Position

Libertarian Free Will

Free will is incompatible with determinism, and we have it: at least some choices are not causally necessitated.

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Classification

Position level
specific
Domains
Ethics, Metaphysics

Overview

Libertarians accept the hard determinist's premise that freedom and determination cannot coexist, and reject the other half: at least some choices are genuinely open, so determinism is false of human action. The support usually offered is the deliberating agent's own standpoint, in which alternatives present themselves as really available, together with the practices of praise and blame that appear to presuppose it.

The standing difficulty is to say what an undetermined choice would be. If a decision is not settled by the agent's reasons and character, it is not obvious how it is settled by the agent at all rather than simply happening — the objection that indeterminism buys randomness where it was meant to buy control.

Position on

Held by traditions

  • Epicureanism

    The swerve is not in Epicurus's surviving writings; Lucretius and Cicero attribute it to him.

    Uncertain: Scholars dispute what freedom the swerve was meant to secure: some read it as the ability to do otherwise, while others argue that it protects our control over how our character develops (Furley, Bobzien) or only keeps the future open (O'Keefe), which is not free will in the modern sense.

    Question scope: Free Will

Rival positions

References