In this paper I will introduce a new compatibilist account of free action: indirect conscious control compatibilism, or just indirect compatibilism for short. On this account, actions are free either when they are caused by compatibilist‐friendly conscious psychological processes, or else by sub‐personal level processes influenced in particular ways by compatibilist‐friendly conscious psychological processes. This view is motivated by a problem faced by a certain family of compatibilist views, which I call conscious control views. These views hold that (...) we act freely when we act in a way that is caused by certain conscious psychological processes. One problem for such views is that current neuroscience suggests that most of our actions are not caused by such processes. Instead, many of the actions we typically suppose are free are caused by sub‐personal level processes and hence would count as not free according to contemporary conscious control views. I argue, contra these views, that many actions caused by these sub‐personal level processes are indirectly free. Further, most of the actions we ordinarily judge to be free are free in this indirect manner. (shrink)

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

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)

In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions. In a recent paper, Feltz and Millan have challenged this conclusion by claiming that most laypeople are only compatibilists in appearance and are in fact willing to attribute free will to people no matter what. As evidence for this claim, they have shown that an important proportion of laypeople still attribute free will to agents in fatalistic universes. In this paper, we first argue that (...) Feltz and Millan’s error-theory rests on a conceptual confusion: it is perfectly acceptable for a certain brand of compatibilist to judge free will and fatalism to be compatible, as long as fatalism does not prevent agents from being the source of their actions. We then present the results of two studies showing that laypeople’s intuitions are best understood as following a certain brand of source compatibilism rather than a “free-will-no-matter-what” strategy. (shrink)

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

Compatibilism is the view that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Natural compatibilism is the view that in ordinary social cognition, people are compatibilists. Researchers have recently debated whether natural compatibilism is true. This paper presents six experiments (N = 909) that advance this debate. The results provide the best evidence to date for natural compatibilism, avoiding the main methodological problems faced by previous work supporting the view. In response to simple scenarios about familiar activities, people (...) judged that agents had moral responsibilities to perform actions that they were unable to perform (Experiment 1), were morally responsible for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 2), were to blame for unavoidable outcomes (Experiments 3-4), deserved blame for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 5), and should suffer consequences for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 6). These findings advance our understanding of moral psychology and philosophical debates that depend partly on patterns in commonsense morality. (shrink)

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

Traditional compatibilism about free will is widely considered to be untenable. In particular, the conditional analysis of the ability to do otherwise appears to be subject to clear counterexamples. I will propose a new version of traditional compatibilism that provides a conditional account of both the ability to do otherwise and the ability to choose to do otherwise, and I will argue that this view withstands the standard objections to traditional compatibilism. For this, I will assume with (...) incompatibilists that the mere possession of a general ability to do otherwise is not sufficient for having the ability that is required for free will. This concession distinguishes the view from the traditional conditional analysis and from recent dispositional accounts of the ability to do otherwise, and we will see that this concession enables a straightforward response to the counterexamples. This, in turn, will play a crucial role in my response to the strongest version of the consequence argument for incompatibilism. (shrink)

Originally published in Ton van den Beld, ed., MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ONTOLOGY. Kluwer. 2000. -/- Compatibilists argue, famously, that it is a simple incompatibilist confusion to suppose that determinism implies fatalism. Incompatibilists argue, on the contrary, that determinism implies fatalism, and thus cannot be consistent with the necessary conditions of moral responsibility. Despite their differences, however, both parties are agreed on one important matter: the refutation of fatalism is essential to the success of the compatibilist strategy. In this paper I (...) argue that compatibilism requires a richer conception of fatalistic concern; one that recognizes the legitimacy of (pessimistic) concerns about the origination of character and conduct. On this basis I argue that any plausible compatibilist position must concede that determinism has fatalistic implications of some significant and relevant kind, and thus must allow that agents may be legitimately held responsible in circumstances where they are subject to fate. The position generated by these compatibilist concessions to incompatibilism will be called 'compatibilist-fatalism'. (shrink)

