Free Will Skepticism

Given the available evidence, I argue that we face considerable uncertainty about free will. In particular, I argue that the available philosophical evidence does not support being highly confident in our theories about the nature of free will, though this does not necessarily mean that we should suspend judgment about either incompatibilism or compatibilism. For those who accept incompatibilism, however, I argue that there is enough uncertainty about libertarian free will that they should suspend judgment about whether we are ever (...) free, if not reject free will entirely. While I do not claim that compatibilists should be similarly agnostic about the existence of free will, I argue that most compatibilist theories are subject to considerable uncertainty as well, so that most compatibilists should be agnostic about how often we act freely. I conclude with a brief discussion of how we might address these issues going forward. (shrink)

In The Stubborn System of Moral Responsibility (2015), Bruce Waller sets out to explain why the belief in individual moral responsibility is so strong. He begins by pointing out that there is a strange disconnect between the strength of philosophical arguments in support of moral responsibility and the strength of philosophical belief in moral responsibility. While the many arguments in favor of moral responsibility are inventive, subtle, and fascinating, Waller points out that even the most ardent supporters of moral responsibility (...) acknowledge that the arguments in its favor are far from conclusive; and some of the least confident concerning the arguments for moral responsibility—such as Van Inwagen—are most confident of the truth of moral responsibility. Thus, argues Waller, whatever the verdict on the strength of philosophical arguments for moral responsibility, it is clear that belief in moral responsibility—whether among philosophers or the folk—is based on something other than philosophical reasons. -/- He goes on to argue that there are several sources for the strong belief in moral responsibility, but the following four are particularly influential: First, moral responsibility is based in a powerful “strike back” emotion that we share with other animals. Second, there is a deep-rooted “belief in a just world”—a belief that, according to Waller, most philosophers reject when they consciously consider it, but which has a deep nonconscious influence on what we regard as just treatment and which provides subtle (but mistaken) support for belief in moral responsibility. Third, there is a pervasive moral responsibility system—extending over criminal justice as well as “common sense”—that makes the truth of moral responsibility seem obvious, and makes challenges to moral responsibility seem incoherent. Finally, there is the enormous confidence we have in the power of reason, which mistakenly leads us to believe that our conscious, rational, and critically reflective selves are constantly guiding our behavior in accordance with our deep values. -/- In these comments, I would like to discuss the many points of agreement I have with Waller, providing along the way additional fuel for his skeptical fire (i.e., his moral responsibility skepticism and his skeptical analysis of the source of our strong belief in moral responsibility). I will also discuss, however, my one main point of disagreement—i.e., his desire to preserve the conception of free will. Waller believes free will can “flourish” in the absence of moral responsibility (see Ch.8), while I maintain they that the variety of free will that is of central philosophical and practical importance is the sort required for moral responsibility in a particular but pervasive sense. This sense of moral responsibility is set apart by the notion of basic desert and is purely backward-looking and non-consequentialist (see Pereboom 2001, 2014; Caruso and Morris, forthcoming). Understood this way, the sort of free will at issue in the historical debate is a kind of power or ability an agent must possess in order to justify certain kinds of desert-based judgments, attitudes, or treatments in response to decisions or actions that the agent performed or failed to perform. (shrink)

Some thinkers argue that our best scientific theories about the world prove that free will is an illusion. Others disagree. The concept of free will is profoundly important to our self-understanding, our interpersonal relationships, and our moral and legal practices. If it turns out that no one is ever free and morally responsible, what would that mean for society, morality, meaning, and the law? Just Deserts brings together two philosophers – Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso – to debate (...) their respective views on free will, moral responsibility, and legal punishment. In three extended conversations, Dennett and Caruso present their arguments for and against the existence of free will and debate their implications. Dennett argues that the kind of free will required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism – for him, self-control is key; we are not responsible for becoming responsible, but are responsible for staying responsible, for keeping would-be puppeteers at bay. Caruso takes the opposite view, arguing that who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward. These two leading thinkers introduce the concepts central to the debate about free will and moral responsibility by way of an entertaining, rigorous and sometimes heated philosophical dialogue. What emerges is a clear account of the latest thinking on free will, and what is at stake for our moral and legal practices. (shrink)

