The debate over free will has pittedlibertarian insistence on open alternativesagainst the compatibilist view that authenticcommitments can preserve free will in adetermined world. A second schism in the freewill debate sets rationalist belief in thecentrality of reason against nonrationalistswho regard reason as inessential or even animpediment to free will. By looking deeperinto what motivates each of these perspectivesit is possible to find common ground thataccommodates insights from all those competingviews. The resulting metacompatibilist view offree will bridges some of the differencesbetween (...) compatibilists and incompatibilists aswell as between rationalists andnonrationalists, and results in a free willtheory that is both more philosophicallyinclusive and more firmly connected tocontemporary research in psychology andbiology. (shrink)

In the elaboration of his soul-making theodicy, John Hick agrees with a controversial point made by compatibilists Antony Flew and John Mackie against the free will defense. Namely, Hick grants that God could have created humans such that they would be free to sin but would, in fact, never do so. In this paper, I identify three previously unrecognized problems that arise from his initial concession to, and ultimate rejection of, compatibilism. The first problem stems from the fact (...) that in two important texts, Hick rejects compatibilism for different and seemingly contradictory reasons. His various explanations of soul-making theodicy’s relationship to compatibilism are therefore in conflict. The second problem is closely related to the first. It turns out that when Hick’s concession to compatibilism is closely examined, soul-making theodicy appears unable to explain the existence of moral evil. The final problem consists in understanding why Hick would have made any concessions to compatibilism in the first place given that he ultimately opts for incompatibilist free will. After identifying these three problems, I develop a distinctive way in which to interpret Hick’s soul-making theodicy that solves the first two. This distinctive interpretation, moreover, has the added benefit of solving another, well-recognized problem that has long plagued Hick’s exposition: the problem of the hypnotist metaphor. Finally, I address the third problem by suggesting a rationale for Hick’s initial concession to the compatibilists. (shrink)

So-called “manipulation arguments” have played a significant role in recent debates between compatibilists and incompatibilists. Incompatibilists take such arguments to show that agents who lack ultimate control over their characters or actions are not free. Most compatibilists agree that manipulated agents are not free but think this is because certain of the agent’s psychological capacities have been compromised. Chandra Sekhar Sripada has conducted an interesting study in which he applies an array of statistical tools to subjects’ intuitive responses (...) to a manipulation case, and he insists that the results of his study provide compelling evidence that people favor compatibilist views of freedom. I argue that because the case that forms the centerpiece of his study is relevantly different from the sort of cases incompatibilists have developed and because he fails to build deterministic conditions into this case, Sripada’s data cannot help settle the disagreement between compatibilists and incompatibilists. (shrink)

Eddy Nahmias, with various collaborators, has used experimental data to argue for the claim that folk intuition is generally compatibilist. We try to undermine this claim in two ways. First, we argue that the various formulations of determinism he uses are not conceptually equivalent, jeopardizing the kinds of conclusions that can be drawn from the resulting data. Second, prompted by these conceptual worries we supplement the typical quantitative surveys that dominate the extant literature with short qualitative interviews. This, in turn, (...) guides us to make a minor modification to the quantitative survey that provides better access to the relevant folk intuitions. (shrink)

The claim that common sense regards free will and moral responsibility as compatible with determinism has played a central role in both analytic and experimental philosophy. In this paper, we show that evidence in favor of this “natural compatibilism” is undermined by the role that indeterministic metaphysical views play in how people construe deterministic scenarios. To demonstrate this, we re-examine two classic studies that have been used to support natural compatibilism. We find that although people give apparently compatibilist responses, this (...) is largely explained by the fact that people import an indeterministic metaphysics into deterministic scenarios when making judgments about freedom and responsibility. We conclude that judgments based on these scenarios are not reliable evidence for natural compatibilism. (shrink)

Compatibilists disagree over whether there are historical conditions on moral responsibility. Historicists claim there are, whilst structuralists deny this. Historicists motivate their position by claiming to avoid the counter-intuitive implications of structuralism. I do two things in this paper. First, I argue that historicism has just as counter-intuitive implications as structuralism when faced with thought experiments inspired by those found in the personal identity literature. Hence, historicism is not automatically preferable to structuralism. Second, I argue that structuralism is much (...) more plausible once we accept that personal identity is irrelevant to moral responsibility. This paves the way for a new structuralist account that makes clear what it takes to be the diachronic ownership condition (which is normally taken to be personal identity) and the locus of moral responsibility (which is normally taken to be ‘whole’ person), and helps to alleviate the intuitive unease many have with respect to structuralism. (shrink)

