Question What is the link between rationality and free will. Can one exist without the other?

Accepted:
November 10, 2005

Comments

On certain conceptions of free will, freedom is bound up with rationality. On other conceptions of free will, however, freedom consists in a capacity to be a first cause of one's choices or actions, and so on such a conception, freedom seems to float free of rationality. Indeed, on such accounts, to be determined by reason seems to curtail freedom.

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke raises a good question for accounts of free will that do not tie freedom and rationality closely together. "Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool, and draw shame and misery upon a man's self? If to break loose from the conduct of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment, which keeps us from choosing or doing the worse, be liberty, true liberty, mad men and fools are the only free men: But yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already."

Question What is the link between rationality and free will. Can one exist without the other? Accepted:November 10, 2005

Question What is the link between rationality and free will. Can one exist without the other?

Accepted:
November 10, 2005