Reading Questions
Richard Taylor - A Contemporary Defense of Free Will

1. Taylor outlines three claims of compatibilism/soft determinism.  List them.
2. Explain the problem Taylor sees with both accepting determinism and also believing are inner choices, decisions, and desires are free.
3. What is the point of the example of the ingenious physiologist?
4. What objection does Taylor have to conceiving of freedom as simple indeterminism?
5. According to Taylor, there are at least two conditions under which it is impossible for me to deliberate.  Explain each.
6. According to Taylor, under either of determinism or simple indeterminism, is it sometimes up to us what we do?  Explain his responses.
7. Taylor says that his theory of agency is a conception of activity that involves two rather strange metaphysical notions.  What are these two metaphysical notions and why are they strange?
8. According to Taylor, is it possible that no one ever really deliberates, and that instead we all only imagine that we do?