Advanced Article:Hume’s compatibilism
March 9, 2013
In this brilliantly clear and well-argued article Paul Russell of the University of British Columbia considers the nature of Hume's compatibilism. Hume argued that freedom requires necessity (determinism) in order to escape from randomness, to apply moral responsiility to actions, and to make sense of the ordered world we see around us (including the ability to predict how our friends will behave in different circumstances). In this article, Hume's arguments in the Treatise and the Enquiry are compared, and the origins of the debate in Hobbes, Clarke, Hutcheson and others are carefully explored. Ultimately it does depend a. how you define freedom, and b. how you understand causal necessity – just how much it depends, you can find out by clicking below.
http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/prussell/Journals/ainsliepaper.pdf
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