Neuroplasticity, the capacity of the brain to induce changes in response to environmental stimuli, entails a continuous rearrangement of the neural network through a complex interaction between genetics and environment. Within this process, the plastic brain uses its internal representations to predict future conditions and proactively proceed to actions. It can be said that plasticity demands a rethinking of the concept of determinism as the process of coming-to-be is directly related to modifications produced by experience. Pure determinism and (...) complete randomness are the two ends of a spectrum of positions relevant to the debate of the existence of free will. However, none conceptually supports free decision-making. How brain activity and the conscious experience of volition are related to one another has been a matter of significant research, with a plethora of findings indicating that early brain signals precede the self-reported time of the decision to act. The meaning of these findings, however, has been debated at both a theoretical and empirical level and the controversy is still ongoing. Consciousness is intertwined with free will along the dimension of time as it would otherwise be purposeless, taking place right at the next moment. Electrical activity of the brain is a measure of neurophysiological function and contributes to the understanding of processes that underlie high-order cognitive functions. A multidisciplinary approach in the study of free will could be designed in a way that philosophical concepts are connected to neural correlates by psychologically functionalizing them in terms of cognitive abilities. Such abilities are at the margins of conscious and nonconscious sensory information and are closely linked to brain processes of executive functions like attentional control and working memory. (shrink)

Do we have free will and moral responsibility? Is free will compatible with determinism? Scott Sehon argues that we can make progress on these questions by focusing on an underlying issue: the nature of action explanation. When a person acts, or does something on purpose, we explain the behavior by citing the agent's reasons. The dominant view in philosophy of mind has been to construe such explanations as a species of causal explanation. Sehon proposes and (...) defends a non-causal account of action and agency, according to which reason explanation of human behavior is teleological rather than causal, before applying the teleological account of action to free will and responsibility. He argues that the non-causal compatibilist account works well in practice: it is in accord with our clear intuitions about cases, and it both explains and provides guidance in the cases where our intuitions are murkier. (shrink)

In this article we study the question of free will from an interdisciplinary angle, drawing on philosophy, neurobiology and physics. We start by reviewing relevant neurobiological findings on the functioning of the brain, notably as presented in (Koch, 2009); we assess these against the physics of (in)determinism. These biophysics findings seem to indicate that neuronal processes are not quantum but classical in nature. We conclude from this that there is little support for the existence of an immaterial (...) ‘mind’, capable of ruling over matter independently of the causal past. But what, then, can free will be? We propose a compatibilist account that resonates well with neurobiology and physics, and that highlights that free will comes in degrees — degrees which vary with the conscious grasp the ‘free’ agent has over his actions. Finally, we analyze the well-known Libet experiment on free will through the lens of our model. We submit this interdisciplinary investigation as a typical case of naturalized philosophy: in our theorizing we privilege assumptions that find evidence in science, but our conceptual work also suggests new avenues for research in a few scientific disciplines. (shrink)

This book offers translations of early critical reactions to Kant’s account of free will. Spanning the years 1784–1800, the translations make available, for the first time in English, works by little-known thinkers including Pistorius, Ulrich, Heydenreich, Creuzer and others, as well as familiar figures including Reinhold, Fichte and Schelling. Together they are a testimony to the intense debates surrounding the reception of Kant’s account of free will in the 1780s and 1790s, and throw (...) into relief the controversies concerning the coherence of Kant’s concept of transcendental freedom, the possibility of reconciling freedom with determinism, the relation between free will and moral imputation, and other arguments central to Kant’s view. The volume also includes a helpful introduction, a glossary of key terms and biographical details of the critics, and will provide a valuable foundation for further research on free will in post-Kantian philosophy. (shrink)

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)

What are the folk-conceptual connections between free will and consciousness? In this paper I present results which indicate that consciousness plays central roles in folk conceptions of free will. When conscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent acted freely. And when unconscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent did not act freely. Further, these studies contribute to recent experimental work on folk philosophical affiliation, which analyzes folk responses to (...) determine whether folk views are consistent with the view that free will and determinism are incompatible (incompatibilism) or with the opposite view (compatibilism). Conscious causation of behavior tends to elicit pro-free will judgments, even when the causation takes place deterministically. Thus, when controlling for consciousness, many folk seem to be compatibilists. However, participants who disagree with the deterministic or cognitive scientific descriptions given of human behavior tend to give incompatibilist responses. (shrink)

