A familiar claim in the free will debate is that the freedom in dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists is limited to the type required for an agent to deserve blame for moral wrongdoing, and to deserve it in a sense that is basic. In this paper, I seek a rationale for this claim, offer an explanation of basic desert, and then argue that the free will debate can persist even when divorced from basic desert.

Some thinkers argue that our best scientific theories about the world prove that free will is an illusion. Others disagree. The concept of free will is profoundly important to our self-understanding, our interpersonal relationships, and our moral and legal practices. If it turns out that no one is ever free and morally responsible, what would that mean for society, morality, meaning, and the law? Just Deserts brings together two philosophers – Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg (...) D. Caruso – to debate their respective views on free will, moral responsibility, and legal punishment. In three extended conversations, Dennett and Caruso present their arguments for and against the existence of free will and debate their implications. Dennett argues that the kind of free will required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism – for him, self-control is key; we are not responsible for becoming responsible, but are responsible for staying responsible, for keeping would-be puppeteers at bay. Caruso takes the opposite view, arguing that who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward. These two leading thinkers introduce the concepts central to the debate about free will and moral responsibility by way of an entertaining, rigorous and sometimes heated philosophical dialogue. What emerges is a clear account of the latest thinking on free will, and what is at stake for our moral and legal practices. (shrink)

Contrary to what I have contended, Michael McKenna argues that basic desert does not have an essential role in the free will debate. On his alternative construal, what is central is whether our practice of holding morally responsible, and blaming in particular, can be justified, and what notion of free will is required for that justification. Notions distinct from basic desert can ground our practice, and so the free will debate is independent (...) of basic desert. Here I argue that the one best candidate for such a notion is basic fairness, but in the area of moral responsibility there is no substantial difference between basic desert and basic fairness. (shrink)

In this paper I tie together the reasoning used in the Consequence Argument with the intuitions that drive Frankfurt cases in a way that illuminates some of the underlying differences between compatibilists and incompatibilists. I begin by explaining the ‘basic mechanism’ at work in Frankfurt cases: the existence of sufficient conditions for an outcome that do not actually bring about that outcome. I suggest that other potential threats to free will, such as God’s foreknowledge, can be understood in (...) terms of this basic mechanism. I then turn to the Consequence argument, which concludes that determinism precludes free will, and I adopt the structure of this argument to create parallel ‘progeny’ arguments using the basic mechanism of Frankfurt cases. By thus forcing the Consequence argument and Frankfurt cases into such close proximity, we can see more clearly some of the crucial issues that separate incompatibilists and compatibilists. Doing so will illustrate that for determinism to be a threat to free will requires a particular conception of the laws of nature, one that is more specific and robust than suggested by the Consequence argument alone. I conclude by showing how these questions about laws of nature lead the free will debate towards the mind-body debate and questions about reductionism and supervenience. (shrink)

In my “The Free Will Debate and Basic Desert,” I argued that against a familiar claim in the free will debate: that the freedom in dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists is limited to the type required for an agent to deserve blame for moral wrongdoing, and to deserve it in a sense that is basic. In that earlier paper, I sought a rationale for this claim, offered an explanation of basic desert, and then argued (...) that the free will debate can persist even when divorced from basic desert. Dana Nelkin and Derk Pereboom then argued against my thesis. In this paper, I reply to their thoughtful criticisms. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

A number of scientists have recently argued that neuroscience provides strong evidence against the requirements of the folk notion of free will. In one such line of argumentation, it is claimed that choice is required for free will, and neuroscience is showing that people do not make choices. In this article, we argue that this no-choice line of argumentation relies on a specific conception of choice. We then provide evidence that people do not share the conception (...) of choice required of the argument, nor do people hold that free will requires the conception of choice on which the argument relies. This leaves the proponents of the no-choice argument with a dilemma: Either they adopt a conception of choice that is not required of the folk concept of free will and thus they cease to be talking about the folk concept of free will, or they adopt a conception of choice that aligns with the folk concept of choice and thus the no-choice argument fails. (shrink)

