Abstract

Most of us are convinced that we act freely and are morally responsible for much of what we do. Nevertheless, this conviction faces a serious challenge, for either determinism or indeterminism must be true, and the truth of either one seems to pose serious difficulties for the existence of free will. Compatibilism about free will is the view that free will is compatible with the truth of determinism. A view that holds that free will is compatible with the truth of indeterminism—and specifically where the indeterminism is located at the ‘moment of action’, either because that action is uncaused or is caused indeterministically by the agent, I call ‘I-compatibilism’. In this dissertation I examine problems that arise for compatibilism on the one hand, and I-compatibilism on the other. The method I use for generating these problems involves considering a series of thought experiments in which we learn either that determinism is true or that indeterminism is true. The function of these thought experiments is to vividly portray implications that follow from either determinism or indeterminism being true, and then to examine how these implications might create problems for either compatibilism or I-compatibilism respectively. The conclusion I arrive at is that consideration of these thought experiments provides us with additional reason to think we don’t have free will if determinism is true, as well as additional reason to think we do have free will if indeterminism is true