جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « اراده آزاد » در نشریات گروه « فلسفه و کلام »

Paul Helm believes that there are good reasons that divine omniscience - which includes the future - with human freedom understood in an incompatibilist sense is logically inconsistent. But this tension should not lead us to a reduced theory of divine foreknowledge, just as it should not negate human freedom and responsibility. Helm has argued that a Christian theist may accept a compatibilist sense of human freedom; first, the Christian doctrine of "God's grace" is compatible only with the compatibilist version of human freedom. Second because God is omniscient, it must be omniscient in a strong sense, and this is the case only if compatibilism is true. We will say that Helm's first argument will lead to the denial of some other accepted doctrines of religions, including Christianity, and his second argument falls into affirming the consequences. But Helm's third reason is that necessarily, if God knows x in advance (which He does), then x will necessarily occur. To avoid problems, he emphasizes that what he means by "necessity" is a historical and not logical necessity. But this argument only works when we accept that God is in time. Therefore, those who consider divine knowledge timeless can claim that all events exist in the divine mind in a necessary way and His knowledge is not necessary because it is in the past. It seems that Helm himself also accepts this problem.

The primary focus of this research centers on the analysis and critique of Moritz Shclick's perspective concerning the "relationship between free will and determinism." Its objective is to demonstrate the inadequacy of his proposed solution in a descriptive-analytical manner. According to Shclick, the purported dilemma surrounding free will and determinism is a pseudo-philosophical quandary stemming from a conflation of key concepts. He contends that disentangling these concepts through differentiation of terms in common sense, such as "normative law" from "descriptive law," "causality" (representing determinism) from "compulsion," and "non-causality" (indeterminism) from "freedom," will naturally dissipate this pseudo-problem. Shclick posits that "compulsion" falls within the realm of normative concepts, while determinism and the principle of causal necessity reside in the domain of descriptive concepts, thereby rendering any connection between "compulsion" and "determinism" non-existent. In this study, I illustrate through three innovative examples that: a) "compulsion" and "freedom" possess at least two distinct meanings in common sense, and Shclick's claim succumbs to the fallacy of reductionism. b) The crux of the issue surrounding free will revolves around the secondary meaning of these terms. c) Shclick's definition of freedom encompasses not only humans but also extends to animals, thereby not impeding others. These three critiques collectively demonstrate the untenability of Shclick's compatibilist perspective.

The problem of free will, which had been discussed by the ancient Greek philosophers, has been discussed in Islamic philosophy at length. For Muslim philosophers, the will is one of the faculties of soul, which causes the action by motivating the desire and making the bodily organs move. In recent decades, due to the great progress made in the field of neuroscience, some materialists have tried to use the findings of neuroscience for explaining their deterministic and materialistic viewpoint and interpreting the process of issuance of the action from a human being according to the neural changes in the body. Sam Harris is one of those who have taken such an approach, and by emphasizing on Libet’s findings and new experiments on the cerebral cortex as well as emphasizing on the factor of environment, considers the human behavior as arising from the environment and genetics, and denies the voluntary and free action. On the other hand, he considers the body as the origin of action and rejects the idea of ​​“Mind” and “Soul”. In this paper, I have tried to criticize Harris’s viewpoint according to the foundations of Mûllā Ṣâdrā’s Transcendent Philosophy.FindingsSam Harris has tried to deny the human free will by focusing on the environment and genetics and considering it only an illusion. But, based on the philosophical foundations of Mûllā Ṣâdrā’s Transcendent Philosophy, Sam Harris’s viewpoint faces some major criticisms which makes it irrational and unacceptable. Emphasizing on the role of genetics, considering all behaviors as predictable by neurons, appealing to chance and randomness in justifying some behaviors, emphasizing on human unawareness of the origin of human actions, considering the behaviors as arising from the activities of body, ignoring the substance of the Mind (the Soul), and confusing determinism with compulsion are some of the cases which reject Harris’s materialistic viewpoint. The will is the crystallization of the soul, which distinguishes human beings from other creatures, and its function cannot be related to the neural activities of the body. Discussion and ConclusionSam Harris sees free will as only an illusion. By emphasizing on the findings of Benjamin Libet in his famous experiment and also by emphasizing on the role of the environment, Harris believes that we are not free agents in doing our actions and that it is genetics and the environment that determine how we must behave. Considering the free will as an illusion goes to the extent that Harris sometimes knows free will as mysterious or essentially meaningless. He emphasizes that free will has nothing to do with any kind of reality and that human beings have no awareness of the origin of their actions. Harris considers human actions as completely compulsory and the product of family, social and environmental conditions in which a person grows up. He, then, points out that human beings are unaware of the process of life and that the hidden dimensions of the mind, which are the origins of many behaviors, are hidden from us. This leads him to the denial of human freedom. On the other hand, Mûllā Ṣâdrā considers the will as one of the faculties of soul, and believes that it is not a material thing. According to Mûllā Ṣâdrā, a human being has free will, and the conscious and purposeful actions which issue from him indicate the existence of the faculty of will in his soul. And, in his view, the true will is a graded thing. Sam Harris’s materialistic interpretation of free will faces challenges and criticisms which make it an unreasonable and unjustifiable interpretation. His reliance on environment and genetics is the most important weakness of his materialistic interpretation of human free will, because it cannot negate the human free will.

