Darrow and Determinism: Giving Up Ultimate Responsibility

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Clarence Darrow’s brilliant and passionate defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy teenagers who pled guilty to the kidnapping and murder of 14 year old Bobby Franks.   On August 22, 1924 Darrow gave his famous twelve hour closing statement, bringing tears to the eyes of the presiding judge and saving his clients from the death penalty.   Here are two excerpts from the summation:

Hodgson’s Black Box

In seeking to establish the existence of what he calls a ‘plain person’s free will’, David Hodgson adduces 8 conditions, the joint satisfaction of which would, he claims, result in our having such free will (proposition 9 asserts this conclusion).  The plain persons’ conception of free will, Hodgson says, is the libertarian conception, in which it is incompatible with determinism.  Although what ordinary people actually believe about free will is an empirical matter in need of research, it’s likely that many people (but not all) have at least a vague

The Moral Levitation of David Brooks

In his latest book, Freedom Evolves, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett coins the wonderful term “moral levitation” – you’ll even find it in the index. It names what some philosophers and many lay people think is required for morally responsible choices: “Real autonomy, real freedom, requires the chooser be somehow suspended, isolated from the push and pull of…causes, so that when decisions are made, nothing causes them except you!” (p.101-2, original emphasis).

Comment on Szasz' "Pharmacracy"

Letter to Reason

4/15/03

Reason Magazine 

To the Editor:

Quoted in Jacob Sullum’s review of Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America, Thomas Szasz writes that “Attributing mental illnesses, such as addiction and panic disorder, to biological alterations occurring at a ‘subcellular level’ is a parody of the denial of free will, choice, and responsibility".

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