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Summary This category collects papers and books that discuss theories of free will that do not fit easily into the standard categories of libertarian, hard determinist, skeptical and (semi) compatibilist taxonomies. 
Key works Given the dominance of the major theories mentioned above, there are no key works in this category (many key works belong also to this category, but they are not key works qua members of this category).
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294 found
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  1. Manipulating Responsibility.Matt King - manuscript
    Manipulation arguments have become almost a cottage industry in the moral responsibility literature. These cases are used for a variety of purposes, familiarly to undermine some proffered set of conditions on responsibility, usually compatibilist conditions. The basic idea is to conceive of a case which intuitively includes responsibility-undermining manipulation but which meets the target account’s set of sufficient conditions on responsibility. The manipulation thereby serves as a counterexample to the target theory. More specifically, recent concern with manipulation cases has often (...)
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  2. Mind-Body problemets olösbarhet frigör viljan.Jan Scheffel - manuscript
    Mind-body problemet analyseras i ett reduktionistiskt perspektiv. Genom att kombinera emergensbegreppet med algoritmisk informationsteori visas i ett tankeexperiment att ett starkt epistemiskt emergent system kan konstrueras utifrån en relativt enkel, ickelinjär process. En jämförelse med hjärnans avsevärt mer komplexa neurala nätverk visar att även medvetandet kan karakteriseras som starkt epistemiskt emergent. Därmed är reduktionistisk förståelse av medvetandet inte möjlig; mind-body problemet har alltså inte en reduktionistisk lösning. Medvetandets ontologiskt emergenta karaktär kan därefter konstateras utifrån en kombinatorisk analys; det är därmed (...)
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  3. What if every subconscious brain module is really an independent consciousness?Robert Vermeulen - manuscript
    What if subconscious brain processes are actually independent consciousnesses, each resembling an independent advisor whispering advice to the main consciousness, or “I”? This multi-consciousness model would support free will, as our choices are informed by other consciousnesses, not the subconscious. Each independent consciousness allows a movable perspective through its rich representation of the world and constantly seeks harmony and resonance between its internal concepts, other consciousnesses, external reality, and the genetic worm hole to the evolutionary past.
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  4. Free Will Free Choice under Constraints.Chaohui Zhuang - manuscript
    The problem of Free Will is an important topic in religion, philosophy and neuroscience. We will introduce a new model of free will: free choice under constraints. Under outer and inner constraints, human still have the ability of free choice. Outer constrains include physical rules, environment and so on. Inner constrains include customs, desires, habits, preferences and so on. Given a specific context, human have the ability of deciding Yes/No on a specific preference. The free choices are caused, but not (...)
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  5. Free will, fundamental dualism, and the centrality of illusion.Saul Smilanksy - manuscript
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  6. Effects, Determinism, Neither Compatibilism nor Incompatibilism, Consciousness.Ted Honderich - forthcoming - Philosophical Explorations.
    Since the rise of the theory of determinism, philosophers have argued and declared that we are diminished by it. Bishop Bramhall against Thomas Hobbes in the 17th Century, Kant against Hume in the 18th, F. H. Bradley against John Stuart Mill in the 19th, Robert Kane and Robert Nozick against such as me in the 20th Century. There must be something in this relentless tradition. It cannot, it seems to me, be the falsehood of determinism. Is it, so to speak, (...)
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  7. The naturalistic case for free will.Christian List - forthcoming - In Stavros Ioannidis, Gal Vishne, Meir Hemmo & Orly Shenker (eds.), Levels of Reality in Science and Philosophy. Cham: Springer.
    The aim of this expository paper is to give an informal overview of a plausible naturalistic case for free will. I will describe what I take to be the main naturalistically motivated challenges for free will and respond to them by presenting an indispensability argument for free will. The argument supports the reality of free will as an emergent higher-level phenomenon. I will also explain why the resulting picture of free will does not conflict with the possibility that the fundamental (...)
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  8. On the Top‑Down Argument for the Ability to Do Otherwise.Leonhard Menges - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-14.
