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Epistemic issues in the free will debate: can we know when we are free?

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Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the views of Robert Kane on the one hand and John Fischer and Mark Ravizza on the other both lead to the following conclusion: we should have very low confidence in our ability to judge that someone is acting freely or in a way for which they can be held responsible. This in turn means, I claim, that these views, in practice, collapse into a sort of hard incompatibilist position, or the position of a free will denier. That would at least be an unintended consequence, and it might be regarded as a virtual reductio. Versions of the objection could likely be made against a number of other accounts of free will, but I will limit my focus to Kane and Fischer. Along the way, by way of response to some possible objections to my argument, I make some comments about epistemic closure principles.

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Notes

  1. Prominent examples of views in this direction include Pereboom (2006), Strawson (2010), Smilansky (2000), Honderich (1988), Double (1991).

  2. A similar point about Kane’s view is argued more briefly in Vargas (2007, 2009).

  3. This suggestion, on behalf of Kane, was made by an anonymous referee for this Journal.

  4. This reading was suggested by an anonymous referee for this Journal.

  5. As did Joseph Keim Campbell and Peter Graham to an earlier version of this paper.

  6. For some classic loci of this sort of point see Nozick (1981), Dretske (1970, 1971, 2003). Also very useful are Brueckner (1985, 1998) and Luper (2011).

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Acknowledgments

I presented an earlier version of this paper at the Bowdoin Conference on Free Will and Moral Responsibility in October 2011. I am indebted to comments from all the participants, but especially from Peter Graham, Joseph Keim Campbell, Manuel Vargas, and Michael Smith.

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  1. Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, USA

    Scott Sehon

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Sehon, S. Epistemic issues in the free will debate: can we know when we are free?. Philos Stud 166, 363–380 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0044-z

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