Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy. Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studies – as represented in our sample (...) – successfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward. (shrink)

Widely used by instructors who emphasize the logical structure of philosophical theories and the dialectical play of argument, this popular work provides clear, reliable, and up-to-date discussions of central philosophical debates. The fourth edition incorporates major revisions--the first since 1982--and features an extensive change in content. Every chapter has been reworked to improve its organization, to make it more accessible and engaging to the student, and to reflect recent discussions.

The consequence argument is among the most influential arguments for the conclusion that free will and determinism are incompatible. Recently, however, it has become increasingly clear that the argument fails to establish that particular incompatibilist conclusion. Even so, a version of the argument can be formulated that supports a different incompatibilist conclusion, according to which free will is incompatible with our behavior being predetermined by factors beyond our control. This conclusion, though not equivalent to the traditional incompatibilist thesis that determinism (...) strictly precludes free will, is something many incompatibilists have had in mind all along and, indeed, is arguably the more central incompatibilist position. The consequence argument thus remains philosophically important, even if, as several of its critics have argued, it can't be used to establish the strict incompatibility of free will and determinism. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

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)

Bobzien presents the definitive study of one of the most interesting intellectual legacies of the ancient Greeks: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. She explains what it was, how the Stoics justified it, and how it relates to their views on possibility, action, freedom, moral responsibility, moral character, fatalism, logical determinism and many other topics. She demonstrates the considerable philosophical richness and power that these ideas retain today.

Humean compatibilism is the combination of a Humean position on laws of nature and the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. This article's aim is to situate Humean compatibilism in the current debate among libertarians, traditional compatibilists, and semicompatibilists about free will. We argue that a Humean about laws can hold that there is a sense in which the laws of nature are 'up to us' and hence that the leading style of argument for incompatibilism?the consequence argument?has a (...) false premiss. We also display some striking similarities between Humean compatibilism and libertarianism, an incompatibilist view. For example, standard libertarians face a problem about luck, and we show that Humean compatibilists face a very similar problem. (shrink)

There is a new objection to the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism. I argue that the objection is more wide-ranging than originally thought. In particular: if it tells against the Consequence Argument, it tells against other arguments for incompatibilism too. I survey a few ways of dealing with this objection and show the costs of each. I then present an argument for incompatibilism that is immune to the objection and that enjoys other advantages.

When Thomas Nagel originally coined the expression “moral luck,” he used the term “luck” to mean lack of control. This use was a matter of stipulation, as Nagel’s target had little to do with luck itself, but the question of how control is related to moral responsibility. Since then, we have seen several analyses of the concept of luck itself, and recent contributors to the moral luck literature have often assumed that any serious contribution to the moral luck debate must (...) begin with a robust concept of luck simpliciter. I argue here that this assumption is a mistake, on the basis of three reasons: the issue was originally conceived as an issue about responsibility and control, analyses of luck tend to distort and needlessly to complicate what is at issue when shoehorned into the moral luck debate, and these analyses have very little (if anything) to contribute to the discussion. (shrink)

What did you do a moment ago? What will you do after you read this? Are you deciding as we speak, or is something else going on in your brain or elsewhere in your body that is determining your actions? Stopping to think this way can freeze us in our tracks. A lot in the world feels far beyond our control--the last thing we need is to question whether we make our own choices in the way we usually assume we (...) do. Questions about free will are so major and consequential that we may prefer not to think about them at all, lest we feel completely lost and unsure of everything we thought we knew! Free Will: An Opinionated Guide offers a clear and straightforward introduction to this vexing topic. Drawing on decades of extensive research in philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology, internationally recognized authority on free will Alfred R. Mele explains and explores the most prominent theories, puzzles, and arguments in free will, all the while presenting his own distinctive take on the topic. like determinism, neuroscience, and control. (shrink)