    The Top-Down Argument for the ability to do otherwise aims at stablishing that humans can do otherwise in the sense that is relevant for debates about free will. It consists of two premises: first, we always need to answer the question of whether some phenomenon (such as the ability to do otherwise) exists by consulting our best scientific theories of the domain at issue. Second, our best scientific theories of human action presuppose that humans can do otherwise. This paper argues (...)
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  9. When Do Robots Have Free Will? Exploring the Relationships between (Attributions of) Consciousness and Free Will.Eddy Nahmias, Corey Allen & Bradley Loveall - forthcoming - In Marcus Missal & Andrew Cameron Sims Feltz (eds.), Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience. Brill.
    While philosophers and scientists sometimes suggest (or take for granted) that consciousness is an essential condition for free will and moral responsibility, there is surprisingly little discussion of why consciousness (and what sorts of conscious experience) is important. We discuss some of the proposals that have been offered. We then discuss our studies using descriptions of humanoid robots to explore people’s attributions of free will and responsibility, of various kinds of conscious sensations and emotions, and of reasoning capacities, and examine (...)
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  10. The Reason View and "the Morality System".Paul Russell - forthcoming - In Michael Frauchiger & Markus Stepanians (eds.), Themes from Wolf. Berlin:
    This paper examines Susan Wolf's accout of "the Reason View" of moral responsibility as articulated and defended in 'Freedom Within Reason' (OUP 1990). The discussion turns on two questions about the Reason View: -/- (1) Does the Reason View aim to satisfy what Bernard Williams describes as “morality” and its (“peculiar”) conception of responsibility and blame? -/- (2) If it does, how successful is the Reason View judged in these terms? -/- It is argued that if the Reason View aims (...)
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  11. Compatibilism as Non-Ideal Theory: A Manifesto.Robert H. Wallace - forthcoming - In David Shoemaker, Santiago Amaya & Manuel Vargas (eds.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 8: Non-Ideal Agency and Responsibility. Oxford University Press.
    This paper articulates and responds to a challenge to contemporary compatibilist views of free will. Despite the popularity and appeal of compatibilist theories, many are left with lingering doubts about compatibilism. This paper explains this doubt in terms of the absurdity challenge: because a compatibilist accepts that they do not have causal access to all the actual sufficient causal sources of their own agency, the compatibilist can find their own agency absurd. By taking a cue from political philosophy, this paper (...)
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  12. Man as Trinity of Body, Spirit, and Soul.Marcoen J. T. F. Cabbolet - 2022 - In And now for something completely different: the Elementary Process Theory. Revised, updated and extended 2nd edition of the dissertation with almost the same title. Utrecht: Eburon Academic Publishers. pp. 319-370.
    Although there are several monistic and dualistic approaches to the mind-body problem on the basis of classical or quantum mechanics, thus far no consensus exists about a solution. Recently, the Elementary Process Theory (EPT) has been developed: this corresponds with a fundamentally new disciplinary matrix for the study of physical reality. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the mind-body problem within this newly developed disciplinary matrix. The main finding is that the idea of a duality of body (...)
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  13. Precis of Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice.Gregg D. Caruso - 2022 - Journal of Legal Philosophy 2 (46):120-125.
  14. Retributivism, Free Will Skepticism, and the Public Health-Quarantine Model: Replies to Kennedy, Walen, Corrado, Sifferd, Pereboom, and Shaw.Gregg D. Caruso - 2022 - Journal of Legal Philosophy 2 (46):161-216.
  15. Moral Responsibility Reconsidered.Gregg D. Caruso & Derk Pereboom - 2022 - Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
    This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of responsibility associated with attributability, answerability, and accountability-it distinguishes between basic and non-basic desert conceptions of moral responsibility and considers a (...)
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  16. Belarmino y las disputas «de auxiliis»: Acerca de un manuscrito inédito sobre la ciencia media.David Torrijos Castrillejo - 2022 - Estudios Eclesiásticos 97:181-215.
    To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of St. Robert Bellarmine, this article pays attention to his significant contribution to the De Auxiliis controversy. The main milestones of his intervention are considered: Bellarmine’s internal censure of the Concordia by Molina made for Aquaviva, as well as some details of his relationship with Pope Clement VIII. He composed several opuscules on these topics, most of which have already been published. Here we transcribe an unpublished manuscript from the last years of (...)
