Abstract

Professor Vesey poses the following question: … philosophers talk of ‘free will’ with a view to justifying our engaging in the practice of treating people as responsible for what they do. But why do we feel the need for a justification? It is because they want, also, to engage in the practice of looking for (motor) causes of everything that happens, and feel that the two practices are somehow incompatible? If so, then it is very paradoxical that they should turn to Descartes, and his theory of willing. Descartes' answer to the question ‘What does a person do immediately?’, namely ‘He performs an act of will’, has what I call ‘the incompatibility feature’, whereas Aristotle's answer has not. Why are they not content to say, with Aristotle, that the two practices are compatible, and hence there is no need for a justification?