This book examines the way in which new discoveries about genetic and neuroscience are influencing our understanding of human behaviour. As scientists unravel more about the ways in which genes and the environment work together to shape the development of our brains, their studies have importance beyond the narrow confines of the laboratory. This emerging knowledge has implications for our notions of morality and criminal responsibility. The extent to which "biological determinism" can be used as an explanation for our (...) behaviour is of interest to philosophers reflecting on the free will versus determinism debate. It also has repercussions for the criminal justice system; in courtrooms around the world, defence lawyers are beginning to appeal to genetic and brain imaging data as grounds for finding their clients not guilty. Can a defendant's genes or the structure of his brain be used as an excuse for his behaviour? Is criminality "hardwired"? Is it legitimate to claim "I couldn't help it, my genes made me do it"? This book appeals to anyone interested in the link between behaviour and genetics, the science and philosophy of moral responsibility and/or criminal law. (shrink)

This volume is aimed at readers who wish to move beyond debates about the existence of free will and the efficacy of consciousness and closer to appreciating how free will and consciousness might operate. It draws from philosophy and psychology, the two fields that have grappled most fundamentally with these issues. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors explore such issues as how free will is connected to rational choice, planning, and self-control; roles for consciousness (...) in decision making; the nature and power of conscious deciding; connections among free will, consciousness, and quantum mechanics; why free will and consciousness might have evolved; how consciousness develops in individuals; the experience of free will; effects on behavior of the belief that free will is an illusion; and connections between free will and moral responsibility in lay thinking. Collectively, these state-of-the-art chapters by accomplished psychologists and philosophers provide a glimpse into the future of research on free will and consciousness. (shrink)

Like most episodes of Black Mirror, “Hang the DJ” raises a host of philosophical questions. While there is much from this episode to explore, this chapter will explore something that has not yet been addressed in other work, namely the connection between “Hang the DJ” and questions about free will and determinism (or indeterminism, as the case may be). This chapter will proceed as follows: first, I will sketch some reasons for thinking that, if (...) determinism is true, then no one has or exercises free will. One type of response to determinism’s threat to free will is to accept the incompatibility of free will and determinism and to maintain that we nevertheless have free will. Theorists who endorse indeterministic accounts of free will are called libertarians in the free will debate (but please do not confuse them with political libertarians). Second, I will explain a bit more of the mechanics of libertarianism. Third, I will discuss an influential challenge to libertarianism that has come to be known as the “rollback argument.” The mechanics of this challenge will resemble the plot twist of “Hang the DJ.” Fourth, and finally, I will explore the episode’s portrayal of the value of undetermined choice. (shrink)

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)

The subject of "human free will" versus "divine predestination" is one of the most contentious topics in classical Islamic thought. By focusing on a theme of central importance to any philosophy of religion, and to Islam in particular, this book offers a critical study of the intellectual imports offered to this discourse by three key medieval Islamic scholars: Avicenna, Ghāzālī and Ibn Arabī.

Do humans have a free choice of which actions to perform? Three recent developments of modern science can help us to answer this question. First, new investigative tools have enabled us to study the processes in our brains which accompanying our decisions. The pioneer work of Benjamin Libet has led many neuroscientists to hold the view that our conscious intentions do not cause our bodily movements but merely accompany them. Then, Quantum Theory suggests that not all physical events are (...) fully determined by their causes, and so opens the possibility that not all brain events may be fully determined by their causes, and so maybe - if neuroscience does not rule this out - there is a role for intentions after all. Finally, a theorem of mathematics, Godel's theory, has been interpreted to suggest that the initial conditions and laws of development of a mathematician's brain could not fully determine which mathematical conjectures he sees to be true. Papers by Patrick Haggard, Tim Bayne, Harald Atmanspacher and Stefan Rotter, Solomon Feferman, and John Lucas investigate these issues. The extent to which human behaviour is determined by brain events may well depend on whether conscious events, such as intentions, are themselves merely brain events, or whether they are separate events which interact with brain events (perhaps in the radical form that intentions are events in our soul, and not in our body). The papers of Frank Jackson, Richard Swinburne, and Howard Robinson investigate these issues. The remaining papers, of Galen Strawson, Helen Steward, and R.A. Duff, consider what kind of free will we need in order to be morally responsible for our actions or to be held guilty in a court of law. Is it sufficient merely that our actions are uncaused by brain events, or what? (shrink)

