Free Will and Scientific Naturalism

Student: Kushnareva Veronika

Supervisor: Kirill K. Martynov

Educational Programme: Bachelor

Year of Graduation: 2014

This paper is aimed to get through and take an attempt to give an answer to the problem of free will in the context of scientific naturalism and close to that ontology evolutional psychology and some statements of the philosophy of mind. What we will try to defend and prove is that free will terminology and mentality is delusive and wrong and perhaps must be redefined in a more proper scientific or even medical manner. Also we explain why and in what extent freedom of choice and responsibility are possible and what criteria of moral judgment can be offered. By the help of the latest works of such thinkers as Quine, Searle, Turing, Dennett and others this thesis is going to be proved and supplied with examples, hypothesis and thought experiments.

Student Theses at HSE must be completed in accordance with the University Rules and regulations specified by each educational programme.

Summaries of all theses must be published and made freely available on the HSE website.

The full text of a thesis can be published in open access on the HSE website only if the authoring student (copyright holder) agrees, or, if the thesis was written by a team of students, if all the co-authors (copyright holders) agree. After a thesis is published on the HSE website, it obtains the status of an online publication.

Student theses are objects of copyright and their use is subject to limitations in accordance with the Russian Federation’s law on intellectual property.

In the event that a thesis is quoted or otherwise used, reference to the author’s name and the source of quotation is required.

Search all student theses