Svend asked:

I'm working on a paper concerning the question of "free will". I have been told, that Skinner and Sartre
in various articles have debated this. Where were these articles published, and when?

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I do not believe that Skinner and Sartre have debated each other on this matter. But perhaps you just
mean that they have each discussed the problem of free will. That they have. Skinner is a "hard
determinist," which is to say that he believes that every event has a cause which , if it occurs, makes
the event (or effect) inevitable. He also holds that human choices, and the actions which flow from
these choices, all are determined by antecedent causes. He believes that since Determinism is true,
there is no free will. One place to go here is Skinner's Science and Human Behavior.Another is his
Beyond Freedom and Dignity.And a third is his novel called Walden Two.

Sartre is an Indeterminist. He holds that human beings make undetermined or uncaused choices. In
fact, Sartre makes uncaused choice which he thinks constitutes free will, the center-piece of his
philosophy. The locus classicus of this is Sartre's Being and Nothingness.His much earlier lecture,
"Existentialism is a Humanism" also contains the gist of this view. Sartre's plays are a dramatic
expression of his views, and his novel, Nauseais another expression of his understanding and
advocacy of human freedom.

Kenneth Stern