Philosophers often consider problems of free will and moral luck in isolation from one another, but both are about control and moral responsibility. One problem of free will concerns the difficult task of specifying the kind of control over our actions that is necessary and sufficient to act freely. One problem of moral luck refers to the puzzling task of explaining whether and how people can be morally responsible for actions permeated by factors beyond their control. This chapter explicates and (...) assesses skeptical, compatibilist, and libertarian approaches to moral luck. First, I argue that what makes the above problems of free will and moral luck distinct is largely their emphasis on different kinds of luck. Second, I describe and evaluate skeptical arguments from constitutive and circumstantial luck that it is impossible to act freely. Third, I explicate and assess various support and implication relationships between various kinds of compatibilism and libertarianism, on the one hand, and causal, constitutive, circumstantial, and resultant moral luck, on the other. (NOTE: Email me for a copy; I will self-archive after embargo ends.). (shrink)

Responsibility is impossible because there is no responsibility-maker and there needs to be one if people are morally responsible. The two most plausible candidates, psychology and decision, fail. A person is not responsible for an unchosen psychology or a psychology that was chosen when the person is not responsible for the choice. This can be seen in intuitions about instantly-created and manipulated people. This result is further supported by the notion that, in general, the right, the good, and virtue rest (...) on the exercise of a capacity rather than the capacity itself. It is also supported by the notion that negligence is not a responsibility-maker. ​ A person is not responsible for a choice that does not reflect his psychology or that does reflect it when he is not responsible for the psychology. This can be seen by considering intuitions regarding acts that are unconnected or arbitrarily connected to a person’s psychology. It can also be seen intuitions about acts that result from a manipulated psychology. The problem with choice as a foundation can be further seen in that an infinite or self-created person would not be responsible despite these superhuman choice-related features. (shrink)

Asymmetry theories about free will and moral responsibility are a recent development in the long history of the free will debate. To my knowledge, Kant commentators have not yet explored the possibility of an asymmetrical reconstruction of Kant's theory of freedom, and that will be my goal here. By "free will", I mean the sort of control we would need to be morally responsible for our actions. Kant's term for it is "transcendental freedom", and he refers to the attribution of (...) moral responsibility as "imputation". By "Kant's theory of freedom", I mean not only his theory of transcendental freedom and imputation, but also the various ways in which he draws on these ideas in his moral theory. (shrink)

Following P. F. Strawson, a number of philosophers have argued that if hard incompatibilism is true, then its truth would undermine the justification or value of our relationships with other persons. In this paper, I offer a novel defense of this claim. In particular, I argue that if hard incompatibilism is true, we cannot make sense of: the possibility of promissory obligation, the significance of consent, or the pro tanto wrongness of paternalistic intervention. Because these practices and normative commitments are (...) central to our relationships as we currently conceive of them, it follows that hard incompatibilism has radically revisionary conclusions. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a form of free will fallibilism. Unlike the free will realist who is fully persuaded that we have sufficient evidence of freedom to justify holding individuals morally responsible for what they do and imposing punishment, and unlike the free will skeptic who is fully persuaded that we do not have enough evidence to believe that we face a future of open alternatives, the free will fallibilist will believe that we have enough evidence to justify a (...) belief in freedom for some purposes but not for others. Along the way I argue that deliberation-compatibilism of the sort recently defended by Pereboom is subject to a very familiar sort of counterexample. The question that concerns me the most is whether punishment—this brutal institution that disposes of the lives of countless of our most vulnerable citizens—can be justified. I think it cannot, precisely because there is not sufficient evidence that human beings are free to choose between branching alternatives and so deserve to be treated like that. At least, if there is such justifying evidence it is more or less completely balanced by evidence that all events including human actions have causes. Moreover, I find compatibilism utterly unpersuasive. At the same time, I believe that I am a free agent; what I do is in large part up to me. I believe that the explanation of action cannot be reduced to causal explanation, and I believe that the logic of action requires a notion of branching time. I have two pictures of the universe; which of the two pictures I may rely upon will depend upon just what it is that I intend to do. Between the problem that preoccupies me, punishment, and my day-to-day choices, there is a wide gap. There are a lot of choices that, on the axis of justification, fall in between the two, many of them choices about how to treat those around us: whether to snub a friend who has insulted me, whether to castigate her, whether to reward a kind act with praise. Where to draw the line is a topic for another paper. The only principle that right now seems to me firm enough to act upon is this: the greater the likelihood of doing harm, the less likely the choice is to be justified. (shrink)

This paper argues for a view of free will that I will call the conceptual impossibility of the truth of free will error theory - the conceptual impossibility thesis. I will argue that given the concept of free will we in fact deploy, it is impossible for our free will judgements - judgements regarding whether some action is free or not - to be systematically false. Since we do judge many of our actions to be free, it follows from the (...) conceptual impossibility thesis that many of our actions are in fact free. Hence it follows that free will error theory - the view that no judgement of the form ‘action A was performed freely’ - is false. I will show taking seriously the conceptual impossibility thesis helps makes good sense of some seemingly inconsistent results in recent experimental philosophy work on determinism and our concept of free will. Further, I will present some reasons why we should expect to find similar results for every other factor we might have thought was important for free will. (shrink)