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  17. Predestinación y libertad. Escritos en torno a la controversia de auxiliis.Domingo Báñez & David Torrijos-Castrillejo - 2021 - Pamplona: EUNSA.
    Edition of the opuscules by D. Báñez on De auxiliis controversy. There is the critical edition of three manuscripts and the first Spanish annotated translation of the opuscules. The Latin text is disposed together with the translation. An introduction situates the opuscules in its systematic and historical context.
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  18. Regret and Necessity: Bernard Williams' Critique of the Free Will Debate.Kazuki Watanabe - 2021 - Pense University of Edinburgh Philosophy Society Journal 2:23-31.
    In this paper, I will present the responsibility-compatibilist argument against responsibility-incompatibilists (hard-determinists and libertarians), according to whom the existence of ‘free-will’, threatened by determinism, is necessary for moral responsibility. First, I will identify what responsibility-incompatibilism presupposes as necessary conditions of moral responsibility: the Strong Doctrine of Free-Will and the Voluntary Control Principle. Second, inspired by Williams, I will demonstrate that our real practice of responsibility does not necessarily presuppose these conditions. Finally, I will defend responsibility-compatibilism from an objection.
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  19. Free will as a higher‐level phenomenon?Alexander Gebharter - 2020 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 9 (3):177-187.
    List (2014, 2019) has recently argued for a particular view of free will as a higher-level phenomenon compatible with determinism. According to List, one could refute his account by showing that determinism at the physical level implies the impossibility of doing otherwise at the agential level. This paper takes up that challenge. Based on assumptions to which List’s approach is committed, I provide a simple probabilistic model that establishes the connection between physical determinism and the impossibility of doing otherwise at (...)
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  20. Précis zu: Agents' Abilities.Romy Jaster - 2020 - Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 74 (3):443-447.
  21. Free Will, Control, and the Possibility to do Otherwise from a Causal Modeler’s Perspective.Gerhard Schurz, Maria Sekatskaya & Alexander Gebharter - 2020 - Erkenntnis 87 (4):1889-1906.
    Strong notions of free will are closely connected to the possibility to do otherwise as well as to an agent’s ability to causally influence her environment via her decisions controlling her actions. In this paper we employ techniques from the causal modeling literature to investigate whether a notion of free will subscribing to one or both of these requirements is compatible with naturalistic views of the world such as non-reductive physicalism to the background of determinism and indeterminism. We argue that (...)
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  22. The Value of Perception.Keith Allen - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3):633-656.
    This paper develops a form of transcendental naïve realism. According to naïve realism, veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational. According to transcendental naïve realism, the naïve realist theory of perception is not just one theory of perception amongst others, to be established as an inference to the best explanation and assessed on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that weighs performance along a number of different dimensions: for instance, fidelity to appearances, simplicity, systematicity, fit with scientific theories, and so on. (...)
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  23. Time, Leeway, and the Laws of Nature: Why Humean Compatibilists Cannot Be Eternalists.Andrei A. Buckareff - 2019 - Metaphysica 20 (1):51-71.
    Humean compatibilism combines a Humean conception of laws of nature with a strong dual-ability condition for free will that requires that agents possess the ability to decide differently when they make a free decision. On the Humean view of laws of nature, laws of nature are taken to be contingent non-governing descriptions of significant regularities that obtain in the entire history of the universe. On Humean compatibilism, agents are taken to possess dual ability when making free decisions because what the (...)
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  24. Beyond free will: The embodied emergence of conscious agency.Michael F. Mascolo & Eeva Kallio - 2019 - Philosophical Psychology 32 (4):437-462.
    ABSTRACTIs it possible to reconcile the concept of conscious agency with the view that humans are biological creatures subject to material causality? The problem of conscious agency is complicated by the tendency to attribute autonomous powers of control to conscious processes. In this paper, we offer an embodied process model of conscious agency. We begin with the concept of embodied emergence – the idea that psychological processes are higher-order biological processes, albeit ones that exhibit emergent properties. Although consciousness, experience, and (...)
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  25. The libertarian predicament: a plea for action theory.Niels van Miltenburg & Dawa Ometto - 2019 - Synthese 196 (1):161-178.