Some compatibilists are internalists. On their view, whether an agent is morally responsible for an action depends only on her psychological structure at that time. Other compatibilists are externalists. On their view, an agent’s history can make a difference as to whether or not she is morally responsible. In response to worries about manipulation, some internalists have claimed that compatibilism requires internalism. Recently, Alfred Mele has argued that this internalist response is untenable. The aim of this paper is (...) to vindicate the claim that compatibilism requires internalism, showing where Mele’s argument goes wrong along the way. (shrink)

The past ten years have seen multiple attempts to estimate the relation between the global personality trait extraversion and compatibilist free will judgments. Here, we contribute to that line of research by conducting a meta-analysis of 17 published and eight unpublished studies (N = 2,811) estimating that relation. Overall, the mean effect size was modest but remarkably robust across materials, locations, and labs (z =.19, 95% CI.15-.24, p <.001). No significant publication bias was detected in the studies (t (23) = (...) 1.88, p =.07). While there was no significant heterogeneity in the studies (Q (24) = 34.42, p =.08, I2 = 26.05), a moderator analysis suggested that the effect is strongest in cases that contain highly affective actions (e.g., murder) (z =.22, 95% CI.17-.28, p <.001) and weakest in cases that contain actions with low affect (e.g., asking whether free will is compatible with determinism) (z =.09, 95% CI -.05-.23, p =.22). The meta-analysis provides additional evidence that extraversion is related to compatibilist free will judgments and helps to identify opportunities to discover boundary conditions and more proximal causal mechanisms for the relation. The results of the meta-analysis also have implications for informed decision making. (shrink)

This chapter defends a history-sensitive compatibilist view of free action and moral responsibility against various criticisms by compatibilists. It constructs a new argument for incompatibilism that makes vivid a problem that luck poses for compatibilism: the zygote argument. It is argued that the zygote argument is much more powerful than more familiar arguments for incompatibilism, and that, even so, compatibilism may survive the attack.

One debate in the experimental exploration of everyday judgments about free will is whether most people are compatibilists or incompatibilists. Some recent research suggests that many people who have incompatibilist intuitions are making a mistake; as such, they do not have genuine incompatibilist intuitions. Another worry is whether most people appropriately understand determinism or confuse it with similar, but different, notions such as fatalism. In five studies we demonstrate people distinguish determinism from fatalism. While people overall make this (...) distinction, a large percentage of people still judge that a person who is fated to perform an action is both free and morally responsible for that action. Those who thought that one freely performs and is morally responsible for a fated action had much stronger compatibilist judgments. These data suggest that a substantial percentage of people have “free will no matter what” intuitions. As a result, even though many people may appear to be compatibilist.. (shrink)

The compatibility question lies at the center of the free will problem. Compatibilists think that determinism is compatible with moral responsibility and the concomitant notions, while incompatibilists think that it is not. The topic of this paper is a particular form of charge against compatibilism: that it is shallow. This is not the typical sort of argument against compatibilism: most of the debate has attempted to discredit compatibilism completely. The Argument From Shallowness maintains that the compatibilists do have (...) a case. However, this case is only partial, and shallow. This limited aim proves itself more powerful against compatibilists than previous all-or-nothing attempts. It connects to the valid instincts of compatibilists, making room for them, and hence is harder for compatibilists to ignore. (shrink)

Orthodox physicalism has a problem with mental causation. If physics is complete and mental events are not identical to physical events (as multiple-realisation arguments imply) it seems as though there is no causal work for the mental to do. This paper examines some recent attempts to overcome this problem by analysing causation in terms of counterfactuals or conditional probabilities. It is argued that these solutions cannot simultaneously capture the force of the completeness of physics and make room for mental causation.

