Abstract
The aim of this paper is to respond to recent discussion of, and objections to, the libertarian view of free will I have developed in many works over the past four decades. The issues discussed all have a bearing on the central question of how one might make sense of a traditional free will requiring indeterminism in the light of modern science. This task involves, among other things, avoiding all traditional libertarian appeals to unusual forms of agency or causation (uncaused causes, noumenal selves, non-event agent causes, etc.) that cannot be accounted for by ordinary modes of explanation familiar to the natural and human sciences. Doing this, I argue, requires piecing together a “complex tapestry” of ideas and arguments that involve rethinking many traditional assumptions about free will. The paper also argues that one cannot get to the heart of historical debates about free will without distinguishing different kinds of freedom, different senses of will, and different notions of control, among other distinctions. I especially focus here on different notions of freedom and control that are necessary to make sense of free will.
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Notes
Another contemporary philosopher who does make a point of distinguishing freedom of action and will is Frankfurt (1971), who does so in terms of higher and lower order desires. While his distinction between different orders of desires is important for a full account of freedom of action and will, I have argued elsewhere that it does not give us the whole story about free will (Kane 1996, pp. 61–67, 2005, pp. 93–98).
It is, of course, an empirical and scientific question whether any indeterminism is there in in the brain in ways appropriate for free will. No purely philosophical theory can settle the matter. It is interesting, however, that in the past decade there has been more openness and discussion on the part of some scientists and philosophers about this possibility. See, e.g, Bishop (2011), Baker and Gollub (1990), Hilborn (2001), Hobbs (1991), Kellert (1993), Balaguer (2010), Heisenberg (2013), Glimcher (2005), Maye et al. (2007), Hameroff and Penrose (1996), Shadlen (2014), Brembs (2010), Stapp (2007), Maye et al. (2007), Doyle (2011), Tse (2013), Jedlicka (2014) and Briegel and Mueller (2015).
Of course, these examples by themselves do not amount to genuine exercises of free will in SFAs, where the wills of the agents are divided between conflicting motives. The will of the assassin not equally divided. He wants to kill the official, but does not also want to fail. Thus, if he fails, it will be merely by chance. And so it is with the husband. This step is just one piece of the larger tapestry. One has to add the other steps to get the whole picture, including the ideas of a conflicted will and a parallel processing brain involving multiple efforts.
Bechtel (2001).
This paragraph and the three following were prompted by helpful comments of an anonymous reviewer, who cited several possible objections to this analogy with perception that called for further clarification of its appropriateness.
This paragraph and the four following respond to potential objections suggested by two anonymous reviewers. I am grateful for their helpful input, which has prompted me to make some necessary and important clarifications.
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Kane, R. The complex tapestry of free will: striving will, indeterminism and volitional streams. Synthese 196, 145–160 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1046-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1046-8