John Martin Fischer

Last updated
John Martin Fischer
Born (1952-12-26) 26 December 1952 (age 71)
Era Contemporary philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Analytic
Main interests
Philosophy of action, free will, moral philosophy
Notable ideas
Semicompatibilism

John Martin Fischer (born December 26, 1952) is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside and a leading contributor to the philosophy of free will and moral responsibility. [1]

Contents

Education and career

Fischer received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1982. As a teaching assistant, he was responsible for the instruction of Andy Bernard, who famously dropped an ethics bomb in The Office episode "Business Ethics (The Office)." [1] He began his teaching career at Yale University, where he taught for almost a decade before joining the faculty at the University of California, Riverside.

In June 2011, Fischer was elected vice-president of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association and became president of the Pacific Division in 2013. [1] In 2024, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [2]

Philosophical work

While Fischer's work centers primarily on free will and moral responsibility, where he is particularly noted as a proponent of semi-compatibilism [3] (the idea that regardless of whether free will and determinism are compatible, moral responsibility and determinism are), [4] he also has worked on the metaphysics of death and philosophy of religion and led a multi-year, multi-pronged research project on "immortality," funded in 2012 by the John Templeton Foundation. [5]

Books

Media appearances and interviews

See also

Related Research Articles

Free will is the capacity or ability to choose between different possible courses of action.

Philosophical analysis is any of various techniques, typically used by philosophers in the analytic tradition, in order to "break down" philosophical issues. Arguably the most prominent of these techniques is the analysis of concepts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">P. F. Strawson</span> English philosopher (1919–2006)

Sir Peter Frederick Strawson was an English philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Oxford. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford from 1968 to 1987. He had previously held the positions of college lecturer and tutorial fellow at University College, Oxford, a college he returned to upon his retirement in 1987, and which provided him with rooms until his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Incompatibilism</span> Contradiction of free will and determinism

Incompatibilism is the view that the thesis of determinism is logically incompatible with the classical thesis of free will. The term was coined in the 1960s, most likely by philosopher Keith Lehrer. The term compatibilism was coined to name the view that the classical free will thesis is logically compatible with determinism, i.e. it is possible for an ordinary human to exercise free will, even in a universe where determinism is true. These terms were originally coined for use within a research paradigm that was dominant among academics during the so-called "classical period" from the 1960s to 1980s, or what has been called the "classical analytic paradigm". Within the classical analytic paradigm, the problem of free will and determinism was understood as a compatibility question: "Is it possible for an ordinary human to exercise free will when determinism is true?" Those working in the classical analytic paradigm who answered "no" were incompatibilists in the original, classical-analytic sense of the term, now commonly called classical incompatibilists; they proposed that determinism precludes free will because it precludes the ability to do otherwise. Those who answered "yes" were compatibilists in the original sense of the term, now commonly called classical compatibilists. Given that classical free will theorists agreed that it is at least metaphysically possible for an ordinary human to exercise free will, all classical compatibilists accepted a compossibilist account of free will and all classical incompatibilists accepted a libertarian account of free will.

Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent. As Steven Weinberg puts it: "I would say that free will is nothing but our conscious experience of deciding what to do, which I know I am experiencing as I write this review, and this experience is not invalidated by the reflection that physical laws made it inevitable that I would want to make these decisions." The opposing belief, that the thesis of determinism is logically incompatible with the classical thesis of free will, is known as "incompatibilism".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libertarianism (metaphysics)</span> Term in metaphysics

Libertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics. In particular, libertarianism is an incompatibilist position which argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe. Libertarianism states that since agents have free will, determinism must be false and vice versa.

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Hard determinism is a view on free will which holds that determinism is true, that it is incompatible with free will, and therefore that free will does not exist. Although hard determinism generally refers to nomological determinism, it can also be a position taken with respect to other forms of determinism that necessitate the future in its entirety.

Galen John Strawson is a British analytic philosopher and literary critic who works primarily on philosophy of mind, metaphysics, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche. He has been a consultant editor at The Times Literary Supplement for many years, and a regular book reviewer for The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Independent, the Financial Times and The Guardian. He is the son of philosopher P. F. Strawson. He holds a chair in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, and taught for many years before that at the University of Reading, City University of New York, and Oxford University.

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In philosophy, moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission in accordance with one's moral obligations. Deciding what counts as "morally obligatory" is a principal concern of ethics.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "John M. Fischer". philosophy.ucr.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-04-04. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  2. "2024 New Member List | American Academy of Arts and Sciences".
  3. "Semicompatibilism". www.informationphilosopher.com.
  4. Kane, R. (2005) A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will, New York: Oxford UP. ISBN   978-0-19-514970-8
  5. Radio, Southern California Public (20 June 2014). "Researchers ponder life after death in 'Immortality Project'". Southern California Public Radio.