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Summary Libertarians believe that free will is incompatible with causal determinism, and agents have free will. They therefore deny that causal determinism is true. There are three major categories of libertarians. Event-causal libertarians believe that free actions are indeterministically caused by prior events. Agent-causal libertarians believe that agents indeterministically cause free actions. Non-causal libertarians typically believe that free actions are constituted by basic mental actions, such as a decision or choice.
Key works In the contemporary debate, event-causal libertarianism has been most powerfully defended by Robert Kane; Kane 1996 is the most complete statement of his position. O'Connor 2000 is perhaps the best articulated defence of agent-causation. Ginet 1990 and McCann 1998 are influential defences of non-causal theories. Clarke 2003 is careful and penetrating overview.
Introductions Clarke & Capes 2021
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  1. Determinism and Luck.Steven M. Duncan - manuscript
    In the course of writing a book on Free Will, I took the opportunity to read a good deal of contemporary literature on the Free Will problem. This paper is a survey and reflection on that reading, responding to the current trends and state of play concerning the existence of free will.
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  2. (1 other version)Sublating the Free Will Problematic: Powers, Agency and Causal Determination.Ruth Groff - manuscript
    I argue that a powers-based metaphysics radically reconfigures the existing free will problematic. This is different from claiming that such an approach solves the ill-conceived problems that emerge from Humean-Kantian default commitments.
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  3. The basis of indeterminism.Shan Gao - 2001
  4. Closing the door on the belief in ability thesis.Neil Levy - unknown
    It is, as Dana Nelkin (2004) says, a rare point of agreement among participants in the free will debate that rational deliberation presupposes a belief in freedom. Of course, the precise content of that belief – and, indeed, the nature of deliberation – is controversial, with some philosophers claiming that deliberation commits us to a belief in libertarian free will (Taylor 1966; Ginet 1966), and others claiming that, on the contrary, deliberation presupposes nothing more than an epistemic openness that is (...)
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  5. On free will.Peter van Inwagen - manuscript
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  6. Thomist Libertarianism is Committed to Mysterianism.Armand Babakhanian - forthcoming - New Blackfriars.
    In recent years, a large amount of scholarship has been written about St Thomas Aquinas's views on free will and determinism. This paper is an attempt to bring some Thomist views of libertarian free will into dialogue with analytic philosopher Peter van Inwagen and his ‘mysterianism’ about free will. The thesis of this paper is that Thomist libertarians about free will are committed to Peter van Inwagen's mysterianism about free will. The paper intends to accomplish this aim by showing how (...)
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  7. The Experience of Free Will.Oisín Deery & Eddy Nahmias - forthcoming - In Joe Campbell, Kristin Mickelson & V. Alan White (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Free Will. Blackwell. pp. 417-433.
    The main question that we address in this chapter is what to say about reportedly libertarian experiences of free agency – in other words, experiences of options as being open, and up to oneself to decide among, such that, if they are accurate or veridical, then (at a minimum) indeterminism must be true. A great deal rides on this question. If normal experiences of free agency are libertarian, and if compatibilists cannot explain them away, then all of us may be (...)
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  8. A nonreductive physicalist libertarian free will.Dwayne Moore - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that the same agential states can cause different possible actions. Nonreductive physicalism is, roughly, the view that mental states cause actions to occur, while these actions also have sufficient physical causes. Though libertarian free will and nonreductive physicalism have overlapping subject matter, and while libertarian free will is currently trending at the same time as nonreductive physicalism is a dominant metaphysical posture, there are few sustained expositions of a nonreductive physicalist model of libertarian (...)
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  9. Must Choices and Decisions be Uncaused by Prior Events or States of the Agent?David Palmer - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-8.
    There is an important but unorthodox view within the philosophy of action that when it comes to certain mental actions of a person—her decisions and choices—these actions cannot be caused by her beliefs and desires or by any prior event or state of her at all. The reason for this, it is said, is that there is something in the very nature of a person’s decisions and choices that entails that they cannot be caused in this way. The arguments for (...)
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  10. Agency incompatibilism, luck, and intelligibility.Bradford Stockdale - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    The problem of luck is one of the most formidable obstacles currently facing libertarian theories of free will. Some have argued that there is no problem, while others have argued that the problem is not a unique one for libertarians. Still others acknowledge the problem and aim to address it with their preferred libertarian theory. Steward (2012) takes the latter strategy with her agency incompatibilism. She develops a version of the problem of present luck and argues that agents who possess (...)