A satisfactory construal of the subject matter of free will debates must allow for disagreements along two axes. First, it must allow for the possibility of higher order disagreements, or disagreements about what concepts, phenomena, or practices an account of free will is supposed to capture or explain. Second, it must allow for the fact of variation in the extent to which theories are bound by antecedent pre-philosophical thought, talk, and practices. A promising way of accommodating (...) these two thoughts is to treat free will in broadly functionalist terms. On the account proposed here, free will is a power that makes sense of everyday responsibility practices. This construal is not widely shared, but it allows for the possibility that we might have false beliefs about the nature of free will, while still making sense of central philosophical debates about free will. (shrink)

Debate on free will with Christian List, Gregg Caruso, and Cory Clark. The exchange is focused on Christian List's book Why Free Will Is Real.

The eighteenth century was a time of brilliant philosophical innovation in Britain. In Of Liberty and Necessity James A. Harris presents the first comprehensive account of the period's discussion of what remains a central problem of philosophy, the question of the freedom of the will. He offers new interpretations of contributions to the free will debate made by canonical figures such as Locke, Hume, Edwards, and Reid, and also discusses in detail the arguments of some less (...) familiar writers. Harris puts the eighteenth-century debate about the will and its freedom in the context of the period's concern with applying what Hume calls the "experimental method of reasoning" to the human mind. His book will be of substantial interest to historians of philosophy and anyone concerned with the free will problem. (shrink)

What is free will? Can it exist in a determined universe? How can we determine who, if anyone, possesses it? Philosophers have been debating these questions for millennia. In recent decades neuroscientists have joined the fray with questions of their own. Which neural mechanisms could enable conscious control of action? What are intentional actions? Do contemporary developments in neuroscience rule out free will or, instead, illuminate how it works? Over the past few years, neuroscientists and philosophers (...) have increasingly come to understand that both fields can make substantive contributions to the free-will debate, so working together is the best path forward to understanding whether, when, and how our choices might be free. We therefore asked leading philosophers and neuroscientists which questions related to free will they would most like the other field to answer. Those experts then voted on the 15 most important questions for each field to answer. This book is a collection of the answers to those questions along with follow-up questions from world experts in the neuroscience and philosophy of free will. These varied perspectives will fascinate, illuminate, and stimulate students from both fields along with anyone who wants to be brought up to date on these profound issues. (shrink)

Most of the free will debate operates under the assumption that classic determinism and indeterminism are the only metaphysical options available. Through an analysis of Dennett’s view of free will as gradually evolving this article attempts to point to emergentist, interactivist and temporal metaphysical options, which have been left largely unexplored by contemporary theorists. Whereas, Dennett himself holds that “the kind of free will worth wanting” is compatible with classic determinism, I propose that (...) his models of determinism fit poorly with his evolutionary theory and naturalist commitments. In particular, his so-called “intuition pumps” seem to rely on the assumption that reality will have a compositional bottom layer where appearance and reality coincide. I argue that instead of positing this and other “unexplained explainers” we should allow for the heretical possibility that there might not be any absolute bottom, smallest substances or universal laws, but relational interactions all the way down. Through the details of Dennett’s own account of the importance of horizontal transmission in evolution and the causal efficacy of epistemically limited but complex layered “selves,” it is argued that our autonomy is linked to the ability to affect reality by controlling appearances. (shrink)