In this thesis, I will defend a new kind of compatibilist account of free action, indirect conscious control compatibilism (or indirect compatibilism for short), and argue that some of our actions are free according to it. My argument has three components, and involves the development of a brand new tool for experimental philosophy, and the use of cognitive neuroscience. The first component of the argument shows that compatibilism (of some kind) is a conceptual truth. Contrary to the (...) current orthodoxy in the free will literature, which is that our concept of free will is an incompatibilist concept - a concept according to which we have free will only if determinism is false - I will show that our concept of free will is in fact a compatibilist concept - a concept according to which we can have free will even if determinism is true - and I do so using a new experimental philosophy methodology inspired by two-dimensional semantics. -/- Of course, even if our concept of free will is a compatibilist concept, this does not mean that there are any free actions in the world: the current empirical evidence from the brain sciences appears to show that there might be no, or very few, free actions in the world, even on many compatibilist understandings of what it would take for there to be free will. The second component of the argument addresses this concern by extending our understanding of compatibilism. Agents act freely either when their actions are caused by compatibilistically acceptable psychological processes, or are indirectly caused by those same processes. Hence the name of my account: indirect compatibilism. -/- The final component of the argument defends my new account against some interesting objections and provides evidence from cognitive neuroscience that some of our actions count as free by the lights of indirect compatibilism. (shrink)

The problem of freedom and determinism has vexed philosophers for several millennia, and continues to be a topic of lively debate today. One of the proposed solutions to the problem that has received a great deal of attention is the Theory of Agent Causation. While the theory has enjoyed its share of advocates, and perhaps more than its share of critics, the theory’s advocates and critics have always agreed on one thing: the Theory of Agent Causation is an incompatibilist theory. (...) That is, both believers and nonbelievers in the theory have taken it for granted that the most plausible version of the Theory of Agent Causation is one according to which freedom and determinism are incompatible. In fact, so entrenched is this assumption that no one on either side of the debate has ever questioned it. Yet it turns out that this assumption is wrong – the most plausible version of the Theory of Agent Causation is a compatibilist one. (shrink)

Compatibilism is the view that determinism is compatible with acting freely and being morally responsible. Incompatibilism is the opposite view. It is often claimed that compatibilism or incompatibilism is a natural part of ordinary social cognition. That is, it is often claimed that patterns in our everyday social judgments reveal an implicit commitment to either compatibilism or incompatibilism. This paper reports five experiments designed to identify such patterns. The results support a nuanced hybrid account: The central tendencies (...) in ordinary social cognition are compatibilism about moral responsibility, compatibilism about positive moral accountability, neither compatibilism nor incompatibilism about negative moral accountability, compatibilism about choice for actions with positive outcomes, and incompatibilism about choice for actions with negative or neutral outcomes. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a new approach to the problem of determinism and moral responsibility. This approach involves asking when someone has a compelling claim to exemption against other members of the moral community. I argue that it is sometimes fair to reject such claims, even when the agent doesn’t deserve, in the sense of basic desert, to be blamed for her conduct. In particular, when an agent’s conduct reveals that her commitment to comply with the standards of the (...) moral community is deficient, and when her demand for exemption further exemplifies this deficiency, she cannot complain of unfair treatment if her demand is rejected. To support this contention, I argue that we are sometimes justified in rejecting otherwise valid moral appeals on the grounds that they are cynically motivated, especially when an agent merely seeks to exploit our commitment to comply with reasonable interpersonal standards. An advantage of this approach is that it affords compatibilists a middle path, allowing them to defend our practice of blaming on non-consequentialist grounds of fairness, even as they acknowledge the force of arguments for incompatibilism about basic desert. (shrink)

Compatibilism is the view that determinism is true, but agents nevertheless possess free will as long as they act from a compatibilist friendly agential structure (i.e., agents want to perform their actions, agents identify with the actions they perform, agents would be responsive to reasons against performing those actions, etc.). The most powerful contemporary objection to compatibilism is the manipulation argument, according to which agents determined to act as they do by the prodding of manipulative neuroscientists are not (...) considered free, so agents determined to act by physical processes operating from the remote past should not be considered free either. One compatibilist response to the manipulation argument is the so-called hard-line reply, according to which compatibilists argue that agents determined by physical processes operating from the remote past are free, so agents determined by manipulative neuroscientists are free as well. In this paper I demonstrate that leading hard-line replies fail, while also introducing a novel argument against the hard-line reply. (shrink)

