Free Will Primer The death of free will, or its exposure as a convenient illusion, some worry, could wreak

havoc on our sense of moral and legal responsibility. According to those who believe that free will and determinism are incompatibleit would mean that people are no more responsible for their actions than asteroids or planets. Anything would go. --Dennis Overbye, The New York Times (2007) This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on--an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star. --William Shakespeare, King Lear (1610/2005) The Free Will Debate: A Primer Determinism: The metaphysical thesis that given the actual past and the laws of nature, there is only one possible future. Indeterminism: The metaphysical thesis that at any one momentholding constant the actual past and the laws of naturethe future is genuinely open (i.e., there are multiple possibilities). Fatalism: The metaphysical thesis that at any moment, everything is necessarily as it is. Conditional vs. Unconditional Could Have Done Otherwise: On the conditional reading, to say I could have done otherwise is to say I would have done otherwise had things been different. On the unconditional reading, to say I could have done otherwise is to say that I could have done otherwise even if everything leading up to my decision remained constant. Indeterminism and the Problem of Luck: If the universe is indeterministic, then the fact that an agent did x rather than y at t1 is ultimately a matter of luck. Determinism and the Problem of Alternative Possibilities: If the universe is deterministic, then agents do not have the unconditional power to do otherwise. Because free will and moral responsibility require the unconditional power to do otherwise, determinism is incompatible with free will and moral responsibility. Incompatibilist Libertarianism: Determinism is incompatible with free will and determinism. However, determinism is false. So, humans have free will and moral responsibility. Incompatibilist libertarianism comes in two varieties: Agent causal accountsi.e., free will requires a certain form of contra-causal agency (e.g., Chisholm)and event causal accounts i.e., free will requires there to be certain kinds of indeterministic events in the world (e.g., Kane).

Incompatibilist Hard Determinism: Determinism is incompatible with free will and determinism. Moreover, because determinism is true, humans do not have free will and moral responsibility (e.g., Pereboom). Impossibilism: Free will and ultimate moral responsibility require us to be the ultimate source of our action. However, the kind of self-causation required for free will and moral responsibility is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminismi.e., free will and moral responsibility are impossible (e.g., Galen Strawson). Soft Determinism: Free will and moral responsibility actually require the truth of determinism (e.g., Ayer and Stace). Compatibilism: In general, compatibilists argue that humans could have free will and moral responsibility even if determinism were true since the former do not require the unconditional ability to do otherwise, holding fixed the actual past and laws, nor the seemingly impossible ability to be ultimately responsible for what makes us the way we are. Instead, compatibilists argue that free and responsible agency require the capacities involved in self-reflection and practical deliberation. Different theorists emphasize different capacitiese.g., our ability to identify with some of our desires over others (e.g., Frankfurt), to understand what is true and good (e.g., Wolf), to be appropriate targets of reactive attitudes (e.g., indignation or approbation) (e.g., Peter Strawson), or to be appropriately responsive to reasons (e.g., Fischer). Semi-Compatibilism: Semi-compatibilists break up the debate about the compatibility of determinism and free will and moral responsibility in two. Whereas some argue that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism even if free will is not (e.g., Fischer), others claim the oppositei.e., free will, but not moral responsibility, is compatible with determinism (e.g., Waller). The Threat of Shrinking Agency: The view that recent developments in social psychology and neuroscience reveal that we either dont have free will and moral responsibility (e.g., the epiphenomenalism of Wegner and Libet and the physicalism/reductionism of Greene and Cohen) or that we have far less agency and moral responsibility than we traditionally assumed (e.g., the situationism of Doris and the automaticity of Bargh). Illusionism vs. Disillusionism: The illusionist is an incompatibilist non-realist who thinks that even though free will and moral responsibility are illusions, they are positive illusions that yield intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits and hence our beliefs in free will and moral responsibility ought to be preserved (e.g., Smilansky). The disillusionist, on the other hand, thinks that free will and moral responsibility are illusory and our belief in them is detrimental and should be abandoned (e.g., Nadelhoffer). This debate is ultimately an empirical and policycentric debate about what we should do if it turns out we decide humans dont have free will and moral responsibility.