Free Will and the Divergence Problem

Free will and the problem of evil

According to the free-will defence, the exercise of free will by creatures is of such value that God is willing to allow the existence of evil which comes from the misuse of free will. A well-known objection holds that the exercise of free will is compatible with determinism and thus, if God exists, God could have predetermined exactly how the will would be exercised; God could even have predet...

The Three Divergence Free Matrix Fields Problem

We prove that for any connected open set Ω ⊂ Rn and for any set of matrices K = {A1, A2, A3} ⊂ M m×n, with m ≥ n and rank(Ai − Aj) = n for i 6= j, there is no non-constant solution B ∈ L∞(Ω,Mm×n), called exact solution, to the problem DivB = 0 in D(Ω,R) and B(x) ∈ K a.e. in Ω . In contrast, A. Garroni and V. Nesi [10] exhibited an example of set K for which the above problem admits the so-calle...

The Scope of Man's Free Will

Experimental philosophy and the problem of free will.

Many philosophical problems are rooted in everyday thought, and experimental philosophy uses social scientific techniques to study the psychological underpinnings of such problems. In the case of free will, research suggests that people in a diverse range of cultures reject determinism, but people give conflicting responses on whether determinism would undermine moral responsibility. When prese...

A study of Determinism and Free-will in Persian Proverbs

Proverbs as a part of colloquial literature are always nourished by religion, culture, traditions, and philosophical beliefs of a community, and thus they mirror the common beliefs of a people. The frequent repletion of a proverb pregnant with a specific thought makes that type of thought a behavioral pattern and affects the actions and behaviors of the people of a society. In the Iranian socie...