From time to time philosophers and scientists have made sensational, provocative claims that certain things do not exist or never happen that, in everyday life, we unquestioningly take for granted as existing or happening. These claims have included denying the existence of matter, space, time, the self, free will, and other sturdy and basic elements of our common-sense or naïve world-view. Around the middle of the twentieth century an argument was developed that can be used to challenge many such skeptical (...) claims based on linguistic considerations, which came to be known as the Paradigm Case Argument ... (shrink)

How is the problem of free will related to the problem of moral luck? In this essay, I answer that question and outline a new solution to the paradox of moral luck, the source-paradox solution. This solution both explains why the paradox arises and why moral luck does not exist. To make my case, I highlight a few key connections between the paradox of moral luck and two related problems, namely the problem of free will and determinism and the paradox (...) of self-creation. Piecing together intuitions, arguments, and insights from recent work on each of these three problems, I argue that the type of control necessary for moral responsibility can only be satisfied by someone who is a genuine source of his own actions, but the relevant notion of sourcehood admits no coherent characterization. If our commonsense view of moral responsibility is incoherent, it is unsurprising that our commitment to the existence of morally responsible agents commits us to some paradoxical things—e.g. to both the existence and impossibility of moral luck. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates an objection to introspective arguments for human freedom found within Spinoza's Ethics. The objection-- which we call Spinoza's dream argument -- challenges the evidentiary value of a person's experience of her own freedom by pointing out that some choices made within dreams are experienced as no less free than choices made while awake despite the fact that choices made within dreams are not free. After reconstructing Spinoza's dream argument, we critically evaluate it, concluding ultimately that it (...) fails in two respects. First, we draw upon the results of an experiment we conducted that suggests that dreamt choices are not experienced as free to the same extent as choices made while awake. Second, we argue that there is no compelling justification for the claim that choices made within dreams are not free. (shrink)

Paul Russell’s The Limits of Free Will is more than the sum of its parts. Among other things, Limits offers readers a comprehensive look at Russell’s attack on the problematically idealized assumptions of the contemporary free will debate. This idealization, he argues, distorts the reality of our human predicament. Herein I pose a dilemma for Russell’s position, critical compatibilism. The dilemma illuminates the tension between Russell’s critical and compatibilist commitments. The problem is not obviously insurmountable, and as a compatibilist who (...) is sympathetic to the view, my aim is to spark further discussion. (shrink)

Can we be held morally responsible for our actions? Yes, says Daniel Dennett. No, says Gregg Caruso. Reader, you decide.

Free will skepticism is the view that people never truly deserve to be praised, blamed, or punished for what they do. One challenge free will skeptics face is to explain how criminality could be dealt with given their skepticism. This paper critically examines the prospects of implementing legal changes concerning crime and punishment derived from the free will skeptical views developed by Derk Pereboom and Gregg Caruso. One central aspect of the changes their views require is a concern for reducing (...) the severity of current forms of punishment. The paper considers two strategies for pursuing such a reduction. By taking into account evidence from the psychology of belief in free will and desire to punish, it is argued that a strategy aiming at a reduction of people’s natural desire to punish criminals can be successful if capable of providing alternatives to current forms of punishment satisfying three properties: they must be less harmful than current forms of punishment, more effective in preventing crime, and incompatible with current forms of punishment. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the sophisticated views on free will and determinism of the nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna and brings them into dialogue with the views of three western philosophers—namely, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Lord Kames and the contemporary analytic philosophers Saul Smilansky and Derk Pereboom. Sri Ramakrishna affirms hard theological determinism, the incompatibilist view that God determines everything we do and think. At the same time, however, he claims that God, in His infinite wisdom, has endowed ordinary unenlightened people (...) with the illusion of free will for the sake of their moral and spiritual welfare. Kames, I suggest, defends a theological determinist position remarkably similar to Sri Ramakrishna’s. However, I argue that Sri Ramakrishna’s mystical orientation puts him in a better position than Kames to explain why a loving God would implant in us the illusion of free will in the first place. I then show how certain aspects of the views of Smilansky and Pereboom resonate with those of Sri Ramakrishna. (shrink)