This article critically examines Kadri Vihvelin's proposal that to have free will is to have the ability to make choices on the basis of reasons, and to have this ability is to have a bundle of dispositions that can be exercised in more than one way. It is argued that partisans of Frankfurt examples can still make a powerful case for the view that being able to do otherwise, even on Vihvelin's compatibilist explication of ‘could have done otherwise,’ is not (...) required for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Isenbergian particularism is the view that we make no appeal to general principles in criticism. Sibleyan generalism is the view that we do make appeal to general reasons in criticism. I argue that Isenbergian particularism and Sibleyan generalism are compatible one with another. I refer to their conjunction as "critical compatibilism" and argue that we ought to accept it over its rivals: strong particularism (the view that we make appeal neither to general principles nor to general reasons in criticism) and (...) strong generalism (the view that we make appeal both to general principles and to general reasons in criticism). (shrink)

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)

We “prepunish” a person if we punish her prior to the commission of her crime. This essay discusses our intuitions about the permissibility of prepunishment and the relationship between prepunishment and compatibilism about free will and determinism. It has recently been argued that compatibilism has particular trouble generating a principled objection to prepunishment. The failure to provide such an objection may be a problem for compatibilism if our moral intuitions strongly favor the prohibition of prepunishment. In defense of compatibilism, I (...) argue that while no objection to prepunishment is entailed by the central tenets of compatibilism, this does not necessarily show that compatibilism conflicts with our moral intuitions. And while there may be no distinctly compatibilist objection to prepunishment, there are common-sense objections to prepunishment of which the compatibilist can make use, at least under actual-world circumstances. And, while these common-sense objections might be inoperative in certain non-actual circumstances, it is not clear that support for prepunishment would be unintuitive in these circumstances. (shrink)

In this essay I shall begin by sketching a "Frankfurt-type example." I shall then lay out a disturbing challenge to the claim I have made above that these examples help us to make significant progress in the debates about the relationship between moral responsibility and causal determinism. I then will provide a reply to this challenge, and the reply will point toward a more refined formulation of the important contribution I believe Frankfurt has made to defending a certain sort of (...) compatibilism. (shrink)

In a recent issue of Faith and Philosophy, Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe seek to respond to the so-called “Problem of Heavenly Freedom,” the problem ofexplaining how the redeemed in heaven can be free yet incapable of sinning. In the course of offering their solution, they argue that compatibilism is inadequateas a solution because it (1) undermines the free will defense against the logical problem of evil, and (2) exacerbates the problem of evil by making God the “author of (...) sin.” In this paper, I respond to these charges and argue that compatibilism can offer a satisfactory explanation for the sinlessness of the redeemed in heaven. I also raise some problems for Pawl’s and Timpe’s incompatibilist solution. (shrink)

This article critically examines Kadri Vihvelin's proposal that to have free will is to have the ability to make choices on the basis of reasons, and to have this ability is to have a bundle of dispositions that can be exercised in more than one way. It is argued that partisans of Frankfurt examples can still make a powerful case for the view that being able to do otherwise, even on Vihvelin's compatibilist explication of ‘could have done otherwise,’ is not (...) required for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s Exclusion Problem holds that the nonreductive physicalist position is untenable. If the mental and the physical are distinct and both cause their effects, then it seems that their effects were caused twice over. I argue that the nonreductive physicalist should reject the Exclusion principle—a position called Causal Compatibilism. I appeal to our concepts of causal sufficiency and difference making in order to distinguish cases of mental causation, epiphenomenalism, and overdetermination. I appeal to James Woodward’s Interventionist framework to (...) individuate causal difference-makers. Mental causation involves two sufficient causes but only one difference-maker. Given that overdetermination involves two sufficient causes and two difference-makers, the Exclusion principle fails to distinguish between overdetermination and mental causation and so, it is false. I conclude that by rejecting the Exclusion principle, the nonreductive physicalist can get out of the Exclusion Problem. (shrink)

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 laws of nature will finally be is (at least partially) dependent upon how an agent decides. In this paper, I argue that the tenability of Humean compatibilism depends in part upon what theory of time is correct. More specifically, I argue that Humean compatibilism is untenable in a deterministic universe if eternalism is true. (shrink)