    Libertarians in the contemporary free will debate find themselves under attack from two angles. They face the challenge of defending the necessity of indeterminism for freedom against the philosophical mainstream position of compatibilism. And second, they are increasingly forced to argue for the very possibility of indeterministic free will, in the face of the so-called luck objection. Many contemporary libertarians try to overcome the second problem by adopting the causal theory of action. We argue that this move at the same (...)
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  26. Blaming the Buddha: Buddhism and Moral Responsibility.Bobby Bingle - 2018 - Sophia 57 (2):295-311.
    This paper answers the question ‘what does Buddhism say about free will?’ I begin by investigating Charles Goodman’s influential answer, according to which Buddhists reject getting angry at wrongdoers because they believe that people are not morally responsible. Despite putative evidence to the contrary, Goodman’s interpretation of Buddhism is problematic on three counts: Buddhist texts do not actually support rejection of moral responsibility; Goodman’s argument has the unwanted upshot of undermining positive attitudes like compassion, which Buddhism unambiguously endorses; and his (...)
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  27. Just Deserts: Can we be held morally responsible for our actions? Yes, says Daniel Dennett. No, says Gregg Caruso.Gregg D. Caruso & Daniel C. Dennett - 2018 - Aeon 1 (Oct. 4):1-20.
    Can we be held morally responsible for our actions? Yes, says Daniel Dennett. No, says Gregg Caruso. Reader, you decide.
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  28. A Critique of Alfred R Mele’s Work on Autonomous Agents: From Self-Control to Autonomy: Oxford University Press, New York, 1995. [REVIEW]Pujarini Das - 2018 - Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 35 (3):603-617.
  29. Explaining Free Will.Michael Elstob - 2018 - Chesham, UK: C. M. Elstob. Printed and distributed by Amazon.
    A new approach using independence indeterminism, a novel naturalistic metaphysics for an open creative universe. -/- The problem of free will - what exactly it is, whether it is required for us to be morally responsible for our actions, and whether any natural being can possibly possess it - has remained unresolved for over 2000 years. -/- Now, starting from the very widely held belief that most change takes place in a way that is independent of how most other change (...)
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  30. Free Will & Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.Filip Grgić & Davor Pećnjak (eds.) - 2018 - Switzerland: Springer.
    This book consists of eleven new essays that provide new insights into classical and contemporary issues surrounding free will and human agency. They investigate topics such as the nature of practical knowledge and its role in intentional action; mental content and explanations of action; recent arguments for libertarianism; the situationist challenge to free will; freedom and a theory of narrative configuration; the moral responsibility of the psychopath; and free will and the indeterminism of quantum mechanics. Also tackling some historical precursors (...)
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  31. A deterministic model of the free will phenomenon.Mark Hadley - 2018 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 8 (1):1-19.
    The abstract concept of indeterministic free will is distinguished from the phenomenon of free will. Evidence for the abstract concept is examined and critically compared with various designs of automata. It is concluded that there is no evidence to support the abstract concept of indeterministic free will, it is inconceivable that a test could be constructed to distinguish an indeterministic agent from a complicated automaton. Testing the free will of an alien visitor is introduced to separate prejudices about who has (...)
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  32. Free will, science and causes of behavior.Sergei M. Levin - 2018 - Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 55 (2):153-164.
    Some scientists and philosophers, based on scientific discoveries and empirical evidence, argue that free will does not exist. Some authors defend the opposite opinion. The universality of their reasoning unites opponents. They seek to correlate scientific knowledge with the entire sum of human actions and, consequently justify the existence of freedom of will or its absence. In the paper, I propose to narrow the focus of the issue to the study of the degree of freedom of individual actions or certain (...)
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  33. Libertà del volere – dalla filosofia teoretica alla filosofia pratica. Un dialogo con Sandro Nannini.Christoph Lumer - 2018 - In Christoph Lumer & Giacomo Romano (eds.), Dalla filosofia dell’azione alla filosofia della mente. Riflessioni in onore di Sandro Nannini. Messina, Italy: corisco. pp. 53-84.
