Hume on Freedom of the Will

Hume recognized that any account of free will has to be made compatible with our knowledge of the causal operations of the world around us. Given that his Treatise is an attempt to detail a "science of man" we should expect that Hume's explanation of human freedom to fit within his naturalistic and empiricist philosophy of nature. This is, in fact, exactly what we get. Hume puts his theory of the will within his general casual account and in doing so offers an interesting solution (or rather, dissolution) to the problem of the compatibility of free will and determinism.

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Choose

The arguments for determinism are fairly straightforward, and unlike a lot of philosophical speculation can be formulated in relatively easy to understand terms. Sam Harris has a series of posts in which he outlines, in pretty accessible terms, the basic structure of the argument for determinism. In what follows here I'll discuss some of the interesting features that Harris brings out of the arguments for determinism, and take a careful look at some of his claims about the relation of the free will problem to moral philosophy.