While skeptical arguments concerning free will have been a common element of philosophical discourse for thousands of years, one could make the case that such arguments have never been more numerous or forceful than at present. In response to these skeptical attacks, some philosophers and psychologists have expressed concern that the widespread acceptance of such skeptical attitudes could have devastating social consequences. In this paper, I set out to address whether such concerns are well-founded. I argue that there is reason (...) to believe that should skeptical arguments result in the widespread dismissal of human free will, the results of such a dismissal are likely to be more positive than negative. (shrink)

As philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism continue to gain traction, we are likely to see a fundamental shift in the way people think about free will and moral responsibility. Such shifts raise important practical and existential concerns: What if we came to disbelieve in free will? What would this mean for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and the law? What would it do to our standing as human beings? Would it cause nihilism and despair as some (...) maintain or would it rather have a humanizing effect on our practices and policies, freeing us from the negative effects of belief in free will? In this chapter we consider the practical implications of free will skepticism and argue that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe. We argue that prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for example, would not be threatened. On treatment of criminals, we argue that although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, preventive detention and rehabilitation programs would still be justified. While we will touch on all these issues below, our focus will be primarily on this last issue. -/- We begin in section I by considering two different routes to free will skepticism. The first denies the causal efficacy of the types of willing required for free will and receives its contemporary impetus from pioneering work in neuroscience by Benjamin Libet, Daniel Wegner, and John-Dylan Haynes. The second, which is more common in the philosophical literature, does not deny the causal efficacy of the will but instead claims that whether this causal efficacy is deterministic or indeterministic, it does not achieve the level of control to count as free will by the standards of the historical debate. We argue that while there are compelling objections to the first route—e.g., Al Mele (2009), Eddy Nahmias (2002, 2011), and Neil Levy (2005)—the second route to free will skepticism remains intact. In section II we argue that free will skepticism allows for a workable morality, and, rather than negatively impacting our personal relationships and meaning in life, may well improve our well-being and our relationships to others since it would tend to eradicate an often destructive form of moral anger. In section III we argue that free will skepticism allows for adequate ways of responding to criminal behavior—in particular, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alternation of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justified and sufficient for good social policy. We present and defend our own preferred model for dealing with dangerous criminals, an incapacitation account built on the right to self-protection analogous to the justification for quarantine (see Pereboom 2001, 2013, 2014a; Caruso 2016a), and we respond to recent objections to it by Michael Corrado and John Lemos. (shrink)

We offer a critical assessment of the “exclusion argument” against free will, which may be summarized by the slogan: “My brain made me do it, therefore I couldn't have been free”. While the exclusion argument has received much attention in debates about mental causation (“could my mental states ever cause my actions?”), it is seldom discussed in relation to free will. However, the argument informally underlies many neuroscientific discussions of free will, especially the claim that advances in neuroscience seriously challenge (...) our belief in free will. We introduce two distinct versions of the argument, discuss several unsuccessful responses to it, and then present our preferred response. This involves showing that a key premise – the “exclusion principle” – is false under what we take to be the most natural account of causation in the context of agency: the difference-making account. We finally revisit the debate about neuroscience and free will. (shrink)

One of the projects Shaun Nichols takes up in Bound is to provide a folk psychological diagnosis of the problem of free will. As part of this diagnosis, Nichols suggests that the dispute between eliminativists and preservationists depends to some extent on assumptions about the way ‘free will’ refers. In light of this, he argues that we might have good reason to accept a discretionary view of free will. Here, I will focus on teasing out some of the more fine-grained (...) features of the discretionary view Nichols proposes. In so doing I will challenge the idea that there is a tenable strategy for consistently preserving two main features of the view: that eliminativists and preservationists can both speak truly, and that the apparent disagreement between them can be diffused by appealing to the role that different practical interests play in the context of utterance. I will conclude with some suggestive remarks on how the spirit of the discretionary view Nichols offers might still be preserved despite the challenge I raise, and why there are good reasons to pursue this kind of view further. (shrink)

In this paper I critically assess Derk Pereboom’s book, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life. In it, I resist Pereboom’s manipulation argument for incompatibilism and his indictment of desert-based accounts of moral responsibility.

This article is a critical discussion of Derk Pereboom’s “disappearing agent objection” to event-causal libertarianism in his Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life. This objection is an important plank in Pereboom’s argument for free will skepticism. It is intended to knock event-causal libertarianism, a leading pro-free-will view, out of contention. I explain why readers should not find the objection persuasive.

