Are we free to break the laws?

Theoria 47 (3):113-21 (1981)
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Abstract

I insist that I was able to raise my hand, and I acknowledge that a law would have been broken had I done so, but I deny that I am therefore able to break a law. To uphold my instance of soft determinism, I need not claim any incredible powers. To uphold the compatibilism that I actually believe, I need not claim that such powers are even possible. My incompatibilist opponent is a creature of fiction, but he has his prototypes in real life. He is modeled partly after Peter van Inwagen and partly on myself when I first worried about van Inwagen's argument against compatibilism.

Other Versions

reprint Lewis, David (1982) "Are We Free to Break the Laws?". In Watson, Gary, Free will, pp. : Oxford University Press (1982)

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Author's Profile

David K. Lewis
PhD: Harvard University; Last affiliation: Princeton University

Citations of this work

Free will.Timothy O'Connor & Christopher Evan Franklin - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Moral Responsibility.Matthew Talbert - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Against Counterfactual Miracles.Cian Dorr - 2016 - Philosophical Review 125 (2):241-286.

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References found in this work

Causation.David Lewis - 1973 - Journal of Philosophy 70 (17):556-567.
Causation.D. Lewis - 1986 - In David K. Lewis (ed.), Philosophical Papers Vol. II. Oxford University Press. pp. 159-213.
The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism.Peter Van Inwagen - 1975 - Philosophical Studies 27 (3):185 - 199.
Basic conditional logic.Brian F. Chellas - 1975 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 4 (2):133 - 153.

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