The invention of the modern subject (continued) : will and action (6)

In the second hour we presented three figures of equilibrium indifference: Buridan's donkey, Buridan's dog, Ghazali's dates, then proposed a bushy investigation of Buridan's donkey in Leibniz, Bayle and Schopenhauer, "tracing" the main variants of the "donkey problem" in Dante, Aristotle(De Caelo, II, 13, 295b29-35), Buridan and Schopenhauer, Leibniz's critic. After this excursus, we returned to Chisholm and the problem of the non-necessitating inclination. Taking up the distinction between the power to act and the power to abstain, we addressed two questions: Are we free to want what we want when we want it ? Are we free not to want what we want when we want it ? To answer these questions, we set out with Chisholm Moore's thesis on the conditions of voluntary action, illuminated by a reference to the Frankfurtian " Principle of alternative possibilities" (PAP): "A person is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise." We concluded with a reminder that Hobbes was laying the foundations for a rejection of PAP, and presented the main thrust of his critique: the ordinary definition of a free agent - one who, when all the conditions required to produce the effect are met, can nevertheless fail to produce it - implies a contradiction.