Abstract

The paper pleads for compatibilism by distinguishing the first-person’s normative and the observer’s empirical perspective. In the normative perspective one’s own actions are uncaused and free, in the empirical perspective they are caused and may be predetermined. Still, there is only one notion of causation that is able to account for the relation between the causal conceptions within the two perspectives. The other main idea for explicating free will by explaining free actions or intentions as appropriately caused in a specified way is acknowledged, but not discussed. The paper finally argues that the normative and the empirical perspective are on a par; none is prior; even from within the empirical perspective the normative perspective is ineliminable