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  11. Against an Argument for Objective Probabilities of Undetermined Choices.Daniele Conti - 2024 - American Philosophical Quarterly 61 (2):127–137.
    According to libertarianism about free will, at least some of the choices we make are free and undetermined. Many libertarians also accept the thesis that, before we make an undetermined choice, there is a nontrivial objective probability that we will make that choice. In the literature on free will, the ascription of objective probabilities is sometimes justified via an “Argument from Motivation,” which adverts to the fact that typically, in situations of choice, we are more motivated to choose some options (...)
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  12. Four Views on Free Will, Second Edition (2nd edition).John Martin Fischer, Robert H. Kane, Derk Pereboom & Manuel Vargas - 2024 - Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
    Four Views on Free Will is a robust and careful debate about free will, how it interacts with determinism and indeterminism, and whether we have it or not. Providing the most up-to-date account of four major positions in the free will debate, the second edition of this classic text presents the opposing perspectives of renowned philosophers John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas. -/- Substantially revised throughout, this new volume contains eight in-depth chapters, almost entirely rewritten for (...)
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  13. Circumstantial and constitutive moral luck in Kant's moral philosophy.Robert J. Hartman - 2024 - European Journal of Philosophy 32 (2):353-359.
    The received view of Kant’s moral philosophy is that it precludes all moral luck. But I offer a plausible interpretation according to which Kant embraces moral luck in circumstance and constitution. I interpret the unconditioned nature of transcendental freedom as a person’s ability to do the right thing no matter how she is inclined by her circumstantial and constitutive luck. I argue that various passages about degrees of difficulty relating to circumstantial and constitutive luck provide a reason to accept a (...)
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  14. Kevin J. Mitchell: Free Agents – How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. Gebunden, 333 Seiten. Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford 2023. Literaturhinweis. [REVIEW]Christoph Leumann - 2024 - Aphin-Rundbrief 31 (2024/1):21-23.
    In seinem Buch "Free Agents" stellt der Neurowissenschaftler und Evolutionsgenetiker Kevin Mitchell ein evolutionäres Erklärungsmodell für den freien Willen vor. Aus philosophischer Sicht relevant ist das Buch vor allem, weil es ein zentrales Credo der aktuellen Freiheits-Debatte in Frage stellt, nämlich die Auffassung, ein naturwissenschaftlich vertretbares Freiheitsverständnis müsse mit dem Determinismus im Einklang stehen. Mitchell geht auf Distanz zum Kompatibilismus und nimmt mit naturwissenschaftlicher Argumentation für die libertarische Gegenposition Partei (auch wenn er selbst diesen Ausdruck nicht verwendet). Sein Buch ist (...)
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  15. Achievements, free will, and meaning in life.David Palmer & Ning Fan - 2024 - Synthese 204 (5):1-19.
    Can we still have the kind of achievements that a meaningful life requires if it turns out that we lack free will due to determinism? Derk Pereboom, an optimistic free-will skeptic, answers positively. He argues that even if we lack free will due to determinism, we can still have achievements and thereby lead meaningful lives. In this paper, we critically assess this issue. After showing that Pereboom fails to provide good reason to think that achievements do not require free will, (...)
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  16. Compatibilism as Non-Ideal Theory: A Manifesto.Robert H. Wallace - 2024 - In David Shoemaker, Santiago Amaya & Manuel Vargas (eds.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 8: Non-Ideal Agency and Responsibility. Oxford University Press.
    This paper articulates and responds to a challenge to contemporary compatibilist views of free will. Despite the popularity and appeal of compatibilist theories, many are left with lingering doubts about compatibilism. This paper explains this doubt in terms of the absurdity challenge: because a compatibilist accepts that they do not have causal access to all the actual sufficient causal sources of their own agency, the compatibilist can find their own agency absurd. By taking a cue from political philosophy, this paper (...)
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  17. Free Will vs. Free Choice in Aquinas’ De Malo.Jacob Joseph Andrews - 2023 - Theophron 2 (1):58-73.