Free will and determinism have recently attracted the attention of Buddhist scholars who have defended conflicting views on this issue. I argue that there is no reason to think that this problem cannot arise in Buddhist philosophy, since there are two senses of ‘free will’ that are compatible with the doctrine of non-self. I propose a reconstruction of a problem of free will and determinism in Early Buddhism, given a) the assumption (...) that Buddhist causation entails universal causal determinism, and b) a crucial passage suggesting that Early Buddhism is committed to the principle of alternative possibilities which is arguably incompatible with a determinist interpretation of causation. This passage suggests that Early Buddhism must leave room for a robust, incompatibilist form of free will, and that a conception of indeterminist free will in the spirit of Robert Kane’s theory allows us to make sense of that notion. (shrink)

From the early reception of Thomas Aquinas up to the present, many have interpreted his theory of liberum arbitrium to imply intellectual determinism: we do not control our choices, because we do not control the practical judgments that cause our choices. In this paper we argue instead that he rejects determinism in general and intellectual determinism in particular, which would effectively destroy liberum arbitrium as he conceives of it. We clarify that for Aquinas moral responsibility presupposes (...) liberum arbitrium and thus the ability to do otherwise, although the ability to do otherwise applies differently to praise and blame. His argument against intellectual determinism is not straightforward, but we construct it by analogy to his arguments against other deterministic threats. The non-determinism of the intellect’s causality with respect to the will results from his claims that practical reasoning is defeasible and that the reasons for actions are not contrastive reasons. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The libertarian conception of free will is incoherent, irrespective of the prospects for determinism. However, both compatibilist and hard determinist accounts of the implications of the lack of libertarian free will are inadequate. This I attempt to show primarily with respect to the notions of desert and justice. Working from a "Core Conception" of justice, I argue that we are obliged to recognize a (...) "Fundamental Dualism" in the morally proper attitude to desert and justice. This means that the compatibilist claim that moral responsibility and justice are not harmed by the lack of libertarian free will is mistaken; but so is the hard determinist claim that no account of moral responsibility and justice is possible once the lack of libertarian free will is realized. The dualistic position proposed attempts to combine the insights of compatibilism and hard determinism, while avoiding their inadequacies. Other alternative positions on the free will issue are also argued to be inadequate. In the light of these considerations it is argued that motivated illusion is a central requirement of moral and personal life. In arguing for the importance of illusion, I claim that it is a reality today, that it is mostly positive, and that by and large it ought to continue. To some extent illusion is unavoidable, but, even more interestingly, there seem to be avoidable but morally necessary illusions. The importance of illusion presents great difficulties in the moral and political sphere as well as in the cognitive sphere. Appreciation of the relatively neglected role of illusion, which follows from the basic structure of the free will problem in its moral aspects, is an important key to making progress on this problem. (shrink)

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics (...) not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This new edition includes slightly revised translations, a revised introduction with expanded discussion of certain key themes in the work, and up-to-date guidance on further reading. (shrink)

This book defends an event-causal theory of libertarian free will and argues that the belief in such free will plays an important, if not essential, role in supporting certain important values. In the first part of the book, the author argues that possession of libertarian free will is necessary for deserved praise and blame and reward and punishment. He contends that his version of libertarian free will-the indeterministic weightings view- is coherent and (...) can fit with a scientific, naturalistic understanding of human nature. However, the author also notes that we don't have sufficient evidentiary grounds to believe that human beings have this kind of free will. Despite this, he argues there are sufficiently strong value-based/axiological reasons to believe we have such free will and to live an act as if we have it. In the second part of the book, the author makes the case that the belief in such libertarian, desert-grounding free will is very important to defending human dignity in the context of criminal justice, making sense of justified pride and its value, and adding value to our relationships. Free Will's Value will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, action theory, ethics, and the philosophy of law. (shrink)

