Determinism is a claim about the laws of nature: very roughly, it is the claim that everything that happens is determined by antecedent conditions together with the natural laws. Incompatibilism is a philosophical thesis about the relevance of determinism to free will: that the truth of determinism rules out the existence of free will. The incompatibilist believes that if determinism turned out to be true, it would also be true that we don't have, and have never had, free will. The (...) compatibilist denies that determinism has the consequences the incompatibilist thinks it has. According to the compatibilist, the truth of determinism does not preclude the existence of free will. (Even if we learned tomorrow that determinism is true, it might still be true that we have free will.) The philosophical problem of free will and determinism is the problem of understanding, how, if at all, the truth of determinism might be compatible with the truth of our belief that we have free will. That is, it's the problem of deciding who is right: the compatibilist or the incompatibilist. (shrink)

The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics is traditionally formulated in terms of whether true counterfactuals of freedom about the future (true subjunctive conditionals concerning what someone would freely do in the future if they were in certain circumstances) even partly determine an agent's present moral obligations. But the very assumption that there are true counterfactuals of freedom about the future conflicts with the idea that freedom requires a metaphysically open future. We develop probabilism as a solution to the actualism/possibilism debate, a (...) solution that accommodates an open future requirement for freedom. We argue that probabilism resolves the conflicting intuitions that arise between actualists and possibilists and maintains certain distinct advantages over actualism and possibilism. (shrink)

I draw upon Helen Steward's concept of agential settling to argue that freedom requires an ability to change the truth‐value of tenseless future contingents over time from false to true and that this ability requires a metaphysically open future.

This thesis investigates the conceptual relationship between laws of nature and free will. In order to clarify the discussion, I begin by distinguishing several questions with respect to the nature of a law: i) do the laws of nature cover everything that happens? ii) are they deterministic? iii) can there be exceptions to universal and deterministic laws? iv) do the laws of nature govern everything in the world? In order to answer these questions I look at three widely endorsed accounts (...) of laws: "Humean" regularity accounts, laws as relations among universals, and the dispositional essentialist account. I argue that there is nothing in the very nature of a law - in any of the accounts surveyed - that implies a positive answer to questions (i) and (ii). I show that this has important consequences for the free will problem. I then turn to the compatibility of free will and determinism. I focus on the Humean view and the dispositional essentialist account of laws. And the bulk of this discussion concerns the consequence argument, especially the question of whether the laws of nature are "up to us". I show that, on the dispositional conception of laws, there is no sense in which the laws of nature are up to us, contrary to the Humean view. However, this does not mean that there is no room for free will on the dispositional account. I argue that free will requires the laws of nature to be limited in scope, rather than being indeterministic. I conclude by showing that this allows one to resist the claim that indeterminism rules out free will. (shrink)

One of the central problems within the free will debate lies in the apparent incompatibility of an agent's ability to do otherwise and determinism. Recently, compatibilist libertarianism was proposed as an actualist position intended to finally reconcile both. In this article, we argue that in order to maintain consistency, this position must be understood as a variant of classical compatibilism rather than a version of libertarianism. Though this seems to be an undesired consequence for proponents of compatibilist libertarianism, we think (...) that it is not that bad. We show that recent objections to this position can be avoided by embracing its compatibilist nature and argue that a modified version of compatibilist libertarianism might very well be as close to an actualist account of free will in a deterministic world as one can hope for. (shrink)

I refute Bailey's claim that his argument for incompatibilism is immune to Campbell's No Past Objection. In my refutation I stress a simple point, that nomological necessitation by future world states does not undermine one's freedom with respect to the present world state. My analysis reveals that the No Past Objection challenges van Inwagen's second consequence argument about as much as it does the others, and suggests that the (uncompromising) incompatibilist must pursue some of the options that Bailey regarded as (...) costly in order to overcome the No Past Objection. (shrink)

Claims about freedom and predestination are ubiquitous in movies, novels, and myths. These claims touch upon the philosophical problem of the compatibility of free will and determination. In order to make an informed judgment about whether these claims are true, it is helpful to know what philosophers have to say about free will. However, philosophical discussions are usually absent in popular culture. It is perhaps no wonder, since free will is a topic that has been discussed for millennia. Consequently, these (...) discussions have become quite complicated and not easy to decipher. This essay is a popular introduction to these discussions, accessible to readers without former acquaintance with the topic. I provide references to other works for readers interested in knowing more. My aim is to show that while there are persuasive arguments against free will, there are no fewer persuasive replies to these arguments. Free will is a fascinating topic, and I hope that acquaintance with the relevant philosophical discussion will prove useful for those who wonder if anyone is free to create their own destiny. (shrink)