Philosophy Questions

Explain Van Inwagens concept of time as a Garden of Forking Paths as it

applies to the problem of free will? How does the Principle of No Choice
relate to adopting a compatibilist stance with regards to the problem of free
will? What are the problems for someone who takes an indeterminist stance?

Peter Van Inwagen tries to do an analogy between our choices (either doing
something or thinking about doing it) and those of a traveler poised to
choose between a forking path in his journey. The only roads that the
traveler can actually pick are the ones that are a progression of the path he
is already on. And he compares the choices of the traveler in his path with
our choices that are determined by our past.
He argues that if determinism is false then choosing is the same as taking a
path out of two or more available paths with one road behind us which is an
analogy with our actual past. But if determinism is false then our choices are
nonexistent and we are walking on a path that has no branches, no
alternative routes.
There are indeed other roads that lead to other destinations and if we could
get to one of these paths we would certainly reach a different destination but
if determinism is true then we cannot get to any of those paths from the road

we are actually on meaning that we can never choose or do anything other

than what we actually do.

The principle of no choice tells us that if a proposition and some conditional

proposition are true and that no one has ever had any choice about whether
these propositions are true then it follows that the result is true and no one
has ever had or has any choice about it being true.
This practically implies that if someone wants to hold the compatibilist
stance, which entails that determinism and free will can coexist, then he
needs to reject the Principle of No Choice, simply because the compatibilist
must say that the agent can decide what happened in the distant past.
Compatibilists try to oppose Van Inwagens idea of determinism stating that
the future is open and were we to make some choice, that future would be
realized. It can be true that many futures are open to the agent, in this
sense, even if only one future has a physically possible connection to the
actual state of the world.
The issue lies in the actual definition of free will and its requirements; Van
Inwagen argues that free will cannot simply be defined as many futures are
open to us. He states that the Principle of No Choice is a clear example of
how the agent does not really have any choices in the matter. He reasons

that given the No Choice Principle, determinism implies that there is no free
will; and that is why the compatibilist must reject the No Choice Principle.
In this instance the compatibilist might argue that having a free will with
respect to a specific action entails only that its caused in part by the
naturally-formed metal states of the agent, i.e. intentions, desires etc. to act.

Another possible solution to the problem of free will is stating that there is
free will and there is no determinism. But this also can be problematic.
Recently most believe that the world works in the way that a quantummechanical theory has it; not deterministically, meaning that the laws of
nature are only probabilistic that instead of determining a unique outcome
with the given conditions it only ranks a set of outcomes by the probability of
happening.
This means that when trying to decide between two different courses of
action both a future in which the agent took the first path and a future in
which the agent took the second path are now open.
But the problem lies when considering that the agents behavior is
indeterministic then choosing the first path (or the second for that matter)
would not determine how future actions will be taken, much less the present
one. So by being indeterministic then choosing the first path is nothing more
than an event that happened. Which would be the same if the second path

was taken; meaning that the agent has no influence in his/her behavior in
choosing a certain act.

1. What is Utilitarianism? What are its strengths and

weaknesses as a moral theory? (Answer this question
through a critical analysis of Bentham, Carritt and Williams,
and the lecture slides).