Abstract
In this essay I present what is, I contend, the free-will problem properly thought through, or at least presented in a form in which it is possible to think about it without being constantly led astray by bad terminology and confused ideas. Bad terminology and confused ideas are not uncommon in current discussions of the problem. The worst such pieces of terminology are “libertarian free will” and “compatibilist free will.” The essay consists partly of a defense of the thesis that the use of these phrases by writers on the problem of free will can only generate conceptual confusion and partly of a formulation of the problem that does not make use of them. I contend that this formulation is neutral with respect to the historically important positions on free will (e.g., compatibilism and incompatibilism).
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Notes
The phrase “free will”—whether it occurs by itself or within the phrase “the free-will thesis”—hardly exists except as a philosophical term of art. Its non-philosophical uses are pretty much confined to the phrase “of his/her own free will” which means “uncoerced.” When, in the movie Devil’s Advocate, Keanu Reeves says to Al Pacino, “But suppose I sell my soul to you, and then repent on my deathbed …” and Pacino, the Devil, replies, “Yeah—free will. That one’s a bitch,” the latter is using a term from philosophy: a technical term from philosophy that, by way of theology, has achieved everyday currency with little if any distortion of the meaning it has in philosophy, a very uncommon fate for a technical philosophical term. “Free will,” although a technical term, was, for centuries, bandied about without any real attempt at definition—like “continuous function” in pre-nineteenth-century mathematics. It is my position that the definition of “the free-will thesis” that follows in the text provides a philosophically adequate definition of this old technical term.
Whatever you do, do not define “free will” this way: “Free will is whatever sort of freedom is required for moral responsibility” (or “Free will consists in having whatever sort of access to alternative possibilities is required for moral responsibility”).
Whatever you do, do not use “compatibilism” as a name for the thesis that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. This can only cause confusion. If you must have a name for this thesis, invent a new one: “MR-compatibilism” or some such.
Lewis (1981, pp. 113–121).
van Inwagen (1983).
Dennett (1984, Ch. 6).
Austin (1961, pp. 153–180).
Dennett (1984, Ch. 6), cited in footnote 6, contains a rather lengthy discussion of “Ifs and Cans.” In this discussion Dennett presents telling criticisms of some of Austin’s arguments (I would call your attention to his excellent discussion of the notorious “I could have holed it” example). But Dennett does not see the point I am calling attention to—although he sometimes dances maddeningly close to it. For more on this topic, see van Inwagen (1988).
Austin (1961, p. 163).
Baker (2003, p. 476).
Baker’s essay is primarily an argument for the conclusion that Christian philosophers should not be libertarians. In the matter of motives and desires, she is primarily concerned to defend the position that Christian philosophers should not want to have “libertarian free will” or want libertarianism to be true. All but one of the reasons for wanting libertarianism to be true that she canvases and rejects in the section of the paper called “Motives for Belief in Libertarian Free Will,” however, have nothing in particular to do with theism in general or Christianity in particular: Libertarian free will is required for moral responsibility; without libertarian free will, we would be puppets; libertarian free will is presupposed by the principle “‘ought’ implies ‘can’.” The single “motive for belief in libertarian free will” she considers that would be a motive only for Christians (or at any rate, only for theists) is that libertarian free will is (supposedly) essential to an effective reply to the argument from evil. In this essay, I am concerned to address only the motives of libertarians that are essentially connected with what I am calling “the problem of free will.” I am not concerned to address motives that a libertarian might have that arose from beliefs he or she had that (like theism) were not consequences of the premises that generate the problem of free will.
Dennett (1978, pp. 286–299).
Broad (1952, pp. 195–217). The informational content of the cited chapter constituted Broad’s Cambridge Inaugural Lecture as Knightsbridge Professor in 1934.
I.e., incompatibilists in the proper sense of the term (see footnote 3, above). There are, of course, philosophers who believe that free will and determinism are incompatible and who also believe that moral responsibility and determinism are compatible.
My reasons for thinking this can be found in van Inwagen (2000).
References
Austin, J. 1961. Ifs and cans. In Philosophical papers, ed. J. Urmson and G. Warnock, 153–180. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Baker, L. 2003. Why Christians should not be libertarians: An Augustinian challenge. Faith and Philosophy 20: 460–478.
Broad, C.D. 1952. Ethics and the history of philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Dennett, D. 1978. Brainstorms. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Dennett, D. 1984. Elbow room: The varieties of free will worth wanting. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Hobart, R. 1934. Free-will as involving determination and inconceivable without it. Mind 43: 1–27.
Kane, R. (ed.). 2002. The Oxford handbook of free will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. 1981. Are we free to break the laws? Theoria 47: 113–121.
van Inwagen, P. 1983. An Essay on free will. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
van Inwagen, P. 1988. Review of Daniel Dennett, Elbow room. Noûs 22: 609–618.
van Inwagen, P. 2000. Free will remains a mystery. Philosophical Perspectives 14: 1–19.
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van Inwagen, P. How to Think about the Problem of Free Will. J Ethics 12, 327–341 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-008-9038-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-008-9038-7