The first hour of the lecture on April 7 opened with a review of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP). After outlining Harry Frankfurt's amendment, the *PAP principle, according to which: "A person is not morally responsible for what he has done if he did it only because he could not have done otherwise", we posited that the archaeology of the subject-agent had to do with four principles presupposed or implied by PAP:
- the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction (PNC): "It is impossible for the same attribute to belong and not to belong at the same time, to the same subject and in the same respect"(Metaph., IV, 3, 1005b19-20) ;
- the principle of the limitation of divine omnipotence (PLTD): "God can do anything that does not involve contradiction";
- the Aristotelian principle of the conditional necessity of the present (PNCP): "Every being, when it is, is necessarily"(De int., 9, 19 a23-24);
- arthur Lovejoy's Principle of Plenitude (PP): "No genuinepossibility can remain unrealized".
On this basis, we took up again the problem of the freedom of the will set out on March 31 (first hour): can we both will that p and want that p, or will that p and will that no? We began by analysing Abelard's answer: at the precise moment when it is the case that non-p, it could just as well have been the case that p. Duns Scotus' theory, which we then presented, extends Abelard's, radicalizing it. To account for this, we presented some theses by Lovejoy, Hintikka and Knuuttila, allowing us to articulate the principle of plenitude and the synchronic model of modality. There's a Scotian redefinition of contingency. Its two major characteristics are :
- it focuses on the synchronicity of alternative possibilities ;
- contingency is no longer presented as a mode of being, but as a mode of acting subordinate to the will, i.e., as a state " whose opposite could happen at the moment it happens ".
To questions of the freedom of the will: Are we free to will what we will when we will it? and Are we free to will what we will when we will it? Duns Scotus answers unequivocally: "Yes! The basis of his answer is what I've called the "Scot formula" (FS): " volens in a, potest nolle in a" ("who wants in a - let's understand: at the moment a -, can nouloir in a - i.e. at the moment a "). The end of the hour was devoted to an analysis of this "revolutionary" formula (Scot distinguishing between a compound and a divided sense of FS), and how it is applied to the problem of freedom, in this case within the framework of a counterfactual hypothesis: the reduction of the existence of the human will to a single instant (" si ponitur voluntatem esse tantum in uno instanti ").