"One of the most careful and intensive among the introductory texts that can be used with a wide range of students. It builds remarkably sophisticated technical skills, a good sense of the nature of a formal system, and a solid and extensive background for more advanced work in logic.... The emphasis throughout is on natural deduction derivations, and the text's deductive systems are its greatest strength. Lemmon's unusual procedure of presenting derivations before truth tables is very effective." --Sarah Stebbins, _The (...) Journal of Symbolic Logic_. (shrink)

This essay challenges the widely accepted principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. The author considers situations in which there are sufficient conditions for a certain choice or action to be performed by someone, So that it is impossible for the person to choose or to do otherwise, But in which these conditions do not in any way bring it about that the person chooses or acts as he (...) does. In such situations the person may well be morally responsible for what he chooses or does despite his inability to choose or to do otherwise. Finally the author considers certain suggestions for revising the principle he rejects or for replacing it with a principle of an altogether different kind. (shrink)

*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)

Manipulation arguments that start from the intuition that manipulated agents are neither free nor morally responsible then conclude to that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. The Zygote argument is a special case of Manipulation argument in which the manipulation intervenes at the very conception of the agent. In this paper, I argue that the Zygote argument fails because (i) very few people share the basic intuitions the argument rests on, and (ii) even those who share this (...) intuition do so for reasons that are unrelated to determinism. Rather, I argue that intuitions about the Zygote argument (and Manipulation arguments in general) are driven by people's intuitions about the deep self, as shown by the fact that intuitions about manipulated agents depend on the moral value of the agent's behavior. (shrink)

Incompatibilists believe free will is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim that this view is supported by ordinary intuitions. We challenge the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive to most laypersons and discuss the significance of this challenge to the free will debate. After explaining why incompatibilists should want their view to accord with pretheoretical intuitions, we suggest that determining whether incompatibilism is in fact intuitive calls for empirical testing. We then present the results of our studies, which (...) put significant pressure on the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive. Finally, we consider and respond to several potential objections to our approach. (shrink)

The shortest form of the Basic Argument against free will and moral responsibility runs as follows: [1] When you act, you do what you do—in the situation in which you find yourself—because of the way you are. [2] If you do what you do because of the way you are, then in order to be fully and ultimately responsible for what you do you must be fully and ultimately responsible for the way you are. But [3] You cannot be fully (...) and ultimately responsible for the way you are. So [4] You cannot be fully and ultimately responsible for what you do. This paper restates the Basic Argument and varies it in several different ways. (shrink)

Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility brings together nine substantial essays on determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility in antiquity by Susanne Bobzien. The essays present the main ancient theories on these subjects, ranging historically from Aristotle followed by the Epicureans, the early Stoics, several later Stoics, and up to Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE. -/- The author discusses questions about rational and autonomous human agency and their compatibility with a large range of important philosophical issues, including their compatibility (...) with divine predetermination and other theological questions; with atomism and continuum theory and with the physical sciences more generally; with the determination of character and its development from childhood through nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with theories of necessity, possibility and contingency; with external or internal preceding causes and impediments; and with folk theories of fatalism. Room is also given to the questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, to virtue and wisdom, and to blame and praise. -/- Historically unified, philosophically profound, and methodologically rigorous, Bobzien’s essays show that in Classical and Hellenistic philosophy these topics were all debated without reference to freedom to do otherwise or to a free will, and that the latter two notions were fully developed only later. The volume will be of interest both to philosophers and to historians of philosophy, with more than half of the essays accessible to advanced undergraduates. (shrink)

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)

In Manipulated Agents, Alfred R. Mele examines the role one's history plays in whether or not one is morally responsible for one's actions. Mele develops a "history-sensitive" theory of moral responsibility through reflection on a wide range of thought experiments which feature agents who have been manipulated or designed in ways that directly affect their actions.

Mele develops a view of paradigmatically free actions--including decisions--as indeterministically caused by their proximal causes. He mounts a masterful defense of this thesis that includes solutions to problems about luck and control widely discussed in the literature on free will and moral responsibility.