Beauchamp and Childress have performed a great service by strengthening the principle of respect for the patient's autonomy against the paternalism that dominated medicine until at least the 1970s. Nevertheless, we think that the concept of autonomy should be elaborated further. We suggest such an elaboration built on recent developments within the neurosciences and the free will debate. The reason for this suggestion is at least twofold: First, Beauchamp and Childress neglect some important elements of autonomy. Second, (...) neuroscience itself needs a conceptual apparatus to deal with the neural basis of autonomy for diagnostic purposes. This desideratum is actually increasing because modern therapy options can considerably influence the neural basis of autonomy itself.Sabine MNeuroScienceAndNorms: Ethical and Legal Aspects of Norms in Neuroimaging at Bonn University Hospital, Germany. Her main research interests are in neuroethics. She is coauthor of three German books about neuroethics and bioethics.Henrik Walter, M.D., Ph.D., is Full Professor of Medical Psychology at the University of Bonn, Germany, and vice-director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University Clinic of Bonn. He is author of Neurophilosophy of Free Will and editor of the book From Neuroethics to Neurolaw?. His research fields are biological psychiatry, cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, neurophilosophy, and neuroethics. (shrink)

This article contends that recent attempts to construct Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) are irrelevant to the debate over free will. The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) states that moral responsibility requires indeterminism, or multiple possible futures. Frankfurt's original case purported to demonstrate PAP false by showing an agent can be blameworthy despite not having the ability to choose otherwise; however he admits the agent can come to that choice freely or by force, and thus has alternate possibilities. Neo-FSCs (...) attempt to show that alternate possibilities are irrelevant to explaining an agent's moral responsibility, but a successful Neo-FSC would be consistent with the truth of PAP, and thus is silent on the big metaphysical issues at the center of the free will debate. (shrink)

This collection provides a selection of the most essential contributions to the contemporary free will debate. Among the issues discussed and debated are skepticism and naturalism, alternate possibilities, the consequence argument, libertarian metaphysics, illusionism and revisionism, optimism and pessimism, neuroscience and free will, and experimental philosophy.

This book is a collection of new essays on the libertarian position on free will and related issues that focuses specifically on the views of philosopher Robert Kane. Written by a distinguished group of philosophers, the essays range from various areas of philosophy including metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of mind.

Are people free and morally responsible? Or are their actions determined, i.e. inevitable outcomes of the past conditions and the laws of nature? These seem fairly straightforward questions, but it is important to distinguish 3 different dimensions of the free will debate: a descriptive project, a substantive project, and a prescriptive project. In this chapter, I’ll consider how psychology can contribute to each project in turn. First, I should say a bit more about the projects.

Since philosophers generally agree that free will is understood partly by the relation it holds to moral responsibility, achieving a better understanding of free will requires that we have a clear idea of the sort of moral responsibility to which free will is thought to be connected. I argue that examining the substantive differences that exist between compatibilists and incompatibilists reveals a specific notion of moral responsibility that is best suited for philosophical debates regarding (...) free will. Upon examination, it becomes apparent that the primary substantive disputes between compatibilists and incompatibilists—as well as between libertarians and skeptics—have to do with the issue of whether retributivist reward or punishment is ever appropriate for certain kinds of agents. Drawing from this, I suggest that participants in the free will debate adopt a particular understanding of moral responsibility that can ground the propriety of retributivist justice. (shrink)

This thesis explores the merits and limits of John Hawthorne’s contextualist analysis of free will. First, I argue that contextualism does better at capturing the ordinary understanding of ‘free will’ than competing views because it best accounts for the way in which our willingness to attribute free will ordinarily varies with context. Then I consider whether this is enough to conclude that the contextualist has won the free will debate. I argue (...) that this would be hasty, because the contextualist, unlike her competitors, cannot tell us whether any particular agent is definitively free, and therefore cannot inform any practices that are premised on whether a particular agent is morally responsible. As such, I argue that whether the contextualist “wins the free will debate” depends on whether it is more important to capture the ordinary understanding of ‘free will’ or more important to inform our practices of ascribing moral responsibility. (shrink)

