There has been much controversy over whether the claims of evolutionary psychologists, if true, imply that we humans are significantly less free than has traditionally been thought. This in turn gives rise to the concern that excuses are being given to philanderers and other ne’er-do-wells for their behaviour. Evolutionary psychologists themselves often respond to this concern by claiming that it presupposes that they believe in genetic determinism, which they do not. Philosophers, such as Janet Radcliffe Richards in Human Nature (...) after Darwin, respond by appealing to compatibilist accounts of free will. The thought is that whether or not our behaviour is caused by evolved mental mechanisms, has no bearing on whether or not it is free. The present paper takes issue with this use of compatibilist arguments. Compatibilist accounts of free will do not just say that an action can be determined and still free; they also distinguish between situations where we are free and ones where we are not. The latter includes not just situations of external coercion, but also situations where there are internal obstacles such as compulsion, addiction or self-deception. While not attempting to outline a full account of what it is to be free, this paper will outline one set of conditions which are sufficient for our freedom to be said to be restricted – conditions which are shared by situations of addiction, self-deception, etc. But a central pillar of evolutionary psychology is that the mind consists wholly or largely of modules whose operation is mandatory. The outputs of these modules are often characterised as desires or goals. It will be argued that this implies internal obstacles to free will that are relevantly similar to the obstacles of addiction, self-deception, etc. It is ultimately a scientific question, and hence outside the scope of this paper, whether the relevant evolutionary-psychological claims are true or not. However, they are central to the discipline, and this paper will argue that if they are true that has negative consequences for how free we are. Hence, the view that evolutionary psychology implies that we are less free than has traditionally been thought is not without foundation. (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)

Compatibilists about free will maintain that free will is compatible with determinism, and incompatibilists disagree. Incompatibilist believers in free will have been challenged to solve a problem that luck poses for them—the problem of present luck. This article articulates that challenge and then explores a novel compatibilist view recently proposed by Christian List. It is argued that List’s view, unlike standard compatibilist views, faces a very similar problem about luck.

Critical review of Buddhist theories of free will published between 2000 and 2014.

A critical review of the first wave of publications on Buddhism and free will between the 1960s and 1980s.

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)

Attempts to develop a genuine compatabilist model of the free will and to implement this model into psychology. The task of the model is to present an alternative to those versions of the compatabilist notion, which rightly seen are nothing but soft versions of determinism. This alternative is based on an integration of a soft version of determinism with a soft version of indeterminism, and based on a nonmystical and scientific concept of downward causality, and thereby is placed (...) in the domain of science and in a materialist ontology. This leads to a hierarchical multi-layer model, the core notion of which is the soft deterministic concept of bottom-up constituting dynamics and the soft indeterministic concept of top-down organizational dynamics. It is in this existential tension field between constitutional and organizational dynamics that our very human nature in general, and free will in particular, develop. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The Problem of Heavenly Freedom explores the tension between the concept of free will and the absence of sin in heaven, challenging traditional notions of moral freedom. This paper examines James Sennett’s solution, known as “proximate compatibilism,” which argues that heavenly freedom can coexist with a form of determinism based on the moral character developed through earthly choices. Sennett contends that true freedom does not require the potential for evil but instead reflects the ability to act in (...) accordance with one’s highest good. Building on Sennett’s framework, Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe offer an extension that incorporates libertarian freedom, suggesting that moral perfection enhances rather than diminishes free will by allowing individuals to choose among various good actions that reflect their alignment with divine goodness. The paper also addresses potential objections, such as the concern that this view undermines significant moral freedom and the role of divine grace, providing rebuttals that highlight the transformative power of character and the synergistic relationship between human choice and divine assistance. By redefining the nature of free will in the context of heavenly existence, this paper presents a compelling argument that true freedom is realized through the alignment of the will with moral perfection, offering a deeper understanding of human destiny and the ultimate purpose of spiritual growth. (shrink)

I argue that God could give us the robust power to do other than we do in a deterministic universe.