In this article the author makes the case for a hybrid sourcehood–leeway compatibilist account of free will. To do so, she draws upon Lehrer’s writing on free will, including his preference-based compatibilist account and Frankfurt-style cases from the perspective of the cognizant agent. The author explores what distinguishes kinds of intentional influence in manipulation cases and applies this distinction to a new perspectival variant of Frankfurt cases, those from the perspective of the counterfactual intervenor. She argues that it matters what (...) kind of intentional influence is at issue in the counterfactual intervention and, further, that our judgments about desert of praise are affected by occupying the POV of the counterfactual intervenor. The author concludes that such attention to perspectival variants of Frankfurt cases supports the view that compatibilist sourcehood accounts of moral responsibility require an additional compatibilist could-have-done-otherwise condition to capture a more robust sense of moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue for what I call “practical perspective compatibilism”. According to this thesis, an agent with practical freedom is sufficiently free to be a moral agent and morally responsible for his or her actions. The concept of practical freedom is originally found in the writings of Kant. Kant argued that we can view the world from either a theoretical or a practical perspective. The theoretical perspective is that of causal explanation and prediction, whereas the practical perspective is (...) that of choosing what to do and how to act. We see that we are free when we view things from a practical perspective. Determinism cannot threaten our practical freedom, since from a practical perspective we must choose what to do even if everything ultimately is determined. I argue that practical freedom is sufficient freedom-wise for moral agency and moral responsibility because morality is action-guiding. Right and wrong are concepts to be employed in deliberation and advice. This is a strong reason to regard factors irrelevant to deliberators and advisers as irrelevant when making judgements of right and wrong, and whether somebody had some other kind of freedom than practical freedom is irrelevant to deliberators and advisers. There are also prima facie reasons to regard moral responsibility as tied to rightness and wrongness, so that agents are blameworthy when they did wrong and praiseworthy when they did right. I also show that no classic arguments for incompatibilism about determinism and moral responsibility work when directed against practical perspective compatibilism. Finally, this thesis discusses metaethics in relation to compatibilism. Since competing theories imply the falsity of some respected metaethical positions, metaethical considerations lend further support to practical perspective compatibilism. (shrink)

This thesis presents a case for theological compatibilism, the view that divine foreknowledge and human freedom are compatible. My attempt to support theological compatibilism is based chiefly upon two arguments, which appear in the second and third chapters of this thesis. While these arguments differ, they are united in one respect: each argument relies heavily upon the doctrine of divine sustenance, which is the doctrine that God is causally responsible for the continual existence of the universe. In chapter II, I (...) employ the doctrine of divine sustenance as an assumption that, when conjoined with a modified characterization of the necessity of the past, forces a common argument against theological compatibilism to generate an absurd conclusion. This approach constitutes a negative argument for theological compatibilism: if the modifications to accidental necessity and the assumptions regarding sustenance are appropriate, then some principle underlying a traditional argument against theological compatibilism must be rejected in order to avoid absurdity. In chapter III, I use the notion of divine sustenance in a positive argument for the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. In that chapter, I contend that theological models that deny foreknowledge or divine sustenance lack the resources to explain the existence of human persons making free decisions. However, I argue that at least one theological model that includes foreknowledge, when conjoined with the doctrine of divine sustenance, provides adequate explanatory grounds for the existence of persons in their free decision-making. This implies that if human persons are free, their freedom is compatible with divine foreknowledge and divine sustenance, which also supports the theological compatibilist's position. Although my discussion results in some unresolved difficulties regarding divine freedom, which I discuss in the final chapter, the arguments in the second and third chapters nevertheless yield the conclusion that proper consideration of divine sustenance corroborates theological compatibilism. The theological compatibilist, then, may cogently employ the doctrine of divine sustenance to defend the coherency of his or her own position and to criticize the plausibility of opposing views. (shrink)

The paper offers the outlines of a response to the often-made suggestion that it is impossible to see how indeterminism could possibly provide us with anything that we might want in the way of freedom, anything that could really amount to control, as opposed merely to an openness in the flow of reality that would constitute the injection of chance, or randomness, into the unfolding of the processes which underlie our activity. It is suggested that the best first move for (...) the libertarian is to make a number of important concessions to the compatibilist. It should be conceded, in particular, that certain sorts of alternative possibilities are neither truly available to real, worldly agents nor required in order that those agents act freely; and it should be admitted also that it is the compatibilist who tends to give the most plausible sorts of analyses of many of the 'can' and 'could have' statements which seem to need to be assertible of those agents we regard as free. But these concessions do not bring compatibilism itself in their wake. The most promising version of libertarianism, it is argued, is based on the idea that agency itself (and not merely some special instances of it which we might designate with the honorific appellation 'free') is inconsistent with determinism. This version of libertarianism, it is claimed, can avoid the objection that indeterminism is as difficult to square with true agential control as determinism can sometimes seem to be. (shrink)

