Editing Predeterminism (section)

==Philippa Foot==

[[Philippa Foot]] is one who misquoted Hobart's title, but who had the same misgivings about determinism.

In 1957 she wrote an article in The Philosophical Review entitled "Free Will As Involving Determinism."

Nevertheless, she criticized arguments that free will requires indeterminism, and in particular the idea that one could not be held responsible for "chance" actions chosen for no particular reason.

Her article begins with the observation that determinism has become widely accepted as compatible with free will.

"The idea that free will can be reconciled with the strictest determinism is now very widely accepted. To say that a man acted freely is, it is often suggested, to say that he was not constrained, or that he could have done otherwise if he had chosen, or something else of that kind; and since these things could be true even if his action was determined it seems that there could be room for free will even within a universe completely subject to causal laws."<ref name="Foot">Philippa Foot "Free Will As Involving Determinism," ''The Philosophical Review'', vol LXVI, (1957).</ref>{{rp|439}}

Foot doubted that the ordinary language meaning of saying our actions are "determined" by motives has the same meaning as strict physical determinism, which assumes a causal law that determines every event in the future of the universe.

She notes that our normal use of "determined" does not imply universal determinism.

"For instance, an action said to be determined by the desires of the man who does it is not necessarily an action for which there is supposed to be a sufficient condition. In saying that it is determined by his desires we may mean merely that he is doing something that he wants to do, or that he is doing it for the sake of something else that he wants. There is nothing in this to suggest determinism in [[Bertrand Russell|Russell]]'s sense."<ref name="Foot"/>{{rp|441}}

Foot cited Bertrand Russell's view of causal determinism:

"The [[Law of Universal Causation|law of universal causation]] . . . may be enunciated as follows:...given the state of the whole universe,...every previous and subsequent event can theoretically be determined."