideas of limited responsibility. • Second, these problems can not be resolved by logical "proofs" nor by linguistic analyses of propositions designed to show "free" and "determined" are logically compatible. • And third, he faults their simplistic idea that one or the other of them must be right.

  6. How Free Are You? • “We have a kind of life-hope which is incompatible with a belief in determinism. An open future, a future we can make for ourselves, is one of which determinism isn't true…This is the image of origination. There can be no such hope if all the future is just effects of effects. It is for this reason, I think, that many people have found determinism to be a black thing. John Stuart Mill felt it as an incubus, and, to speak for myself, it has certainly got me down in the past.” (p.94)

  7. Big Quote • “All our choices, decisions, intuitions, other mental events, and our actions are no more than effects of other equally necessitated events” (Honderich 1995) • Implications: • We have no freedom because even our decisions are pre-determined. • He makes the point that free will is problematic because even our will is determined, therefore restricting our freedom.

  8. Moral Responsibility • Honderich implies that moral responsibility can be reconciled with determinism. • He doesn’t think that ‘voluntariness’ is incompatible with determinism but that ‘origination’ is. • “Since we do not share a single settled conception of a free decision, it is pointless to assert, with Compatibilists, that freedom is consistent with determinism. It is exactly as pointless to assert, with Incompatibilists, that freedom is inconsistent with determinism. The problem of determinism and freedom is in a sense not an intellectual or conceptual problem. We have different attitudes, and what we must do, if we accept determinism, is to seek and keep and value those in which we can rationally persist.”

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