Compatibilists argue, famously, that it is a simple incompatibilist confusion to suppose that determinism implies fatalism. Incompatibilists argue, on the contrary, that determinism implies fatalism, and thus cannot be consistent with the necessary conditions of moral responsibility. Despite their differences, however, both parties are agreed on one important matter: the refutation of fatalism is essential to the success of the compatibilist strategy. In this paper I argue that compatibilism requires a richer conception of fatalistic concern; one that recognizes the (...) _legitimacy_ of (pessimistic) concerns about the origination of character and conduct. On this basis I argue that any plausible compatibilist position must concede that determinism has fatalistic implications of some significant and relevant kind, and thus must allow that agents may be legitimately held responsible in circumstances where they are subject to fate. The position generated by these compatibilist concessions to incompatibilism will be called 'compatibilist-fatalism'. (shrink)

Much of the recent philosophical discussion about free will has been focused on whether compatibilists can adequately defend how a determined agent could exercise the type of free will that would enable the agent to be morally responsible in what has been called the basic desert sense :5–24, 1994; Fischer in Four views on free will, Wiley, Hoboken, 2007; Vargas in Four views on free will, Wiley, Hoboken, 2007; Vargas in Philos Stud, 144:45–62, 2009). While we agree with Derk Pereboom (...) and others that the compatibilist’s burden should be properly understood as providing a compelling account of how a determined agent could be morally responsible in the basic desert sense, the exact nature of this burden has been rendered somewhat unclear by the fact that there has been no definitive account given as to what the basic desert sense of moral responsibility amounts to. In Sect. 1 we set out to clarify the compatibilist’s burden by presenting our account of basic desert moral responsibility—which we call retributivist desert moral responsibility for purposes of clarity—and explain why it is of central philosophical and practical importance to the free will debate. In Sect. 2 we employ a thought experiment to illustrate the kind of difficulty that compatibilists of any stripe are likely to encounter in attempting to explain how determined agents can exercise the kind of free will needed for retributivist desert moral responsibility. (shrink)

As I read the texts of Aquinas and the state of the discussion among his interpreters on the question of the compatibility between creaturely freedom and divine providence, an alternative interpretation suggests itself. My impression is that traditional interpreters left Aquinas’ account of the relationships among human freedom, providence and divine goodness inadequately defended, while Maritain and Lonergan with fair intention subverted it, because their readings were hampered by libertarian intuitions about human freedom which Aquinas did not share. -/- Understanding (...) Aquinas’ account of freedom in compatibilist terms reveals greater coherence in his account of the nature of human freedom and the role our freedom plays in the created order than do accounts infected with libertarian notions of freedom. Once the compatibilist conception of freedom is comprehended, it functions like a lens of superior clarity through which other aspects of Aquinas’ thought concerning the created order can be seen afresh. Accordingly, our first task is to craft the lens itself: a compatibilist conception of freedom will be ground from the material available in Aquinas’ writing on the will, its acts, and their causes in a way unclouded by the apparent tensions between causality and freedom which libertarian intuitions introduce. Then grasping the compatibilist lens, we will see through it a coherent account of the high purpose in the plan of providence for free creatures. Finally, we will observe coherence in Aquinas’ account of the permission of sin and even the ultimate failure of free creatures through the perspective afforded by compatibilist freedom. (shrink)

Natural compatibilists say that moral responsibility is compatible with natural (or causal) determinism, where natural events and laws of nature determine everything that happens. Theological compatibilists say that moral responsibility is compatible with theological determinism, where God (rather than natural events/laws) determines everything that happens. Some philosophers accept natural compatibilism but reject theological compatibilism, and, in this chapter, I argue that this combination of views is untenable I start with a discussion of why someone might be attracted to (...) this combination of views in the first place, which includes a discussion of the manipulation argument against compatibilism. Some natural compatibilists endorse “soft-line” responses to this argument—responses which imply theological incompatibilism. I argue that such “soft-line” approaches cannot succeed, and along the way I argue that their failure undermines Jason Turner’s recent compatibilist free will defense (in response to the problem of evil). I wrap up by considering some implications of my conclusion that natural compatibilists should be theological compatibilists, including whether my conclusion highlights the “cost” of compatibilism, as proponents of manipulation arguments sometimes allege, and also whether anything follows with regard to God’s standing to blame determined human agents. (shrink)

