Preserving preservationism (about free will)

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Reference Conditions ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Conceptual Question

This chapter addresses the question of how phenomenology might influence the reference conditions of the concept of free will. For descriptivists about reference, if the presentational content of free-agency phenomenology is libertarian, then descriptively libertarian reference conditions for the concept might be inherited from the phenomenology. In that case, eliminativism about the concept and denialism about free will would be true, assuming determinism. However, Gregg Caruso has maintained that even on a non-descriptivist and apparently preservationist and realist approach to the conceptual question, such as the natural-kind view, if the phenomenology has libertarian presentational content, then eliminativism and denialism are also true, once we assume determinism. Relying on the view about free-agency phenomenology developed in Chapter 4, this chapter provides a non-descriptivist defense of both preservationism and realism about free will, against Caruso’s claims. The chapter also considers Shaun Nichols’s discretionist position about free will.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Reference Conditions ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Human Behaviors

This chapter situates the natural-kind view defended in the book in relation to standard views about free will. Typically, standard approaches assume a broadly descriptivist theory of reference, according to which the concept of free will refers (and so free will exists and we act freely) just in case it is associated with presuppositions that are (mostly) satisfied by actual human behaviors. On the natural-kind view, by contrast, the presuppositions associated with the concept do not have to be satisfied in order for reference to succeed (or for free will to exist). According to the natural-kind view, moreover, even if people’s free-agency phenomenology influences the reference conditions of the concept, the phenomenology supports both the natural-kind view and compatibilism.

Naturally Free Action

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Intelligent Agent ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Free Actions ◽  
Compatibility Question

Do we have free will? This book argues that the answer to that question is “yes,” by showing how the concept of free will refers to many actual behaviors, and how free actions are a natural kind. Additionally, the book addresses the role of phenomenology in fixing the reference of the concept, and argues that free-agency phenomenology is typically accurate, even if determinism is true. The result is a realist, naturalistic framework for theorizing about free will, according to which free will exists and we act freely. For the most part, this verdict is reached independently of addressing the compatibility question, which asks whether free will is compatible with determinism. Even so, the book weighs in on that question, arguing that the natural-kind view both supports compatibilism and provides compatibilists with an attractive way to be realists about free will. The resulting position is preferable to previous natural-kind accounts as well as to revisionist accounts of free will and moral responsibility. Finally, the view defuses recent empirical threats to free will and is able to address emerging questions about whether an artificially intelligent agent might ever act freely or be responsible for its behaviors.

Is free-agency phenomenology accurate?

2021 ◽  
pp. 115-136
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Free Agency

This chapter argues that free-agency phenomenology might be accurate or veridical even if determinism is true, in which case it is compatibilist. Indeed, free-agency phenomenology might be veridical even if it has libertarian presentational content and assuming the truth of determinism. Compatibilists can concede, at least for argument’s sake, that free-agency phenomenology is in one sense libertarian. Yet they should insist that it is in another sense compatibilist. Consequently, even if libertarian descriptions of free-agency phenomenology are apt, there is still a sense in which this very phenomenology might be veridical, assuming determinism. This verdict undermines a motivation for libertarianism, since it removes any presumption in favor of libertarianism based on phenomenology. It also supports the natural-kind view about free will.

Free-agency experience and belief

2021 ◽  
pp. 157-188
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Mental Simulation ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Content View

Accumulating evidence indicates that (1) people tend to presuppose indeterminism as required for free will, and (2) people’s free-agency experiences suggest that they have indeterministic free will. However, most deny that (3) people’s presupposition of indeterminism has its source in their experience. This chapter explains how (3) might be true. It does so by appeal to the phenomenon of prospection, which is the mental simulation of future possibilities for the purpose of guiding action. The resulting view fills in at least some of the details of the HPC natural-kind view defended in Chapters 2 and 3, and also some details of the dual-content view about free-agency phenomenology defended in Chapters 4 and 5. It also links this view about phenomenology to the natural-kind view.

The Oxford Handbook of Free Will

2005 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Consequence Argument ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hard Determinism ◽  
Determinism And Indeterminism ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

The Oxford Handbook of Free Will provides a guide to current scholarship on the perennial problem of free will—perhaps the most hotly and voluminously debated of all philosophical problems. While reference is made throughout to the contributions of major thinkers of the past, the emphasis is on recent research. The articles combine the work of established scholars with younger thinkers who are beginning to make significant contributions. The book is divided into eight parts: Part I (Theology and Fatalism), Part II (Physics, Determinism, and Indeterminism), Part III (The Modal or Consequence Argument for Incompatibilism). Part IV (Compatibilist Perspectives on Freedom and Responsibility), Part V (Moral Responsibility, Alternative Possibilities, and Frankfurt-Style), Part VI (Libertarian Perspectives on Free Agency and Free Will), Part VII (Nonstandard Views: Successor Views to Hard Determinism and Others), and Part VIII (Neuroscience and Free Will). Taken as a whole, the book provides a roadmap to the state of the art thinking on this enduring topic.