Resumen: El presente escrito tiene por objetivo discutir los alcances de la postura denominada escepticismo sobre el libre albedrío y evaluar si el debate compatibilismo - incompatibilismo supone una postura racionalista y/o necesitarista respecto a si un sujeto S actúa libremente. La discusión de los últimos diez años sobre este tópico permite establecer una distinción relevante entre que una acción sea libre, sin que ello descarte antecedentes causales de esa acción. En particular, sin que ello conduzca a un compromiso con (...) el denominado principio de posibilidades alternativas ni con el denominado argumento consecuencial. Se discutirá cómo el experimento desarrollado por Libet comprende el si una acción libre es equivalente a una acción consciente, considerando la relevancia de la libertad de veto y el rol del criterio de control de una acción. Una arista relevante en este análisis será la postura epifenomenalista. Finalmente, se evaluará la alternativa modal denominada imposibilismo y su rol en una postura escéptica respecto al libre albedrío.: This paper discusses the free will scepticism claim and discerns whether the compatibilism - incompatibilism debate presupposes a rationalistic/necessitarism stance about if a subject S acts freely. The last ten years makes it possible to establish a relevant distinction between an action being free, without discarding causal antecedents of that action. Specifically, this does not lead to a compromise with the so-called Principle of Alternative Possibilities or with the Consequence Argument. It will be discussed how the experiment developed by Libet comprises whether a free action is equivalent to a conscious action, considering the relevance of freedom of veto and the role of the control criterion of an action. A relevant edge in this analysis will be the epiphenomenalist stance. Finally, it will be evaluated the impossibilist modal alternative and its role in a sceptical position regarding free will. (shrink)

: What is at stake in the debate between those, such as Sam Harris and me, who contend that we would lack free will on the supposition that we are causally determined agents, and those that defend the claim that we might then retain free will, such as Daniel Dennett? I agree with Dennett that on the supposition of causal determination there would be robust ways in which we could shape, control, and cause our actions. But I deny that on (...) this supposition we would have the control in action required for us to basically deserve to be blamed, praised, punished or rewarded. In this response, I argue that this is the core issue that divides compatibilists and incompatiblists about free will and causal determination, and that the incompatibilist position is the right one to accept. Keywords: Sam Harris; Daniel Dennett; Free Will Skepticism; Compatibilism; Incompatibilism Risposta a Daniel Dennet sullo scetticismo circa il libero arbitrio Riassunto: Qual è la posta in gioco nel dibattito che vede contrapporsi chi – come Sam Harris e me – sostiene che non avremmo libertà di volere sulla scorta dell’ipotesi per cui siamo agenti causalmente determinati e chi, al contrario – come Daniel Dennett – difende l’idea che possa darsi un libero volere? Concordo con Dennett circa il fatto che, anche nell’ipotesi della determinazione causale, resterebbe lo spazio per sostenere che per vari e importanti aspetti saremmo comunque noi a modellare, controllare e causare le nostre azioni. E tuttavia rifiuto che su questa base avremmo il controllo in azioni richieste per meritare di essere biasimati, lodati, puniti o premiati. A mio avviso questo è l’elemento cardine che divide i compatibilisti dagli incompatibilisti all’interno del dibattito sul libero arbitro e sulla determinazione causale e ritengo che la posizione corretta sia quella incompatibista. Parole chiave: Sam Harris; Daniel Dennett; Scetticismo verso il libero arbitrio; Compatibilismo; Incompatibilismo. (shrink)

One of the most intriguing problems of philosophy and of mankind is the question whether humans have a free will. This question is heavily disputed between natural scientists and especially neuroscientists, who deny free will, and philosophers and other groups, who insist on free will. It is perplexing that both sides base their premise on the same precondition, namely naturalism. We will prove that naturalism automatically leads to physicalism, to materialism, and to reductionism. We will also prove here that it (...) is logically not possible to have a free will if naturalism is true. Free will definitely requires an additional substance, a non-material soul, which cannot be part of our universe. This must not be in contradiction to our current knowledge of natural sciences. (shrink)

What I want to do in this essay is examine a notorious argument put forward by Galen Strawson. He advocates what he describes as an a priori argument against the possibility of ultimate (moral) responsibility. There have been many attempts at answering Strawson, but whether they have been successful is debatable. I attempt to employ Henri Bergson's approach to the free will debate and assess whether what he says has any purchase in terms of criticism of Strawson's position. I conclude (...) that Bergson's views offer a serious alternative in debates about free will. (shrink)

