Galen Strawson

righteous care for the needs of their animals..."” (Of Animals and Chemicals). Animals are also suffering in classrooms for the benefits of biology, (experiments and dissections). Studies show, non animal testing is more educational. Greek doctor Galen stated the animal experiments. Four hundred years ago, William Harvey used animals to find out how blood went through the body. “An estimated 26 million animals are used every year in the United States for scientific and commercial testing”…

Q.1.1 Claudius Galenus, or Galen (129 – c. 216 AD), was an important and influential Greek physician in the Roman Empire. He is credited with laying out a new standard in medicine that had considerable influence on medical practice for more than a millennium (Cook, 2015). The letters exchanged between Peter the Venerable, an abbot of a monastery at Cluny (in France) and Bartholomaeus, a physician, date back to the year 1150, a time when Galenic ideas in medicine were being practiced and followed…

The debate about free will has been going on for years. After reading many articles, it seems that people have very different views regarding free will; two of these people are Galen Strawson and Robert Kane. Strawson believes that you cannot make yourself the way you are due to predetermined factors, while Kane believes that you can shape your own character through self-forming actions that pave the road for your decisions later on in life. Although both make very good arguments for their claim…

In this paper, I am going to argue that Galen Strawson is wrong when he claims that we cannot be ultimately morally responsible for our actions. The basis of Strawson’s argument conveys that nothing can be the cause of itself and for one to be responsible for one’s actions then, they have to be the cause of themselves. In other words, what Strawson is saying is that you act because of the way you are. So, he says to be morally responsible for one’s action then, one must be responsible for…

The discussion of morals and moral responsibility is deep-seated in the classic philosophical repertoire. A closely related matter, and a frequent objection to moral responsibility, is determinism, the idea that given the initial state and laws of the universe, all future events and outcomes are completely determined. Over the course of this paper, I describe a particular theory for how moral responsibility can exist even in a deterministic universe. One prominent view in the realm of moral…

Is free will actually free? Are we morally responsible for who we are? Do we truly deserve the praise or blame that we receive for our actions? I support the claim that we cannot be ultimately morally responsible for being who we are. [Intro:43 words] Most people’s definition of the word “free” in free will is determined by their idea that every individual in their right mind has the freedom of choice to make a decision leading to an action. This idea of freedom separates the individual and…

Within this essay, I will argue that Galen Strawson’s basic argument, presented in Your Move: The Maze of Free Will, is correct about the impossibility of ultimate moral responsibility. I will do this by first explaining the basic argument as proposed by Strawson, then raising an objection to it concerning the distinction between the self and the way you are by denying the second premise. And finally, I will be refuting the objection. Strawson’s basic argument can be boiled down to the simple…

Philosophy can be seen like a religion. There are many beliefs and theories that people hold true. However, there is no specific evidence that one theory is more likely than the others. When it comes to the dilemma of responsibility, it is up to the individual thinker to decide what they hold righteous. By incorporating ideas from hard determinism, libertarianism, and compatibilism it can be established that all of these are applicable in certain situations. However, I believe we must hold…

There are two standard requirements for free will: alternate possibilities and ultimate responsibility. Alternate possibilities mean that the metaphorical path before any agent must be one with forking paths. In terms of alternate possibilities, free will requires the ability to do otherwise. In other words, open futures are necessary for free will to exist. This leads to the second condition for free will: ultimate responsibility. The basis of ultimate responsibility is that in order for an…

Within this essay, I will argue that Galen Strawson’s basic argument, presented in Your Move: The Maze of Free Will, is correct about the impossibility of ultimate moral responsibility. I will do this by first explaining the argument, then raising an objection that concerns self-creation, and finally refuting the objection. Strawson’s basic argument can be boiled down to the simple notion that one cannot be ultimately morally responsible. He claims that anything you do in any circumstance is…