The debate over free will has pittedlibertarian insistence on open alternativesagainst the compatibilist view that authenticcommitments can preserve free will in adetermined world. A second schism in the freewill debate sets rationalist belief in thecentrality of reason against nonrationalistswho regard reason as inessential or even animpediment to free will. By looking deeperinto what motivates each of these perspectivesit is possible to find common ground thataccommodates insights from all those competingviews. The resulting metacompatibilist view offree (...) will bridges some of the differencesbetween compatibilists and incompatibilists aswell as between rationalists andnonrationalists, and results in a free willtheory that is both more philosophicallyinclusive and more firmly connected tocontemporary research in psychology andbiology. (shrink)

This paper 1) argues that libertarians are virtually as badly off as compatibilists in the face of the objection to the Free Will Defence that omnipotent God could have ensured that all free beings always but freely did right, and 2) explores the prospects for an "upgraded" Free Will Defense which takes freedom merely as a necessary condition for a further higher good which logically could not be achieved if God employed any of the available (...) strategies--under both compatibilist and libertarian assumptions--for creating morally free beings without the risk of moral evil. (shrink)

In Chapter VI of his powerful study God and Other Minds Dr Alvin Plantinga deploys what—following a suggestion of mine—he calls ‘The Free Will Defence’. He presents his case there as a reaction to two earlier attempts to overcome that defence. I propose to take this chapter in Plantinga as my starting point here; and, as far as can be, to ignore, though not by that token to repudiate, those by now rather ancient earlier essays.

Compatibilist libertarianism claims that alternate possibilities for action at the agential level are consistent with determinism at the physical level. Unlike traditional compatibilism about alternate possibilities, involving conditional or dispositional accounts of the ability to act, compatibilist libertarianism offers us unqualified modalities at the agential level, consistent with physical determinism, a potentially big advance. However, I argue that the account runs up against two problems. Firstly, the way in which the agential modalities are generated talks past the worries of (...) the incompatibilist in the traditional free will problem. As such, it fails to dispel the worries that determinism generates for the incompatibilist. Secondly, in spite of the ingenious use of the supervenience thesis and multiple realizability, the position still allows us to generate the old worry that determinism at the physical level would mean no alternate possibilities at the level of agency. In particular, I develop a new example, the ‘atomic slit case’ that demonstrates how physical level information is salient to what is possible at the agential level, motivating incompatibilism. (shrink)

The free will defense is a theistic strategy for resisting the atheistic argument known as “the logical problem of evil.” It insists that God may have to allow some evil in order to get the greater good of creatures freely choosing to act rightly. Many philosophers have thought that the free will defense requires the truth of incompatibilism, according to which acts cannot be free if they are causally determined. For it seems that if (...) class='Hi'>compatibilism is true, God should be able to get the goods of free creatures acting rightly without any evil by simply creating a world where creatures are causally determined to always act rightly. I argue that this is not so. First I describe and motivate a compatibilist account of free will according to which, although God can create creatures which are both free and causally determined, the freedom of determined creatures depends on God’s not taking into account what they will be determined to do. I then show how, given such a form of compatibilism, God may be able to create free and determined creatures without being able to create creatures determined to always freely act rightly. (shrink)

This paper presents existing results and experimental evidence in social psychology to argue against the compatibilist thesis that our folk-psychological notions of freedom and moral responsibility are completely consistent with the acceptance of determinism. In section 1, I spell out the compatibilist position and briefly discuss the standard incompatibilist argument-the so-called consequence argument. In section 2, I take a closer look at the folk psychology of free will and argue that, contra the compatibilist, recent empirical research by Shaun (...) Nichols, Joshua Knobe and others, reveals that our folk-psychological intuitions are essentially incompatibilist and libertarian in nature. I conclude in section 3 by examining the phenomenology of agentive experience and argue that it further undermines the compatibilist thesis. (shrink)