I formulate a compatibilism that is distinctively responsive to skeptical worries about the justification of punishment and other moral responsibility practices. I begin with an evolutionary story explaining why backward-looking reactive attitudes are “given” in human society. Cooperative society plausibly could not be sustained without such practices. The necessary accountability practices have complex internal standards. These internal standards may fully ground the appropriateness of reactive attitudes. Following a recent analogy, we can similarly hold that there are no external standards (...) for what is funny; the norms of comedy are complex, but funny is funny. However, this is compatible with moral reasons to change the practices themselves, and therefore change what is fitting within them: in the first instance, a moralistic “that's not funny” is ill-fitting, but “that shouldn't be funny” can be apt. The analogous reformist position prescribes practices constituting the minimal responsibility norms necessary for cooperative society. (shrink)

This paper tries to summarize the main lines of discussion at the conference "Compatibilist Libertarianism: Advantages and Challenges" (October 29, 2021). This conference, organised by Alexander Gebharter and Maria Sekatskaya, served the discussion of Christian List's account of compatibilist libertarianism. Speakers were Taylor W. Cyr, Nadine Elzein, Alexander Gebharter, Christian List, Alfred R. Mele, Leonhard Menges, Tuomas K. Pernu, and Maria Sekatskaya.

A pair of compatibilists, John Fischer (2012: ch. 6; n.d.) and Manuel Vargas (2012) have responded to a problem about luck that Alfred Mele (2005, 2006) posed for incompatibilist believers in free will and moral responsibility. They offer assistance to libertarians - at least on this front. In this paper, we assess their responses and explain why what they offer is inadequate for libertarian purposes.

This paper articulates and responds to a challenge to contemporary compatibilist views of free will. Despite the popularity and appeal of compatibilist theories, many are left with lingering doubts about compatibilism. This paper explains this doubt in terms of the absurdity challenge: because a compatibilist accepts that they do not have causal access to all the actual sufficient causal sources of their own agency, the compatibilist can find their own agency absurd. By taking a cue from political philosophy, this (...) paper argues that a non-ideal construction of the problem of free will allows compatibilists to overcome this existential-metaphysical challenge, and by doing so, perhaps adopt a metaphysically progressive picture of human agency. (shrink)

A common compatibilist view says that we are free and morally responsible in virtue of the ability to respond aptly to reasons. Many hold a version of this view despite disagreement about whether free will requires the ability to do otherwise. The canonical version of this view is reductive. It reduces the pertinent ability to a set of modal properties that are more obviously compatible with determinism, like dispositions. I argue that this and any reductive view of abilities faces a (...) significant challenge: it cannot adequately explain the freedom-grounding element of this ability. The problem has the form of a dilemma. This leaves reasons-responsive compatibilists with two options: abandon theories of free will grounded in abilities or abandon reductive theories of abilities. (shrink)

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

No contemporary compatibilist account of free will can be complete unless it engages with the consequence argument. I will argue that Wilfrid Sellars offered an ingenious version of compatibilism that can be used to refute the consequence argument. Unfortunately, owing to the opacity of Sellars’s writings on free will, his solution has been neglected. I will reconstruct his view here, demonstrating how it represents a powerful challenge to the consequence argument and tying it to some recent developments in the (...) compatibilist literature. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel argument for compatibilism, the view that free will and determinism are compatible. Drawing on principles from quantum mechanics, specifically the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the concept of superposition, the paper proposes an analogy between the behavior of particles at the quantum level and the choices made by free agents. It argues that just as particles exist in a field of possibilities until observed, actions exist in a field of possibilities until a decision is made. (...) The deterministic aspect comes from the natural laws that govern the behavior of particles (and, by extension, our actions), while the free will aspect is represented by the field of possibilities from which we can choose. The paper further explores the implications of this perspective for our understanding of moral responsibility and the nature of reality. It concludes by suggesting that our collective observations and choices contribute to the creation of our shared reality, underscoring the interconnectedness of all beings. (shrink)

