Twenty‐First‐Century Counseling Theory Development in Relation to Definitions of Free Will and Determinism

This article is a continuation of Wilks's ( 2003 ) review of the development of counseling theory in relation to definitions of free will and determinism. The original review showed that theoretical synthesis was in part achieved when causal events inherent in absolute determinism were incorporated into a soft self‐determinist process. This review traces three 21st‐century challenges to self‐determinism and provides evidence supporting the inclusion of both self‐determinism and indeterminate free will in a single but asymmetrical causal model.     

Voluntary Action and Rational Sin in Anselm of Canterbury

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) holds that freedom of the will is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. This condition, however, turns out to be trivially fulfilled by all rational creatures at all times. In order to clarify the necessary conditions for moral responsibility, we must look more widely at his discussion of the nature of the will and of willed action. In this paper, I examine his theory of voluntariness by clarifying his account of the sin of Satan in De casu diaboli. Anselm agrees with Augustine that the sinful act cannot be given a causal explanation in terms of a distinct preceding act of will or desire or choice. He thus rejects volitionalist accounts of Satan's sin and thus of voluntary action in general. He moves beyond his predecessor, however, in insisting on the necessity of an explanation in terms of reasons, and his theory of the dual nature of the rational will is designed to meet this demand. A comparison of Satan's case with the case of the miser of De casu diaboli 3, finally, shows that Anselm's account requires that acts of the will or ‘willings’ qualify as voluntary, a suggestion as interesting as problematic.     

Articles of Faith: Freedom of Expression and Religious Freedom in Contemporary Multiculture

ABSTRACT

This article examines the relationship between freedom of religion and freedom of speech and expression within contemporary multicultural liberal democracies. These two fundamental human rights have increasingly been seen, in public and political discourse, in terms of tension if not outright opposition, a view reinforced by the Charlie Hebdo killings in January 2015. And yet in every human rights charter they are proximate to one another. This essay argues that this adjacency is not coincidental, that it has a history and that, in illuminating this history, it is possible to explore how the contemporary framing of these two rights as being in opposition has come about. Looking back to the framing of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the essay offers an historical perspective that, in turn, facilitates a reappraisal and re-evaluation of these two liberties that is the necessary, albeit insufficient, predicate to the task of addressing the problematic of multicultural ‘crisis' in the contemporary liberal democracies of Western Europe, North America and Australasia, in which the presence of certain religious communities (Muslims, in particular) and the role of religion in public and political life more generally (and, conversely, of secularism) has assumed a central importance.     

Why compatibilist intuitions are not mistaken: A reply to Feltz and Millan

In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions. In a recent paper, Feltz and Millan (2015 Feltz, A., &; Millan, M. (2015). An error theory for compatibilist intuitions. Philosophical Psychology, 28(4), 529–555.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) have challenged this conclusion by claiming that most laypeople are only compatibilists in appearance and are in fact willing to attribute free will to people no matter what. As evidence for this claim, they have shown that an important proportion of laypeople still attribute free will to agents in fatalistic universes. In this paper, we first argue that Feltz and Millan’s error-theory rests on a conceptual confusion: it is perfectly acceptable for a certain brand of compatibilist to judge free will and fatalism to be compatible, as long as fatalism does not prevent agents from being the source of their actions. We then present the results of two studies showing that laypeople’s intuitions are best understood as following a certain brand of source compatibilism rather than a “free-will-no-matter-what” strategy.     

Belief in free will as an adaptive,ungrounded belief

False beliefs and delusions are usually regarded negatively, especially in psychology and evolutionary biology. Recently, McKay and Dennett (2009b) have argued that there are ungrounded beliefs which confer benefits on individuals even if they are false. I propose to expand this class of beliefs to include the belief that one has free will, and I will defend the claim that this belief is advantageous, even if it is false. One derives one’s belief in control from one’s experience of control, which is generated by a set of cognitive systems termed “control systems.” While the control systems and the interpretive mechanism are useful in and of themselves, the belief in personal free will is adaptive because it directly leads to fitness-increasing behaviors. As such, we have good reason to regard the belief that one has free will as an adaptive, ungrounded belief. This paper will also suggest that further research on the possible distinction between belief in personal free will and belief in general free will may put us in a better position to understand recent, apparently contradictory data on individuals’ beliefs regarding free will and other related phenomena.     

On the role of indeterminism in libertarian free will

In a recent paper in this journal, “How should libertarians conceive of the location and role of indeterminism?” Christopher Evan Franklin critically examines my libertarian view of free will and attempts to improve upon it. He says that while Kane's influential [view] offers many important advances in the development of a defensible libertarian theory of free will and moral responsibility?…?[he made] “two crucial mistakes in formulating libertarianism” – one about the location of indeterminism, the other about its role – “both of which have helped fan the flame of the luck argument”. In this paper, I respond to Franklin's criticisms, arguing that, so far from making it significantly more difficult to answer objections about luck and control, as he claims, giving indeterminism the location and role I do makes it possible to answer such objections and many other related objections to libertarian free will. A central theme of this paper will emerge in my responses: In order to make sense of freedom of will in general and to do justice to the complex historical debates about it, one must distinguish different kinds of control agents may have over events and correspondingly different kinds of freedom they may possess.     

O’Connor’s argument for indeterminism

Timothy O’Connor has recently defended a version of libertarianism that has significant advantages over similar accounts. One of these is an argument that secures indeterminism on the basis of an argument that shows how causal determinism threatens agency in virtue of the nature of the causal relation involved in free acts. In this paper, I argue that while it does turn out that free acts are not causally determined on O’Connor’s view, this fact is merely stipulative and the argument that he presents for this conclusion begs the question.     

A Meta-Analysis of the Reliability of Free and For-Pay Big Five Scales

The present study meta-analytically compared coefficient alpha reliabilities reported for free and for-pay Big Five scales. We collected 288 studies from five previous meta-analyses of Big Five traits and harvested 1,317 alphas from these studies. We found that free and for-pay scales measuring Big Five traits possessed comparable reliabilities. However, after we controlled for the numbers of items in the scales with the Spearman-Brown formula, we found that free scales possessed significantly higher alpha coefficients than for-pay scales for each of the Big Five traits. Thus, the study offers initial evidence that Big Five scales that are free more efficiently measure these traits for research purposes than do for-pay scales.     

自由基在神经外科手术时脑保护中的意义

神经外科手术中脑内自由基(主要是氧自由基)产生增加,脂质过氧化反应增强,造成细胞结构和功能上的继发性损伤。自由基在继发性损伤中的具体机制尚未完全清楚,可能与缺血级联反应、缺血再灌注和细胞凋亡有关。术中采取措施清除自由基以及减少自由基的产生将有助于保护损伤的脑组织。     

自由基与蛛网膜下腔出血后脑血管痉挛的关系及防治策略

脑血管痉挛是蛛网膜下腔出血后的严重并发症之一,可引起脑组织严重缺血或迟发性缺血性脑损伤,甚至导致脑梗死,但其病理机制仍未完全清楚,而越来越多的研究表明自由基在脑血管痉挛病理变化过程中发挥着重要作用。通过对自由基与脑血管痉挛之间关系的科学分析,探讨蛛网膜下腔出血后与自由基相关的脑血管痉挛的防治策略。