The philosophical debate about free will and responsibility has been of great importance throughout the history of philosophy. In modern times this debate has received an enormous resurgence of interest and the contribution in 1962 by P.F. Strawson with the publication of his essay "Freedom and Resentment" has generated a wide range of discussion and criticism in the philosophical community and beyond. The debate is of central importance to recent developments in the free will literature and has shaped the way (...) contemporary philosophers now approach the problem. This volume brings together a focused selection of the major contributions and reactions to the free will and responsibility debate inspired by Strawson's contribution. McKenna and Russell also provide a comprehensive overview of the debate. (shrink)

This paper provides articulates a non-epiphenomenal, libertarian kind of free will—a kind of free will that’s incompatible with both determinism and epiphenomenalism—and responds to scientific arguments against the existence of this sort of freedom. In other words, the paper argues that we don’t have any good empirical scientific reason to believe that human beings don’t possess a non-epiphenomenal, libertarian sort of free will.

Cicero's De fato: On Hellenistic Conditionals and Free Will. The Serbo-Croatian translation of Cicero's De fato, with comments and detailed analysis of some arguments and problems of the text. -/- (s/h): Tekst Ciceronovog spisa "de fato", prevod, komentari i u dodacima, detaljnija analiza pojedinih argumenata i problema sadržanih u tekstu.

*As mentioned in Peter Coy's NYT essay "When Being Good Is Just a Matter of Being Lucky" (2023) -/- ----- -/- How is the problem of free will related to the problem of moral luck? In this essay, I answer that question and outline a new solution to the paradox of moral luck, the source-paradox solution. This solution both explains why the paradox arises and why moral luck does not exist. To make my case, I highlight a few key connections (...) between the paradox of moral luck and two related problems, namely the problem of free will and determinism and the paradox of self-creation. Piecing together intuitions, arguments, and insights from recent work on each of these three problems, I argue that the type of control necessary for moral responsibility can only be had by someone who is a genuine source of his own actions, but the relevant notion of sourcehood admits no coherent characterization. If our commonsense view of moral responsibility is incoherent, it is unsurprising that our commitment to the existence of morally responsible agents commits us to some paradoxical things—e.g. to both the existence and impossibility of moral luck. For more information about this article, please write to gmail account: kristin.mickelson.42. (shrink)

This article examines the free will problem as it arises within Thomas Hobbes' naturalistic science of morals in early modern Europe. It explains that during this period, the problem of moral and legal responsibility became acute as mechanical philosophy was extended to human psychology and as a result human choices were explained in terms of desires and preferences rather than being represented as acts of an autonomous faculty. It describes how Hobbes changed the face of moral philosophy, through his Leviathan, (...) in ways that still structure and resonate within the contemporary debate. (shrink)

While there is a vast philosophical literature exploring the conditions under which it is appropriate to hold individuals morally responsible for their actions, relatively little attention has been paid to the related question of which kinds of individuals merit these responsibility ascriptions. Under normal circumstances, typical adult human beings are held morally responsible for their behaviour but infants and nonhuman animals are not. In this thesis, I aim to account for this difference. That is, I aim to give an analysis (...) of the concept of moral agency. In Chapter One, I begin with a schema of moral agency, under which moral agents are characterised by the possession of certain abilities, enabling certain actions, for which certain responses are warranted. The literature on moral responsibility offers many ways of filling in these details, primarily by specifying the relevant agential abilities in terms of various responsibility conditions. My aim in this chapter is to offer a basic account, under which moral agents are characterised by the simplest possible abilities while still being appropriate targets of the relevant responses, such as praise and blame. I draw on the work of Nomy Arpaly, whose account of moral responsibility identifies the relevant ability as the ability to act out of good or ill will. I offer an analysis of this ability, under which basic moral agency is characterised by the ability to have desires about others’ mental states. In Chapter Two, I consider a range of alternative responsibility conditions offered by other philosophers, each of which appears to be necessary for moral agency. I argue that these conditions are not necessary for a basic account of moral agency. In Chapter Three, I move beyond basic moral agency to offer a more restrictive account that aims to capture other important aspects of our moral lives: the practice of justification and our ability to improve our moral character. I claim these aspects are underpinned by the use of moral reasons to guide our behaviour, and in contrast to moral motivation, this guidance is characterised by the ability to have beliefs about the desirability of actions. In Chapter Four, I aim to answer two questions: at what age do humans become moral agents, and are there any nonhuman animals who are moral agents. I draw on the work of Josef Perner, who offers a three-stage framework of the development of mental representation during childhood. I consider the conceptual coherence of this framework, its applicability to both accounts of moral agency developed in the thesis, and the empirical evidence that bears on the framework. As a result, I tentatively conclude that basic moral agency develops at around 18 months of age and may be present in a few species of nonhuman animal, whereas the more restrictive type of moral agency developed in Chapter Three develops no earlier than around 3.5 years of age and is restricted to human beings. (shrink)

