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Articles

Another Determined Effort

Roger Squires continues the debate on free will and determinism.

I misunderstood Antony Flew’s appeal to experience (Philosophy Now 1,2 and 3), but am unrepentant in challenging his Incompatibilism. He thinks it follows from the fact that we distinguish between movings and mere motions that “universal, necessitating” determinism is false. Where we act, we could have done otherwise; where physical necessity reigns, we could not. I agree with Hume that the problem lies in that notion of necessity.

The Determinist thinks that behaviour is necessitated in roughly the following sense.

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