    The goal of this paper is to show that Thomas Aquinas, in his _Disputed Questions on Evil_, presents a theory of free will that is compatibilist but still involves a version of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) and even requires alternative possibilities for a certain kind of responsibility. In Aquinas’ view, choosing between possibilities is not the primary power of the will. Rather, choice arises through the complex interaction of various parts of human psychology, in particular through the indeterminacy (...)
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  18. Libertarianism and agentive experience.Justin A. Capes - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):33-44.
    Libertarianism about free will conjoins the thesis that free will requires indeterminism with the thesis that we have free will. Here the claim that we have experiential evidence for the libertarian position is assessed. It is argued that, on a straightforward reading, the claim is false, for our experiences as agents don't support the claim that free will requires indeterminism. However, our experiences as agents may still have a role to play in an overall case for libertarianism, insofar as they (...)
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  19. The Boundary Theory of Libertarian Free Will.André Juthe - 2023 - Review of Metaphysics 77 (2):327-343.
    The first purpose of this article is to present a new theory of libertarian free will—the boundary theory of libertarian free will—which provides a new framework by means of employing boundaries as a “conceptual scheme” for understanding libertarian free will. This theory consists of two parts. One part suggests that the agent’s will should be viewed as the intermediate boundary between an agent’s reasons and his alternative choices. The second part is a model where the agent’s will is a faculty (...)
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  20. Responsibility collapses: why moral responsibility is impossible.Stephen Kershnar - 2023 - New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
    Our worldview assumes that people are morally responsible. Consider our emotions regarding other people or ourselves. We often feel anger, gratitude, pride, and shame toward them or ourselves. Consider religious beliefs. Jews and Christians believe that God cares whether a person does right by others and freely loves him. Consider moral values. We value dignity, freedom, and rights. The above emotions, beliefs, and values assume that people are responsible. In particular, they assume that a person is responsible for what she (...)
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  21. Free Will's value: criminal justice, pride, and love.John Lemos - 2023 - New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
    This book defends an event-causal theory of libertarian free will and argues that the belief in such free will plays an important, if not essential, role in supporting certain important values. In the first part of the book, the author argues that possession of libertarian free will is necessary for deserved praise and blame and reward and punishment. He contends that his version of libertarian free will-the indeterministic weightings view- is coherent and can fit with a scientific, naturalistic understanding of (...)
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  22. Haji and the Indeterministic Weightings Model of Libertarian Free Will.John Lemos - 2023 - Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 25 (3):101-118.
    In recent work, I defend an indeterministic weightings model of libertarian free will. (Lemos, 2018, Ch. 5; 2021; 2023, Ch. 6). On this view, basic free-willed actions are understood as the result of causally indeterminate deliberative processes in which the agent assigns evaluative weight to the reasons for the different choice options under consideration. In basic free-willed actions, the assignment of weights is causally undetermined, and the choices are typically the causal consequence of these assignments of weights in which the (...)
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  23. On Three Arguments Against Metaphysical Libertarianism.Ken M. Levy - 2023 - Review of Metaphysics 76 (4):725-748.
    I argue that the three strongest arguments against metaphysical libertarianism—the randomness objection, the constitutive luck objection, and the physicalist objection—are actually unsuccessful and therefore that metaphysical libertarianism is more plausible than the common philosophical wisdom allows. My more positive thesis, what I will refer to as “Agent Exceptionalism,” is that, when making decisions and performing actions, human beings can indeed satisfy the four conditions of metaphysical libertarianism: the control condition, the rationality condition, the ultimacy condition, and the physicalism condition.
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  24. Mechanical Choices: A Compatibilist Libertarian Response.Christian List - 2023 - Criminal Law and Philosophy:1-23.
    Michael S. Moore defends the ideas of free will and responsibility, especially in relation to criminal law, against several challenges from neuroscience. I agree with Moore that morality and the law presuppose a commonsense understanding of humans as rational agents, who make choices and act for reasons, and that to defend moral and legal responsibility, we must show that this commonsense understanding remains viable. Unlike Moore, however, I do not think that classical compatibilism, which is based on a conditional understanding (...)
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  25. Quantum Indeterminism, Free Will, and Self-Causation.Marco Masi - 2023 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 30 (5-6):32–56.