Das Buch verschafft einen Überblick über die neuere Willensfreiheitsdebatte, wobei es auch die Konsequenzen der Hirnforschung für das Freiheitsproblem erörtert. Ferner entwickelt der Autor eine eigene Position, die er 'fähigkeitsbasierten Libertarismus' nennt. Er widerspricht dem breiten philosophischen Konsens, dass jedenfalls eine Art von Freiheit mit einem naturwissenschaftlichen Weltbild unverträglich sei, nämlich die Fähigkeit, sich unter gegebenen Bedingungen so oder anders zu entscheiden. Im Buch wird argumentiert, dass der libertarischen Freiheitsauffassung, die wir im Alltag alle teilen, bei näherer Betrachtung keine Tatschen (...) entgegenstehen, sondern nur philosophische Doktrinen. Zwar können wir durch unser Handeln keine Naturgesetze abändern und sind auch keine ersten Beweger, aber für ein So-oder-Anderskönnen bedarf es dessen nicht. (shrink)

A new approach using independence indeterminism, a novel naturalistic metaphysics for an open creative universe. -/- The problem of free will - what exactly it is, whether it is required for us to be morally responsible for our actions, and whether any natural being can possibly possess it - has remained unresolved for over 2000 years. -/- Now, starting from the very widely held belief that most change takes place in a way that is independent of how most other change (...) is taking place, this book builds an argument - and a novel metaphysical view dubbed "independence indeterminism" - that rapidly leads not only to a paradigm-changing way of viewing existence, but also to a new way of explaining our possession of free will. -/- This carefully and fully argued book will be of interest to a wide readership not only because of its focus on free will but also because independence indeterminism helps resolve other long-standing issues, including why the mind is not wholly reducible to causally determined processes occurring in the brain. (shrink)

The words “free will” have uses in ordinary talk as in “free will offering” and, most commonly, in the expression “of my own free will.” We all know what states of affairs make this expression applicable, and its standard use is defined by this application. Yet philosophers discuss, or used to discuss, whether the will is free, libertarians saying that it is and determinists denying this. Are they, or were they, asking whether anyone ever acts of his own free will? (...) If so, the question asked was absurd. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer’s most recent collection of essays, Deep Control: Essays on Free Will and Value, is both incredibly wide-ranging and impressively detailed. Fischer manages to cover a staggering amount of ground in the free will debate, while also providing insightful and articulate analyses of many of the positions defended in the field. In this collection, Fischer focuses on the relationship between free will and moral responsibility. In the first section of his book, Fischer defends Frankfurt cases as an important (...) and useful tool in rejecting the necessity of regulative control for moral responsibility. In the second section, Fischer turns his attention to his own account of guidance control. In this essay, I first focus on Fischer’s defense of Frankfurt cases, specifically his response to the argument that the assumption of determinism in such cases is question-begging. I then analyze two objections to Fischer’s account of guidance control. Finally, I conclude with a brief discussion of the metaphor of the pilgrimage, which Fischer introduces in the opening essay of his collection. (shrink)

Why is it that philosophers find it so hard to come to agreement? Many disputes that have gone on for centuries or even millennia are still unresolved, even though there has been increased conceptual sophistication on the part of the contending parties. Consider, for example, the question of free will, where libertarians still contest the field with determinists and compatibilists.

The paper begins by considering David Armstrong's beautiful paper 'The Headless Woman Illusion and the Defence of Materialism', which conjectures how we get the illusion that there are non-physical qualia. There are discussions of other metaphysical illusions, that there is a passage of time, that we have libertarian free will, and that consciousness is ineffable (which last also relates to Armstrong), and of their possible explanations. Moral: avoid appeal to so called intuition or phenomenology.