Consider this scenario: A terrorist just bombed the subway in London, which resulted in the casualties of numerous innocent people. His act can be considered well-planned for he fully knew what consequences his act would bring. If determinism is true, is it possible that the terrorist in question bombed the subway out of free will? An incompatibilist would respond to this question with a resounding “no”. A compatibilist, on the other hand, would answer yes, as long as the (...) terrorist possessed certain psychological characteristics, causal histories, etc. This underlies the basis of disputes between the compatibilists and incompatibilists, who appear to hold opposite views on whether it is possible for someone to act out of free will if determinism is true. However, as I shall discuss in Chapter One, this disagreement is partly a verbal one that stems from the diverse meanings of the term “free will”. This thesis aims to transcend the verbal disagreement and explore where the deeper, more substantial disagreements may lie between compatibilists and incompatibilists. One possible sphere where substantial disagreements between compatibilists and incompatibilists may lie is the content of the ordinary concept of free will, or that of the strongest sense of control condition necessary for securing the ordinary concept of moral responsibility. On this view, the metaphysical question and the conceptual question about free will are inseparable; in order to find out the metaphysical satisfaction conditions of free will, one must first identify the conceptual satisfaction conditions of free will. Further, the latter is reflected in everyday free will/ moral responsibility ascriptions about hypothetical or real scenarios. In Chapter Two, I analyze how the recent experimental philosophy movement bears on this issue. By examining the findings of some current experimental philosophy studies, I argue that neither compatibilism nor incompatibilism can sufficiently capture the ordinary concept of free will or moral responsibility. In the light of my discussions in Chapter Two, I explain in Chapter Three why each of the various traditional accounts of free will cannot independently provide an adequate “package deal” of solutions for the problem of free will. Near the end of the chapter, I propose a pluralistic, agnostic account of free will as an alternative solution. Despite its great instrumental value, experimental philosophy is not widely recognized as a philosophically significant methodology. Hence, Chapter Four is devoted to discussing the actual and potential values of experimental philosophy in the light of its contribution to the free will debate. I conclude that the encounter between the free will debate and the experimental philosophy movement is a fruitful one; the former proves the value of the latter by receiving helpful insights from it. (shrink)

Anscombe’s “Causality and Determination” is often cited in the contemporary free will debate, but rarely discussed in much detail. It’s main contribution, it is thought, is the defense of an alternative to deterministic causation, thus clearing the way for an incompatibilist analysis of free actions in terms of probabilistic causation. However, in this paper I will show that the contemporary probabilistic analysis of free action actually stands in direct conflict with Anscombe’s lecture. Instead, I (...) will argue, its true value for incompatibilist accounts of free will lies in Anscombe’s thought that there are various fundamentally different kinds of causality. This variety, I argue, allows for a revised conception indeterminism and an understanding of free will as the manifestation of a particular sort of agent-causal power. (shrink)

In this paper I consider two kinds of approaches that philosophers have used to defend free will against psychologist Daniel Wegner’s claim that neuroscience research indicates that consciousness does not have any causal power over our actions. On the one hand, Eddy Nahmias relies heavily on empirical arguments to challenge Wegner’s conclusions. In contrast, Daniel Dennett employs a conceptual argument based on the idea that Wegner is operating under a mistaken notion of self. After ultimately rejecting the defenses (...) of free will given by both Nahmias and Dennett, I conclude by assessing whether either of the types of approaches taken by these philosophers might eventually yield a viable defense of free will in light of the challenges posed by contemporary neuroscience. (shrink)

It is a common assumption among both philosophers and psychologists that having accurate beliefs about ourselves and the world around us is always the epistemic gold standard. However, there is gathering data from social psychology that suggest that illusions are quite prevalent in our everyday thinking and that some of these illusions may even be conducive to our overall well being. In this paper, we explore the relevance of these so-called 'positive illusions' to the free will debate. (...) More specifically, we use the literature on positive illusions as a springboard for examining Saul Smilansky 's so-called 'free will illusionism '. At the end of the day, we will use data from both social and developmental psychology concerning perceived control to try to show that his view is on shaky empirical footing. (shrink)