    A view that emancipates free will by means of quantum indeterminism is frequently rejected based on arguments pointing out its incompatibility with what we know about quantum physics. However, if one carefully examines what classical physical causal determinism and quantum indeterminism are according to physics, it becomes clear what they really imply–and, especially, what they do not imply–for agent-causation theories. Here, we will make necessary conceptual clarifications on some aspects of physical determinism and indeterminism, review some of the major objections (...)
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  26. Lemos on the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection.Dwayne Moore - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (3):1459-1477.
    I recently argued that reductive physicalist versions of libertarian free will face a physical indeterminism luck objection. John Lemos claims that one potential advocate of reductive physicalist libertarianism, Robert Kane, avoids this physical indeterminism luck objection. I here show how the problem remains.
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  27. Emergent Agent Causation.Juan Morales - 2023 - Synthese 201:138.
    In this paper I argue that many scholars involved in the contemporary free will debates have underappreciated the philosophical appeal of agent causation because the resources of contemporary emergentism have not been adequately introduced into the discussion. Whereas I agree that agent causation’s main problem has to do with its intelligibility, particularly with respect to the issue of how substances can be causally relevant, I argue that the notion of substance causation can be clearly articulated from an emergentist framework. According (...)
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  28. Elucidating open theism.Joshua R. Sijuwade - 2023 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 94 (2):151-175.
    In this article, I seek to provide a philosophical elucidation of the thesis of open theism. This task will be performed by utilising the conception of open theism, Generic Open Theism, provided by Alan Rhoda (and precisified in part by William Hasker). This conception will then be further elucidated through the employment of the notion of libertarianism, as proposed by Robert Kane, which will enable the thesis of Generic Open Theism to be shown to not be subject to two important (...)
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  29. (1 other version)Individuality and Freedom.Ellen Bliss Talbot, Joel Katzav & Dorothy Rogers - 2023 - In Joel Katzav, Dorothy Rogers & Krist Vaesen (eds.), Knowledge, Mind and Reality: An Introduction by Early Twentieth-Century American Women Philosophers. Cham: Springer. pp. 301-311.
    In this article, Ellen Bliss Talbot explores the free will/determinism debate through an examination of the notions of individual unity, uniqueness, and self-sufficiency.
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  30. Christianity and the Problem of Free Will.Leigh Vicens - 2023 - Cambridge University Press.
    Central to the teachings of Christianity is a puzzle: on the one hand, sin seems something that humans do not do freely and so cannot be not responsible for, since it is unavoidable; on the other hand, sin seems something that we must be responsible for and so do freely, since we are enjoined to repent of it, and since it makes us liable to divine condemnation and forgiveness. After laying out the puzzle in more depth, this Element considers three (...)
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  31. A problem for counterfactual sufficiency.John William Waldrop - 2023 - Analysis 83 (3):527-535.
    The consequence argument purports to show that determinism is true only if no one has free will. Judgments about whether the argument is sound depend on how one understands locutions of the form 'p and no one can render p false'. The main interpretation on offer appeals to counterfactual sufficiency: s can render p false just in case there is something s can do such that, were s to do it, p would be false; otherwise, s cannot render p false. (...)
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  32. A Companion to Free Will.Joseph Keim Campbell, Kristin M. Mickelson & V. Alan White (eds.) - 2022 - Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley-Blackwell.
    The concept of free will is fraught with controversy, as readers of this volume likely know. Philosophers disagree about what free will is, whether we have it, what mitigates or destroys it, and what it's good for. Indeed, philosophers even disagree about how to fix the referent of the term 'free will' for purposes of describing and exploring these disagreements. What one person considers a reasonably neutral working definition of 'free will' is often considered question-begging or otherwise misguided by another. (...)
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  33. Moral Responsibility Reconsidered.Gregg D. Caruso & Derk Pereboom - 2022 - Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Derk Pereboom.
    This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of responsibility associated with attributability, answerability, and accountability-it distinguishes between basic and non-basic desert conceptions of moral responsibility and considers a (...)
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  34. Molinism: Explaining our Freedom Away.Nevin Climenhaga & Daniel Rubio - 2022 - Mind 131 (522):459-485.
    Molinists hold that there are contingently true counterfactuals about what agents would do if put in specific circumstances, that God knows these prior to creation, and that God uses this knowledge in choosing how to create. In this essay we critique Molinism, arguing that if these theses were true, agents would not be free. Consider Eve’s sinning upon being tempted by a serpent. We argue that if Molinism is true, then there is some set of facts that fully explains both (...)
