What does Ayer believe about free will?

Ayer states that free will must be seen as the antithesis not of causality, but of constraint1. For Ayer, and compatabilists in general, the term ‘free will’ merely entails an action or decision undertaken outside of duress, be it external or internal.

What is freedom and necessity?

philosophers have defined freedom as the consciousness of necessity. And. by so doip.g they are able to say not only that a man can be acting freely. when his action is causally determined, but even that his action must be. causally determined for it to be possible for him to be acting freely.

Does Ayer believe in moral responsibility?

Ayer’s Views on Moral Responsibility: Moral responsibility requires not the absence of a cause (i.e., the absence of an explanation—which is what the indeterminist mistakenly thinks), but instead the absence of a constraint.

Does Ayer believe in random actions?

Ayer: Why do we have moral responsibility only for causally determined actions? If my action is a random occurrence, then I am not morally responsible for it. If my action is NOT a random occurrence, then there must be a cause of it. In that case, the action is determined (by the cause).

What does Ayer argue in freedom and necessity?

Ayer discusses and objects to one brand of compatibilism that asserts that freedom is the consciousness of necessity. This view says that we are free when we come to accept our destiny.

What did AJ Ayer believe?

Although Ayer’s views changed considerably after the 1930s, becoming more moderate and increasingly subtle, he remained loyal to empiricism, convinced that all knowledge of the world derives from sense experience and that nothing in experience justifies a belief in God or in any other extravagant metaphysical entity.

Who said Freedom is the recognition of necessity?

This kind of an appeal has lost much of its credibility in recent times and is one of the reasons why Marxism has become out of favour. The idea that ‘freedom is the recognition of necessity’ appears in Engels’ Anti-Duhring.

What does Ayer argue for?

Ayer argued that the relevant contrast to freedom was not causality, but constraint, or compulsion, which are a ‘special’ sort of cause. So if our actions could be caused whilst not being ‘constrained’ in any way, then determinism could be true and we could still be free.

What did Ayer argue?

In The Problem of Knowledge (1956), Ayer defended a context-based account of knowledge that had as its essential ingredients that some claim, p, counted as knowledge for a person, A, iff p was true, A was sure that p, and A had, in the relevant context, ‘the right to be sure’ about the truth of p.

How does A. J. Ayer define knowledge?

According to Ayer, knowing is having the right to be sure; and in his The Problem of Knowledge, he maintains that we have the right to be sure in cases of self-evidence, truths directly warranted by experience, and when we have valid deductions based claims which we have the right to be sure about.

What does Hegel mean by freedom is the recognition of necessity?

In Hegel’s system, both freedom and necessity are defined in such a manner that their reconcilation through the universal idea is logically unavoidable. Freedom involves the recognition in consciousness of necessity in its entirety.

What is freedom Hegel?

The concept of freedom is one which Hegel thought of very great importance; indeed, he believed that it is the central concept in human history. ‘Mind is free’, he wrote, ‘and to actualise this, its essence – to achieve this excellence – is the endeavour of the worldmind in world-history’ (VG, p. 73).