If my ability to react freely is constrained by forces beyond my control, am I still morally responsible for the things I do? The question of whether, how and to what extent we are responsible for our own actions has always been central to debates in philosophy and theology, and has been the subject of much recent research in cognitive science. And for good reason- the views we take on free will affect the choices we make as individuals, (...) the moral judgments we make of others, and they will inform public policy. Michael McKenna's text introduces this important subject with remarkable clarity, offering the first comprehensive overview of both incompatibilist and compatibilist stances. He begins by motivating both viewpoints, then provides classical accounts of each before giving students an in-depth examination of current scholarship in the free will debate. Topics covered include: the nature of free will the nature of determinism the nature of moral responsibility arguments for the incompatibility of free will and determinism arguments of the compatibility of free will and determinism libertarian theories of free will and moral responsibility compatibilist theories of free will and moral responsibility hard determinist and hard incompatibilist theories. (shrink)

Standard methods in experimental philosophy have sought to measure folk intuitions using experiments, but certain limitations are inherent in experimental methods. Accordingly, we have designed the Free-Will Intuitions Scale to empirically measure folk intuitions relevant to free-will debates using a different method. This method reveals what folk intuitions are like prior to participants' being put in forced-choice experiments. Our results suggest that a central debate in the experimental philosophy of free will—the “natural” compatibilism (...) debate—is mistaken in assuming that folk intuitions are exclusively either compatibilist or incompatibilist. They also identify a number of important new issues in the empirical study of free-will intuitions. (shrink)

Four Views on Free Will is a robust and careful debate about free will, how it interacts with determinism and indeterminism, and whether we have it or not. Providing the most up-to-date account of four major positions in the free will debate, the second edition of this classic text presents the opposing perspectives of renowned philosophers John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas. -/- Substantially revised throughout, this new volume (...) contains eight in-depth chapters, almost entirely rewritten for the new edition, in which the authors state their different positions on the debate, offer insights into how their views have evolved over the past fifteen years, respond to recent critical literature in the field, and interact and engage with each other in dialogue. In the first four chapters the authors defend their distinctive views about free will: libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism, and revisionism. The subsequent four chapters consist of direct replies by each of the authors to the other three. (shrink)

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 distinguished from free will skepticism. Free will skepticism is the view that our vulnerability to conditions of fate and luck serve to discredit our view of ourselves as free and responsible agents. Free will pessimism rejects free will scepticism, since the basis of its pessimism rests with the assumption that we are free and responsible agents who are, nevertheless, subject to fate and luck in this aspect of our lives. According to free will pessimism, all the major parties and positions in the free will debate, including that of skepticism, are modes of evasion and distortion regarding our human predicament in respect of agency and moral life. (shrink)

Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free (...) class='Hi'>will--one for readers who are convinced that free will is incompatible with determinism (incompatibilists), and the other for readers who are convinced of the opposite (compatibilists). Luck poses problems for all believers in free will, and Mele offers novel solutions to those problems--one for incompatibilist believers in free will and the other for compatibilists. An early chapter of this empirically well-informed book clearly explains influential neuroscientific studies of free will and debunks some extravagant interpretations of the data. Other featured topics include abilities and alternative possibilities, control and decision-making, the bearing of manipulation on free will, and the development of human infants into free agents. Mele's theory offers an original perspective on an important problem and will garner the attention of anyone interested in the debate on free will. (shrink)

In this little but profound volume, Robert Kane and Carolina Sartorio debate a perennial question: Do We Have Free Will? Short, lively and accessible, the debate showcases diverse and cutting-edge work on free will.