Recently there have been a number of attempts to show that free will is not a necessary condition for moral responsibility. It is argued that moral responsibility can be shown to be compatible with determinism even if free will is not. I assess the two most prominent arguments for this position and conclude that neither is sound. There is, however, an argument which does make a prima facie case for this new form of compatibilism. This argument, however, is not decisive. (...) I maintain that what can be learned from the argument’s short-comings is that the free will problem can only be resolved by appeal to moral theory. We need some method by which competing intuitions about the matter can be adjudicated. (shrink)

Michael S. Moore defends the ideas of free will and responsibility, especially in relation to criminal law, against several challenges from neuroscience. I agree with Moore that morality and the law presuppose a commonsense understanding of humans as rational agents, who make choices and act for reasons, and that to defend moral and legal responsibility, we must show that this commonsense understanding remains viable. Unlike Moore, however, I do not think that classical compatibilism, which is based on a conditional understanding (...) of the ability to do otherwise, provides a sufficiently robust account of free will, even when it is amended as Moore suggests. I argue that free will and responsibility can be defended more robustly by observing that, at the level of agency, there can be alternative possibilities and mental causation in a stronger sense than recognized by classical compatibilism, even if physical determinism is true. Moore’s arguments could thus be strengthened by embracing this compatibilist libertarian position. At the same time, I note that, although the idea of responsibility is robustly defensible, there are independent reasons for rejecting a retributivist approach to punishment. (shrink)

_Libertarian restrictivists hold that agents are rarely directly free. However, they seek to reconcile their views_ _with common intuitions by arguing that moral responsibility, or indirect freedom (depending on the version of_ _restrictivism) is much more common than direct freedom. I argue that restrictivists must give up either the_ _claim that agents are rarely free, or the claim that indirect freedom or responsibility is much more common_ _than direct freedom. Focusing on Kane’s version of restrictivism, I show that the view (...) holds people responsible_ _for actions when (merely) compatibilist conditions are met. Since this is unacceptable by libertarian lights,_ _they must either accept that compatibilist conditions on moral responsibility are sufficient, or make their_ _restrictivism more extreme than it already is._. (shrink)

“The Range of Leibnizian Compatibilism” Leibniz is generally regarded as a compatibilist, holding that an individual can be determined and also act freely. However, some Leibnizian texts suggest that perhaps Leibniz also had incompatibilist tendencies; in particular, Leibniz could not entirely give up the thesis that free individuals must have the ability to act in ways other than they actually do. I identify several varieties of deterministic threat to freedom and examine Leibniz's views with respect to them. Leibniz must find (...) room in his metaphysics for compatibilism not only with respect to human freedom, but also for divine freedom. There are asymmetries in his accounts of human and divine freedom that make it easier for Leibniz to accommodate compatibilism for God than for humans. (shrink)

The present paper probes the relation between the metaphysics of human freedom and the Rothbardian branch of Austrian economics. It transpires that Rothbard and his followers embrace metaphysical libertarianism, which holds that free will is incompatible with determinism and that the thesis of determinism is false as pertaining to human action. However, as we demonstrate, their economics with its reliance on value scales requires for its tenability compatibilist freedom. Moreover, we attempt to show that the notion of value scales (or (...) preferences) postulated by them implies that value scales are determinative of choices people make. We contend that it is for this reason that the said Austrians should jettison their metaphysical libertarianism. (shrink)

Sharon Ryan has recently argued that if one has compatibilist intuitions about free action, then one should reject the claim that agents cannot exercise direct voluntary control over coming to believe. In this paper I argue that the differences between beliefs and actions make the expectation of direct voluntary control over coming to believe unreasonable. So Ryan's theory of doxastic agency is untenable.

The claim that we have free will is so important to Kant that many of his commentators suggest that the entire structure and machinery of his Critique of Pure Reason is constructed solely for the purpose of sheltering free will from the devastating effects it suffers from empiricism. Indeed, Kant himself, in a famous line in the preface, tells us, “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith” [Bxxx]. The question of whether (...) people are free willed or determined in their actions is the central issue of the Third Antinomy, and perhaps arguably, the main issue of the whole Critique. (shrink)

Do we have free will and moral responsibility? Is free will compatible with determinism? Scott Sehon argues that we can make progress on these questions by focusing on an underlying issue: the nature of action explanation. When a person acts, or does something on purpose, we explain the behavior by citing the agent's reasons. The dominant view in philosophy of mind has been to construe such explanations as a species of causal explanation. Sehon proposes and defends a non-causal account of (...) action and agency, according to which reason explanation of human behavior is teleological rather than causal, before applying the teleological account of action to free will and responsibility. He argues that the non-causal compatibilist account works well in practice: it is in accord with our clear intuitions about cases, and it both explains and provides guidance in the cases where our intuitions are murkier. (shrink)

