Abstract

This dissertation may be conveniently divided into four principal parts. Following a brief overview of the dissertation as a whole , in the first part , I examine several fundamental problems that are peculiar to extant theories of autonomy and free agency. In the second part , I introduce and defend a basic version of the Theory of Middle Freedom---a unified, composite, acausal theory of free agency. I argue that this theory's virtues include its providing inter alia a method for resolving the demarcation problem, a satisfactory solution to the problem of identification, a novel account of action control in an indeterminist framework, a plausible account of compatibilist free action, and a way of unifying within a single conceptual framework the three dominant theories of free agency that are found in the historical and contemporary philosophical literature, viz. simple indeterminism, agent-causal libertarianism, and compatibilism. In the third part , I outline the rudiments of a non-standard theory of counterpossibles by which the basic Theory of Middle Freedom may be extended. Then, in the fourth part , I apply both the basic theory and this extended theory to outstanding problems in philosophical theology involving the nature of divine freedom, the existence of evil, and the metaphysics of divine providential governance. I conclude by making some brief closing remarks