Abstract

I begin this study with a review of the 18th-century figures, Leibniz, Wolff, Crusius, Hume and the pre-critical Kant concerning causation, free will and compatibilism. This review provides the background for an investigation into and a reconstruction of Kant's thesis of the compatibility of causal determinism and human freedom. I formulate Kant's argument for causal determinism and present his defense of that argument, devoting an extended discussion to the recent literature regarding its key premise, the Law of Universal Causation. Then I identify and analyze two senses of 'will', the legislative function of practical reason and the executive function of the power of choice, and four senses of 'freedom of the will', spontaneity, independence, autonomy and heteronomy. ;On the strength of these discussions, I attribute to Kant the views that causal determinism obtains and that human beings have free will. After considering and finding unsatisfactory the traditional readings of Kant's resolution of the apparent incompatibility of these two theses, I explicate Kant's often misunderstood distinction between things in themselves and appearances. On the basis of the features of this distinction together with my exposition of Kant's theory of freedom, I ascribe to Kant a token-token identity thesis regarding human actions and natural events, but a type-type irreducibility thesis regarding the sorts of descriptions applicable to human actions and natural events. The consequent compatibilist resolution, in addition to furnishing a way of reading problematic passages underlying standard incompatibilistic interpretations, yields a compatibilism which neither sacrifices the epistemology of the Critique of Pure Reason, nor leaves Kant with only an impoverished theory of human free will. ;Finally, I bring the results of this inquiry into the current debate over the problem of freedom and determinism. Specifically, for the purpose of providing Kantian critiques of current positions and current critiques of the Kantian position, I place Kant's view of token-token identity and type-type irreducibility within the context of contemporary philosophy of mind, aligning him with philosophers who share not only his compatibilism, but also, to a surprising degree, the particulars of his version of compatibilism.