Michael Moore’s recent book Mechanical Choices: The Responsibility of the Human Machine is full of rich, insightful discussion of many important issues related to free will and moral responsibility. I will focus on one particular issue raised by Moore: the question of whether we can have control over the past. Moore defends a compatibilist account of moral responsibility on which there are some possible cases in which agents do have such control. But Moore seeks to avoid positing too much control (...) over the past. I will argue that Moore’s attempt is not successful. Furthermore, I will try to show that compatibilists in general face a serious challenge regarding control over the past. In sections 1 and 2 I will explore Moore’s views. In section 3 and 4 I will offer a general argument against compatibilism about moral responsibility and determinism. (shrink)

The new dispositionalists defend the position that an agent in a deterministic Frankfurt-style case has the ability to do otherwise, where that ability is the one at issue in the principle of alternative possibilities. Focusing specifically on Kadri Vihvelin's proposal, I argue against this position by showing that it is incompatible with the existence of structurally similar cases to FSCs in which a preemptive intervener bestows an agent with an ability.

Conflicts between our best philosophical theories (BPTs) and our common beliefs are widespread. For example, if eliminativism is our BPT, then our BPT conflicts with common beliefs about the existence of middle-sized composite artifacts. “Compatibilism” is the name usually given to a theoretical attitude, according to which, in the case of a conflict between BPT and a common belief P, we should try to find a reconciliation. The two major variants of compatibilism are “semantic compatibilism” (SC) and (...) “cognitive compatibilism” (CC). According to SC, to be reconciled with BPT is the “real” version of the content of our ordinary assertions; according to CC, to be reconciled with BPT is the mental state we are “really” in while thinking P. In this paper, we present a new kind of compatibilism, epistemic compatibilism (EC). According to EC, to be reconciled with BPT is the explanation of why we believe that P. After presenting EC, we will argue that it fares better than SC and CC for at least two related reasons: EC does not rely on any form of what we call semantic or cognitive “recarving”; thus, EC avoids some sceptical problems that aect the other two versions of compatibilism. (shrink)

In the early 1980’s van Inwagen presented the Direct Argument for the incompatibility of determinism with moral responsibility. In the course of the ensuing debate, Fischer, McKenna and Loewenstein have replied, each in their own way, that versions of the Direct Argument do not pose even a prima facie threat to compatibilism. Their grounds were that versions of the Direct Argument all use the “Transfer NR” inference rule in a dialectically problematic way. I rebut these replies here. By so (...) doing, I hope to set the Direct Argument debate on a more fruitful path. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a version of compatibilism against luck-related objections. After introducing the types of luck that some take to be problematic for moral responsibility, I consider and respond to two recent attempts to show that compatibilism faces the same problem of luck that libertarianism faces—present luck. I then consider a different type of luck—constitutive luck—and provide a new solution to this problem. One upshot of the present discussion is a reason to prefer a history-sensitive compatibilist (...) account over a purely nonhistorical structuralist account. (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)

A critical review of Mark Siderits's arguments in support of a compatibilist Buddhist theory of free will based on early Abhidharma reductionism and the two-truths distinction between conventional and ultimate truths or reality, which theory he terms 'paleo-compatibilism'. The Buddhist two-truths doctrine is basically analogous to Sellers' distinction between the manifest and scientific images, in which case the argument is that determinism is a claim about ultimate reality, whereas personhood and agency are about conventional reality, both discourse domains are (...) semantically insulated, and thus there cannot be any issue of the incompatibility. (shrink)

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

Many manipulation arguments against compatibilism rely on the claim that manipulation is relevantly similar to determinism. But we argue that manipulation is nothing like determinism in one relevant respect. Determinism is a "universal" phenomenon: its scope includes every feature of the universe. But manipulation arguments feature cases where an agent is the only manipulated individual in her universe. Call manipulation whose scope includes at least one but not all agents "existential manipulation." Our responsibility practices are impacted in different ways (...) by universal and existential phenomena. And this is a relevant difference, especially on Strawsonian approaches to moral responsibility, which take facts about our responsibility practices to be deeply connected to the nature of responsibility itself. We argue that Strawsonian accounts of moral responsibility are immune to manipulation arguments, and no attempt to modify the scope of manipulation or determinism featured in these arguments will help incompatibilists secure their desired conclusion. (shrink)

