Deck 6: Freedom

Question 1

Sir Arthur Eddington advanced the claim that every event in the universe was predictable.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Kierkegaard argued that one is responsible for whatever one was and that self-conscious choice and commitment were the factors that made a person most human.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Most contemporary philosophers believe in soft determinism, the view that human freedom and determinism are compatible positions.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Many scientists now agree that the concept of "cause" does not apply to certain subatomic particles, making the hard determinist view false.

Question 5

Hume defended a soft determinist position.

Question 6

Mill began by rejecting determinism and the idea that all human actions were "necessary and inevitable" given their causes.

Question 7

Some feminists understand sexual objectification as the primary process of the subjection of women.

Question 8

Kant denied determinism.

Question 9

Fatalism is the view that whatever a person's actions and circumstances, his or her predetermined end is inevitable.

Question 10

Oedipus the King is a literary exercise in exploring the freedom of the will and the notion that a predetermined end is impossible.

Question 11

The Western concept of "nihilism" is similar to the Eastern concept of "nothingness."

Question 12

Kierkegaard called karma the sickness unto death.

Question 13

Predestination depends on particular antecedent conditions.

Question 14

Hard determinism depends on particular antecedent conditions.

Question 15

A sufficient cause is incapable of bringing the event about by itself.

Question 16

Prayer in Islam is the ego's escape from mechanism to freedom.

Question 17

Daniel Dennett, argues that determinism is dismissed, in part, because of popular images that associate it with particular "bogeyman" images that he thinks are absurd.

Question 18

The model of determinism can be put this way: To say that every event has its cause is to say that if certain antecedent conditions are satisfied, then we can predict that such and such will occur.

Question 19

The model of indeterminacy can be put this way: Not every event has its sufficient natural cause.

Question 20

Indeterminacy guarantees free will.

Question 21

Soft determinism is also known as __________.

A) indeterminism
B) compatibilism
C) fatalism
D) free will

Question 22

The view of many theologians that our every action is known by God is called __________.

A) theism
B) omniscience
C) the free choice of the will
D) predestination

Question 23

Determinism is the thesis that every event has its __________ natural causes.

A) irrelevant
B) sufficient
C) determined
D) free

Question 24

Sartre was a defender of __________.

A) freedom
B) feminism
C) determinism
D) totalitarianism

Question 25

Aristotle's view of __________ means factors unknown to the agent influences his or her choices.

A) society
B) determinism
C) ignorance
D) karma

Question 26

Which of the following is assumed when we hold people accountable for their actions?

A) Free will
B) Karma
C) Universal law
D) Nihilism

Question 27

Is it possible to have free will but not freedom?

A) No, there's always a way to do what you will. So, as long as you have a free will, you have freedom.
B) No, it's not possible to have either. Both are illusions.
C) Yes, you could be constrained and unable to exercise your free will.
D) Yes, you are always free in your mind, even though there is no freedom in the physical, deterministic universe.

Question 28

In the ancient Greek tragedy, Oedipus the King, Oedipus and Iocasta behave in a way that exemplified the concept of __________.

A) karma
B) fate
C) determinism
D) compatibilism

Question 29

Why did God give free will to people if He knew that people would use it to sin, according to St. Augustine?

A) Because God hoped they wouldn't.
B) Because God is not all-knowing and did not anticipate that outcome.
C) Because God is not all-powerful and couldn't prevent people from sinning.
D) Because justice, punishment, and reward, is one of the goods that is from God.

Question 30

According to the Yoruba philosophy, what determines a person's fate?

A) One's self (free will of the soul)
B) God
C) Ori
D) Karma

Question 31

Which of the following names did Dennett give to the notion that we are automata without free will and at the mercy of brute causation?

A) Zomboid
B) Mechanoid
C) Mechanish
D) Sphexish

Question 32

According to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, if you know the location of a subatomic particle, then you __________.

A) also know the momentum of it
B) can't know the momentum of it
C) also know the size of it
D) can't know the size of it

Question 33

Quantum theory asserts the indeterminacy of __________ particles.

A) macroscopic
B) electromagnetic
C) subatomic
D) gravitational

Question 34

When a drug addict wants to have his or her drug of choice but at the same time wants to quit, he or she has a conflict of first-order desires. If the addict desires to have only the desire to quit, this desire is called __________, according to Frankfurt.

A) second-order
B) abstinence
C) third-order
D) self-forming choice

Question 35

B. F. Skinner's method of controlling animal and human behavior and changing it for the better through conditioning is based on a belief in __________.

A) coercion
B) divine intervention
C) Indeterminism
D) determinism

Question 36

Indeterminism claims that not every event has its sufficient natural cause; however, indeterminism still does not leave room for ____________________ because random, uncaused events are not caused by agents either.

A) faith
B) soft determinism
C) free will
D) determinism

Question 37

Kant claimed that the basic rule of determinism, _______________, was one of the rules by which we must interpret every experience.

A) the principle of universal causation
B) the principle of universal freedom
C) the principle of universal soft determinism
D) the principle of universal indeterminism

Question 38

__________ determinists believe that we are "matter in motion," physical bodies that are subject to all of the laws of nature.

A) Soft
B) Hard
C) Moderate
D) Most

Question 39

The key to the _____________ position is that an action or a decision, although fully determined, is free if it "flows from the agent's character."

A) soft determinism
B) Indeterminism
C) Consequentialism
D) Incompatibilism

Question 40

The _____________ claimed that only God is free and that all human actions are determined by God.