For a long time, the issue of "free will" has been one of the important topics among thinkers. Today, with the progress of neuroscience, scientists in this field have tried to explain this problem with an experimental approach. Therefore, Benjamin Libet and his colleagues have provided a new analysis of the formation process of voluntary action with laboratory studies on subjects. By examining the changing times of electrical oscillations in the brain, "conscious will" and muscle stimulation, they have discovered that the " readiness potential" begins to slowly change about 400 milliseconds before the time of awareness of the will, and this is the reason for the person's will to act. Therefore, Libet concluded that "unconscious brain process is the source of conscious will and voluntary action".

The current research method was textbook. it was criticized and investigated with the analytical-rational method.

In Sadrai's attitude to Libet's findings, according to the rational analysis of the process of voluntary action, the potential of previous preparation can be considered as the scientific stage of voluntary action, i.e. the stage of imagination and confirmation. We presented another analysis according to the types of agents. The soul, in the active role, naturally does its work without knowledge and will - in the sense of making a decision. But the soul, as a subject, performs its actions on the basis of knowledge and will. Therefore, the process of voluntary action is from the beginning of desire or conscious will to the realization of the action, such as the actions of the "subject with intention". Of course, issuing a will from an immaterial soul is like a "subject in manifestation". And here is the place of confrontation between Sadrai's view and Libet's findings. Because according to Libet's point of view, the conscious will has an unconscious origin. But according to Sadr al-Mutalahin, the will is issued from the soul and self-conscious origin. In addition, we presented a new analysis through the explanation of the truth of "material- immaterial levels of will".

Through laboratory and neurological observations, only the material order of the will and its electrical changes in nervous systems can be observed. But according to the progressive principles of transcendental wisdom, corresponding to this material level, the will has a non-physical level. The same conscious state that Libet did not access through the laboratory experiment, and asked the subjects themselves to report when they were aware of their will. Therefore, Benjamin Libet observed a series of changes before the conscious will after which the conscious will occurred. He then concluded that the unconscious brain process is the source of the conscious will. This conclusion of Libet is a rational argument. However, such scientific findings cannot challenge dualism, or in other words, Sadra's monotheism (the truth of a single material-immaterial human being). According to Sadra's progressive principles, not only this experiment is not considered a challenge for Sadra's psychology, but also some findings of this experiment are compatible with some aspects of rational and philosophical analysis of the gradual process of will.

Advances in technology in the field of artificial intelligence and entering the era of linking biological and digital achievements, depicts the perspective of the utopia of artificial intelligence that seeks to transfer the structure of the biological brain to artificial machines, so that their performance can exceed the performance of modern humans. But the realization of such an ideal, from the point of view of Bruce Reichenbach, is accompanied by theological and philosophical challenges. In this article, by analyzing the content, an attempt has been made to explain and evaluate these alleged challenges from two perspectives of Sadra's wisdom and artificial intelligence specialists in the areas of human identity, spirituality, worship of God, free will, and moral decisions. Although Reichenbach's concerns are significant, they seem to have drawbacks, such as a lack of attention to the survival of primitive patterns and the survival of choice and awareness, the possibility of transmitting religious sentiments in religious experiences, and the possibility of assuming the true God as religious. The possibility of realizing models of free will and the possibility of transition to moral awareness is faced in strong artificial intelligence.