The debate on compatibility of fate with human responsibility lasted for five hundred years of the Stoic school and it is still with us in terms of contemporary discussions of the compatibility of determinism and free will. Chrysippus was confronted with the standard objection: It would be unjust to punish criminals “if human beings do not do evils voluntarily but are dragged by fate.” Chrysippus uses the famous illustration of the cylinder and cone, which cannot start moving without being pushed. (...) However, when this has happened, from then on the cylinder rolls and the cone spins by their own nature. I explore the cylinder analogy and its modern relevance from the perspective of thought experiments. I argue that it helps us isolate the main causal factor (the locus of responsibility and agency) and insulate this factor from the rest of the causal history and causal background. The cylinder/cone analogy is a compatibilistic tool, a kind of “mental distillation” in which we separate in imagination those aspects (causal factors) which are relevant for moral responsibility from those which are not. I suggest, somehow anachronistically, but in line both with contemporary compatibilism and Chrysippian views on causal structure of agency that the actions of an agent are “fated” from the theoretical point of view, but they are up to her from the practical point of view. (shrink)

(Part of a symposium on an OUP collection of Paul Russell's papers on free will and moral responsibility). Paul Russell’s The Limits of Free Will is more than the sum of its parts. Among other things, Limits offers readers a comprehensive look at Russell’s attack on the problematically idealized assumptions of the contemporary free will debate. This idealization, he argues, distorts the reality of our human predicament. Herein I pose a dilemma for Russell’s position, critical compatibilism. The dilemma illuminates (...) the tension between Russell’s critical and compatibilist commitments. The problem is not obviously insurmountable, and as a compatibilist who is sympathetic to the view, my aim is to spark further discussion. (shrink)

In a recent paper I argued that agent causation theorists should be compatibilists. In this paper, I argue that compatibilists should be agent causation theorists. I consider six of the main problems facing compatibilism: (i) the powerful intuition that one can't be responsible for actions that were somehow determined before one was born; (ii) Peter van Inwagen's modal argument, involving the inference rule (β); (iii) the objection to compatibilism that is based on claiming that the ability to do (...) otherwise is a necessary condition for freedom; (iv) "manipulation arguments," involving cases in which an agent is manipulated by some powerful being into doing something that he or she would not normally do, but in such a way that the compatibilist's favorite conditions for a free action are satisfied; (v) the problem of constitutive luck; and (vi) the claim that it is not fair to blame someone for an action if that person was determined by forces outside of his or her control to perform that action. And in the case of each of these problems, I argue that the compatibilist has a much more plausible response to that problem if she endorses the theory of agent causation than she does otherwise. (shrink)

Flew strongly defends a compatibilist thesis in the free will debate before going on to totally object to theistic libertarianism. His objections basically rely on his compatibilism embracing the notion of agent causation, which is not very common in compatibilist theses. Since he is a strong proponent of ordinary language philosophy, he also holds that linguistic analyses can certainly solve the free will problem as well as many other problems of philosophy. In doing so, he first uses the paradigm (...) cases based on our common sense experience and then assumes the verity of principle of alternative possibilities. This study attempts to show, on the one hand, that there are some serious difficulties in both his justification of compatibilism and his objections to theistic libertarianism, and on the other hand, that he cannot easily defend both at the same time. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers John Martin Fischer argues that the Molinist solution to the problem of reconciling divine omniscience with human freedom does not offer such a solution at all. Instead, he maintains, Molina simply presupposes theological compatibilism. However, Fischer construes the problem in terms of sempiternalist omniscience, whereas classical Molinism adopts atemporalism. I argue that, moreover, an atemporalist reformulation of Fischer’s argument designed to show that Molinism is not even consistent is unsuccessful as well, since it (...) employs a transfer principle about causal inaccessibility that Molina rightfully rejects. (shrink)

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

The principle of alternative possibilities tells us that an agent is morally responsible for an action only if he could have done otherwise. Frankfurt-style cases provide an extremely influential challenge to the PAP . And Frankfurt-style compatibilists are motivated to accept compatibilism about responsibility and determinism in part due to FSCs. But there is a significant tension between our judgments about responsibility in FSCs and our judgments about responsibility in certain omissions cases. This tension has thus far largely been (...) treated as an internal puzzle for defenders of FSCs to solve. My goal here is to regiment this tension into a clear argument which undermines the FSC based critique of PAP. I will also argue that there is an in principle reason to doubt that Frankfurt-Style Compatibilists will be able to successfully respond to my argument. (shrink)