Do people have free will, or this universal belief an illusion? If free will is more than an illusion, what kind of free will do people have? How can free will influence behavior? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? How and why might a sense of free will have evolved? These are a few of the questions this book attempts to answer. People generally act as (...) though they believe in their own free will: they don't feel like automatons, and they don't treat one another as they might treat robots. While acknowledging many constraints and influences on behavior, people nonetheless act as if they (and their neighbors) are largely in control of many if not most of the decisions they make. Belief in free will also underpins the sense that people are responsible for their actions. Psychological explanations of behavior rarely mention free will as a factor, however. Can psychological science find room for free will? How do leading psychologists conceptualize free will, and what role do they believe free will plays in shaping behavior? In recent years a number of psychologists have tried to solve one or more of the puzzles surrounding free will. This book looks both at recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to free will and at ways leading psychologists from all branches of psychology deal with the philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will and the importance of consciousness in free will. It also includes commentaries by leading philosophers on what psychologists can contribute to long-running philosophical struggles with this most distinctly human belief. These essays should be of interest not only to social scientists, but to intelligent and thoughtful readers everywhere. (shrink)

This is a work concerned with justification and freedom and the relationship between these. Its summational aim is to defend a transcendental argument for free will – that we could not be epistemically justified in undermining a strong notion of free will, as a strong notion of free will would be required for any such process of undermining to be itself epistemically justified. The book advances two transcendental arguments – for a deontically internalist conception (...) of epistemic justification and the aforementioned argument for a libertarian conception of free will. In defending each of these arguments, the book both defends and relies upon the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In articulating the latter transcendental argument – for freedom – heavy reliance is made on the earlier, epistemic, work: especially on the deontological conception of rational justification (on epistemic internalism). (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)

A major goal for compatibilists is to avoid the luck problem and to include all the facts from neuroscience and natural science in general which purportedly show that the brain works in a law-governed and causal way like any other part of nature. Libertarians, for their part, want to avoid the manipulation argument and demonstrate that very common and deep seated convictions about freedom and responsibility are true: it can really be fundamentally up to us as agents to determine (...) that the future should be either A or B. This book presents a theory of free will which integrates the main motivations of compatibilists and libertarians, while at the same time avoiding their problems. The so-called event-causal libertarianism is the libertarian account closest to compatibilitsm, as it claims there is indeterminism in the mind of an agent. The charge of compatibilists, however, is that this position is impaired by the problem of luck. This book is unique in arguing that free will in a strong sense of the term does not require indeterminism in the brain, only indeterminism somewhere in the world which there plausibly is. (shrink)

A Pragmatic Approach to Libertarian Free Will argues that the kind of free will required for moral responsibility and just desert is libertarian free will. It is a source of great controversy whether such a libertarian view is coherent and whether we should believe that we have such free will. This book explains and defends Robert Kane¿s conception of libertarian free will while departing from it in certain key respects. It (...) is argued that a suitably modified Kanean model of free will can be shown to be conceptually coherent. In addition, it is argued that while we lack sufficient epistemic grounds supporting belief in the existence of libertarian free will, we may still be justified in believing in it for moral reasons. As such, the book engages critically with the works of a growing number of philosophers who argue that we should jettison belief in the existence of desert-grounding free will and the practices of praise and blame and reward and punishment which it supports. (shrink)

This volume, edited by René Brouwer and Emmanuele Vimercati, deals with the debate about fate, providence and free will in the early Imperial age. This debate is rekindled in the 1st century CE during emperor Augustus' rule and ends in the 3rd century CE with Plotinus and Origen, when the different positions in the debate were more or less fully developed. The book aims to show how in this period the notions of fate, providence and freedom were (...) developed and debated, not only within and between the main philosophical schools, that is Stoicism, Aristotelianism, and Platonism, but also in the interaction with other, "religious" movements, here understood in the general sense of groups of people sharing beliefs in and worship of (a) superhuman controlling power(s), such as Gnosticism, Hermetism as well as Judaism and Christianity. (shrink)

'Review from previous edition 'the arguments for free will and determinism are lucidly laid out... A primer that is serviceable, enjoyable and rather mischievous.'' - The Observer 1993 ''refreshing, provocative and original work'' - Times Literary Supplement 1994 ''a readable and engaging introduction to the determinism controversy... Honderich's book is well worth reading... the view he presents is provocative and he has written a very challenging and enlightening introduction to 'the determinism problem' that should be (...) widely read.'' - Times Educational Supplement 1994 ''If you feel strong enough read this book; if not be glad that it has been written; this is main stream philosophy and its conclusions are encouraging.'' -New Directions July 2002This second edition of the best-known and most translated introduction to the great philosophical problem of determinism and freedom has been fully revised and enlarged to take account of debates emerging since the first edition was published. In the first edition Ted Honderich went beyond two traditions of philosophical thought, whilst in this edition he indicates that the nature of the debate must change. (shrink)