The main issue of this article is how to harmonize determinism and moral responsibility (the classic problem of free will) by reconsidering the philosophy of Avicenna. Certainly, Avicenna believes in determinism and in various works has emphasized the necessity of the effect by its sufficient cause. Avicenna, on the other hand, certainly believes in the moral responsibility of autonomous agents, including human beings. We have shown in the first step that he denies free will in the libertarian sense (the ability to do otherwise) for any agents; Because this notion of free will requires objective possibilities and is not compatible with causal determinism. Avicenna has identified a new type of voluntary agent who does not need to have an over-intentional intention to do something. Here, he looks very similar to proponents of agent causation; His idea, however, was not intended to defend a libertarian notion of free will, but to get rid of the challenge of the infinite regress of wills. Hence, Avicenna can be considered one of the few proponents of the "compatibilist agent causation." In the second step, an overview of Avicenna's theory of action is drawn. Here, in particular, emphasis is placed on the activity of the soul in the stages of the causal process leading to action, and the quality of these activities is introduced as a criterion for the morality degree of the agent..

Great naturalist philosophers like David Armstrong, David Papineau, Jeagwon Kim, and others have argued that the best arguments for naturalism are based on Physical Causal Closure (in brief P.C). P.C that is a premise in these arguments implies that only natural/physical causes are responsible for natural events and supernatural/non-physical causes cannot have any effective role in the natural universe. By adding some reasonable rules such as Ockham's Razor or Eleatic Principle to P.C, they have concluded that there is no non-natural cause such as God.Many theists, in the face of the physical causal closure, may accept it and see the relationship between God and the natural world not as causal but as something entirely different; as existential or necessary relation. But this view seems to have problems. First, it is passive because it simply accepts the basic premise of the naturalistic view, and secondly, it seems unacceptable from a theistic point of view to reduce the relationship between God and the world to existential or necessary relation and to eliminate the possibility of causal influence on natural things.In this paper, I will claim that P.C is not only against supernatural causation but is also against human agency and mental causation. To show this, first, I will present an argument against human mental causation based on P.C, and Then I will consider four different physicalist (which are committed to P.C) approaches that try to save mental causation. These approaches consist of 1) anomalous monism, 2) non-reductive physicalism, 3) over-determination, and 4) reductive physicalism.The first solution is the idea that Davidson came up with to solve the problem of mental causation. By criticizing type identity and reductionism, he first re-examines the issue of mental causation in a new form. Examining the first (anomalous monism), I will show that this approach cannot save mental causation, and, in fact, mental causation will be rejected in this view. The second approach, although it hopes to maintain both mental causation and commitment to the physical closure, this article will show that it wouldn't succeed in doing either. Although at first glance, acceptance of over-determination may seem like a better solution, I show that this solution has fundamental problems, including the fact that in this approach mental causality becomes redundant, without which physical causes will produce the same result. But without a doubt, the main and popular solution of naturalists will be the last, that is, reductionism. Reductionism in this approach distances itself from early reductionism and seeks to establish a token identity between mental and physical states. But this moderate reductionism also faces fundamental problems such as the hard problem of consciousness, intention, and human agency, which will reject the possibility of its success. I will show, therefore, that none of these approaches can solve the problem of P.C and mental causation.By criticizing all of them, I will show that P.C has an absurd consequence and cannot be a plausible premise in the argument for naturalism. Therefore, the best argument for naturalism will fail and cannot work against God.