In the third and final part of his A Theory of Determinism (TD) Ted Honderich addresses the fundamental question concerning “the consequences of determinism.” The critical question he aims to answer is what follows if determinism is true? This question is, of course, intimately bound up with the problem of free will and, in particular, with the question of whether or not the truth of determinism is compatible or incompatible with the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility. It is (...) Honderich’s aim to provide a solution to “the problem of the consequences of determinism” and a key element of this is his articulation and defence of an alternative response to the implications of determinism that collapses the familiar Compatibilist/Incompatibilist dichotomy. Honderich offers us a third way – the response of “Affirmation” (HFY 125-6). Although his account of Affirmation has application and relevance to issues and features beyond freedom and responsibility, my primary concern in this essay will be to examine Honderich’s theory of “Affirmation” as it concerns the free will problem. (shrink)

The immediate aim of this paper is to articulate the essential features of an alternative compatibilist position, one that is responsive to sources of resistance to the compatibilist program based on considerations of fate and luck. The approach taken relies on distinguishing carefully between issues of skepticism and pessimism as they arise in this context. A compatibilism that is properly responsive to concerns about fate and luck is committed to what I describe as free will pessimism, which is to be (...) distinguished from free will skepticism. Free will skepticism is the view that our vulnerability to conditions of fate and luck serve to discredit our view of ourselves as free and responsible agents. Free will pessimism rejects free will scepticism, since the basis of its pessimism rests with the assumption that we are free and responsible agents who are, nevertheless, subject to fate and luck in this aspect of our lives. According to free will pessimism, all the major parties and positions in the free will debate, including that of skepticism, are modes of evasion and distortion regarding our human predicament in respect of agency and moral life. (shrink)

In Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, Derk Pereboom proposes an optimistic model of life that follows on the rejection of both libertarian and compatibilist beliefs in free will, moral responsibility, and desert. I criticize his views, focusing on punishment. Pereboom responds to my earlier argument that hard determinism must seek to revise the practice of punishment in the direction of funishment, whereby the incarcerated are very generously compensated for the deprivations of incarceration. I claimed that funishment is a (...) practical reductio: of hard determinism. Pereboom replies, but I claim that he misses a key component of my reductio, the idea that moving in the direction of funishment will considerably weaken the deterrence of potential criminals so that hard determinism becomes self-defeating in practice. Beyond the challenge of funishment, I raise various other difficulties with Pereboom’s model, concerning its deeply unintuitive implications, the harm it does to the motivation of potential criminals, its weakness in resisting utilitarian-like dangers, and more. Our conclusions should lead to a re-evaluation of the compatibilist interpretation of moral life, as a richer, more plausible, and safer interpretation than hard determinism. This needs to be combined with a true hard determinist acknowledgment of the deep injustice and tragedy involved in punishment in light of the absence of libertarian free will. Such a complex view will come closer to doing justice to notions of justice, morality, and decency. (shrink)

Despite recent neuroscientific research purporting to reveal that free will is an illusion, this paper will argue that agency is an inescapable feature of rationality and thought. My aim will not be to address the methodology or interpretation of such research, which I will only mention in passing. Rather, I will examine a collection of basic concepts which are presupposed by thought, and propose that these concepts are interrelated in ways that makes them both basic and irreducibly complex. The collection (...) includes such concepts as belief, value, meaning, and truth. I will argue that free will belongs to this collection, and as such is also presupposed by thought. This proposal is opposed to a methodological tendency in analytic philosophy, to eliminate aspects of concepts which can’t be given a clear analysis, and to the wish of many empirical psychologists and cognitive scientists to reduce intentional/mental states to neurons and other mindless phenomena which they regard as more fundamental. Instead of offering a direct critique of either of these methodological attitudes, I will try to place the concept of freedom in its proper conceptual context, and make a positive case for its reality. (shrink)

Free will skepticism maintains that what we do, and the way we are, is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the basic desert sense—the sense that would make us truly deserving of praise and blame. In recent years, a number of contemporary philosophers have advanced and defended versions of free will skepticism, including Derk Pereboom (2001, 2014), Galen Strawson (2010), Neil Levy (2011), Bruce Waller (2011, (...) 2015), and myself (Caruso 2012, 2013, forthcoming). Critics, however, often complain that adopting such views would have dire consequences for ourselves, society, morality, meaning, and the law. They fear, for instance, that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert moral responsibility would leave us unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior, increase anti-social conduct, and undermine meaning in life. -/- In response, free will skeptics argue that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe (see, e.g., Pereboom 2001, 2014; Waller 2011, 2015; Caruso 2016, forthcoming). According to optimistic skeptics, prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for instance, would not be threatened. And although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, incapacitation and rehabilitation programs would still be justified (see Pereboom 2001, 2013, 2014; Levy 2012; Caruso 2016; Pereboom and Caruso, forthcoming). In this paper, I attempt to extend this general optimism about the practical implications of free will skepticism to the question of creativity. -/- In Section I, I spell out the question of creativity and explain why it’s relevant to the problem of free will. In Section II, I identify three different conceptions of creativity and explain the practical concerns critics have with free will skepticism. In Section III, I distinguish between three different conceptions of moral responsibility and argue that at least two of them are consistent with free will skepticism. I further contend that forward-looking accounts of moral responsibility, which are perfectly consistent with free will skepticism, can justify calling agents to account for immoral behavior as well as providing encouragement for creative activities since these are important for moral and creative formation and development. I conclude in Section IV by arguing that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert would not mean the death of creativity or our sense of achievement since important and realistic conceptions of both remain in place. (shrink)