The goal of this paper is to explain and defend the following argument: (1) If it can be reasonably doubted that someone had free will with respect to some action, then it is a requirement of justice to refrain from doing serious retributive harm to him in response to that action. (2) Anyone who believes the free will debate to be philosophically valuable must accept that it can be reasonably doubted that anyone ever has (...) class='Hi'>free will. (3) Therefore, anyone who believes the free will debate to be philosophically valuable must accept that it is a requirement of justice to refrain from serious retributive harm. (shrink)

This novel contributed volume advances the current debate on free will by bridging the divide between analytic and historically oriented approaches to the problem. With thirteen chapters by leading academics in the field, the volume is divided into three parts: free will and determinism, free will and indeterminism, and free will and moral responsibility. The contributors aim to initiate a philosophical discourse that profits from a combination of the two approaches. On (...) the one hand, the analytic tools familiar from the debate – arguments, concepts, and distinctions – can be used to sharpen our understanding of classical philosophical positions. On the other hand, the rich philosophical tradition can be reconstructed so as to inspire new solutions. In recent years, the problem of free will has received special attention in the analytic arena. This is the first anthology to combine historical and analytic perspectives, significantly furthering the debate, and providing a crucial resource to academics and advanced students alike. (shrink)

“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millenia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) Most philosophers suppose that the concept of (...) free will is very closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility. Acting with free will, on such views, is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action. (Clearly, there will also be epistemic conditions on responsibility as well, such as being aware—or failing that, being culpably unaware—of relevant alternatives to one's action and of the alternatives' moral significance.) But the significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility. Free will also appears to be a condition on desert for one's accomplishments (why sustained effort and creative work are praiseworthy); on the autonomy and dignity of persons; and on the value we accord to love and friendship. (See Kane 1996, 81ff. and Clarke 2003, Ch.1.). (shrink)

The concept of free will is fraught with controversy, as readers of this volume likely know. Philosophers disagree about what free will is, whether we have it, what mitigates or destroys it, and what it's good for. Indeed, philosophers even disagree about how to fix the referent of the term 'free will' for purposes of describing and exploring these disagreements. What one person considers a reasonably neutral working definition of 'free will' is (...) often considered question-begging or otherwise misguided by another. Such disputes make it difficult to summarize the problem of free will, roughly the debate over the nature and existence of free will, in a clear and uncontentious way. In generic terms, however, the two basic solutions to the problem of free will are free-willism, the view that we have free will, and free-will denialism, i.e. the view that we do not have free will. As stated here, neither denialism nor free-willism constitutes a complete solution to the problem of free will; to be complete, a proposed solution must also tell us a convincing story about what free will is and that, as it turns out, is a very difficult task indeed. One historically popular way of approaching the problem of free will is to ask about the relationship between free will and determinism: "Does free will stand in relation R to determinism: yes or no?" This is just a template for a question, of course. To transform this template-question into a substantive question with a clear meaning, we need to flesh out the template's free-will relatum, its determinism relatum, and give a precise value to relation R. There is, however, no uncontroversial way to do this. In addition to the standard difficulties raised by fixing the referent of 'free will', philosophers hold radically different views about what is-or should be-meant by 'determinism', Shabo ), and they identify relations which are as substantively different as correlation and causation when characterizing relation R. In practical terms, then, it may be best to think of the problem of determinism as a loose collection of disagreements about how to best spell out and answer the template-question, and how asking and answering such questions would help us to solve the problem of free will. (shrink)

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 mental causation debates have proceeded largely independently of each other. Here we aim to make progress in determining how the free will and mental causation debates bear on one another. We first argue that the problems of free will and of mental causation can be seen as special cases of a more general problem, concerning whether and how mental events of a given type may be efficacious, qua the types of event they are---qualitative, intentional, freely deliberative---given their apparent causal irrelevancy for effects of the type in question; here we generalize what Horgan 1989 identifies as "the problem of mental quausation" (S1). We then build on this result to identify fruitful parallels between hard determinism and eliminative physicalism (S2) and soft determinism and non-reductive physicalism (S3). (shrink)

