Abstract

There is no philosophical question more intellectually and emotionally pressing than the question of whether we, human beings, ever do anything freely. The question presses because there are persuasive reasons to think that we never act freely. Upon reading Wilfrid Sellars’s “Reply to Donagan” one must conclude that compatibilism, between the views that human actions are determined and that human beings act freely, has received its definitive defense. Never has a “Reply” contained so much meaty philosophy. Despite the definitiveness of Sellars’s defense of compatibilism, I am unconvinced that compatibilism meets the problem of free will and determinism. My aim is to offer a new perspective on the problem, one which questions previously unchallenged assumptions about the problem.