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A Defense of Free Will Skepticism: Replies to Commentaries by Victor Tadros, Saul Smilansky, Michael McKenna, and Alfred R. Mele on Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life

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Abstract

This paper features Derk Pereboom’s replies to commentaries by Victor Tadros and Saul Smilansky on his non-retributive, incapacitation-focused proposal for treatment of dangerous criminals; by Michael McKenna on his manipulation argument against compatibilism about basic desert and causal determination; and by Alfred R. Mele on his disappearing agent argument against event-causal libertarianism.

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Notes

  1. I say that this argument targets basic-desert moral responsibility rather than agency [2014: 32]. The reason is that this argument doesn’t show that the occurrence of S’s decision to A absent S’s settling whether the decision to A occurs cannot count as an instance of S’s agency.

  2. If one is averse to absence causation, one might invoke Dowe’s (2001) notion of “quasi-causation” in its place, where (roughly) the absence of watering the plant quasi-causes it to die just in case watering it would have caused it to continue to live. Sartorio (2016) suggests this alternative.

  3. This treatment of difference-making corrects for problems for the earlier account I provided in (2015). Thanks to Richard Holton and Carolina Sartorio for valuable discussion.

  4. Note that, on one variety of the agent-causal view, decisions are agent causings, which in turn are analyzed as activations of the agent-causal power (e.g., DeRose 1993). On such a position, a decision to A will be simultaneous with an agent causing of A by virtue of the decision’s being identical with the agent causing.

  5. Near the end of his comment, Mele outlines a position according to which an agent’s moral responsibility on the event-causal view can result from the shaping of her values by past free decisions. I develop an objection to this type of view in (2001: 49).

  6. Thus by “causation fundamentally as a substance” I do not mean to exclude substance causation wholly grounded in or constituted by event causation, as long as it does not reduce to event-causation. For my views on constitution, grounding, and reduction, see Chapter 7 of (2011). Thanks to Randy Clarke for prodding me to clarify my position on this issue.

    Thanks to Gregg Caruso, Jennifer Chandler, Michael Corrado, Richard Holton, John Lemos, Dana Nelkin, and Carolina Sartorio for valuable comments and discussion.

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Acknowledgements

Let me thank my four commentators, Victor Tadros, Saul Smilansky, Michael McKenna, and Al Mele for their excellent, thoughtful, and constructive comments, and for valuable subsequent discussion. Each prompted me to refine and clarify my views.

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    Derk Pereboom

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Pereboom, D. A Defense of Free Will Skepticism: Replies to Commentaries by Victor Tadros, Saul Smilansky, Michael McKenna, and Alfred R. Mele on Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life . Criminal Law, Philosophy 11, 617–636 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-017-9412-2

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