This article describes and rejects three standard views of reason in secular clinical ethics. The first, instrumental reason view, affirms that reason may be used to draw conceptual distinctions, map moral geography, and identify invalid forms of argumentation, but prohibits recommendations because reason cannot justify any content-full moral or metaphysical commitments. The second, public reason view, affirms instrumental reason, and claims ethicists may make recommendations grounded in the moral and metaphysical commitments of bioethical consensus. The third, comprehensive reason view, also (...) affirms instrumental reason, but encourages ethicists to make recommendations grounded in the moral and metaphysical commitments of their private worldviews. A compatibilist view of public reason is then defended, which holds that each standard view captures an important role for reason in different aspects of secular clinical ethics. The article ends by identifying three implications for enduring theoretical debates in clinical ethics. (shrink)

Recently there have been a number of attempts to show that free will is not a necessary condition for moral responsibility. It is argued that moral responsibility can be shown to be compatible with determinism even if free will is not. I assess the two most prominent arguments for this position and conclude that neither is sound. There is, however, an argument which does make a prima facie case for this new form of compatibilism. This argument, however, is not decisive. (...) I maintain that what can be learned from the argument’s short-comings is that the free will problem can only be resolved by appeal to moral theory. We need some method by which competing intuitions about the matter can be adjudicated. (shrink)

Although the free will debate of contemporary analytic philosophy lacks almost any kind of historical perspective, some scholars have pointed out a striking similarity between Stoic approaches to free will and Frankfurt’s well-known hierarchical theory. However, the scholarly agreement is only apparent because they disagree about the kind of similarity between the Stoic and the Frankfurtian theories. The main thesis of my paper is that so far, commentators have missed the crucial difference between the Stoics’ approach to free will and (...) Frankfurt’s, a difference that makes the former the superior approach. (shrink)

There are generally two controversial issues over Kant's solution to the free will problem. One is over whether he is a compatibilist or an incompatibilist and the other is over whether his solution is a success. In this paper, I will argue, regarding the first controversy, that “compatibilist” and “incompatibilist” are not the right terms to describe Kant for his unique views on freedom and determinism; but that of the two, incompatibilist is the more accurate description. Regarding the second controversy, (...) I will argue that Kant's solution to the free will problem is not a success because his effort in making the effects of freedom part of the field of appearance has made his solution incoherent and ambiguous. Despite this, I argue that Kant's attempt to solve the free will problem is groundbreaking because he at least has separated freedom from the dominance of determinism. (shrink)

Positions taken in the current debate over free will can be seen as responses to the following conditional: -/- If every action is caused solely by another event and a cause necessitates its effect, then there is no action to which there is an alternative (C). -/- The Libertarian, who believes that alternatives are a requirement of free will, responds by denying the right conjunct of C’s antecedent, maintaining that some actions are caused, either mediately or immediately, by events whose (...) effects could be different, even if they were to recur under identical circumstances. We have here a denial of Laplacian Determinism (LD), according to which the condition of the world at any instant makes only one state possible at any other instant. One prominent defender of this view, Robert Kane, holds that unless an agent’s neural mechanisms operated indeterministicly in forming her character she is not responsible for its manifestations. This requirement is entailed by the principle of “ultimate responsibility” (UR) according to which an act is freely willed only if (a) its agent is personally responsible for its performance in the sense of having caused it to occur by voluntarily doing something that was avoidable and (b) there is no sufficient condition for its performance for which its agent is not personally responsible. The orthodox Compatibilist, adducing counterexamples to UR, argues that even if C and its antecedent are true, free will is possible. Ned Markosian has provided the Compatibilist with yet another response to UR-based objections to her view, wedding it to the notion of agent causation: here the deterministic causing of an act by its agent is necessary and sufficient for its being “morally free.” I criticize this view as inconsistent with the agent causalist's belief that moral responsibility precludes causation of a choice by any power other than the maker thereof: he being its efficient cause. (shrink)

