Robert Allen

Wayne County Community College District
  •  412
    Susan Wolf’s compatibilism is unique for being ‘asymmetrical.' While holding that blameworthiness entails being able to avoid acting wrongly, she maintains that our freedom consists in single-mindedly pursuing Truth and Goodness. Comparing and contrasting her position to Saint Anselm’s seminal, libertarian approach to the same subject elicits serious questions, highlighting its drawbacks. How could freedom entail the inability to do cer…Read more
  •  400
    Free Will and Indeterminism: Robert Kane’s Libertarianism
    Journal of Philosophical Research 30 341-355. 2005.
    Drawing on Aristotle’s notion of “ultimate responsibility,” Robert Kane argues that to be exercising a free will an agent must have taken some character forming decisions for which there were no sufficient conditions or decisive reasons.<sup>1</sup> That is, an agent whose will is free not only had the ability to develop other dispositions, but could have exercised that ability without being irrational. To say it again, a person has a free will just in case her character is the product of decisi…Read more
  •  393
    Absolutism vs. Relativism in Contemporary Ontology
    Journal of Philosophical Research 23 343-352. 1998.
    In this paper, I examine Emest Sosa’s defense of Conceptual Relativism: the view that what exists is a function of human thought. My examination reveals that his defense entails an ontology that is indistinguishable from that of the altemative he labels less “sensible,” viz., Absolutism: the view that reality exists independently of our thinking. I conclude by defending Absolutism against Sosa’s objections.
  •  286
    Must we choose between reducing material substances to collections of properties, a’ la Berkeley and Hume or positing bare particulars, in the manner of Locke? Having repudiated the notion that a substance could simply be a collection of properties existing on their own, is there a viable alternative to the Lockean notion of a substratum, a being essentially devoid of character? E.J. Lowe and Michael Loux would answer here in the affirmative. Both recommend hylomorphism as an upgrade on the …Read more
  •  241
    John Perry has recently developed a form of Compatibilism that respects the Principle of Alternatives (PA), according to which free agency requires having the ability to do more than one thing. Eschewing so-called Frankfurt counterexamples to this intuitively plausible principle, long the bête noire of those who would like to believe in free agency and Determinism, Perry argues that there is an important sense in which we can act differently than we do. It signifies the “natural” property of p…Read more
  •  214
    The indirect argument (IA) for incompatibilism is based on the principle that an action to which there is no alternative is unfree, which we shall call ‘PA’. According to PA, to freely perform an action A, it must not be the case that one has ‘no choice’ but to perform A. The libertarian and hard determinist advocates of PA must deny that free will would exist in a deterministic world, since no agent in such a world would perform an action to which there were alternatives: an actio…Read more
  •  200
    Working Backwards with Copi's Inference Rules
    American Philosophical Association Journal on Teaching Philosophy 95 (Spring): 103-104. 1996.
    In their Introduction to Logic, Copi and Cohen suggest that students construct a formal proof by "working backwards from the conclusion by looking for some statement or statements from which it can be deduced and then trying to deduce those intermediate statements from the premises. What follows is an elaboration of this suggestion. I describe an almost mechanical procedure for determining from which statement(s) the conclusion can be deduced and the rules by which the required inferences can b…Read more
  •  192
    Things strike me in a variety ways. F and F# sound slightly different, ripe and unripe tomatoes neither look nor taste nor smell the same, and silk feels smoother than corduroy. In each case, I distinguish an experience of something on the basis of what it is like to be its subject. That is to say, in philosophical parlance, if not quite the vernacular, its “quale,” leads me to categorize it and, thus, respond appropriately to its stimulus. The function of a quale being established, we must defi…Read more
  •  178
    Identity and Becoming
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (4): 527-548. 2000.