The question of free will has long been considered one of the most important philosophical questions. It can be said that different and even conflicting opinions have been expressed on this issue. Allamah Jafari and John Searle are two thinkers who, in their intellectual framework, have made a significant contribution to clarifying the “free will” debate. The two thinkers agree on various issues such as the role of the ‘I’ in creating free will, the non-randomness of action, the existence of a gap before activity, and so forth. They also differ on issues such as “the meaning of free will or freedom,” “the scope of freedom or free will,” and the “Divinity of ‘I’ or non-divinity of ‘I’.” Allamah Jafari, besides the rational and reasoning method, pays attention to the scientific context. Searle also has a scientific and reasoning view of the question of free will. Jafari proves free will by introducing the metaphysical self. Moreover, consciousness has a unique role in his theory. Searle, On the other hand, with the concepts of “consciousness” and dependence on the “non-empirical self,” seeks to create a hole for proving free will. Jafari’s view about freedom is that we have free will. Therefore, his approach in this regard is liberal. But Searle plays a role in explaining the issue of “free will” by proposing two hypotheses. Both philosophers believe that the substantial evidence for the existence of free will is that we always think before we act. This thinking causes a gap between the period before the action and the time of the action. According to Jafari, a gap appears in the time “before the action” and “the time of the action.” But in Searle’s view, this gap appears between “reasons for the decision,” “the decision” and “the decision and the action,” and between “the action and the continuation of that action.” A careful examination of the views of these two philosophers can open a new way for the question of “free will” and “freedom.” This is because both thinkers have also dealt with scientific issues and have considered various aspects of the phenomenon of “will” and its freedom or lack of freedom have been considered. This article, in addition to describing and clarifying the opinion of the two philosophers, is responsible for analytical, comparative, and critical points. The comparative and critical analysis of this article reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the views of these two philosophers. The idea of Jafari and John Searle is a new view on the issue of free will. Finally, it can be said that the scientific and philosophical attitude of these two philosophers can be a new way to develop other influential theories in this field. We can summarize the contents in such a way that this article includes the views of two philosophers along with analytical, critical, and comparative evaluation. The purpose of this study is to provide a new solution and further clarify the issue of free will with a descriptive-analytical method.

The argument that free will and indeterminism are incompatible is known as the Luck Argument. This argument has been put forward against the libertarians who deny determinism to prove free will. The basic idea of the argument is that in an undetermined world, free will cannot be imagined. There are various formulations for this argument. They all seek to explain why, if the choice is undetermined, it is by chance; but the focus of this article is on the explanatory formulation. The basic idea of this formulation is that in undetermined situations, there is no contrastive explanation and in this case, there is no free will. This argument is formulated as follows:  If a choice is undetermined, it means that it is possible to make a different choice by assuming the past before the choice is completely identical.  If it is possible to make different choices (different futures) with the same past, it is not possible to provide a contrastive explanation for the choice.  If there is no contrastive explanation for choice, then that choice is by chance.  If a choice happens by chance, it's not free. Therefore, if a choice is undetermined, it is not free. Libertarian responses to this argument can be divided into three main categories. The first group confesses that the argument is question-begging. The main contention is that since only in determined situations is it possible to have contrastive explanations, it is impossible to seek them for undetermined situations. However, this is not the case in this particular case, and the claim is another form of the combination of the first and second premises. The second group of responses to the Luck Argument focusing on the third premise of the argument argues that although there is no contrastive explanation for undetermined choices, another type of explanation which is non-contrastive is possible. In this case, the choice is no longer by chance and it is free. But it seems that non-contrastive explanations are not sufficient for explaining undetermined choices. The third answer claims that it is not that we do not have contrastive explanations for all undetermined situations, and that there is a contrastive explanation at least for some undetermined choices. In fact, this group argues that the combination of the first and second premise of the Luck Argument – that if a choice is undetermined, there is no contradictory explanation - is wrong. Among the different perspectives of this category, is the focus on describing and evaluating Clark's response. He proposes different scenarios to answer this argument. Their evaluation shows that in the first and second scenarios, there was a different definition of indeterminism and although at first glance, they were considered a response to the Luck Argument, the evil consequence of this presupposition and its incompatibility with free choices has been explained. Clark's third scenario is consistent with the definition of indeterminism that the Luck Argument had in the first premise, but Clark himself also acknowledges that we have no contrastive explanations for such situations. Taken together, with all of these scenarios, Clark's attempt to illustrate the contrast between undetermined choices seems to have failed. In conclusion, Evaluation of the three responses presented in the explanatory formulation of the Luck Argument shows that they have failed to solve the problem and explaining free will in undetermined situations continues to be challenging.

The problem of free will has historically evolved. What is observed in the contemporary period with the emergence of empirical science is the relationship between free will and physical determinism. Although physical determinism has been weakened in some approaches to empirical science, the free will problem still remains strong in philosophical debates. What is discussed in this article can be shown as the following argument. 1. Determinism is either true or false; 2. If determinism is correct, the past determines the future, and consequently our will, and therefore we do not have free will; 3. If determinism is wrong, in an undetermined world, the human will is by chance and not free; 4. Therefore, in any case, we do not have free will. The first introduction is an obvious and true statement. The second premise is the content of the consequence argument and the third premise is the claim of the luck argument. The final proposition is the logical result of the preparations. Comparative studies of this article also showed that transcendental wisdom, through accepting the luck argument and not providing an acceptable answer to the consequence argument, must accept the final result of this argument, which is the rejection of free will. In general, it seems that no acceptable theoretical solution to the contemporary problem of free will has been found so far, and a solution to this problem must be sought in practical reasons.