This is a contribution to a Book symposium on The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays by Paul Russell. Russell provides replies to three critics of The Limits of Free Will. The first reply is to Robert Wallace and focuses on the question of whether there is a conflict between the core compatibilist and pessimist components of the "critical compatibilist" position that Russell has advanced. The second reply is to Angela Smith's discussion of the "narrow" interpretation (...) of moral responsibility responsibility (as defended by R. Jay Wallace) and how best to respond to it. The third and last reply is concerned with Christopher Bennett's criticism of Russell's views concerning "motivational scepticism" and the possibility of pure practical reasons. (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)

In “The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the Question of Natural Compatibilism,” Deery, Davis, and Carey recommend that experimental philosophers employ a new methodology for determining the extent to which the folk are natural compatibilists about free will and moral responsibility. While I agree that the general methodology that the authors developed holds great promise for improving our understanding of folk attitudes about free will and moral responsibility, I am much less enthusiastic about some (...) of the conclusions that they reached on the basis of the particular studies they ran. Key among these are that the folk harbor some compatibilist intuitions and that the findings of both Nichols and Knobe , on the one hand, and Nahmias and Murray , on the other, are undermined by their reliance upon a particular formulation of determinism in the cases they presented to their subjects. (shrink)

Introduction -- The nature of free will -- Requirements of freedom : preeminently deliberation -- Free will requires the absence of thought-external -- Determination over choices and decisions -- Choice and decision are crucial -- Doing and trying -- Free action and agent causality -- Modes of freedom -- Metaphysical and moral freedom -- Moral freedom is removed by manipulation and especially -- Compulsion -- Intention and moral standing -- Moral freedom of the will (...) involves agent intent and motivation -- Ramifications of freedom -- Free will requires up-to-the-end revisability but this does not gainsay probabilistic predictability -- Issues of revision and control -- The counterfactual dimension : "could have done otherwise" -- Problem cases : machines and lunatics -- Free will as outside causality but compatible with it -- Averting the zenonic fallacy of casual regression -- Averting predetermination (contrasting pre-determination with precedence determination) -- The crucial contrast between events and eventuations -- Choices and decisions as terminating eventuations -- Free will stands outside the stream of natural causality -- On freedom and causality -- Free will excludes pre-determinism but not motive determinism -- Motivational determinism vs. casual necessitation -- Motivations and motives -- Freedom from what? : certainly not from one's own motives -- And reasons: freedom demands motivational determination -- Free will requires motivational determinism -- Determination by one's autonomous motives is the crux of moral freedom -- Compulsion is impulsion -- Objections to motive determinism can be met -- Freedom and motivation -- Must an agent choose his motives for a decision to qualify (morally) as free? -- Freedom does not require motivational self-construction -- Does freedom require self-understanding? -- Willing to will : does freedom require the will to be self-endorsing? -- Does freedom require the approval of intellect and reason? -- Does freedom require self-approved motives? -- Buridan's ass : a random willfulness is not freedom -- Compatibilism regains : what free will excludes is not agent -- Determination but gant-bypassing nature determination -- The explanation of free acts via agent determination -- Freedom, responsibility, and "could have done otherwise" -- Reasons and motives impel but do not compel -- Compatibilism again -- Mind-matter partnership -- A two-sided coin -- The issue of initiative -- A salient duality -- Mind-brain interaction works by coordination not by causality -- Does free will exist? deliberations -- Pro and con -- On evidentiating free will -- Is free will unscientific? -- So does science counter-indicate free will -- Free-will naturalism and evolution. (shrink)