For a long time, Daniel Dennett, like many philosophers, has been trying to understand how to make room for free will in a world of ordered causes. A core feature of Dennett's view on these matters is that the world is deterministic and his approach to this project has been to show how determinism really is our friend rather than our enemy . His most recent foray into this arena is the ambitious book, Freedom Evolves, where he once again seeks (...) to make clear that determinism does not threaten any of the freedoms worth wanting' that is, free will is compatible or consistent with determinism and that free will is a capacity that has evolved just as we as a species have evolved. My primary concern in this essay will not be on evolutionary theory and its role in the evolving capacity for free will. Rather, I will focus my attention on two features of Dennett's recent book that seem most closely related to understanding the nature of freedom. The first feature is his view, and accompanying arguments, that a deterministic world is no obstacle to free will. Here, he is at pains to argue two theses crucial to his project: that determinism does not imply inevitability, and that determinism does not imply that there are no genuine options. The second feature is his discussion of incompatibilism { the view that free will is inconsistent with determinism - through what many acknowledge as the best incompatibilist account of free will going these days, that of Robert Kane . Here, Dennett pursues three theses: that Kane's account does not need the indeterminism that inspired itscreation, that Kane cannot harness indeterminism in any way distinguishable from determinism, and that Kane's requirement that decisions be made by agents 'here and now' roughly up to them at the time of choice is unmotivated at best and incoherent at worst. If Dennett were to score a knockout on these three points against Kane, it would indeed look bad for any incompatibilist relying on indeterminism. In discussing Dennett's treatment of Kane, I also will raise some critical questions for Kane. Independent of Dennett's worries, incompatibilism is not home free. (shrink)

Nelkin presents a simple and natural account of freedom and moral responsibility which responds to the great variety of challenges to the idea that we are free and responsible, before ultimately reaffirming our conception of ourselves as agents. Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility begins with a defense of the rational abilities view, according to which one is responsible for an action if and only if one acts with the ability to recognize and act for good reasons. The view (...) is compatibilist -- that is, on the view defended, responsibility is compatible with determinism -- and one of its striking features is a certain asymmetry: it requires the ability to do otherwise for responsibility when actions are praiseworthy, but not when they are blameworthy. In defending and elaborating the view, Nelkin questions long-held assumptions such as those concerning the relation between fairness and blame and the nature of so-called reactive attitudes such as resentment and forgiveness. Her argument not only fits with a metaphysical picture of causation -- agent-causation -- often assumed to be available only to incompatibilist accounts, but receives positive support from the intuitively appealing Ought Implies Can Principle, and establishes a new interpretation of freedom and moral responsibility that dovetails with a compelling account of our inescapable commitments as rational agents. (shrink)

It is argued here that the question of whether compatibilism is true is irrelevant to metaphysical questions about the nature of human decision‐making processes—for example, the question of whether or not humans have free will—except in a very trivial and metaphysically uninteresting way. In addition, it is argued that two other questions—namely, the conceptual‐analysis question of what free will is and the question that asks which kinds of freedom are required for moral responsibility—are also essentially irrelevant to metaphysical questions (...) about the nature of human beings. (shrink)