This paper seeks to explain and evaluate, by an analytic method, the conflict between determinism and free will from the viewpoint of two physicalist reductionist philosophers, namely, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. Dennett is a compatibilist philosopher who tries to show compatibility between determinism and free will, while Sam Harris is a non-compatibilist philosopher who turns to determinism with the thesis that our thoughts and actions have been pre-determined by the neurobiological events associated with them, and thus, considers free will to be an illusion. Therefore according to him, we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions.  However, Dennett tries to establish the existence of free will through the use of concepts like control and deliberation and defends ‘free will worth wanting’. Therefore, if we take the agency of the agent and the absence of determinism as two criteria for free will, Dennett accepts both and Harris denies them; since there is neurobiological determinism, and all of Dennett's deliberations, etc. are also determined neurobiologically. Between the two conditions of free will, Dennett accepts that the origin of action must be in the agent; however, he refutes the condition of alternate possibilities, establishing his view based on a causal theory. As a Neo-Darwinist, he explains human beings’ physical and mental phenomena based on evolution theory and despite accepting causal determinism, he shows how the agent can still have agency in decisions and actions. As a result, he does not consider determinism to requisite compulsion. In his philosophical system, one can change the future that has not yet taken place. This decision-making regarding the future takes place through the process of deliberation, which has a special place in Dennett’s view. On the other hand, by adhering to Libet’s neurological experiments, Harris refutes both conditions of free will and considers the cause of all human being actions to arise from activities of the brain and concludes that one cannot have any conscious control over one’s actions. As a result, he emerges as a non-compatibilist determinist. In both his works, The Moral Landscape and Free Will, Harris addresses the topic of free will. In Free Will, he criticizes the view of compatibilists like Dennett, who responds to those criticisms in his article, ‘Reflections on Free Will, Review of Sam Harris’ Free Will’. Like Harris, Dennett too addresses free will in his two important books, Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves. Following an analysis of the views of Dennett and Harris and explaining the criticisms of the two regarding each other, the present article will show that neither Dennett, considering the rest of the elements of his philosophical views in philosophy of mind and philosophy of action can well justify compatibilism, nor can Harris, considering his neurological approach defend his determinist idea. The conflict that is present in Dennett’s views causes his explanation of the agent being the origin of his action to also be indefensible. Furthermore, due to the incompatibility of the different elements of his view and the vagueness of his idea regarding the effect of unconscious intentions on action, Harris too is placed in a weak position. In contrast to Harris’ supposition, a human is not “a puppet [who] is free as long as he loves his strings”; rather, a human chooses, makes decisions and acts according to his own will. As a result, despite the objections that apply to both philosophers, Dennett’s view is more acceptable than Harris’ in terms of the effort to justify free will; even though neither have been apparently successful in defending their own ideas.

The present article studies Bernard Williams's view on moral responsibility using an analytical-critical approach. The discussion of moral responsibility includes the definition, conditions, and problem of moral responsibility. In Western philosophical texts, moral responsibility refers to the praise and blame of the agent by himself or others for an act he has committed. This is while, according to our moral appetites and the theories based on them such as Kant's, moral responsibility is conditioned on free action and every healthy human being has the capacity for moral understanding, the ability to act accordingly and to deserve moral praise and blame for one's actions as they all equally benefit from reason and free-will. Thus, the foundation of moral responsibility is empirical and safe from factors beyond control, that is, luck. In addition, the problem of moral responsibility is the conflict of free-will or freedom and determinism, and different philosophers have theorized regarding the three approaches of compatibility, incompatibility, and impossibility. Bernard Williams, a great philosopher on ethics with an Aristotelian influence - though he does not seem to define moral responsibility as opposed to what has been mentioned - offers a completely different view of the conditions and problem of moral responsibility and challenges our moral intuitions and theories such as Kant's and distinguishes between morality and ethics. He considers voluntary action to be the result of deliberation and intention but by innovating the term moral luck and relying on it, he even considers human voluntary action to be influenced by constitutive luck (i.e. the capacities, talents, and inner abilities of each person) and resultant luck (i.e. various psychological, social, cultural, political, economical, etc. factors which affect the outcome of actions). Therefore, by violating a completely voluntary act, he breaks the relation between freedom and moral responsibility and considers moral responsibility to be superficial or dependent on the concept of luck and gives it an empirical basis. Faced with the problem of moral responsibility, he criticizes compatibilists and incompatibilists in three ways. According to Williams, there is a misunderstanding in the concept of blame used by compatibilists and incompatibilists. In addition, compatibilists must compromise between determinism, psychological concepts, and moral responsibility. Also, the compatibilists do not pay attention to the difference between what free-will is and the will we have. On the other hand, incompatibilists have used determinism in the sense of fatalism. Finally, the incompatibilist view fails to establish a relationship between choice, intention, and action. By claiming a compatibilist view that is safe from these problems, Williams argues that there is a compromise between the above-mentioned items if we separate ourselves from our moral intuitions and the present ethics. This article explains Williams' moral responsibility, with an introduction to Williams and moral responsibility. It then describes Williams' compatibilism while also expresses his critique of compatibilism and incompatibilism. Finally, by assessing Williams's view, it concludes it to be a truly deterministic view that violates freedom and moral responsibility and the basis of its evidence and arguments as weak. For this reason, it  is difficult and indefensible to accept it.