Are free will and determinism compatible? Philosophical focus on this deceptively simple `compatibility question' has historically been so pervasive that the entire free will debate is now standardly framed in its terms - that is, as a dispute between compatibilists, who answer the question affirmatively, and incompatibilists, who respond in the negative. This dissertation, in contrast, adopts a position that I call `descriptive variantism,' according to which prevailing notions of free will exhibit significant (...) aspects of both compatibilism and incompatibilism. My formulation and defense of this position provides a framework for considering several important issues that cannot be adequately addressed on the traditional conception of the free will debate. The theoretical advantages of descriptive variantism become apparent, I argue, only after adopting needed refinements to the compatibility question itself. As it stands, this question conflates at least two distinct issues: whether free will, as ordinarily understood, does in fact conflict with determinism, and whether free will should be taken to involve such a conflict. The vast majority of work in this area, I maintain, implies that (a) the shared notion of free will exemplified in everyday usage conforms exclusively to either compatibilism or incompatibilism, and (b) the (singular) position suggested by this shared notion constitutes the most adequate response to the compatibility question. This is a mistake: it ignores several other possibilities, among them the prospect that multiple `shared notions' are implicated in the complex network of judgments, attitudes, and social practices related to free will. Having reformulated various aspects of the free will debate in ways that address these issues, I go on to argue that no single account of free will can underwrite the broad range of phenomena associated with this notion. Most importantly, I maintain that contextual features, especially those related to abstraction and concreteness, engender significantly different notions of free will: abstract contexts tend to elicit judgments and other behaviors conducive to incompatibilism, while concreteness often promotes tendencies best captured by compatibilist theories. I support these empirical claims primarily by drawing out the conceptual implications of recent experimental work on these topics in a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, and defend my interpretation against alternative accounts that purport to `explain away' the contextual differences exhibited in the experimental data. If these claims are correct, then the fundamental conflicts inherent in prevailing notions of free will have the potential to manifest themselves in some highly problematic ways. For example, criminal laws enacted in abstract contexts may presuppose constraints on free agency deeply at odds with those implicitly adopted by jurors evaluating concrete violations of these laws. I attempt to make some preliminary progress on these vexing, but vital, issues by suggesting that revision towards compatibilism represents an initially appealing method of resolving some of these practical difficulties. Importantly, though, this suggestion is tentative, particularly insofar as the extent to which such revision is ultimately desirable, feasible, or even psychologically possible remains unclear. Further consideration of these issues thus constitutes an important avenue for future research. (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)

What is the place of human free will in our lives if all our actions are the result of some other cause? Does our processing unconscious beliefs or desires make us less free? Is our free will necessarily restricted if we do not choose our own beliefs? The debate between free will and its opposing doctrine, determinism, is one of the key issues in philosophy. _Free Will: An historical and philosophical introduction_ (...) provides a comprehensive introduction to this highly important question and examines the contributions made by sixteen of the most outstanding thinkers from the time of early Greece to the twentieth century: *Homer *Sophocles *Platto *Aristotle *St Augustine *St Thomas Aquinas *Descaartes *Spinoza *Hume *Kant *Schopehauer *Freud *Sartre *Weil *Wittgenstein *Moore Ilham Dilman brings together all the dimensions of the problem of free will with examples from literature, ethics and psychoanalysis. Drawing out valuable insights from both sides of the free will-determinism divide, and he provides an accessible and highly readable introduction to this perennial problem. (shrink)

Over the past few centuries the free will debate has largely turned on the question of whether or not the truth of the thesis of determinism is compatible with the relevant form of freedom that is required for moral responsibility. This way of approaching the free will problem was fundamentally challenged by P.F. Strawson in his hugely influential paper “Freedom and Resentment,” which was published in 1962. In this paper Strawson pursues a line of argument (...) that can be found in the work of several major figures in the “moral sense school,” such as David Hume and Adam Smith. The strategy Strawson employs is one that begins with a complex and subtle description of the attitudes and practices that are constitutive of moral responsibility as we observe it in human life. According to Strawson, both sides in this debate fail to identify the real foundations of moral responsibility, which rests with the fabric of our human emotional psychology. When we start from inside these natural, human commitments, Strawson maintains, we are better placed to generate a viable and pertinent theory of human freedom as it relates to the requirements of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The essays in this volume explore various issues pertaining to human agency, such as the relationship between free will and causal determinism, and the nature and conditions of moral responsibility. Builds on and extends some of the very best recent work in the field. Features lively and vigorous debate. Forges connections between abstract philosophical theorizing and applied work in neuroscience and even criminal law.