Central passages: Gellius Attic Nights 7.2; Cicero On Fate 8 11, 39–45; Plutarch On Stoic Self‐Contradictions 1055f –1056d. There are only three sources that attest undoubtedly that Chrysippus, in some way, dealt with the problem of causal determinism and moral responsibility. They report the so‐called cylinder analogy and a Chrysippan distinction of causes, and present the core of Chrysippus’ compatibilism. The discussion of these passages in this chapter shows that they fit in smoothly with Chrysippus’ other arguments, adding to the (...) ‘preserved’ concepts of contingency and intentional action finally that of moral responsibility—all fully in accord with his theory of fate and causal determinism. The chapter describes the specific problem of moral responsibility and determinism that Chrysippus and his opponents encountered, and shows how it differs from problems that are today subsumed under labels such as ‘the free‐will problem’. In particular, it emerges that the conception of moral responsibility of Chrysippus and his contemporaries is grounded not on any concept of freedom to do otherwise, but on a kind of ‘agent autonomy’. This conception of moral responsibility leads to different problems for its justification within a deterministic system than a theory of freedom to do otherwise. Based on their theories of causation, of mind, of decision making, and of character determination, the Stoics provide a sophisticated solution to these difficulties, showing among other things how it is possible that the rational and moral aspects of human agents can manifest themselves in human actions. Chrysippus’ claim that human actions are, though fated, not necessary, becomes comprehensible if one takes on his distinction between the modal concept of something's being necessary, on the one hand, and the physical power ‘Necessity’, on the other. In Chrysippus’ arguments for the compatibility of fate and moral responsibility, we encounter no word for freedom. The freedom that is identified as relevant to the arguments is freedom from external hindrances and from force. This freedom was referred to generally by negative phrases such as ‘not externally hindered’ or ‘not necessitated’, but not by a single term or noun phrase; and it was regarded as a necessary condition for something's depending on us and happening because of us. By ‘that which depends on us’ and ‘that which happens because of us’ Chrysippus seems to have understood simply the things of which we, qua rational beings, are the possible or actual cause. Such causal origination is brought about by the faculty of assent. The freedom from force and external hindrances is guaranteed by the utilization of this very mechanism through which we become the cause of our actions. For it is part of the nature of this human mental capacity of assent that it is neither forced nor fully externally determined. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Nietzsche is mostly known for denying moral responsibility on account of lack of libertarian free will, thus betraying an incompatibilist approach to moral responsibility. In this paper, however, I focus on a different, less familiar argument by Nietzsche, one that I interpret as a critique of a compatibilist conception of moral responsibility. The critique shows why punishment and our moral sanctions in general are morally unjustified by the compatibilist's own lights. In addition, I articulate what I call Nietzsche's explanatory challenge, (...) which challenges the compatibilist to explain the performance of an immoral action without appealing to conditions that would exempt or excuse the wrongdoer or otherwise relieve the wrongdoer from responsibility and would thus make punishing the wrongdoer morally unjustified. By drawing on the work of R. Jay Wallace, I reconstruct Nietzsche's anticompatibilist argument and defend it against four possible objections. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza offer a theory of moral responsibility which makes responsibility dependent upon the way in which moral agents view themselves. According to the theory, agents are responsible for their actions only if they think of themselves as apt candidates for praise and blame; if they come to believe they are not apt candidates for praise and blame, they are ipso facto not morally responsible. In what follows, I show that Fischer and Ravizza’s account of responsibility (...) for consequences is inconsistent with this subjective element of their theory, and that the subjective element may be retained only if they are willing to implausibly restrict their account of responsibility for consequences. I end by discussing the broad significance of the failure of the subjective element for their overall approach to moral responsibility. (shrink)

In Grundgesetze, Vol. II, §91, Frege argues that ‘it is applicability alone which elevates arithmetic from a game to the rank of a science’. Many view this as an in nuce statement of the indispensability argument later championed by Quine. Garavaso has questioned this attribution. I argue that even though Frege's applicability argument is not a version of ia, it facilitates acceptance of suitable formulations of ia. The prospects for making the empiricist ia compatible with a rationalist Fregean framework (...) appear thus much less dim than expected. Nonetheless, those arguing for such compatibility eventually face an hardly surmountable dilemma. (shrink)

Aquinas teaches that human acts are caused by God. Assuming that such causation entails theological determinism, philosophers with libertarian intuitions tend either to read around Aquinas’s teaching on the relation of divine causality and human action, or to reject that teaching altogether. Unfortunately, the arguments most often used by Aquinas and his contemporary defenders to show that his teaching is compatible with human freedom fail to address thelibertarian’s main concerns. In part one of this essay, I consider these arguments and (...) show why they fail. In part two, I attempt to address the libertarian’s concerns more directly by arguing that Aquinas should not be thought of as a theological determinist. I will show that theological determinism presupposes acertain logic or explanatory scheme, which Aquinas’s understanding of God, and in particular of divine simplicity, will not accommodate. Hence, the kinds ofinferences needed to make theological determinism intelligible do not apply in Aquinas’s case. (shrink)

Aquinas teaches that human acts are caused by God. Assuming that such causation entails theological determinism, philosophers with libertarian intuitions tend either to read around Aquinas’s teaching on the relation of divine causality and human action, or to reject that teaching altogether. Unfortunately, the arguments most often used by Aquinas and his contemporary defenders to show that his teaching is compatible with human freedom fail to address thelibertarian’s main concerns. In part one of this essay, I consider these arguments and (...) show why they fail. In part two, I attempt to address the libertarian’s concerns more directly by arguing that Aquinas should not be thought of as a theological determinist. I will show that theological determinism presupposes acertain logic or explanatory scheme, which Aquinas’s understanding of God, and in particular of divine simplicity, will not accommodate. Hence, the kinds ofinferences needed to make theological determinism intelligible do not apply in Aquinas’s case. (shrink)