Separatists are grounding theorists who hold that grounding relations and metaphysical explanations are distinct, yet intimately connected in the sense that grounding relations back metaphysical explanations, just as causal relations back causal explanations. But Separatists have not elaborated on the nature of the ‘backing’ relation. In this paper, I argue that backing is a form of (partial) grounding. In particular, backing has many of the properties commonly attributed to grounding, and taking backing to be partial grounding allows Separatists to make (...) the most of their position vis‐à‐vis their Unionist opponents. (shrink)

An apparently increasing number of philosophers take free will skepticism to pose a serious challenge to some of our practices. This must seem odd to many—why should anyone think that free will skepticism is relevant for our practices, when nobody seems to think that other canonical forms of philosophical skepticism are relevant for our practices? Part of the explanation may be epistemic, but here I focus on a metaethical explanation. Free will skepticism is special because it is compatible with ‘basic (...) moral reasons’—moral reasons acknowledged by all mainstream ethicists—and other minds and induction skepticism are not. One example is our reason not to intentionally harm others. Practical seriousness about other minds and induction skepticism undermines this reason, but practical seriousness about free will skepticism only undermines a potential overrider of this reason, that is, the reason of retribution. (shrink)

In his classic paper, The Principle of Alternate Possibilities, Harry Frankfurt presented counterexamples to the principle named in his title: A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. He went on to argue that the falsity of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) implied that the debate between the compatibilists and the incompatibilists (as regards determinism and the ability to do otherwise) did not have the significance that both parties had attributed (...) to it -- since moral responsibility could exist even if no one was able to do otherwise. I have argued that even if PAP is false, there are other principles that imply that moral responsibility entails the ability to do otherwise, and that these principles are immune to Frankfurt-style counterexamples. Frankfurt has attempted to show that my arguments for this conclusion fail. This paper is a rejoinder to that reply; I argue that he has failed to show this. (shrink)

"This is an important book, and no one interested in issues which touch on the free will will want to ignore it."--Ethics. In this stimulating and thought-provoking book, the author defends the thesis that free will is incompatible with determinism. He disputes the view that determinism is necessary for moral responsbility. Finding no good reason for accepting determinism, but believing moral responsiblity to be indubitable, he concludes that determinism should be rejected.

Many philosophers maintain that the ability to do otherwise is compatible with comprehensive divine foreknowledge but incompatible with the truth of causal determinism. But the Fixity of the Past principle underlying the rejection of compatibilism about the ability to do otherwise and determinism appears to generate an argument also for the incompatibility of the ability to do otherwise and divine foreknowledge. By developing an account of ability that appeals to the notion of explanatory dependence, we can replace the Fixity of (...) the Past with a principle that does not generate this difficulty. I develop such an account and defend it from objections. I also explore some of the account's implications, including whether the account is consistent with presentism. (shrink)

I argue that God could give us the robust power to do other than we do in a deterministic universe.

Peter van Inwagen has developed two highly influential strategies for establishing incompatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility. These have come to be known as ‘the Direct Argument’ and ‘the Indirect Argument,’ respectively. In recent years, the two arguments have attracted closely related criticisms. In each case, it is claimed, the argument does not provide a fully general defense of the incompatibilist’s conclusion. While the critics are right to notice these arguments’ limitations, they have not made it clear what the (...) problem with the arguments is supposed to be. I suggest three possibilities, arguing that none proves to be well founded. I conclude that the scope of these arguments is fully adequate for their defenders’ purposes. (shrink)

According to the Consequence Argument, the truth of determinism plus other plausible principles would yield the conclusion that we have no free will. In this paper I will argue that the conception of determinism typically employed in the various versions of the Consequence Argument is not plausible. In particular, I will argue that, taken most straightforwardly, determinism as defined in the Consequence Argument would imply that the existence of God is logically impossible. This is quite an implausible result. The truth (...) or falsity of determinism is typically taken to be a contingent, empirical matter. But how could the empirical discovery that determinism is true lead to the conclusion that God’s existence is a logical impossibility? The defender of the Consequence Argument can avoid this conclusion, but only at the cost of making other similarly implausible claims. The objection.. (shrink)

In spite of its significance for everyday and philosophical discourse, the explanatory connective has not received much treatment in the philosophy of logic. The present paper develops a logic for based on systematic connections between and the truth-functional connectives.

