Free Will is not a Mystery

Abstract

This article defends an event-causal libertarian view. To introduce the view, the first half of the article deals with another notion that has been entwined with contemporary debates about free will and has also generated a large recent literature, the notion of autonomy or self-determination. The coherence account of autonomy can be interpreted in compatibilist terms. But the article notes that free agency also requires alternative possibilities and these require indeterminism. It argues that indeterminism can be introduced into the picture of autonomous action by supposing that free actions result by “normal causal processes” from preferences that were “noncoercively formed” and were caused but not determined by the agent's considerations.

The Two‐Stage Luck Objection

“…Now accepting both (a) and (c) doesn't automatically commit libertarians to (b). A libertarian could conceivably deny, for example, that either choice would be anomalous or exceedingly improbable without accepting that there is a definite answer to the question, “How likely is each possible choice?” (See Ekstrom , p. 376, and Buchak .) Unlike some influential versions of the Luck Objection, such as the Rollback Argument (van Inwagen ), the Two‐stage Luck Objection doesn't depend on such definite probability assignments.…”

“…5, and ; Haji ; Clarke , pp. 159–69, ; Ekstrom and ; McCall and Lowe ; Almeida and Bernstein ; Pereboom , chs. 2–3 and 2014, chs.…”

“…While there is no bright line separating libertarians who see the problem as real but ultimately soluble from those who deny that there is a genuine problem at all, there appears to be a growing skepticism among libertarians (and others) about whether the Luck Objection poses a serious problem for the libertarian enterprise. See for example McCall and Lowe ; Griffith ; Franklin , , and forthcoming; Ekstrom and ; Balaguer ; Almeida and Bernstein ; Steward ; and Vargas . It should be noted that some of these writers believe that worries about luck are misplaced if (and only if) libertarians adopt an agent‐causal framework (O'Connor and , Griffith , and Steward ), while others seem to hold that the worries, at least as currently formulated, are unfounded tout court (Ekstrom and , Balaguer , and Franklin and ).…”

Farewell to the luck (and Mind) argument

“…Clarke 2000; Mele 1999a). Mele describes Wilma, a person who is attracted to such an account, as someone who leaves it open whether ''freedom and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism, but maintain that the falsity of determinism is required for more desirable brands of these things'' 13 One might try to do this by arguing that indeterminism occurs during preference formation and it is preference formation, rather than choosing and acting in accordance with our preference, that is the true loci of control (see Ekstrom 2000Ekstrom , 2003. Alternatively, one might argue, like the deliberative libertarian, that indeterminism occurs during the deliberative process, but, unlike the deliberative libertarian, that this process is the loci of agential-control.…”

“…The two significant claims that we must evaluate are (1) if a choice is undetermined, then it is a matter of luck, and (2) if it is a matter of luck that event E occurred, then no one was able to prevent or bring about E at that time. Some commentators (Ekstrom 2003) have tried to argue that van Inwagen equivocates on the meaning of luck: in (2) he employs a notion of luck that is essentially inimical to control, but in (1) he employs an innocuous notion of luck. However, this charge does not stick.…”