In his book, philosopher and law professor Ken Levy explains why he agrees with most people, but not with most other philosophers, about free will and responsibility. Most people believe that we have both - that is, that our choices, decisions, and actions are neither determined nor undetermined but rather fully self-determined. By contrast, most philosophers understand just how difficult it is to defend this "metaphysical libertarian" position. So they tend to opt for two other theories: "responsibility skepticism" (...) and "compatibilism". In opposition to both of these theories, Levy explains how free will and responsibility are indeed metaphysically possible. But he also cautions against the dogma that metaphysical libertarianism is actually true, a widespread belief that continues to cause serious social, political, and legal harms. Levy's book presents a crisp, tight, historically informed discussion, with fresh clarity, insight, and originality. It will become one of the definitive resources for students, academics, and general readers in this critical intersection among metaphysics, ethics, and criminal law. Key features: Presents a unique, qualified defense of "metaphysical libertarianism," the idea that our choices, decisions, and actions can be fully self-determined. Written clearly, accessibly, and with minimal jargon - rare for a book on the very difficult issues of free will and responsibility. Seamlessly connects philosophical, legal, psychological, and political issues. Will be provocative and insightful for professional philosophers, students, and non-philosophers. (shrink)

Philosophical work on free will, contemporary as well as historical, is inevitably framed by the problem of free will and determinism. One of my goals in what follows is to give a feel for the main lines of that debate in philosophy today. I will also be outlining a particular perspective on free will. Many working philosophers consider themselves Compatibilists; the perspective outlined, building on a number of arguments in the recent literature, is (...) a contemporary form of such a view. It cannot, however, claim to be the contemporary philosophical perspective. There is no such thing. Against a background of the perennial problem of free will and determinism, through ongoing argument and debate, philosophers continue to try to work toward an understanding of precisely what it means for an action to be free. (shrink)

Focusing on the concepts and interactions of free will, moral responsibility, and determinism, this text represents the most up-to-date account of the four major positions in the free will debate. Four serious and well-known philosophers explore the opposing viewpoints of libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism, and revisionism The first half of the book contains each philosopher’s explanation of his particular view; the second half allows them to directly respond to each other’s arguments, in a lively and (...) engaging conversation Offers the reader a one of a kind, interactive discussion Forms part of the acclaimed Great Debates in Philosophy series. (shrink)

This paper considers the analogies and disanalogies between a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about free will and a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about the external world. In the case of free will, I offer the ancient Lazy Argument and an argument of my own, which I call the Agency Argument, as examples of the relevant genre; and in the case of the external world, I consider Moore’s alleged proof (...) of an external world. I draw attention to analogies and disanalogies between the arguments offered in each case in order to suggest that although the Agency Argument shares with its Moorean relative the unfortunate property of being dialectically ineffective against some of those it is mainly hoping to convince, it will not be dialectically ineffective against all of them. It is also argued that the Agency Argument is less vulnerable than Moore’s proof to worries about its justificatory structure. (shrink)

Free will is usually defined by three conditions: the ability to do otherwise; control of one’s own choices; responsiveness to reasons. The compatibility of free will with determinism lies at the heart of the philosophical debate at the metaphysical level. This debate, while being increasingly refined, has not yet reached a conclusion. Recently, neuroscience and empirical psychology have tried to settle the problem of free will with a series of experiments that go in the (...) direction of so-called illusionism: free will as the conscious control of our behavior cannot exist, being a mere illusion. But even in this case, the experimental results are challenged at various levels. Considering that in most moral and legal systems, the subject’s liability derives from their freedom, the usefulness of preserving the concept of freedom – which incidentally responds to a very strong commonsensical intuition – suggests the need for an operational solution. This could be done by resorting to the concepts of capacity and cognitive control, which are measured by a set of well-established neuropsychological tests. Our preliminary proposal is to create an index, the first step towards a specific quantification and measurement of free will, to be used especially in ethical and legal contexts. Theoretical premises, practical difficulties and objections to this approach are also discussed and addressed. (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)

In this paper I offer from a source compatibilist's perspective a critical discussion of "Four Views on Free Will" by John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas. Sharing Fischer's semi-compatibilist view, I propose modifications to his arguments while resisting his coauthors' objections. I argue against Kane that he should give up the requirement that a free and morally responsible agent be able to do otherwise (in relevant cases). I argue against Pereboom that his famed (...) manipulation argument be resisted by contending that the agents in it are free and responsible. And I also argue against Vargas by challenging the sense in which his revisionist thesis differs from a position like Fischer's and mine. I close by reflecting on the nature of desert. All seem to assume it is central to the debate, but what is it? (shrink)

This chapter in the Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind surveys issues concerning free will. Topics include the compatibility question, compatibilist accounts, and libertarian accounts of free will.

