Free Will

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2011

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the 500th edition of the programme, Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophical idea of free will.Free will - the extent to which we are free to choose our own actions - is one of the most absorbing philosophical problems, debated by almost every great thinker of the last two thousand years. In a universe apparently governed by physical laws, is it possible for individuals to be responsible for their own actions? Or are our lives simply proceeding along preordained paths? Determinism - the doctrine that every event is the inevitable consequence of what goes before - seems to suggest so.Many intellectuals have concluded that free will is logically impossible. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza regarded it as a delusion. Albert Einstein wrote: "Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion." But in the Enlightenment, philosophers including David Hume found ways in which free will and determinism could be reconciled. Recent scientific developments mean that this debate remains as lively today as it was in the ancient world.With: Simon BlackburnBertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of CambridgeHelen BeebeeProfessor of Philosophy at the University of BirminghamGalen StrawsonProfessor of Philosophy at the University of ReadingProducer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

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
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.