    The article, first, reconstructs and criticizes Sandro Nannini’s incompatibilistic concept of freedom of decision and, second, develops a compatibilistic alternative, a synthesis of a rationalistic and an autonomous approach. Nannini justifies his conception primarily from a naturalistic point of view: it reflects our sense of agency, so he says. This is criticized as empirically wrong and methodically mistaken: The theory of freedom of decision is, actually, normative; it is about good decisions; naturalism cannot establish normative claims. The alternative is based, (...)
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  34. Hard-Incompatibilist Existentialism: Neuroscience, Punishment, and Meaning in Life.Derk Pereboom & Gregg D. Caruso - 2018 - In Gregg D. Caruso & Owen Flanagan (eds.), Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience. Oxford University Press.
    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 (...)
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  35. Historical Moral Responsibility: Is The Infinite Regress Problem Fatal?Eric Christian Barnes - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (4):533-554.
    Some compatibilists have responded to the manipulation argument for incompatibilism by proposing an historical theory of moral responsibility which, according to one version, requires that agents be morally responsible for having their pro-attitudes if they are to be morally responsible for acting on them. This proposal, however, leads obviously to an infinite regress problem. I consider a proposal by Haji and Cuypers that addresses this problem and argue that it is unsatisfactory. I then go on to propose a new solution (...)
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  36. Free Will, Agent Causation, and “Disappearing Agents”.Randolph Clarke - 2017 - Noûs:76-96.
    A growing number of philosophers now hold that agent causation is required for agency, or free will, or moral responsibility. To clarify what is at issue, this paper begins with a distinction between agent causation that is ontologically fundamental and agent causation that is reducible to or realized in causation by events or states. It is widely accepted that agency presents us with the latter; the view in question claims a need for the former. The paper then examines a “disappearing (...)
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  37. Education and the Free Will Problem: A Spinozist Contribution.Johan Dahlbeck - 2017 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 51 (4):725-743.
    In this Spinozist defence of the educational promotion of students’ autonomy I argue for a deterministic position where freedom of will is deemed unrealistic in the metaphysical sense, but important in the sense that it is an undeniable psychological fact. The paper is structured in three parts. The first part investigates the concept of autonomy from different philosophical points of view, looking especially at how education and autonomy intersect. The second part focuses on explicating the philosophical position of causal determinism (...)
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  38. Aquinas on Free Will and Intellectual Determinism.Tobias Hoffmann & Cyrille Michon - 2017 - Philosophers' Imprint 17.
    From the early reception of Thomas Aquinas up to the present, many have interpreted his theory of liberum arbitrium to imply intellectual determinism: we do not control our choices, because we do not control the practical judgments that cause our choices. In this paper we argue instead that he rejects determinism in general and intellectual determinism in particular, which would effectively destroy liberum arbitrium as he conceives of it. We clarify that for Aquinas moral responsibility presupposes liberum arbitrium and thus (...)
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  39. Two Libertarian Theories: or Why Event-causal Libertarians Should Prefer My Daring Libertarian View to Robert Kane's View.Alfred R. Mele - 2017 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 80:49-68.
    Libertarianism about free will is the conjunction of two theses: the existence of free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism, and at least some human beings sometimes exercise free will (or act freely, for short). 1 Some libertarian views feature agent causation, others maintain that free actions are uncaused, and yet others – event-causal libertarian views – reject all views of these two kinds and appeal to indeterministic causation by events and states. 2 This article explores the relative (...)
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  40. An Early Theory of Contingency in Leibniz.Samuel Murray - 2017 - Studia Leibnitiana 47 (2):205-219.
    My discussion has four parts. In section 1, I reconstruct Leibniz’s early position on freedom and show how various problems motivated significant changes in Leibniz’s views over a short period of time. In section two, I outline a series of notes by Leibniz entitled “De Libertate a Necessitate in Eligendo,” where Leibniz develops a rudimentary theory of contingency that resembles the infinite analysis theory developed around 1686. In section three, I consider some reasons for why Leibniz dropped the “Eligendo” view. (...)
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  41. Three Vedāntas: Three Accounts of Character, Freedom and Responsibility.Shyam Ranganathan - 2017 - In The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 249-274.