Carl Hoefer has argued that determinism in block universes does not privilege any particular time slice as the fundamental determiner of other time slices. He concludes from this that our actions are free, insofar as they are pieces of time slices we may legitimately regard as fundamental determiners. However, I argue that Hoefer does not adequately deal with certain remaining problems. For one, there remain pervasive asymmetries in causation and the macroscopic efficacy of our actions. I suggest that what (...) Hoefer may have shown us is that causation, not determinism, was the threat to free will all along. Additionally, Hoefer might avoid the problem of the asymmetry of macroscopic efficacy by noting we have a very small region of space-time completely determined by our choices. However, this move implies our freedom to act is freedom to do very little, given that the region is trivial. I suggest that Hoefer should instead claim that we do have pervasive macroscopic efficacy toward the past, though I am unsure of how well this thesis works. Regardless, there remains a problem that the inside-out perspective requires us to see our choices as brute facts or random occurrences. Attempts to resolve this problem seem to require either a theory of agent causation or a traditional compatibilist argument, making Hoefer’s thesis extraneous, unless he can show us that these require the inside-out perspective. However, Hoefer has not yet shown us this, so there is work to be done. (shrink)

This article offers an introductory overview of some key issues in the free will debate. it is suitable for non-specialists.

It is widely believed that (1) if theological determinism were true, in virtue of God’s role in determining created agents to perform evil actions, created agents would be neither free nor morally responsible for their evil actions and God would not be perfectly good; (2) if metaphysical compatibilism were true, the free-will defense against the deductive problem of evil would fail; and (3) on the assumption of metaphysical compatibilism, God could have actualized just any one (...) of those myriad possible worlds that are populated only by compatibilist free creatures. The primary thesis of this essay is that none of these propositions is true. This thesis is defended by appealing to a recently proposed novel, acausal, composite, unified theory of free action – the Theory of Middle Freedom – that evades the central problems plaguing traditional theories of metaphysical compatibilism. (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 millionaire’s idle, talentless and self-centered daughter inherits a large sum of money that she does not really deserve. The victim of kidnapping rots in a cell in 1980s Beirut in a captivity that springs not from any wrong he has done but from his ill-fortune in being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The hard-working, brilliant and self-denying Nobel Prize-winning scientist receives a large cheque for his extraordinarily productive labours. The murderer spends decades in jail for the (...) terrible crimes he has freely committed. The first two cases are cases where justice seems ill-served, where someone’s good or ill-fortune reflects not what they deserve but mere luck. The second two are cases where justice seems to be honoured: what befalls Scientist and Murderer reflects not their good or bad luck but their merits and deserts. (shrink)

Supervenient libertarianism maintains that indeterminism may exist at a supervening agency level, consistent with determinism at a subvening physical level. It seems as if this approach has the potential to break the longstanding deadlock in the free will debate, since it concedes to the traditional incompatibilist that agents can only do otherwise if they can do so in their actual circumstances, holding the past and the laws constant, while nonetheless arguing that this ability is compatible with physical determinism. (...) However, we argue that supervenient libertarianism faces some serious problems, and that it fails to break us free from this deadlock within the free will debate. (shrink)

