B4: Determinism, Control, and the Consequence Argument

这个项目的核心问题是对我们行为的控制是否与决定论相容。如果决定论是正确的，那么在遥远的过去（甚至在我们出生之前）的任何时候，世界的完整状态与自然法则一起完全决定了我们当前的行为。因此，决定论威胁着我们每天都坚信的“我们可以控制自己的行为”。该项目认为，决定论和控制之间的这种明显的紧张关系，只有在对因果关系、定律、反事实和形态的进一步假设被添加到决定论中时才会出现。许多附加的假设在直觉上似乎是合理的。然而，该项目将使用经验数据（涉及科学结果和科学实践）以及归纳方法来质疑这些假设。除其他事项外，我们将展示所谓的“结果论证”，这是许多人认为控制与决定论不相容的最有力的论证，它建立在关于其他可能性的经验上没有根据的假设上。

The central question of the project is whether control over our actions is compatible with determinism. If determinism is true, then the complete state of the world at any time in the distant past (even before we were born) together with the laws of nature completely fixes our current actions. Determinism, therefore, threatens our everyday conviction that we have control over our actions. The project argues that this apparent tension between determinism and control only arises if further assumptions about causation, laws, counterfactuals, and modality are added to determinism. Many of these added assumptions seem intuitively plausible. However, the project will use empirical data (concerning both scientific results and scientific practice) as well as inductive methods to question these assumptions. Among other things, we will show that the so-called 'Consequence Argument', which many consider the strongest argument for the incompatibility of control and determinism, rests on empirically un-founded assumptions about alternative possibilities.