Reference, error, naturalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-112
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Better Than

This chapter reinforces the HPC natural-kind view about free will by considering its advantages over other approaches in more detail, including Manuel Vargas’s revisionist approach. It is argued that Vargas’s view founders on a dilemma, which the natural-kind view escapes: Either Vargas’s approach is non-descriptivist, like the natural-kind view, in which case it is not revisionist; or it is revisionist, in which case it is not clear how it is descriptivist. Moreover, this chapter argues that the natural-kind view serves Vargas’s purposes better than his own view does. Finally, the chapter compares the natural-kind view to standard compatibilist, libertarian, and hard-incompatibilist views. Among all of these views, it is argued that only the HPC view is sufficiently methodologically naturalistic in its approach.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
Free Actions ◽  
Neil Levy ◽  
Shed Light

This concluding chapter summarizes the central claims of the book. Additionally, it argues that the HPC natural-kind view about free actions has the resources to address various empirical threats to free will. For example, Neil Levy has argued that recent findings about how implicit biases affect actions threatens free will and moral responsibility. However, the natural-kind view defuses this threat, including Levy’s version of it. The chapter also shows how the natural-kind view can shed light on emerging questions about whether artificially intelligent agents might ever act freely or be responsible for their actions, and if so in what sense. Finally, the chapter sketches some findings indicating that folk thinking may actually assume something like the natural-kind view.

The Recovery of Free Agency in the Theology of St. Augustine

1987 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Wetzel
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
The Law

In The Spirit and the Letter Augustine claims that grace not only avoids abrogating human freedom it actually establishes free will. His claim raises some intriguing questions. What sort of freedom is it that can be established only by the influence of another agent—in this case, God—and what sort of bondage is it that is overcome by grace? If we remain exclusively within Augustine's theological discourse, the answers come straightforwardly and by now have a ring of familiarity. The freedom in question is the state of loving God over and above his worldly and time-bound creations, fulfilling (with divine assistance) the demands of the Law, and finding one's happiness in reconciliation with the eternal through the mediation of Jesus Christ. Bondage is conversely the blindness and perversity of keeping one's attention fixed on creation apart from its relation to its Creator and of courting the satisfaction of only those desires which are framed independently of God's claims on every human being. Freedom is loving well or having a bona voluntas; bondage is loving aimlessly, unreflectively, and hence destructively.

THE HEART OF LIBERTARIANISM: FUNDAMENTALITY AND THE WILL

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (01) ◽  
pp. 72-92
Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract:It is often claimed that libertarianism offers an unattractive conception of free will and moral responsibility because it renders free agency inexplicable and irrational. This essay aims, first, to show that the soundness of these objections turns on more basic disagreements concerning the ideals of free agency and, second, to develop and motivate a truly libertarian conception of the ideals of free agency. The central contention of the essay is that the heart of libertarians’ ideal of free agency is the ideal of agential fundamentality.

scholarly journals ‘Animals run about the world in all sorts of paths’: varieties of indeterminism

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse M. Mulder
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Biological Determinism ◽  
The World ◽  
Physical Forces

AbstractIn her seminal essay ‘Causality and Determination’, Elizabeth Anscombe very decidedly announced that “physical indeterminism” is “indispensable if we are to make anything of the claim to freedom”. But it is clear from that same essay that she extends the scope of that claim beyond freedom–she suggests that indeterminism is required already for animal self-movement (a position recently called ‘agency incompatibilism’ by Helen Steward). Building on Anscombe’s conception of causality and (in)determinism, I will suggest that it extends even further: life as such already requires physical indeterminism. Furthermore, I show that we can, on this basis, arrive at the idea of varieties of (in)determinism, along with a corresponding variety of incompatibilist theses. From this Anscombean vantage point, the free will discussion takes on a quite different outlook. The question whether free agency can coexist with determinism on the level of blind physical forces, which preoccupies the philosopher of free will, turns out to conflate a whole series of compatibility questions: not just whether life is compatible with physical determinism, but also whether animal self-movement is compatible with ‘biological determinism’, and whether free agency is compatible with ‘animal determinism’.

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