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Abstract

The so-called Mind argument aims at the conclusion that agents act freely only if determinism is true. The soundness of this argument entails the falsity of libertarianism, the two-part thesis that agents act freely, and free action and determinism are incompatible. In this paper, I offer a new formulation of the Mind argument. I argue that it is true by definition that if an agent acts freely, either (i) nothing nomologically grounds an agent’s acting freely, or (ii) the consequence argument for incompatibilism is unsound. I define the notion of nomological grounding, and argue that unless an agent’s acting freely is nomologically grounded, unacceptable consequences follow. I then argue that if agents act freely and the consequence argument is sound, a vicious regress ensues. I conclude by considering the libertarian’s dialectical options.

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Notes

  1. Throughout this essay, the adverb “necessarily” should be read as “It is broadly logically necessary that.” Moreover, I treat metaphysical necessity and broadly logical necessity as equivalent.

  2. I will later define determinism more precisely; for now, it is enough to say that it is the thesis that given the past, and given the laws of nature, only one future is physically possible.

  3. So named by van Inwagen (1983) because the argument has appeared so often on the pages of the journal Mind. See Hobart (1934), Nowell-Smith (1948), and Smart (1961). According to van Inwagen, there are three “strands” of the Mind argument; my argument seems to be an instance of the third strand.

  4. I here stipulate that the free actions considered in this essay are the free actions of finite agents who exist at times. If there is a being who exists outside of time and acts freely (e.g., God), nothing I say here is relevant to Her or His free actions.

  5. I note that this definition is neutral with respect to whether t = t′.

  6. Here I follow Plantinga (1976). This paragraph is a paraphrase of first few lines of Sect. II.1.

  7. Which is not to say that the correspondence theory of truth is correct.

  8. Plantinga, ibid. I note that while Plantinga uses ‘S’ to refer to an arbitrary state of affairs, I use ‘O’. I do so in order to avoid confusion in what follows.

  9. I will use ‘□p’ to designate that proposition p is true in every possible world, and hence, broadly logically necessary.

  10. I will use ‘◊p’ to designate that proposition p is true in some possible world, and, hence, broadly logically possible.

  11. Because it is true in every possible world W that if W is the actual world, p is true.

  12. Finch and Rea (2008, p. 10). Here I use the terms ‘O’ and ‘O′’ where Finch and Rea use ‘S’ and ‘S*’.

  13. I have in mind what some philosophers refer to as ‘time slices’ or ‘simultaneity planes’.

  14. A time is a possible state of affairs; if it were not possible, its obtaining would entail contradictions, and, hence, every proposition. But if its obtaining entailed every proposition, it would entail propositions about what happens at other times.

  15. Those who find it helpful to think in metaphors might imagine that W and W′ “share a temporal slice.”

  16. But one should not suppose that, strictly speaking, times are discrete. It will soon become clear that none of my arguments depends on the thesis that time is a series of discrete moments.

  17. Granted, some of us take the trans-temporality thesis to be obviously true. It is implied by what Loss (2009) calls the “highly intuitive principle” that, “For any time t, no one has any choice about the present (p. 67).” And, as Loss points out, this principle is a “counterpart of [a] postulate in Prior’s Ockhamist tense logic.” However, given that my argument hinges on this thesis, it seems a bit quick to assert it and move on. See Loss for the relevant citations of Prior.

  18. For an excellent discussion of mood and modality in English grammar, see Huddleston and Pullman (2002, pp. 172–208).

  19. Of course, there are contexts in which this is not a safe assumption. And so I issue a promissory note: if confronted with an account of free action according to which it is sometimes up to agents what happened (in the past), I will make the same argument I make here, mutatis mutandis.