    A material object is constituted by a sum of parts all of which are essential to the sum but some of which seem inessential to the object itself. Such object/sum of parts pairs include my body/its torso and appendages and my desk/its top, drawers, and legs. In these instances, we are dealing with objects and their components. But, fundamentally, we may also speak, as Locke does, of an object and its constitutive matter—a “mass of particles”—or even of that aggregate and the sum of subatomic part…Read more
  •  176
    Illusionism treats the almost universally held belief in our ability to make free choices as an erroneous, though beneficent, idea. According to this view, it is sadly true, though virtually impossible to believe, that none of a person’s choices are avoidable and ‘up to him’: any claim to the effect that they are being naïveté or, in the case of those who know better, pretense. Indeed, the implications of this skepticism are so disturbing, pace Spinoza, that it must not be allowed to see the l…Read more
  •  151
    St. Anselm is a master of philosophical prose. His writings on God, truth, and free will are models of clarity born of unflagging concern for argumentative precision. He is especially adept at using analogies to cinch his readers' understanding of these recondite matters. Who could forget the light shed upon the concept of existence by the Painter Analogy in the Ontological Argument or how his River Analogy illumines the unification of the Holy Trinity? Such intellectual insights could only …Read more
  •  146
    The going-on problem (GOP) is the central concern of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. It informs not only his epistemology and philosophy of mind, but also his views on mathematics, universals, and religion. In section I, I frame this issue as a matter of accounting for intentionality. Here I follow Saul Kripke's lead. My departure therefrom follows: first, a criticism of Wittgenstein's “straight” conventionalism and, secondly, a defense of a solution Kripke rejects. I proceed under the ass…Read more
  •  146
    Language Games: Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy
    Dissertation, Wayne State University. 1991.
    This dissertation is a discussion of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. In it, Wittgenstein's answer to the "going on problem" will be presented: I will give his reply to the skeptic who denies that rule-following is possible. Chapter One will describe this problem. Chapter Two will give Wittgenstein's answer to it. Chapter Three will show how Wittgenstein used this answer to give the standards of mathematics. Chapter Four will compare Wittgenstein's answer to the going on problem to Plato's. Chap…Read more
  •  140
    Causal Determinism (CD) entails that all of a person’s choices and actions are nomically related to events in the distant past, the approximate, but lawful, consequences of those occurrences. Assuming that history cannot be undone nor those (natural) relations altered, that whatever results from what is inescapable is itself inescapable, and the contrariety of inevitability and freedom, it follows that we are completely devoid of liberty: our choices are not freely made; our actions are not fre…Read more
  •  138
    I demonstrate here that St. Anselm’s account of free will fits neatly into an Aristotelian conceptual framework. Aristotle’s four causes are first aligned with Anselm’s four senses of ‘will’. The volitional hierarchy Anselm’s definition of free will entails is then detailed, culminating in its reconciliation with Eudemonism. The Beatific Vision, as summum bonum, is shown to be the apex of that series of perfections. I conclude by explicating Anselm’s teleological understanding of sin by re…Read more
  •  123
    Positions taken in the current debate over free will can be seen as responses to the following conditional: If every action is caused solely by another event and a cause necessitates its effect, then there is no action to which there is an alternative (C). The Libertarian, who believes that alternatives are a requirement of free will, responds by denying the right conjunct of C’s antecedent, maintaining that some actions are caused, either mediately or immediately, by events whose effects could …Read more
  •  115
    An Aid to Venn Diagrams
    American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy 96 (Spring 1997): 104-105. 1997.
    The following technique has proven effective in helping beginning logic students locate the sections of a three-circled Venn Diagram in which they are to represent a categorical sentence. Very often theses students are unable to identify the parts of the diagram they are to shade or bar.
  •  103
    The representationist maintains that an experience represents a state of affairs. To elaborate, a stimulus of one’s sensorium produces, according to her, a “phenomenal composite” made up of “phenomenal properties” that are the typical effects of certain mind-independent features of the world, which are thereby represented. It is such features, via their phenomenal representatives, of which the subject of an experience would become aware were she to engage in introspection. So, one might ask, …Read more
  •  91
    Robust Alternatives and Responsibility
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 1 (1): 21-29. 2004.