The Theory of Important Criteria is used to argue that the age?old problem of the compatibility of free will and determinism turns on the question of the importance of causal indeterminacy of choice as a criterion of being able to do otherwise. One's answer to this question depends in turn on one's evaluation of certain moral issues and of the force and significance of certain similes, analogies and diagrams in terms of which one can ?depict? a deterministic universe. It is (...) further argued that the problem of free will and determinism is not a pseudo?problem, but a genuine problem that is hard to solve because of the depth and complexity of the evaluative issues on which it hangs. (shrink)

Among challenges to libertarians, the _Mind_ Argument has loomed large. Believing that this challenge cannot be met, Peter van Inwagen, a libertarian, concludes that free will is a mystery. Recently, the _Mind_ Argument has drawn a number of criticisms. Here I seek to add to its woes. Quite apart from its other problems, I argue, the _Mind_ Argument does a poor job of isolating the important concern for libertarians that it raises. Once this concern has been clarified, however, another argument (...) serves to renew the challenge. The Assimilation Argument challenges libertarians to explain how ostensible exercises of free will are relevantly different from other causally undetermined outcomes, outcomes that nobody would count as exercises of free will. In particular, libertarians must explain how agents can have the power to settle which of two causally possible futures becomes the actual future. This will require them to distinguish cases where this power is supposedly present from similar cases where it’s clearly absent. (shrink)

Benjamin Libet’s work paved the way for the neuroscientific study of free will. Other scientists have praised this research as groundbreaking. In philosophy, the reception has been more negative, often even dismissive. First, I will propose a diagnosis of this striking discrepancy. I will suggest that the experiments seem irrelevant, from the perspective of philosophy, due to the way in which they operationalize free will. In particular, I will argue that this operational definition does not capture free will properly and (...) that it is based on a false dichotomy between internal and external causes. However, I will also suggest that this problem could be overcome, as there are no obvious obstacles to an operationalization of free will that is in accord with the philosophical conception of free will. (shrink)

Strong notions of free will are closely connected to the possibility to do otherwise as well as to an agent’s ability to causally influence her environment via her decisions controlling her actions. In this paper we employ techniques from the causal modeling literature to investigate whether a notion of free will subscribing to one or both of these requirements is compatible with naturalistic views of the world such as non-reductive physicalism to the background of determinism and indeterminism. We argue that (...) from a causal modeler’s perspective the only possibility to get both requirements consists in subscribing to reductive physicalism and indeterminism. (shrink)

Moral luck occurs when factors beyond an agent’s control affect her blameworthiness. Several scholars deny the existence of moral luck by distinguishing judging blameworthy from blame-related practices. Luck does not affect an agent’s blameworthiness because morality is conceptually fair, but it can affect the appropriate degree of blame for that agent. While separatism resolves the paradox of moral luck, we aim to show it that it needs amendment, because it is unfair to treat two equally blameworthy people unequally. We argue (...) that separatists should conceive fairness as a pro tanto reason for blame. By locating fairness as a ground for blame within a wider axiology of blame, separatism could resolve the challenge of blaming fairly. In such an axiology, reasonable and fair blame diverge. (shrink)

According to Universal Epistemic Deontology, all of our doxastic attitudes are open to deontological evaluations of obligation and permissibility. This view thus implies that we are responsible for all of our doxastic attitudes. But many philosophers have puzzled over whether we could be so responsible. The paper explores whether this puzzle can be resolved, and Universal Epistemic Deontology defended, by appealing to a view of responsibility I call the Revelatory View. On that view, an agent is responsible for something when (...) it reveals the kind of person the agent is. I explore four ways of developing the Revelatory View and argue that none ultimately defend Universal Epistemic Deontology. (shrink)

My topic lies on conceptual terrain that is quite familiar to philosophers. For others, a bit of background may be in order. In light of what has filtered down from quantum mechanics, few philosophers today believe that the universe is causally deterministic. That is, to use Peter van Inwagen's succinct definition of “determinism,” few philosophers believe that “there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.” Even so, partly for obvious historical reasons, philosophers continue to argue about whether free (...) will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism. Compatibilists argue for compatibility, and incompatibilists argue against it. Some incompatibilists maintain that free will and moral responsibility are illusions. But most are libertarians, libertarianism being the conjunction of incompatibilism and the thesis that at least some human beings are possessed of free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Some psychological states—paradigmatically, beliefs and intentions—are rationally evaluable: they can be rational or irrational, justified or unjustified. Other states—e.g. sensations and gastrointestinal states—aren't: they're a‐rational. On a familiar but hard‐to‐make‐precise line of thought, at least part of what explains this difference is that we're somehow responsible for (having/being in) states of the former sort, in a way we're not for the others. But this responsibility can't be modeled on the responsibility we have for our (free, intentional) actions. So how should (...) it be understood? In this paper I address that question. The overall shape of my answer is in line with tradition: I take the responsibility to be grounded in certain capacities for reflection and control. Answers in this family have recently been subjected to an interesting challenge. But the version I defend meets that challenge. (shrink)