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  35. Free Will and (In)determinism in Hang the DJ.Taylor Cyr - 2022 - In Amber Bowen & John Anthony Dunne (eds.), Theology and Black Mirror. Fortress Academic. pp. 55-65.
    Like most episodes of Black Mirror, “Hang the DJ” raises a host of philosophical questions. While there is much from this episode to explore, this chapter will explore something that has not yet been addressed in other work, namely the connection between “Hang the DJ” and questions about free will and determinism (or indeterminism, as the case may be). This chapter will proceed as follows: first, I will sketch some reasons for thinking that, if determinism is true, then no one (...)
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  36. Free Will and Moral Luck.Robert J. Hartman - 2022 - In Joseph Keim Campbell, Kristin M. Mickelson & V. Alan White (eds.), A Companion to Free Will. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 378-392.
    Philosophers often consider problems of free will and moral luck in isolation from one another, but both are about control and moral responsibility. One problem of free will concerns the difficult task of specifying the kind of control over our actions that is necessary and sufficient to act freely. One problem of moral luck refers to the puzzling task of explaining whether and how people can be morally responsible for actions permeated by factors beyond their control. This chapter explicates and (...)
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  37. Why Frankfurtian all-in can’ts are irrelevant to free will.Geert Keil - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65.
    This paper argues that Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs) do not compromise the agent’s ability to decide otherwise. In his attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, Frankfurt relied on what Austin called the ‘all-in’ sense of ‘can’, and misconstrued the agent’s inability to do otherwise as an all-in can’t. Like the new dispositionalists, I maintain that the agent’s relevant abilities are ‘masked’ rather than lost in Frankfurt cases. The argument from masked abilities, however, is not confined to a compatibilist construal of (...)
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  38. What Does Indeterminism Offer to Agency?Andrew Law - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (2):371-385.
    Libertarian views of freedom claim that, although determinism would rule out our freedom, we are nevertheless free on some occasions. An odd implication of such views (to put it mildly) seems to be that indeterminism somehow enhances or contributes to our agency. But how could that be? What does indeterminism have to offer agency? This paper develops a novel answer, one that is centred around the notion of explanation. In short, it is argued that, if indeterminism holds in the right (...)
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  39. The naturalistic case for free will.Christian List - 2022 - In Meir Hemmo, Stavros Ioannidis, Orly Shenker & Gal Vishne (eds.), Levels of Reality in Science and Philosophy: Re-Examining the Multi-Level Structure of Reality. Springer.
    The aim of this expository paper is to give an informal overview of a plausible naturalistic case for free will. I will describe what I take to be the main naturalistically motivated challenges for free will and respond to them by presenting an indispensability argument for free will. The argument supports the reality of free will as an emergent higher-level phenomenon. I will also explain why the resulting picture of free will does not conflict with the possibility that the fundamental (...)
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  40. On List's compatibilist libertarianism.Dwayne Moore & Sara Ugljesic - 2022 - Philosophical Forum 53 (4):259-268.
    Christian List has recently presented a compatibilist libertarian solution to the free will and determinism problem. He proposes the admixture of libertarianism, which endorses agential alternative possibilities, with physical determinism, which endorses the necessity of physical effects. In this paper, we argue that List's innovative proposal ultimately fails.
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  41. Compatibilist Libertarianism: Advantages and Challenges (Conference Report).Jan-Felix Müller - 2022 - Kriterion – Journal of Philosophy 36 (3-4):323-334.
    This paper tries to summarize the main lines of discussion at the conference "Compatibilist Libertarianism: Advantages and Challenges" (October 29, 2021). This conference, organised by Alexander Gebharter and Maria Sekatskaya, served the discussion of Christian List's account of compatibilist libertarianism. Speakers were Taylor W. Cyr, Nadine Elzein, Alexander Gebharter, Christian List, Alfred R. Mele, Leonhard Menges, Tuomas K. Pernu, and Maria Sekatskaya.
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  42. Practical grounds for freedom: Kant and James on freedom, experience and an open future.Joe Saunders & Neil W. Williams - 2022 - In Freedom After Kant: From German Idealism to Ethics and the Self. Blackwell's. pp. 155-171.