    The Principle of Robust Alternatives states that an agent is responsible for doing something only if he could have performed a ‘robust’ alternative thereto: another action having a different moral or practical value. Defenders of PRA maintain that it is not refuted by a ‘Frankfurt case’, given that its agent can be seen as having had such an alternative provided that we properly qualify that for which he is responsible. I argue here against two versions of this defense. First, I show that those …Read more
  •  85
    It has been contended that an event as a whole does not occur but, rather, is only occurring when any one of its temporal parts occurs1 I shall consider here the mereological implications of drawing a distinction between the time of an event’s occurrence- its duration- and the times of its occurring- the duration of any one of its proper temporal parts. In particular, I intend to see whether it allows one to avoid having co-located events in one’s ontology.
  •  72
    Responsibility and Motivation
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 35 (3): 289-299. 1997.
  •  72
    Re-examining Frankfurt Cases
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 37 (3): 363-376. 1997.
  •  71
    Free Will and Indeterminism: Robert Kane’s Libertarianism
    Journal of Philosophical Research 30 341-355. 2005.
    Drawing on Aristotle’s notion of “ultimate responsibility,” Robert Kane argues that to be exercising a free will an agent must have taken some character forming decisions for which there were no sufficient conditions or decisive reasons. That is, an agent whose will is free not only had the ability to develop values and beliefs besides those that presently make up her motives, but could have exercised that ability without being irrational. An agent wills freely, on this view, by beingultimately …Read more
  •  62
    Self-Forming Actions
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 81 263-278. 2007.
    The following is a now popular argument for free will skepticism: 1. If free will exists, then people must make themselves. 2. People cannot make themselves. 3. Thus, free will is impossible. It would make no sense to hold someone responsible, either for what he’s like or what he’s done, unless he has made himself. But no one could make himself. A person’s character is necessarily imposed upon him by Nature and others. To rebut, I intend to lean on common usage, according to which 2 is false:…Read more
  •  39
    Self-Forming Actions
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 81 263-278. 2007.
    The following is a now popular argument for free will skepticism: 1. If free will exists, then people must make themselves. 2. People cannot make themselves. 3. Thus, free will is impossible. It would make no sense to hold someone responsible, either for what he’s like or what he’s done, unless he has made himself. But no one could make himself. A person’s character is necessarily imposed upon him by Nature and others. To rebut, I intend to lean on common usage, according to which 2 is false:…Read more
  •  29
    The Mereology of Events
    Sorites 16 23-37. 2005.
    I demonstrate here that it is possible for an event to be identical with one of its proper parts, refuting the key premise in Lawrence Lombard's argument for the essentiality of an event's time. I also propose and defend an alternative to his criterion of event identity
  •  17
    Noel Hendrickson believes that free will is separable from the “evaluative intuitions” with which it has been traditionally associated. But what are these intuitions? Answer: principles such as PAP, Β, and UR (6). The thesis that free will is separable from these principles, however, is hardly unique, as they are also eschewed by compatibilists who are unwilling to abdicate altogether evaluative intuitions. We are told in addition that there are “metaphysical senses” of free will that are not “r…Read more
  •  13
    Free Will and Indeterminism
    Journal of Philosophical Research 30 341-355. 2005.
    Drawing on Aristotle’s notion of “ultimate responsibility,” Robert Kane argues that to be exercising a free will an agent must have taken some character forming decisions for which there were no sufficient conditions or decisive reasons. That is, an agent whose will is free not only had the ability to develop values and beliefs besides those that presently make up her motives, but could have exercised that ability without being irrational. An agent wills freely, on this view, by beingultimately …Read more
  •  10
    The problem of evil is an obstacle to justified belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God . According to Saint Augustine’s free will theodicy , moral evil attends free will. Might something like AFWT also be used to account for natural evil? After all, it is possible that calamities such as famines, earthquakes, and floods are the effects of the sinful willing of certain persons, viz., ‘fallen angels.’ Working to destroy our faith, Satan and his cohorts could be responsible for…Read more
  •  4
    Free Agency and Self-Esteem
    Sorites 20 74-79. 2008.
    In this paper I define the role of self-esteem in promoting free agency, in order to meet some objections to the content-neutrality espoused by the reflective acceptance approach to free agency, according to which an agent has acted freely if and only if she would reflectively accept the process by which her motive was formed -- in other words, any volition the agent forms is an impetus to a free action just in case she would positively appraise its genesis. For primary self-esteem to exist it i…Read more