In _Living Without Free Will_, I develop and argue for a view according to which our being morally responsible would be ruled out if determinism were true, and also if indeterminism were true and the causes of our actions were exclusively events.¹ Absent agent causation, indeterministic causal histories are as threatening to moral responsibility as deterministic histories are, and a generalization argument from manipulation cases shows that deterministic histories indeed undermine moral responsibility. Agent causation has not been ruled out as (...) a coherent possibility, but it is not credible given our best physical theories. Hence we must take seriously the prospect that we are not free in the sense required for moral responsibility. I call the resulting view _hard incompatibilism_. Furthermore, contrary to widespread belief, a conception of life without free will would not at all be devastating to morality or to our sense of meaning in life, and in certain respects it may even be beneficial. (shrink)

An empirical study of people's intuitions about freedom of the will. We show that people tend to have compatiblist intuitions when they think about the problem in a more concrete, emotional way but that they tend to have incompatiblist intuitions when they think about the problem in a more abstract, cognitive way.

Philosophers working in the nascent field of ‘experimental philosophy’ have begun using methods borrowed from psychology to collect data about folk intuitions concerning debates ranging from action theory to ethics to epistemology. In this paper we present the results of our attempts to apply this approach to the free will debate, in which philosophers on opposing sides claim that their view best accounts for and accords with folk intuitions. After discussing the motivation for such research, we describe our methodology of (...) surveying people’s prephilosophical judgments about the freedom and responsibility of agents in deterministic scenarios. In two studies, we found that a majority of participants judged that such agents act of their own free will and are morally responsible for their actions. We then discuss the philosophical implications of our results as well as various difficulties inherent in such research. (shrink)

This essay begins by dividing the traditional problem of free will and determinism into a “correlation” problem and an “explanation” problem. I then focus on the explanation problem, and argue that a standard form of abductive (i.e. inference to the best-explanation) reasoning may be useful in solving it. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of the abductive approach, I apply it to three standard accounts of free will. While each account implies the same solution to the correlation problem, each implies a unique (...) solution to the explanation problem. For example, all libertarian-friendly accounts of free will imply that it is impossible to act freely when determinism is true. However, only a narrow subset of libertarians have the theoretical resources to defend the incompatibilist claim that deterministic laws (qua being deterministic) undermine free will, while other libertarians must reject this incompatibilist view. -/- [Version: Nov. 12, 2018]. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue for the rejection of Vihvelin's ‘Three-fold Classification’ , a nonstandard taxonomy of free-will compatibilism, incompatibilism, and impossibilism. Vihvelin is right that the standard taxonomy of these views is inadequate, and that a new taxonomy is needed to clarify the free-will debate. Significantly, Vihvelin notes that the standard formal definition of ‘incompatibilism’ does not capture the historically popular view that deterministic laws pose a threat to free will. Vihvelin's proposed solution is to redefine ‘incompatibilism.’ However, Vihvelin's (...) formal definition of ‘incompatibilism’ is flawed according to her own arguments. In addition, Vihvelin's characterization of ‘compatibilism’ is incomplete, and at least two important free-will views are missing from her proposed taxonomy. Given the problems with Vihvelin's arguments for 3-FC, her novel view of the dialectic between the major free-will views lacks support. (shrink)

This article’s guiding question is about bullet biting: When should compatibilists about moral responsibility bite the bullet in responding to stories used in arguments for incompatibilism about moral responsibility? Featured stories are vignettes in which agents’ systems of values are radically reversed by means of brainwashing and the story behind the zygote argument. The malady known as “intuition deficit disorder” is also discussed.

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

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 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)