On Sat, 9 Jun 2007 10:01:28 -0700 (PDT) andie nachgeborenen
<andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> Edwards believed in the Calvinist doctrine of
> predestination, not in causal determinism, which is
> what I am sure Joanne and I know Hume and Nietzsche,
> advocate. The following links are useful in making
> the distinction:
I am not sure that I quite agree with that. Edwards was quite familar with the new mechanistic science of Isaac Newton and the philosophies of Locke and Berkeley. I think that to a large extent he fudged the difference between causal determinism and Calvinist predestination, which he thought he could do, since he subscribed to a form of Berkeleyian idealism which viewed the natural world as ideas in God's mind. So from that perspective, causal determinism would reduce to predestination anyway. Apart from that, his writings on free will remain of interest because he made a very strong case that the notion of libertarian free will is incoherent. I think he was right about that. BTW his book, "Freedom of the Will" can be found online here:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/will.html
>
> http://www.ovrlnd.com/Apologetics/Determinism.html
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination
>
> The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has the
> following good pieces on compatibilism and causal
> determinism:
>
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
>
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/supplement.html
>
> The author reminded me that Hobbes, not Hume, is
> probably the first modern compatibilist.
>
>
> --- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > >
> > > One name for the position is "compatibilism," and
> > it's
> > > a pretty standard view held by a wide variety of
> > > thinkers. Hume was probably the first person to
> > > formulate the position in anything like a modern
> > form.
> >
> > It's been over 50 years since I read this, but I
> > think Jonathan Edwards
> > claimed that we were responsible only if we were
> > _not_ free; if we were
> > free than every act was by a different person and we
> > could not be held
> > responsible for it; but if we were not free, then
> > our acts represented
> > what we really were and we were respnsible.
> >
> > Carrol
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
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> >
>
>
>
>
>
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