  20. Rosen (2010, p. 109).

  21. Ibid. p.110.

  22. Schaffer (2009, pp. 364–365).

  23. Audi (2012), 101.

  24. L W’ is a rigid designator, and, so, if a world W′ is governed by the same laws as W, L W is true in W′. To affirm ((L W) W & (L W) W ) is to affirm that W and W′ are governed by the same laws of nature. In affirming (((L W) W & (L W) W ) & (W ≠ W′)), one affirms that the same laws of nature govern distinct worlds. In what follows, I will assume that for any world W, the proposition L W that expresses the conjunction of all the laws of nature that govern L W is maximal, so that for any proposition p L that expresses a law of nature that governs some possible world, either L W includes p L or precludes p L . In this case, [(L W) W & (L W) W ] is equivalent to (L W) W; moreover,[(L W) W & (L W) W ] is equivalent to (L W) W . Roughly if a proposition L W expresses the conjunction of all laws of nature that govern a world W, there is no world W′ such that (i) (L W) W is true in W′ and (ii) W′ is governed by (“extra”) laws that do not govern W. The same argument against libertarianism can be made without this assumption, but it would complicate things needlessly. I should add here that the assumption that there is a proposition that expresses the laws of nature that obtain in a possible world does not entail that laws of nature are propositions.

  25. If there is such a state of affairs.

  26. Thanks to an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this issue.

  27. Thanks to Jennifer Lackey for suggesting this example.

  28. Or some similar notion, such as not having a choice about, its being unavoidable that, or its being unpreventable that.

  29. I will revisit this assumption in Sect. 10.

  30. For those familiar with McKay and Johnson (1996), it may be useful to consider how the law addition principle maps onto what they say there. First, let us stipulate that ‘□M s,t p W designates the proposition that □(p w & ∀St(there is nothing that S at t can do such that, if she were to do it, p might be false)). Next, let us consider that, although they gave a counterexample to a similar inference principle, McKay and Johnson did not give a counterexample to this: (NpMq) (□N s,t p W & □M s,t q W ) entails □N s,t (p & q)W. Let us further consider that it seems plausible that □M s,t (L W)W is true. But if □M s,t (L W)W is true and (NpMq) is valid, the law addition principle is valid. Unless there is some reason to think that, despite appearances, (NpMq) is invalid, it is safe to assume that the law addition principle is valid if the consequence argument is sound.

  31. It is relatively common for participants in the free will debate to draw a distinction between derivatively free acts and non-derivatively free acts. Moreover, philosophers who do so might characterize S’s performing A at t as an example of the former and her forming the intention to perform A as an example of the latter. If there is such a distinction, my argument is directed at non-derivatively free acts.

  32. See, e.g., Ekstrom (2001), (2003), Franklin (2011), Kane (1996), (1999), and (2011).

  33. Let us recall that if O′ nomologically grounds the obtaining of the Transition, O′ does not obtain prior to or at t′. Instead, O′ obtains simultaneously with the Transition. But let us recall that if it is up to S at t′ whether O′ obtains, S at t′ bears the Transition relation to O′. So, if O′ obtains simultaneously with the Transition that obtains across t′ and t, and if it is up to S at t′ whether O′ obtains, S at t′ bears the Transition relation to some O′ that obtains simultaneously with her bearing the Transition to it. Is this possible? Did I not say that the Transition relation is diachronic? First of all, if this is not possible, then it is all the easier for the anti-libertarian to reach her conclusion; in assuming it is possible, I am giving the libertarian a dialectical advantage. Second, I think the libertarian would be right to question the bald assertion that it is not possible for it to be up to an agent whether there obtains a state of affairs that obtains simultaneously with the Transition. To assume that one need not argue for this impossibility seems uncharitable.

  34. A fan of the consequence argument might go on to suggest that if (M) is true, the consequence argument is sound though my regress argument is not. As Finch and Warfield argue in their (1998), if an agent’s lacking power over the truth value of a proposition is construed in terms of a might-conditional rather that a would-conditional, the consequence argument, but not the Mind argument, is sound.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Andrew Bailey, David Buller, Mylan Engel, Mary Beth Finch, Tomis Kapitan, Jennifer Lackey, Sam Newlands, Baron Reed, Peter van Elswyk, an anonymous referee for this journal, and especially Mike Rea for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I also thank audience members at the 2011 meeting of the Illinois Philosophical Association, and, in particular, my commentator, John Lemos.

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Finch, A. Against libertarianism. Philos Stud 166, 475–493 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0042-1

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