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FREE WILL and DETERMINISM A Dialogue Participants: FREDERICK: Free-willist DANIEL: Determinist CAROLYN: Compatibilist INTRODUCTORY REMARKS FREDERICK: Here ..

"This is an important book, and no one interested in issues which touch on the free will will want to ignore it."--Ethics. In this stimulating and thought-provoking book, the author defends the thesis that free will is incompatible with determinism. He disputes the view that determinism is necessary for moral responsbility. Finding no good reason for accepting determinism, but believing moral responsiblity to be indubitable, he concludes that determinism should be rejected.

Part 1. lecture 1. Free will and determinism-- the basic debate -- lecture 2. Fate and karma -- lecture 3. Divine predestination and foreknowledge -- lecture 4. Causal determinism -- lecture 5. Ancient and medieval indeterminism -- lecture 6. Agent causation -- lecture 7. Ancient and classical compatibilism -- lecture 8. Contemporary compatibilism -- lecture 9. Hard determinism -- lecture 10. Free will impossibilism -- lecture 11. The belief in free will -- lecture 12. Physics and free will --.

What values, if any, would be undermined by determinism?[i] Traditionally this question has been tackled by asking whether determinism is compatible with free will or whether it is compatible with moral responsibility. Compatibilists say that determinism would not threaten free will or moral responsibility, and hence that people’s values should not be influenced by whether or not they believe in determinism. Incompatibilists say that determinism would undermine free will or moral responsibility, and hence that a belief in determinism should have a considerable impact on one’s values, precluding many popular evaluative beliefs.

In this paper I shall define a thesis I shall call 'determinism', and argue that it is incompatible with the thesis that we are able to act otherwise than we do (i.e., is incompatible with 'free will'). Other theses, some of them very different from what I shall call 'determinism', have at least an equal right to this name, and, therefore, I do not claim to show that every thesis that could be called 'determinism' without historical impropriety is incompatible with free will. I shall, however, assume without argument that what I call 'determinism' is legitimately so called. In Part I, I shall explain what I mean by 'determinism'. In Part II, I shall make some remarks about 'can'. In Part III, I shall argue that free will and determinism are incompatible. In Part IV, I shall examine some possible objections to the argument of Part III. I shall not attempt to establish the truth or falsity of determinism, or the existence or nonexistence of free will.

Determinism is a claim about the laws of nature: very roughly, it is the claim that everything that happens is determined by antecedent conditions together with the natural laws. Incompatibilism is a philosophical thesis about the relevance of determinism to free will: that the truth of determinism rules out the existence of free will. The incompatibilist believes that if determinism turned out to be true, it would also be true that we don't have, and have never had, free will. The compatibilist denies that determinism has the consequences the incompatibilist thinks it has. According to the compatibilist, the truth of determinism does not preclude the existence of free will. (Even if we learned tomorrow that determinism is true, it might still be true that we have free will.) The philosophical problem of free will and determinism is the problem of understanding, how, if at all, the truth of determinism might be compatible with the truth of our belief that we have free will. That is, it's the problem of deciding who is right: the compatibilist or the incompatibilist.

Of liberty and necessity, by D. Hume.--The doctrine of necessity examined, by C. S. Peirce.--Determinism in history, by E. Nagel.--Some arguments for free will, by T. Reid.--Has the self free will? by C. A. Campbell.--Dialogue on free will, by L. de Valla.--Can the will be caused? by C. Ginet.--Free will, by G. E. Moore.--A modal muddle, by S. N. Thomas.--Determinism, indeterminism, and libertarianism, by C. D. Broad.--An empirical disproof of determinism? by K. Lehrer.--Free will, praise and blame, by J. J. C. Smart.--Bibliographical essay.