Here are some things that are widely believed about free will and determinism. Free will is prima facie incompatible with determinism. The incompatibility is logical or at least conceptual or a priori. A compatibilist needs to explain how free will can co-exist with determinism, paradigmatically by offering an analysis of ‘free’ action that is demonstrably compatible with determinism. Free will is not impugned by quantum indeterminism, at least not in the same decisive way that it is impugned by determinism. To (...) reconcile free will with quantum indeterminism takes work, but the work comes under the heading of metaphysical business-as-usual; to reconcile free will with determinism requires a conceptual breakthrough.And listen to Laura Waddell Ekstrom on the burden of proof. (shrink)

David Lewis’ contemplations regarding divine foreknowledge and free will, along with some of his other more substantial work on modal realism and his counterpart theory can serve as a springboard to a novel solution to the foreknowledge and metaphysical freedom puzzle, namely a proposal that genuine metaphysical freedom is compatible with determinism, which is quite different from the usual compatibilist focus on the compatibility between determinism and moral responsibility. This paper argues that while Lewis opens the doors to such a (...) possibility, in order to fully elucidate a genuinely metaphysical compatibilist account, Lewis’ own counterpart theory must be abandoned in favour of an account of trans-world identity that is theoretically framed by a modified version of Robert Nozick’s closest continuer theory. (shrink)

Libertarian views of freedom claim that, although determinism would rule out our freedom, we are nevertheless free on some occasions. An odd implication of such views (to put it mildly) seems to be that indeterminism somehow enhances or contributes to our agency. But how could that be? What does indeterminism have to offer agency? This paper develops a novel answer, one that is centred around the notion of explanation. In short, it is argued that, if indeterminism holds in the right (...) places, then the best explanation of the history of the world necessarily cites facts about our agency. Along the way, alternative proposals regarding the significance of indeterminism are considered and, ultimately, rejected in favour of the one developed in this paper. (shrink)

Libertarians like Robert Kane believe that indeterminism is necessaryfor free will. They think this in part because they hold both (1) thatmy being the ultimate cause of at least part of myself is necessary forfree will and (2) that indeterminism is necessary for this ``ultimateself-causation''. But seductive and intuitive as this ``USCLibertarianism'' may sound, it is untenable. In the end, nometaphysically coherent (not to mention empirically valid) conception ofultimate self-causation is available. So the basic intuition motivatingthe USC Libertarian is ultimately (...) impossible to fulfill. (shrink)

One reaction to the theory of moral responsibility Hume presentsis that the theory cannot be reconciled with his remarks about the self in Treatise, Book One. Hume declared a self or person to be nothing but a bundle of transient perceptions, arguing further that there is no one perception that continues invariably the same at any two moments of time. It would follow from such a view that, since one and the same bundle cannot logically exist at two distinct moments, (...) and hence a person at t1 is distinct and different from a person at t2, it is logically impossible, even unjust, to ascribe responsibility to a person at a later time for, say, a moral crime committed at a previous time. The reason is that the individual to whom responsibility will be ascribed is the successor of the criminal and not the criminal himself. But since this runs counter to our moral practices of making accountable the perpetrators of crimes, Hume would therefore have to give up or at least revise his theory of the self if he is to discuss intelligibly the issue of individual moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this essay I present what is, I contend, the free-will problem properly thought through, or at least presented in a form in which it is possible to think about it without being constantly led astray by bad terminology and confused ideas. Bad terminology and confused ideas are not uncommon in current discussions of the problem. The worst such pieces of terminology are "libertarian free will" and "compatibilist free will." The essay consists partly of a defense of the thesis that (...) the use of these phrases by writers on the problem of free will can only generate conceptual confusion and partly of a formulation of the problem that does not make use of them. I contend that this formulation is neutral with respect to the historically important positions on free will (e. g., compatibilism and incompatibilism). (shrink)

For beings that have a beginning in time, free will seems impossible, because our choices seem to be a result of past events over which we had no control. Latter-day Saint theology offers what seems a simple solution: the idea that human beings have always existed in the form of spirits or “intelligences.” While this idea solves some key puzzles, contemplating an infinite past also brings the recognition that causal autonomy is not enough for freedom. A crucial feature of humanity (...) is the ability to move beyond past choices and versions of ourselves. Human freedom involves a dynamic process of identification, alienation, and re-identification through which we develop, improve, and mature as agents. Thinking about freedom over the long run, with attention to both the past and the future, casts the traditional debate over free will in a distinctive light, suggesting fresh possibilities. (shrink)