Metaphysics · Ethics
Are human actions causally determined, and can people be free and morally responsible if they are?
Free will is compatible with causal determinism: an action is free when it flows from the agent's own reasons, desires, or character, whether or not those are themselves causally determined.
Causal determinism is true and incompatible with free will, so human beings do not have free will.
Genuine choice is real; the will is not necessitated.
A thought experiment constructs an imagined case and reasons through it to isolate a principle, intuition, possibility, or conceptual consequence.
The free-will problem asks two linked questions: whether human action is causally determined and whether determination would rule out freedom and responsibility. Hard determinists answer that actions are determined and therefore not free; compatibilists argue that determined action can still be free; libertarians hold that at least some free actions are not determined.
Keeping both questions explicit makes these three positions genuine rivals rather than three answers to different problems.