Proponents of the “Belief in Ability Thesis” (BAT) maintain that one deliberates about whether to perform a given action only if one believes that one can perform the action in question. In An Essay on Free Will, Peter van Inwagen endorsed BAT and deployed it in an argument for the incompatibility of deliberation and consistent belief in the nonexistence of free will. Van Inwagen’s argument att...

Today liberalism (or neoliberalism) is blamed for the growing inequality and poverty in the world as well as for ideological fundamentalism. Since such discussions are wide-ranging, held at universities and in political bodies, the author makes a distinction between liberalism as political philosophy and liberal – or as is now often called neoliberal – practical politics. According to him, libe...

While the question of whether our actions are determined or are the result of free will is a deep one in philosophy, it does not need to be answered for forensic psychiatrists to give evidence in court. As Stephen Morse has pointed out, the absence of free will is not named as an excusing condition. The insanity defense, for instance, requires proof of functional impairment, to which psychiatri...

SUMMARY Addressing homophobia and heterosexism as a teacher raises issues of respect for the intellectual freedom of your students. The central thesis of this article is that these issues are best addressed on the basis of general principles of academic freedom-that is, intellectual freedom in educational and research contexts. Three cases are analyzed on the basis of principles developed by th...

based on an immanent religious approach, the present article is an attempt to answer the following two questions: can freedom be studied from a quranic viewpoint? how can freedom be analyzed according to the quran within a specific theoretical framework? the study of the quranic verses asserts that the quran views mankind as being god's successor on earth and having a divine nature and a f...