The Free Will Show Episode 16: Compatibilism, Part 2 (Dispositional Compatibilism) with Kadri Vihvelin
Mar 22, 2021
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Time Travel Example Shaped Her Free Will Work
- Kadri Vihvelin recounts how her work on time travel motivated her thinking about freedom and abilities.
- She explains the grandfather/baby-self problem and how laws and counterfactuals (e.g., no resurrection) shape which actions a time traveler could actually perform.
Prison Visit Sparked Her Free Will Questions
- Vihvelin describes how a criminology class and a prison visit triggered her philosophical interest in free will.
- Prisoners insisted they acted of their own free will while criminologists cited causal explanations, prompting her to reconcile both perspectives.
Dispositions Persist Under Determinism
- Dispositions are causal powers like fragility or elasticity and exist even when unmanifested.
- Vihvelin highlights that dispositions are compatible with determinism, undermining the idea that determinism eradicates ability-like properties.