    In this chapter, we compare Kant and James’ accounts of freedom. Despite both thinkers’ rejecting compatibilism for the sake of practical reason, there are two striking differences in their stances. The first concerns whether or not freedom requires the possibility of an open future. James holds that morality hinges on the real possibility that the future can be affected by our actions. Kant, on the other hand, seems to maintain that we can still be free in the crucial sense, even (...)
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  43. God and the Value of Free Will.Luke Teeninga - 2022 - Sophia 61 (3):643-657.
    It is standard practice to appeal to libertarian free will to explain how God’s existence might be compatible with much of the evil we see in the actual world. Libertarian free will has also been important to certain responses to the argument for atheism from divine hiddenness. But what is often neglected in appealing to libertarian free will, as others have pointed out, is an explanation of why God would create us with such free will in the first place. Laura (...)
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  44. Human Freedom and the Inevitability of Sin.Leigh Vicens - 2022 - In Leigh Vicens & Peter Furlong (eds.), Theological Determinism: New Perspectives. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
  45. Du Châtelet’s Libertarianism.Aaron Wells - 2022 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 38 (3):219-241.
    There is a growing consensus that Emilie Du Châtelet’s challenging essay “On Freedom” defends compatibilism. I offer an alternative, libertarian reading of the essay. I lay out the prima facie textual evidence for such a reading. I also explain how apparently compatibilist remarks in “On Freedom” can be read as aspects of a sophisticated type of libertarianism that rejects blind or arbitrary choice. To this end, I consider the historical context of Du Châtelet’s essay, and especially the dialectic between various (...)
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  46. Compatibilist Libertarianism: Why It Talks Past the Traditional Free Will Problem and Determinism Is Still a Worry.John Daniel Wright - 2022 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 8 (4):604-622.
    Compatibilist libertarianism claims that alternate possibilities for action at the agential level are consistent with determinism at the physical level. Unlike traditional compatibilism about alternate possibilities, involving conditional or dispositional accounts of the ability to act, compatibilist libertarianism offers us unqualified modalities at the agential level, consistent with physical determinism, a potentially big advance. However, I argue that the account runs up against two problems. Firstly, the way in which the agential modalities are generated talks past the worries of the (...)
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  47. The Prejudice of Freedom: an Application of Kripke’s Notion of a Prejudice to our Understanding of Free Will.James Cain - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (3):323-339.
    This essay reframes salient issues in discussions of free will using conceptual apparatus developed in the works of Saul Kripke, with particular attention paid to his little-discussed technical notion of a prejudice. I begin by focusing on how various forms of modality (metaphysical, epistemic, and conceptual) underlie alternate forms of compatibilism and discuss why it is important to avoid conflating these forms of compatibilism. The concept of a prejudice is then introduced. We consider the semantic role of prejudices, in particular (...)
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  48. Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will.Randolph Clarke & Justin Capes - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    To have free will is to have what it takes to act freely. When an agent acts freely—when she exercises her free will—what she does is up to her. A plurality of alternatives is open to her, and she determines which she pursues. When she does, she is an ultimate source or origin of her action. So runs a familiar conception of free will.
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  49. Quantum propensities in the brain cortex and free will.Danko D. Georgiev - 2021 - Biosystems 208:104474.
    Capacity of conscious agents to perform genuine choices among future alternatives is a prerequisite for moral responsibility. Determinism that pervades classical physics, however, forbids free will, undermines the foundations of ethics, and precludes meaningful quantification of personal biases. To resolve that impasse, we utilize the characteristic indeterminism of quantum physics and derive a quantitative measure for the amount of free will manifested by the brain cortical network. The interaction between the central nervous system and the surrounding environment is shown to (...)
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  50. Libertarian Free Will, Naturalism, and Science.Stewart Goetz - 2021 - Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 23 (3):157-172.
    If we have libertarian free will, then it is plausible to believe that the occurrences of certain physical events have irreducible and ineliminable mental explanations. According to a strong version of naturalism, everything in the physical world is in principle explicable in nonmental terms. Therefore, the truth of naturalism implies that libertarian choices cannot explain the occurrences of any physical events. In this paper, I example a methodological argument for the truth of naturalism and conclude that the argument fails. I (...)
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