The whole human will be known in Islam by the Mu'tazila theologian sect. Judge Abdul Jabbar is a prominent thinker of retreat with the aim of defending divine justice and explaining its compatibility with the issue of duty as well as moral responsibility, considers human actions independent of the Divine Will. On the other hand, in contemporary Western philosophy, Roderick Chizam introduces himself as the ultimate source of action in order to explain the compatibility between human causality and the principle of causal necessity. In this study, by using analytical-descriptive method, while expressing the views of both thinkers on human moral responsibility, will be expressed that despite the fundamental differences in the worldview of Chizam and Judge Abdul Jabbar on matters such as human nature and the types of causality in the world, on the issue of human free will, there is a kind of coherence and closeness, However, by accepting the total independent will of man, both thinkers, while being caught in a non-monotheistic view, have achieved wrong conclusions about human activity.

This article examines Manuel Vargas’s revisionism, which is a theory of free will as a condition of moral responsibility. In this theory, both diagnos tic and prescriptive account of free will and moral responsibility in commonsense are explained. The diagnos tic account describes commonsense beliefs about free will and moral responsibility and prescriptive account aims to tell us how we ought to think about free will and moral responsibility. Commonsense intuitions about free will are Incompatibilis t and especially Libertarianis t. But prescriptive account can’t be Libertarianism, since it has to assume indeterminism specifically in the subjective decision-making process, and this goes beyond the available evidences. It also can’t be Eliminativism, because we can revise common sense about these things, in a way that to be consis tent. The prescriptive account is a kind of Compatibilism, free will, in this regard, is the ability to recognize moral considerations and guide their behavior in the light of these considerations. At the end, Vargas’s use of Consequence Argument, citing empirical evidence, the use of a Compatibilis t concept of can and relying on Libertarianis t norms for interpretation his Prescriptive account has been criticized.

This paper seeks to explain and study a new approach by Fischer in solving the possible conflict between God’s fore and infallible knowledge with the moral responsibility of the agent. Even though, on one hand, Fischer considers attributes such as knowledge to be essential and infallible Divine characteristics and also attributes temporal non-Thomistic eternity to God within the temporal framework of material existents and ultimately accepts the Fixity of the Past Principle and man’s lack of control over temporally expired events and at first glance is faced with the conflict between such foreknowledge with man’s free will in his actions; however, his type of view regarding the essence of man’s free will frees him from this challenge. In Fischer’s Frankfurter explanation, free will is not a factor preceded by man’s ability to attempt an alternative act in the opposite course and therefore, even if Divine knowledge is synonymous with the one-sidedness of action, such a consequence would not be equal to man’s loss of volition and free will. In this article, after presenting a short explanation for Fischer’s view regarding Divine foreknowledge and addressing the Fixity of the Past Principle and the possibilities of alternatives and Fischer’s Frankfurter approach in encountering that, we will assess Fischer’s solution and observe that, anyway, envisioning the existence of an alternative for actions to actualize the free will of the agent is unavoidable.

