Quiz 6

van Inwagen, "The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism"
Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person"
Nagel, "Moral Luck"

1. The libertarian and hard determinist agree that:
a. free will and determinism are incompatible.
b. free will requires determinism.
c. responsibility requires causal regularity.
d. free will requires the absence of coercion or compulsion.

2. For van Inwagen, the key step in the argument for incompatibilism is that:
a. if it is predetermined that you will do something, then you cannot avoid doing that thing.
b. if anyone could do other than he did, then he could render false the laws of nature.
c. if someone could render false the laws of nature, he could do other than what he did.
d. the laws of nature imply that humans do not control their actions.

3. Soft determinists (compatibilists) think that what rules out free will is:
a. causal determination in general.
b. coercion or compulsion.
c. determinism.
d. the predictability of one's action.

4. Frankfurt holds that a wanton:
a. lacks second-order volitions.
b. is not a human being.
c. is a person whose second-order volitions are ineffective.
d. is someone whose first-order volitions are in conflict.

5. A denier of moral luck would hold that when we compare the truck driver who hits the child with the one who does not, though both were equally negligent, we should:
a. blame them equally.
b. blame them in proportion to our actual emotional responses.
c. blame them in accord with which outcome is worse
d. not blame either, since the negligence was minor.

6. In van Inwagen's account, determinism claims, that:
a. no one is free.
b. all states of the universe are fixed by laws.
c. every action that occurs is fated to have to occur.
d. man is wholly the product of his genes and his environmental upbringing.

7. According to Frankfurt, the unwilling addict, as contrasted to the
indifferent addict:
a. has a conflict in his first-order desires.
b. has a conflict in his second-order volitions.
c. is someone whose second-order volitions are ineffective.
d. is someone who fails to have a will.

8. Frankfurt is best classified as a:
a. compatibilist.
b. libertarian.
c. hard determinist.
d. incompatibilist.

9. The determination of blame or praise according to moral luck is in conflict with:
a. our natural attitudes in assigning blame or praise.
b. the view that we are responsible only for what is in our will.
c. the view that we are responsible for our actions.
d. the view that we are subject to causal laws.

10. Some soft determinists/compatibilists argue that an action A by X is free if:
a. it is uncaused.
b. X could have done otherwise, if he wanted to.
c. X could have done otherwise, in the same circumstances.
d. it is not controlled by forces outside the agent.

11. For Frankfurt, if a person has free will then:
a. he could have done otherwise.
b. his second-order volitions determine his first-order volitions.
c. his first-order volitions are not in conflict with each other.
d. his second-order desires are effective in determining his actions.

12. According to Nagel, the type of luck of the child who is taken from
Germany to Argentina at the beginning the Nazi era, in contrast to the one
who stays, is:
a. constitutive luck.
b. luck in one's circumstances.
c. luck in how one is determined by antecedent circumstances.
d. luck in the way one's actions and projects turn out.

13. If moral luck is possible, it should affect the evaluation of:
a. agents, not acts.
b. acts, not agents.
c. both acts and agents.
d. neither acts nor agents.

14. The Kantian view that is challenged by the problem of moral luck is that:
a. an act is morally right only if it meets the test of the categorical imperative.
b. the will is good or bad not because of what it accomplishes but because of its willing alone.
c. to be moral an act must be done out of duty and not merely in conformity to it.
d. a genuine moral principle is not conditional on the inclinations or desires of agents.

 

[Answers: 1. A   2. B   3. B   4. A   5. A   6. B   7. C   8. A   9. B   10. B   11. B   12. B   13. A   14. B]

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