In Book II, chapter xxi of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, on ‘Power’, Locke presents a radical critique of free will. This is the longest chapter in the Essay, and it is a difficult one, not least since Locke revised it four times without always taking care to ensure that every part cohered with the rest. My interest is to work out a coherent statement of what would today be termed ‘compatibilism’ from this text – namely, a doctrine which (...) seeks to render free will and determinism compatible. By emphasizing the hedonistic dimension of his argument, according to which we are determined by “the most pressing uneasiness” we feel, I show how a deterministic reading is possible. This was seen by Locke’s favorite and also most radical disciple, the deist Anthony Collins, whose treatise A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (1717) is both a critique of Essay II.xxi and a radicalization of its contents. I argue that Collins articulated a form of determinism which recognizes the specificity of action, thanks in large part to the uniquely ‘volitional’ determinism suggested by Locke. (shrink)

It is a truism that where one starts from and the direction one goes determines where one ends up. This is no less true in philosophy than elsewhere, and certainly no less true in matters dealing with the relationship between God’s foreknowledge and human free actions. In what follows I will argue that the incompatibilist view that Fischer and others stalwartly defend results from the particular starting point they choose, and that if one adopts a different starting point about divine (...) knowledge the logical incompatibility they envision and philosophically anguish over evaporates. (shrink)

For many years there has been a debate in truthmaking theory between proponents of the substantive and deflationary approaches. Substantivists about truthmaking maintain that we need entities called truthmakers, while deflationists of truthmaking argue that the asymmetric form of the T-schema is sufficient. In contrast to incompatibilists, who argue that one should adopt only one of these approaches, I propose a compatibilist theory of truthmaking in which the two approaches complement each other through the distribution of different functions of truthmaking. (...) I find that this helps to solve the problem of truthmaking of certain contentious truths, such as negative truths. (shrink)

The rapid pace of technological advancements offers an essential field of research for a deeper understanding of man’s relationship with artifacts of her design. These artifacts designed by humans can have various mental and physical effects on their users. The human interaction with the artifact is not passive; on the contrary, it exhibits a potential that reveals the inner dispositions of human beings and makes them open to new creations. In this article, we will examine the impact of technology on (...) human life through the dispositional compatibilism perspective of the contemporary philosopher Kadri Vihvelin, arguing for a system of metaphysics in which ontology of properties depend on dispositions. In this context, the emerging phenomenon of dispositional compatibilism opens the door to developing new philosophical ideas for evaluating the concepts of compatibilism and freedom in the context of technology. Thus, it is emphasized that although technological devices shape human life, new and unforeseen powers may emerge due to human-artifact interaction. This article will examine the idea of dispositional compatibilism by specifically considering human interaction with text-based AI applications. The ability of AI to collaborate with human thought patterns is a meaningful example of the observation of dispositional compatibilism. In conclusion, the article aims to address the effects of technology on human freedom by approaching the human-artifact relationship from a dispositional perspective. It also aims to defend the claim that technological artifacts can positively contribute to human freedom from the perspective of dispositional compatibilism. (shrink)

The compatibility of determinism and the ability to do otherwise has been implicitly assumed by many to be irrelevant to the viability of compatibilist responses to the manipulation argument for incompatibilism. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. The manipulation argument may be unsound. But even so, the manipulation argument, at the very least, undermines classical compatibilism, the view that free will requires the ability to do otherwise, and having that ability is compatible with determinism. This is because classical (...) compatibilism, in conjunction with any type of reply to the manipulation argument, has counterintuitive implications. In order to avoid such implications, we need not hold that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. But we must hold that determinism is incompatible with the ability to do otherwise. (shrink)

Is human free will compatible with the natural laws of the universe? To “compatibilists” who see free actions as emanating from the wants and reasons of human agents, free will looks perfectly plausible. However, “incompatibilists” claim to see the more ultimate sources of human action. The wants and reasons of agents are said to be caused by physical processes which are themselves mere natural results of the previous state of the world and the natural laws which govern it. This paper (...) argues that the incompatibilists make a mistake in appealing to such non-agent sources of human action. They fail to realize that free will may exist at one scale, but not at the scales where they look. When free will is considered from the correctly scaled perspective, it does seem compatible with determinism and natural laws. (shrink)