Dennett and Taylor’s alleged refutation of the Consequence Argument
Author(s) -
Johan E. Gustafsson
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.452
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1467-8284
pISSN - 0003-2638
DOI - 10.1093/analys/anz048
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , incompatibilism , philosophy , epistemology , inference , free will , compatibilism , biochemistry , chemistry
Daniel C. Dennett has long maintained that the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism is confused. In a joint work with Christopher Taylor, he claims to have shown that the argument is based on a failure to understand Logic 101. Given a fairly plausible account of having the power to cause something, they claim that an inference rule that the argument relies on is invalid. In this paper, I show that Dennett and Taylor’s refutation does not work against a better, more standard version of the Consequence Argument. Hence Dennett and Taylor’s alleged refutation fails.
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