    Indian thought is often said to be concerned with ethics (dharma) that leads to freedom (mokṣa). Either this means that we should treat freedom as the end that justifies the ethical life (Consequentialism), or that the ethical life is the procedure that causes freedom (Proceduralism). The history of Vedānta philosophy—philosophy of the latter part of the Vedas—largely endorses the latter option via the “moral transition argument” (MTA): a dialectic that takes us from teleology to proceduralism. It is motivated by a (...)
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  42. Free Will Pessimism.Paul Russell - 2017 - In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, Volume 4. New York, NY, USA: pp. 93-120..
    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 (...)
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  43. Reasons, Causes, and Chance-Incompatibilism.Markus E. Schlosser - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (1):335–347.
    Libertarianism appears to be incoherent, because free will appears to be incompatible with indeterminism. In support of this claim, van Inwagen offered an argument that is now known as the “rollback argument”. In a recent reply, Lara Buchak has argued that the underlying thought experiment fails to support the first of two key premises. On her view, this points to an unexplored alternative in the free will debate, which she calls “chance-incompatibilism”. I will argue that the rollback thought experiment does (...)
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  44. Routledge Companion to Free Will.Kevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith & Neil Levy (eds.) - 2017 - New York: Routledge.
    Questions concerning free will are intertwined with issues in almost every area of philosophy, from metaphysics to philosophy of mind to moral philosophy, and are also informed by work in different areas of science. Free will is also a perennial concern of serious thinkers in theology and in non-western traditions. Because free will can be approached from so many different perspectives and has implications for so many debates, a comprehensive survey needs to encompass an enormous range of approaches. This book (...)
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  45. Joseph Albo on Free Choice: Exegetical Innovation in Medieval Jewish Philosophy.Shira Weiss - 2017 - New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    Scripture is replete with narratives that challenge a variety of philosophical concepts; including morality, divine benevolence, and human freedom. Free choice, a significant and much debated concept in medieval philosophy, continues to be of great interest to contemporary philosophers and others. However, scholarship in biblical studies has primarily focused on compositional history, philology, and literary analysis, not on the examination of the philosophy implied in biblical texts. In this book, Shira Weiss focuses on the Hebrew Bible's encounter with the philosophical (...)
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  46. Chinese Perspectives on Free Will.Christian Helmut Wenzel & Marchal Kai - 2017 - In Kevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith & Neil Levy (eds.), Routledge Companion to Free Will. Routledge. pp. 374-388.
    The problem of free will as it is know in Western philosophical traditions is hardly known in China. Considering how central the problem is in the West, this is a remarkable fact. We try to explain this, and we offer insights into discussions within Chinese traditions that we think are related, not historically but regarding the issues discussed. Thus we introduce four central Chinese concepts, namely: (1) xīn 心 (heart, heart-mind), (2) xìng 性 (human nature, characteristic tendencies, inborn capacity), (3) (...)
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  47. Free will and mental quausation.Sara Bernstein & Jessica M. Wilson - 2016 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (2):310-331.
    Free will, if such there be, involves free choosing: the ability to mentally choose an outcome, where the outcome is 'free' in being, in some substantive sense, up to the agent of the choice. As such, it is clear that the questions of how to understand free will and mental causation are connected, for events of seemingly free choosing are mental events that appear to be efficacious vis-a-vis other mental events as well as physical events. Nonetheless, the free will and (...)
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  48. Freedom and Thought.Michael Bourke - 2016 - Modern Horizons:1-22.
    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 (...)
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  49. Descartes on Free Will and Moral Possibility.Brian Embry - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research:380-398.
    An early modern scholastic conception of moral possibility helps make sense of Descartes's own perplexing use of that concept and solves the exegetical puzzles surrounding Descartes's conflicting remarks about free will.
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  50. Free will and the construction of options.Chandra Sripada - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (11):2913-2933.
    What are the distinctive psychological features that explain why humans are free, but many other creatures, such as simple animals, are not? It is natural to think that the answer has something to do with unique human capacities for decision-making. Philosophical discussions of how decision-making works, however, are tellingly incomplete. In particular, these discussions invariably presuppose an agent who has a mentally represented set of options already fully in hand. The emphasis is largely on the selective processes that identify the (...)
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