A) Christians
B) Buddhists
C) Ash'arites
D) Mu'tazilites

Question 41

_____________ summarized the problem of freedom and one Christian solution to it: God made human beings free because He is all good, and free actions are better than unfree ones.

A) Frankfurt
B) Kant
C) Sartre
D) Augustine

Question 42

The ancient Greek tragedies depend on _____________, the view that whatever a person's actions and circumstances, however free that person may seem, his or her predetermined end is inevitable.

A) predestination
B) free will
C) fatalism
D) chaos

Question 43

_____________ is the view that our every action (and every event in the universe) is known, if not also caused in advance, by God.

A) Predestination
B) Free will
C) Fatalism
D) Chaos

Question 44

_____________ was a hard determinist.

A) LaPlace
B) Sartre
C) Kant
D) Mill

Question 45

_____________ offered various fictions to facilitate thinking about problems with traditional accounts of determinism that presented "truly frightening bugbears" as means of presenting the question of free will.

A) Sartre
B) Mill
C) Eddington
D) Dennett

Question 46

Many philosophers have argued for _____________, the view that human freedom and determinism are compatible positions.

A) determinism
B) hard determinism
C) soft determinism
D) incompatibilism

Question 47

_____________ defended the hard determinist viewpoint so uncompromisingly that he shocked even his colleagues as well as many traditionalists.

A) Hume
B) Kant
C) Sartre
D) d'Holbach

Question 48

In novels such as George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, a _____________ view of human nature is attacked as potentially creating the philosophical basis of societies more oppressive and authoritarian than any we have even seen.

A) free will
B) soft determinist
C) determinist
D) compatibilist

Question 49

_____________, who uses Freud and psychoanalysis as the basis for his claim that all our acts are compelled and not free, insofar as all our acts are brought about by a set of psychological determinants over which we have no control.

A) Frankfurt
B) Hospers
C) LaPlace
D) Kant

Question 50

_____________ presented a similar but more joyous sentiment on the importance of freedom than Dostoyevsky.

A) Thich Nhat Hanh
B) LaPlace
C) Frankfurt
D) Sartre

Question 51

Compare and contrast hard determinism, soft determinism, and indeterminism. Explain why indeterminism is just as problematic as hard determinism. From which two traditions of physics do these views arise?

Question 52

Compare and contrast fatalism and karma. Which view makes the most sense?

Question 53

Explain the concept of predestination. Which is the Islamic conception of predestination? Contrast this view to the Western religious view.

Question 54

Write your account of a debate between Sartre and Frankfurt on the existence of freedom.

Question 55

Argue for the position that freedom means simply "not constrained." Can this position be reconciled with the idea that freedom means "could have done otherwise"? Why or why not?

Question 56

Would you rather be a gear in a big deterministic machine or some random swerving probabilistic atomic particle in an indeterministic system? If every action (including yours) in the universe is determined, then you don't have freedom. If every action (including yours) in the universe is random, then you don't have freedom. If every action (including yours) is a percentage of each, then you don't have freedom. Is there another alternative that can save your freedom?

Question 57

Does it make sense to praise or blame someone for something that person had no control over? If she couldn't do otherwise, would there be any justification for accolades or punishment? Discuss the correlation between moral responsibility and free will.

Question 58

How are fatalism, hard determinism, and predestination different? Common street lingo may use these terms synonymously; however, there are important distinctions for the philosopher. What are they?

Question 59

Discuss Dennett's insight that whenever philosophers or laypeople worry about whether we have free will, they mount illicit arguments (straw man fallacies) that some rival agent is involved. They then show how ludicrous it would be to assume that a rival agent is vying for control of our bodies and minds, thereby taking away our free will (or preventing us from having it in the first place). However, without these "bogymen," as Dennett put it, to anchor the philosophical discussions, the idea of a natural lack of free will would not be so strange. Why did Dennett think agency confound the discussion?

Question 60

Consider Robert Kane's notion of "self-forming choices." The idea is that we create our characters and dispositions by the ongoing choices we make, that is, we create our selves. Discuss how this might come about in the physical sense, according to Kane. He suggested that there is a "stirring up of chaos in the brain that makes it sensitive to micro-indeterminacies at the neuronal level." How would moments of self-formation actually alter neuronal processes? How might you go about designing an experiment to test this hypothesis?

Question 61

The tragic figure __________ famously made many efforts toward avoiding his prophesied fate.

Question 62

In Buddhism, all human __________ are gestures of attachment to the physical world, each one binding its maker more and more to a difficult fate.

Question 63

__________, or freedom, is not a freedom of the self or the individual. In fact,
it is a freedom from the self and the individual, achieved only when there is no longer a self at all.

Question 64

__________ is the view that our every action (and every event in the universe) is known, if not also caused in advance, by God.

Question 65

The contemporary American philosopher __________ argued that freedom meant that we are free to choose what we shall do and that our decisions are effective.

Question 66

The philosopher __________ had such confidence in the Newtonian system that he claimed that if he knew the location and motion of every object in the universe, he could predict the location and motion of every object in the universe at any time in the future.

Question 67

African Yoruba philosophy is founded on a variant of __________.

Question 68

According to __________, an act is compulsory "when its origin is without" such that the person who acts "contributes nothing to it."

Question 69

The basis of __________ or __________ is that we somehow carve a space within determinism for those actions that we insist on calling "free" and for which we hold ourselves and other people responsible.

Question 70

The __________ claimed that human freedom is consistent with God's power by distinguishing between two types of action, or causality.