What is free will? Can it exist in a determined universe? How can we determine who, if anyone, possesses it? Philosophers have been debating these questions for millennia. In recent decades neuroscientists have joined the fray with questions of their own. Which neural mechanisms could enable conscious control of action? What are intentional actions? Do contemporary developments in neuroscience rule out free will or, instead, illuminate how it works? Over the past few years, neuroscientists and (...) philosophers have increasingly come to understand that both fields can make substantive contributions to the free-will debate, so working together is the best path forward to understanding whether, when, and how our choices might be free. We therefore asked leading philosophers and neuroscientists which questions related to free will they would most like the other field to answer. Those experts then voted on the 15 most important questions for each field to answer. This book is a collection of the answers to those questions along with follow-up questions from world experts in the neuroscience and philosophy of free will. These varied perspectives will fascinate, illuminate, and stimulate students from both fields along with anyone who wants to be brought up to date on these profound issues. (shrink)

Gathering an international team of scholars, The Companion to Freedom and Nature is the first book devoted exclusively to Paul Ricoeur’s Freedom and Nature. Covering important influences on Ricoeur’s early thought and connecting it to current issues in embodied cognition and the philosophy of will, the companion promotes a renewed appreciation of the contemporary relevance of this groundbreaking work.

It is now more than half a century since I first began thinking about issues of free will. The libertarian views of free will I developed over this long period have been much debated and have been refined and further developed in response to the critical literature. The goal of this book is to provide an overview of recent developments of my views along with responses to the latest critical literature on them over the past twenty-five (...) years since the publication of my book, The Significance of Free Will (OUP, 1996). Chapters 1-5 present an overview of my current view with the recent additions and alterations to it defended in greater detail. Chapters 6-10 include critical examinations of influential views of many philosophers in the past twenty-five years who have defended alternative views of free will and moral responsibility, including prominent defenders of competing libertarian views, prominent defenders of compatibilist views, free will skeptical views, revisionist views, illusionist views, and others. The goal of these chapters is not merely to criticize these views, but to show what I believe they get right and what aspects of many of them can be accommodated in the libertarian view of free will I defend here. In the final chapter 11, I relate the view of free will of earlier chapters to ethical views I have developed in other works over this same period and to the philosophy of religion, including Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism) as well as theistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Free will, moral responsibility, self-forming actions, ultimate responsibility, incompatilism, AC/EC libertarianism, plural voluntary control, teleological guidance control, will-setting. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Freedom as a Power Freedom and Determinism Freedom and Action References Further reading.

In this chapter we deal with the challenge to the existence of free will and moral responsibility that is raised by the threat of determinism from a Wittgensteinian perspective. Our argument starts by briefly recapitulating Wittgenstein’s analysis of the practice of doubt in On Certainty. We subsequently turn to the problem of free will. We argue that the existence of free will is a basic certainty and that the thesis of determinism fails (...) to cast doubt on it. We thereby make use of – but also try to go beyond – Wittgenstein’s own remarks in his “Lectures on Freedom of the Will”. In the final section we focus more explicitly on moral responsibility. Inspired by P.F. Strawson’s work on free will and moral responsibility, which we take to be deeply Wittgensteinian, we argue that our practices of holding each other responsible manifest basic human certainties which cannot be meaningfully challenged by invoking the thesis of determinism. (shrink)

The concept of free will is fraught with controversy, as readers of this volume likely know. Philosophers disagree about what free will is, whether we have it, what mitigates or destroys it, and what it's good for. Indeed, philosophers even disagree about how to fix the referent of the term 'free will' for purposes of describing and exploring these disagreements. What one person considers a reasonably neutral working definition of 'free will' is (...) often considered question-begging or otherwise misguided by another. Such disputes make it difficult to summarize the problem of free will, roughly the debate over the nature and existence of free will, in a clear and uncontentious way. In generic terms, however, the two basic solutions to the problem of free will are free-willism, the view that we have free will, and free-will denialism, i.e. the view that we do not have free will. As stated here, neither denialism nor free-willism constitutes a complete solution to the problem of free will; to be complete, a proposed solution must also tell us a convincing story about what free will is and that, as it turns out, is a very difficult task indeed. One historically popular way of approaching the problem of free will is to ask about the relationship between free will and determinism: "Does free will stand in relation R to determinism: yes or no?" This is just a template for a question, of course. To transform this template-question into a substantive question with a clear meaning, we need to flesh out the template's free-will relatum, its determinism relatum, and give a precise value to relation R. There is, however, no uncontroversial way to do this. In addition to the standard difficulties raised by fixing the referent of 'free will', philosophers hold radically different views about what is-or should be-meant by 'determinism', Shabo ), and they identify relations which are as substantively different as correlation and causation when characterizing relation R. In practical terms, then, it may be best to think of the problem of determinism as a loose collection of disagreements about how to best spell out and answer the template-question, and how asking and answering such questions would help us to solve the problem of free will. (shrink)