There are powerful arguments for free will scepticism. However, it seems obvious that some of our actions are done of our own free will. It has been argued that we can solve this puzzle by giving ‘free’ a contextualist analysis. In everyday contexts we are often allowed to ignore sceptical arguments, and can truly say that we acted freely. In the more demanding context of philosophy, it is true that we never do anything freely. Our freedom is elusive; it escapes (...) us as soon as sceptical arguments are brought up. This kind of freedom contextualism has been criticized for conceding too much to the sceptic. Furthermore, it has problematic implications for moral responsibility. I develop an alternative contextualist analysis of ‘free’, according to which it is proper in certain contexts to ignore sceptical arguments even if they are brought up. Ignoring them is proper when doing so is necessary for engaging in an activity that is obviously justified. I argue that engaging in deliberation and inter-agential interaction with other people are obviously justified activities that require ignoring sceptical arguments. In these contexts, we do have a non-elusive kind of freedom. (shrink)

In his recent monumental book On What Matters, Derek Parfit argues for a hard determinist view that rejects free will-based moral responsibility and desert. This rejection of desert is necessary for his main aim in the book, the overall reconciliation of normative ethics. In Appendix E of his book, however, Parfit claims that it is possible to mete out fair punishment. Parfit’s position on punishment here seems to be inconsistent with his hard determinism. I argue that Parfit is mistaken here, (...) in a way that leads him to unjustified optimism about the possibility of fair penalization. Insofar as we take the free will problem seriously, we cannot reconcile a belief in the absence of desert with a belief in the fairness of penalization. (shrink)

A review of Bruce Waller's "Against Moral Responsibility.".

Spinoza’s moral philosophy is trending. This is the fourth book written in English in six years devoted to various aspects of it; that may not qualify as viral, but it is progress. The volume’s five essays cover moral responsibility, akrasia, moral realism, and Spinoza’s model of human nature: the free man. Hence its subtitle is misleading. There is nothing uniquely contemporary about the issues discussed, as is evident from the essays themselves. Also, the moral problems are not the type one (...) might expect. You will not find an analysis of Spinoza’s position on the moral status of non-human animals, for example. What you will find is an effort to bring Spinoza into contemporary debates. In their introduction... (shrink)

Shaun Nichols has recently argued that while the folk notion of free will is associated with error, a question still remains whether the concept of free will should be eliminated or preserved. He maintains that like other eliminativist arguments in philosophy, arguments that free will is an illusion seem to depend on substantive assumptions about reference. According to free will eliminativists, people have deeply mistaken beliefs about free will and this entails that free will does not exist. However, an alternative (...) reaction is that free will does exist, we just have some deeply mistaken beliefs about it. According to Nichols, all such debates boil down to whether or not the erroneous folk term in question successfully refers or not. Since Nichols adopts the view that reference is systematically ambiguous, he maintains that in some contexts it’s appropriate to take a restrictivist view about whether a term embedded in a false theory refers, while in other contexts it’s appropriate to take a liberal view about whether a token of the very same term refers. This, according to Nichols, affords the possibility of saying that the sentence “free will exists” is false in some contexts and true in others. In this paper I argue that even if we grant Nichols his pluralistic approach to reference, there is still good reason to prefer eliminativism to preservationism with regard to free will. My argument focuses on one important difference between the concept of “free will” and other theoretical terms embedded in false theories—i.e., the role that the phenomenology of free agency plays in reference fixing. (shrink)

This article presents a new conceptual view on the conscious will. This new concept approaches our will from the perspective of the requirements of our neural-muscular system and not from our anthropocentric perspective. This approach not only repositions the will at the core of behavior control, it also integrates the studies of Libet and Wegner, which seem to support the opposite. The will does not return as an instrument we use to steer, but rather as part of the way we (...) learn new automatic behavior and of how our neural system steers us. The new concept suggests that understanding of our will is more about understanding of our daily behavior than about the will itself. (shrink)

Doing without Free Will: Spinoza and Contemporary Moral Problems introduces Spinoza into the current discussion of the possibility of morality without free will, as it was he who first accomplished such a task. While his contemporaries reacted with shock to his determinist philosophy, today more people are ready to take seriously Spinoza's moral philosophy, which provides a foundation for our understanding of responsibility, akrasia, and moral values without the need for free will.