This paper proposes a reconciliation between libertarian freedomand causal indeterminism, without relying on agent-causation asa primitive notion. I closely examine Peter van Inwagen''s recentcase for free will mysterianism, which is based in part on thewidespread worry that undetermined acts are too chancy to befree. I distinguish three senses of the term chance I thenargue that van Inwagen''s case for free will mystrianism fails,since there is no single construal of the term change on whichall of the premises (...) of his argument for free will–causalindeterminism incompatibilism are true. By use of a particularevent-causal indeterminist account of free action, I support thecase for free will–indeterminism compatibilism. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to respond to a collection of conceptual and scientific threats to compatibilist accounts of free will, particularly reasons-responsive views. Compatibilists hold that free will is compatible with the truth of determinism. Some compatibilists also claim that some actual agent at least sometimes acts freely, where it is true that she acts freely in virtue of her satisfying a specific set of control and epistemic conditions. These conditions often include the possession (...) of certain capacities, such as the capacity to recognize reasons for acting and to act on the basis of those reasons. First, I address two pressing philosophical objections to the adequacy of compatibilist accounts of free will: Are reasons-responsive accounts of free will too permissive in their class of free agents? Must reasons-responsive theorists - and compatibilists more generally - concede that some agents who are manipulated or intentionally designed by others are none the less acting freely and morally responsible for their actions? I then survey a widely proposed scientific threat to compatibilist accounts of free will - and to any account of free will that requires the same basic capacities as compatibilists do: Even if the compatibilist account accurately captures the basic capacities that an agent requires to act freely, does neuroscientific work on practical decision-making and action production limit - or worse, speak against -- our actual exercise of free will, as compatibilists conceive of it? I argue that the compatibilist need not yield to these philosophical challenges to the adequacy of their accounts of free will and to their claim that some actual agents act freely, sketching plausible compatibilist-friendly reasons to doubt the potency of each challenge. Finally, I argue that the extant incompatibilist accounts of free will suffer from a previously undiagnosed, serious problem: that there is an irreconcilable tension between the way in which philosophers motivate the incompatibilist ability to do otherwise and the way in which they formally express it. I conclude by offering a diagnosis for the future of the free will debate given the arguments advanced. (shrink)

This chapter in the Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind surveys issues concerning free will. Topics include the compatibility question, compatibilist accounts, and libertarian accounts of free will.

Free will is often said—by compatibilists and incompatibilists alike—to be a power (or complex of powers) of agents. This paper offers proposals for, and examines the prospects of, a powers-conception of free will that takes the powers in question to be causal dispositions. A difficulty for such an account stems from the idea that when one exercises free will, it is up to oneself whether one wills to do this or that. The paper also (...) briefly considers whether a powers-conception that invokes powers of a different kind, such as agent-causal or noncausal powers, might fare better with respect to this problem. (shrink)

Philosophers often consider problems of free will and moral luck in isolation from one another, but both are about control and moral responsibility. One problem of free will concerns the difficult task of specifying the kind of control over our actions that is necessary and sufficient to act freely. One problem of moral luck refers to the puzzling task of explaining whether and how people can be morally responsible for actions permeated by factors beyond their control. (...) This chapter explicates and assesses skeptical, compatibilist, and libertarian approaches to moral luck. First, I argue that what makes the above problems of free will and moral luck distinct is largely their emphasis on different kinds of luck. Second, I describe and evaluate skeptical arguments from constitutive and circumstantial luck that it is impossible to act freely. Third, I explicate and assess various support and implication relationships between various kinds of compatibilism and libertarianism, on the one hand, and causal, constitutive, circumstantial, and resultant moral luck, on the other. (shrink)

Philosophical tradition has long held that free will is necessary for moral responsibility. We report experimental results that show that the folk do not think free will is necessary for moral responsibility. Our results also suggest that experimental investigation of the relationship is ill served by a focus on incompatibilism versus compatibilism. We propose an alternative framework for empirical moral psychology in which judgments of free will and moral responsibility can vary independently in (...) response to many factors. We also suggest that, in response to some factors, the necessity relation may run from responsibility to free will. (shrink)