In this book Tobias Hoffmann studies the medieval free will debate during its liveliest period, from the 1220s to the 1320s, and clarifies its background in Aristotle, Augustine, and earlier medieval thinkers. Among the wide range of authors he examines are not only well-known thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham, but also a number of authors who were just as important in their time and deserve to be rediscovered today. To shed further (...) light on their theories of free will, Hoffmann also explores their competing philosophical explanations of the fall of the angels, that is, the hypothesis of an evil choice made by rational beings under optimal psychological conditions. As he shows, this test case imposed limits on tracing free choices to cognition. His book provides a comprehensive account of a debate that was central to medieval philosophy and continues to occupy philosophers today. (shrink)

_ _ _Free Will_ brings together the essential readings on the debate of free will and determinism.Written by top scholars in the field, the essays represent some of the clearest and most accessible thinking on this subject. The introduction offers a concise yet thorough mapping of this age-old debate as well as a helpful overview of the selections.

Free will has been the object of debate in the context of addiction given that addiction could compromise an individual’s ability to choose freely between alternative courses of action. Proponents of the brain-disease model of addiction have argued that a neuroscience perspective on addiction reduces the attribution of free will because it relocates the cause of the disorder to the brain rather than to the person, thereby diminishing the blame attributed to the person with an (...) addiction. Others have worried that such displacement of free will attribution would make the person with a drug addiction less responsible. Using the paradigmatic literature on the seductive allure of neuroscience explanations, we tested whether neuroscience information diminishes attributions of free will in the context of addiction and whether respondent characteristics influence these attributions and modulate the effect of neuroscience information. We performed a large-scale, web-based experiment with 2,378 German participants to explore how attributions of free will in the context of addiction to either alcohol or cocaine are affected by: (1) a text with a neurobiological explanation of addiction, (2) a neuroimage showing effects of addiction on the brain, and (3) a combination of a text and a neuroimage, in comparison to a control group that received no information. Belief in free will was measured using the FAD-Plus scale and was, subsequent to factor analysis, separated into two factors: responsibility and volition. The investigated respondent characteristics included gender, age, education, self-reported knowledge of neuroscience, substance-use disorder (SUD), and having a friend with SUD. We found that attributions of volition (in the cocaine-subsample) were reduced in the text and neuroimage-treatment compared to the control group. However, respondent characteristics such as education and self-reported knowledge of neuroscience were associated with lower attributions of responsibility for both substances, and education was associated with lower attribution of volition for the alcohol sub-sample. Interaction analyses showed that knowledge of neuroscience was found to generally decrease attribution of responsibility. Further research on attribution of free will should consider the effects of context and respondent characteristics, which appeared surprisingly larger than those induced by experimental treatments. (shrink)

Are humans free, or are we determined by our genes and the world around us? The question of freedom is not only one of philosophy’s greatest conundrums, but also one of the most fundamental questions of human existence. It’s particularly pressing in societies like ours, where our core institutions of law, ethics, and religion are built around the belief in individual freedom. Can one still affirm human freedom in an age of science? And if free will doesn’t (...) exist, does it make sense to act as though it does? These are the issues that are presented, probed, and debated in the following chapters. A dozen experts―specialists in medicine, psychology, ethics, theology, and philosophy—grapple with the multiple and often profound challenges presented by today’s brain science. After examining the arguments against traditional notions of free will, several of the authors champion the idea of a chastened but robust free will for today, one that allows us still to affirm the value of first-person experience. (shrink)

An important and engaging book on a key argument in contemporary debates about free will and moral responsibility.

Focusing on the concepts and interactions of free will, moral responsibility, and determinism, this text represents the most up-to-date account of the four major positions in the free will debate. Four serious and well-known philosophers explore the opposing viewpoints of libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism, and revisionism The first half of the book contains each philosopher’s explanation of his particular view; the second half allows them to directly respond to each other’s arguments, in a lively and (...) engaging conversation Offers the reader a one of a kind, interactive discussion Forms part of the acclaimed Great Debates in Philosophy series. (shrink)