Christopher Franklin argues that the hard luck view, which I have recently defended, is misnamed: the arguments turn on absence of control and not on luck. He also argues that my objections to agent-causal libertarianism depend on a demand, for a contrastive explanation that guarantees the choice the agent makes, which would be question-begging in the dialectical context. In response to the first objection, I argue that though Franklin may be right that it is absence of control that matters to (...) freedom and not luck, we often are unable to discern whether an agent lacks sufficient control without asking whether the event is lucky for the agent; hence we cannot dispense with worries about luck in favor of concern about control. In response to the second worry, I argue that though Franklin is right in claiming that there is a perfectly good explanation regarding how the agent-causal power is exercised, it is not an adequate explanation given the context, because the same kind of explanation is available on event-causal theories. Agent-causal libertarians aim to avoid the luck objection which they acknowledge is powerful against event-causal libertarians; if it is true that they can offer nothing more than the latter kinds of theories in the way of control over actions, they fail in their aim. (shrink)

Shaun Nichols has recently argued that while the folk notion of free will is associated with error, a question still remains whether the concept of free will should be eliminated or preserved. He maintains that like other eliminativist arguments in philosophy, arguments that free will is an illusion seem to depend on substantive assumptions about reference. According to free will eliminativists, people have deeply mistaken beliefs about free will and this entails that free will does not exist. However, an alternative (...) reaction is that free will does exist, we just have some deeply mistaken beliefs about it. According to Nichols, all such debates boil down to whether or not the erroneous folk term in question successfully refers or not. Since Nichols adopts the view that reference is systematically ambiguous, he maintains that in some contexts it’s appropriate to take a restrictivist view about whether a term embedded in a false theory refers, while in other contexts it’s appropriate to take a liberal view about whether a token of the very same term refers. This, according to Nichols, affords the possibility of saying that the sentence “free will exists” is false in some contexts and true in others. In this paper I argue that even if we grant Nichols his pluralistic approach to reference, there is still good reason to prefer eliminativism to preservationism with regard to free will. My argument focuses on one important difference between the concept of “free will” and other theoretical terms embedded in false theories—i.e., the role that the phenomenology of free agency plays in reference fixing. (shrink)

This paper is about an asymmetry in the justification of praising and blaming behaviour which free will theorists should acknowledge even if they do not follow Wolf and Nelkin in holding that praise and blame have different control conditions. That is, even if praise and blame have the same control condition, we must have stronger reasons for believing that it is satisfied to treat someone as blameworthy than we require to treat someone as praiseworthy. Blaming behaviour which involves serious harm (...) can only be justified if the claim that the target of blame acted freely cannot be reasonably doubted. But harmless praise can be justified so long as the claim that the candidate for praise did not act freely can be reasonably doubted. Anyone who thinks a debate about whether someone acted freely is truth-conducive has to acknowledge that reasonable doubt is possible in both these cases. (shrink)

Derk Pereboom’s Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life provides the most lively and comprehensive defense of free will skepticism in the literature. It contains a reworked and expanded version of the view he first developed in Living without Free Will. Important objections to the early book are answered, some slight modifications are introduced, and the overall account is significantly embellished—for example, Pereboom proposes a new account of rational deliberation consistent with the belief that one’s actions are causally determined and (...) develops a forward-looking theory of moral responsibility con- sistent with free will skepticism. A significant contribution to the field, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life is destined to become a classic and is essential reading for anyone interested in free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

What would be the consequence of embracing skepticism about free will and/or desert-based moral responsibility? What if we came to disbelieve in moral responsibility? What would this mean for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and the law? What would it do to our standing as human beings? Would it cause nihilism and despair as some maintain? Or perhaps increase anti-social behavior as some recent studies have suggested (Vohs and Schooler 2008; Baumeister, Masicampo, and DeWall 2009)? Or would it rather (...) have a humanizing effect on our practices and policies, freeing us from the negative effects of what Bruce Waller calls the “moral responsibility system” (2014, p. 4)? These questions are of profound pragmatic importance and should be of interest independent of the metaphysical debate over free will. As public proclamations of skepticism continue to rise, and as the mass media continues to run headlines announcing free will and moral responsibility are illusions, we need to ask what effects this will have on the general public and what the responsibility is of professionals. (shrink)