McCay and Sevel’s collection Free Will and the Law consists of a series of essays by various writers about the libertarian theory of free will of the Australian philosopher and jurist David Hodgson (1939–2012).
Hodgson was an appellate judge for nearly three decades, and was described by James Allsop, Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, as “one of the finest judges who ever graced a court in this country.”
He had a keen interest in the problem of free will in a legal context and wrote several books on the subject, the best-known being The Mind Matters and Rationality + Consciousness
= Free Will in which he sets out his argument for the view that despite determinism being true, we make real decisions that are not determined, but are in a fundamental
way only down to us.
In addition to the collection by McCay and Sevel, several other books and papers have been written about Hodgson’s work, most notably by Deery, Keaton, and Levy. Despite these many analyses of his work, what Hodgson argues throughout his body of work can be summed up fairly simply as follows: our consciousness operates separately from our body (brain) in some way. The choices we make are informed by a capacity that this consciousness gives us, and we are, therefore, at least partly responsible for what we do and for our own character. Punishment is not primitive or inhumane but is needed as the basis for human rights. If we do not punish offenders because they are guilty, there is less reason not to punish people when they are innocent. In true libertarian spirit, Hodgson believes that offenders must recognise their own responsibility for their conduct, and at least partially for their own character. He therefore, proposes that we argue that, even if neuroscience refutes free will completely, we
should act as if this had not happened. We should hold that, even if free will is a dead concept, we must pretend it is not. It is easy to see why this reasoning is flawed. “We should ignore what we don’t like” is a problematic concept for obvious reasons.
Photo Wikipedia - David Hodgson
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