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🗓️ 10 March 2011
⏱️ 42 minutes
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0:00.0 | Thanks for down learning the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk. |
0:10.0 | I hope you enjoy the program. |
0:12.0 | Hello, earlier I came to this studio in Broadcasting House and sat down in this chair. |
0:17.0 | There are many other things I could have done this morning. |
0:19.0 | Go for a walk, write, read or stay in bed. |
0:21.0 | I came here of my own free will, or I stay in bed. I came here of my own free will or I think I did. |
0:25.0 | According to some of the finest minds in philosophy, free will is an illusion and everything we do is the result of processes beyond our control. |
0:33.0 | Can this be true and if we're not responsible for our actions can we take moral responsibility for them? |
0:39.0 | philosophers have been arguing about these questions for a long time. |
0:44.4 | The Enlightenment thinker David Hume called free will the most contentious |
0:47.9 | question of metaphysics, the most contentious science. |
0:51.2 | 250 years later the the debate continues, and the discoveries of neuroscience have given it new impetus. |
0:58.0 | With me to discuss free will are Simon Blackburn, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, |
1:05.0 | Helen Bee, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, |
1:10.0 | and Galen Strossen Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. |
1:13.4 | Simon Blackburn, can you give us a rather fuller idea of what's meant by free will? |
1:19.0 | Well, of course, that's partly contentious because different philosophers will try offering different definitions but I think we can divide it into two |
1:27.6 | There's a question of the will what is that what's a volition or what's an intention and then there's a question of freedom. |
1:34.0 | So if I take the first, Wittgenstein put it by asking what's the difference |
1:40.0 | between my arm going up and my raising my arm, or if you like what's subtracted from my raising |
1:46.0 | by my arm just going up. |
1:50.1 | And the obvious answer there is, well, presumably if you raise your arm the |
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