Abstract Libet’s experiments, showing that we become aware of our intention to act only after we have unconsciously formed it. Based on these experimental studies, Some claim that we do not possess free will. This paper offers three responses to this claim; First, it is doubtful that actions studied in the Libet’s experiments are ideal exemplars of free will. They are at best ‘degenerate’ examples of free will. Second, Libet uses such terms as ‘urge’ and ‘intention’ interchangeably. An alternative interpretation of Libet’s results says, what the subjects were required to report was not a conscious intention or decision to act, but rather a perceived urge to move. Third, Libet’s results do not constitute a separate challenge to our freedom. It is merely rehearsing the claim that determinism is incompatible with free will. So, Libet’s experiments provide no evidence against compatibilist notion of free will. Keywords: Libet’s experiments, Free will, Readiness potential, Conscious decision, Compatibilism.

The evil has always been a hindrance to justifying the belief in the absolute Omniscient, absolute Almighty, and absolute Benevolent God. Hence, philosophers and theologians have sought to answer this question in various ways. Allameh Tabataba'i and Augustine are among philosophers who have addressed this issue differently. In the ideas propounded by each one of them, evil is considered as a punishment for sin and the result of man‘s free will . According to these two views, a connection can be established between moral evil and natural evil; thus, moral evil is the result of man‘s free will, and natural evil is the result of moral evil. In other words, natural evil is the punishment for sins and the misuse of free will. Consequently, the belief in a benevolent God can be justified. A significant point in Allameh Tabataba'i and Augustine‘s views is that their theories about the existence of moral and natural evil are justice-oriented. Given that a large part of evil is the punishment for sins; therefore, according to the divine justice, its existence is necessary, and the other part of the evil which is to develop virtues is the result of God‘s beneficence and grace. In this article, considering this point, the relationship between moral evil and natural evil is examined from the perspective of these two thinkers and a comparison is made between them.

In modern times, the discussions surrounding the problem of choice are entitled ‘free-will’. We may ask however, ‘is choice the same as free-will or not?’ Is the former another word for the latter or has a significant change occurred in this discussion (aside from a change in the words used to refer to it)?  In this article, first an explanation has been presented for the meaning of ‘choice’ in Islamic philosophy. Then, the transformations of the two principle explanations of choice in this tradition have been explained. Following this, they have been compared with the principle explanations of choice in western philosophy. The conclusion of such a comparison is that free-will is a new explanation for choice in modern times. This is founded on the separation of the free-act from the act made by one’s own choice Aside from justifying the fact that the action stems from free-will, it also justifies its being made by one’s own choice and that man is responsible for it. Today, in the tradition of Islamic philosophy, the explanations of choice do not fulfill the expectations that we have that we will be able to use the discussion on choice in practical philosophy. This is due to the fact that attention has not been paid to the element of being responsible. It is for this reason that it is necessary to take another look at and examine the discussions presented in Islamic philosophy regarding choice – keeping in mind the new explanation of free-will - and that it be examined what suitable explanation does being responsible have in these discussions.

In this article, I consider Iris Murdoch`s view on modern moral philosophy. Murdoch believes that ethic is the most important human activity which are called for two points; first to be realistic, and second to answer the question of how we can make us morally better. Based on these two demands, Murdoch criticized modern moral philosophy, in which, according to her, human will is the core of moral act and makes moral choice arbitrary which depends on human choice. This thought do not help ethic but makes moral act more difficult. The consequence of modern moral philosophy is fantasy and selfishness that create fat ego. Fat ego is a self-centered man who moves away from morality.

The intuition that humans has about free will, has always been a solid backbone against the overwhelming challenges of free will. In Islamic philosophy, this intuition has been represented in the form of presential knowledge and has been considered as an undoubted knowledge. In this paper, we we have discussed the phenomenology of free will by using the principles of transcendent wisdom by analytical proof method, in the sense that we have examined our intuition about free will and identified its epistemic value. The phenomenological analysis of free will has led us to conclude that the intuition of free will is an interconnected set of ten perceptional components. These components are not identical in terms of epistemological validity and are categorized into three different groups. Some of them are highly visible in the form of presential knowledge or propositions that are directly derived from this particular knowledge (inner experience propositions or VIJDANIAT). This group is absolutely epistemologically valid without any condition. The other group is not highly visible in the form of presential knowledge and requires some evidence to be complete and credible. The third group consists of components that have different degrees, each level has a different epistemological validity than the others. In the intuition of free will, components that are not epistemologically credible provide the context in which, with a common intuition, different interpretations of free will can be presented.