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)

My paper provides a preliminary work towards a theory of freedom and agency which I name "Theory of Procedural Agency (TPA)". Since TPA relies on intuitions which can not be settled into the metaphysical framework of contemporary approaches to freedom and agency, I focus on some reasons which explain why these intuitions should be preferred to the competing ones. My strategy is to argue for my view defending an embryonal version of TPA, that is Berkeley's considerations on free (...) class='Hi'>will, agency and determinism. In the first section I deal with Berkeley's treatment of free will. My idea is that his arguments offer clear and evident reasons in support of the first intuition grounding a TPA like approach to freedom. In the second section I move some criticisms to Berkeley's theory of will, claiming that, in order to overcome these, the assumption of the constitution view concerning self-knowledge would help. In the third section I set forth a logical formulation for TPA, showing how Berkeley's consideration on agency provide grounding reasons for that. Finally, in the last section, I plan the work to be done to achieve a consistent and complete version of TPA. (shrink)

The determinism-free will debate is perhaps as old as philosophy itself and has been engaged in from a great variety of points of view including those of scientific, theological, and logical character. This chapter focuses on two arguments from logic. First, there is an argument in support of determinism that dates back to Aristotle, if not farther. It rests on acceptance of the Law of Excluded Middle, according to which every proposition is either true or false, (...) no matter whether the proposition is about the past, present or future. In particular, the argument goes, whatever one does or does not do in the future is determined in the present by the truth or falsity of the corresponding proposition. The second argument coming from logic is much more modern and appeals to Gödel's incompleteness theorems to make the case against determinism and in favour of free will, insofar as that applies to the mathematical potentialities of human beings. The claim more precisely is that as a consequence of the incompleteness theorems, those potentialities cannot be exactly circumscribed by the output of any computing machine even allowing unlimited time and space for its work. The chapter concludes with some new considerations that may be in favour of a partial mechanist account of the mathematical mind. (shrink)

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

In this introduction we accomplish two things. First, we attempt to get clear about what we mean by the term 'free will'. Second, we introduce a philosophical puzzle known as the metaphysical problem of free will.

Few issues bedevil criminology and criminal justice as much as free will versus determinism. It goes to the heart of the character of the people they deal with and how we should respond to them. People are held morally responsible for what they do only if we believe that they have the ability to make reasoned choices to act morally. Liberals tend to hold an external locus of control and are skeptical of free will, and (...) conservatives tend to favor an internal locus of control and embrace free will. This liberal-conservative divide reveals itself in the theories they favor as the best explanations of criminal behavior. Liberals favor explanations external to criminals such as an unfair economic system or criminal justice bias; conservatives tend to favor internal explanations such as low self-control or lack of empathy. In terms of responding to criminal behavior, there have been calls to abandon the idea of punishment and abolish prisons. Liberals may tend to view this as humanitarian while conservatives will tend to view them as incredibly naïve. The greater tendency of liberals to hold an external locus of control and their skepticism about free will lead them to view people's behavior as largely beyond their control, which accounts for their punishment abolitionist stance. The greater tendency of conservatives to believe in free will and an internal locus of control leads to a more punitive stance toward criminals. Many issues that divide liberals and conservatives in criminology-criminal justice may be traced to their beliefs about free will and determinism. (shrink)

Dans le De fato, Alexandre construit une théorie péripatéticienne du destin et réfute les Stoïciens, partisans dune conception dure du destin. Par là il offre un document majeur sur le déterminisme dans lAntiquité. Louvrage montre comment lexégèse dAristote lui permet de proposer une conception nouvelle de la responsabilité.