This paper is based on the comments I gave to Alfred Mele regarding his original Zygote Argument during my presentation at a small workshop on manipulation arguments in Budapest back in 2012. After those comments, Mele changed the conclusion of his original Zygote Argument and redefined 'incompatibilism' so that it would refer to the conclusion of his new Zygote Argument (Mele 2013+). Yet, over the last decade, Mele has made no comment in print about the changes he made nor the (...) invalidity objection that led to them. To my knowledge, Mele has only mentioned this 2015 paper once: in the context of defending his non-explanatory definition of 'incompatibilism' at the opening of Aspects of Agency (p. 6, n. 4), Mele draws his readers' attention to just *just this paper* as a place where they'll find the type of nonstandard/nontraditional definition of 'incompatibilism' that he rejects. If Mele had a general concern about unusual definitions of 'incompatibilism', he could have just as easily named almost any leading figure in free will for this purpose (since most reject the non-explanatory definition he now endorses). But for some reason, Mele thought an unemployed junior researcher should be singled out as an example. Moreover, if Mele were genuinely interested in helping his readers understand the ambiguity of terms like 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism' it is a mystery that he referenced a paper in which nothing of substance hung on the definitions given to these terms when he might have instead pointed them to my OTHER 2015 paper in which the MAIN AIM of the paper is to expose the difficulties facing anyone who wants to define the terms 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism' in a way that everyone will accept (including a critique of the definitions that Mele has adopted). By all appearances, Mele's aim was to give readers the false impression that my working definition of 'incompatibilism' played some role in my charge that his argument is invalid (which it doesn't, given that the term doesn't appear in either the premises or conclusion of that argument). In this paper, I simply use the invalidity of the simple 2-premise Zygote Argument to make a series of more philosophically significant points (e.g. regarding the dialectical structure of the free-will debate, the role of best-explanation reasoning, and to develop the first-ever "master manipulation argument"). Mele pays no attention to my answer to the "Now What?" question in this paper, even though that answer was the paper's main point. For those interested in a more recent discussion of how the logical and metaphilosophical observations made in this paper have helped to move the free-will debate forward, I suggest my contributions to the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Free Will (Intro and Chapter 4, 2023) and my paper "Free Will, Self-Creation, and the Paradox of Moral Luck" (2019). (shrink)

The terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ were introduced in the mid-20th century to name conflicting views about the logical relationship between the thesis of determinism and the thesis that someone has free will. These technical terms were originally introduced within a specific research paradigm, the classical analytic paradigm. This paradigm is now in its final stages of degeneration and few free-will theorists still work within it (i.e. using its methods, granting its substantive background assumptions, etc.). This chapter discusses how the ambiguity (...) of the terms ‘incompatibilism’ and ‘compatibilism’ took root and why it matters to the contempory debate. I explain why the ambiguity of these anachronistic terms, though relatively innocuous when they were first introduced, is now encouraging theorists to tolerate and perpetuate serious philosophical errors (e.g. to conflate relations as different in kind and importance as correlation and causation, to knowingly promote invalid arguments, and to equivoate on jargon in ways that keep the free-will debate mired in psuedo-stalemates). I also suggest a new paradigm for anyone looking for relief from the confusion and deadlock created by the use of inadequate classical narratives and jargon. -/- A selection from the publication is available to download here. For full version, please gmail me, username: kristin.mickelson.42 -/- . (shrink)

"We wish this volume to be a sure companion to the study of free will, broadly construed to include action theory, moral and legal responsibility, and cohort studies feathering off into adjacent fields in the liberal arts and sciences. In addition to general coverage of the discipline, this volume attempts a more challenging and complementary accompaniment to many familiar narratives about free will. In order to map out some directions such accompaniment will take, in this introduction we anchor the thirty (...) contributions to this volume in some common history from which they arise, and attempt to indicate where future work in free will and moral responsibility will–and has already begun to–depart from that history." -Excerpt from Introduction. ... ... To read full introduction, (1) download attached file or (2) follow wiley_dot_com link below, click "Read An Excerpt", then click :Excerpt 3:(pdf)". (shrink)

*As mentioned in Peter Coy's NYT essay "When Being Good Is Just a Matter of Being Lucky" (2023) -/- ----- -/- How is the problem of free will related to the problem of moral luck? In this essay, I answer that question and outline a new solution to the paradox of moral luck, the source-paradox solution. This solution both explains why the paradox arises and why moral luck does not exist. To make my case, I highlight a few key connections (...) between the paradox of moral luck and two related problems, namely the problem of free will and determinism and the paradox of self-creation. Piecing together intuitions, arguments, and insights from recent work on each of these three problems, I argue that the type of control necessary for moral responsibility can only be had by someone who is a genuine source of his own actions, but the relevant notion of sourcehood admits no coherent characterization. If our commonsense view of moral responsibility is incoherent, it is unsurprising that our commitment to the existence of morally responsible agents commits us to some paradoxical things—e.g. to both the existence and impossibility of moral luck. For more information about this article, please write to gmail account: kristin.mickelson.42. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue for the rejection of Vihvelin's ‘Three-fold Classification’ , a nonstandard taxonomy of free-will compatibilism, incompatibilism, and impossibilism. Vihvelin is right that the standard taxonomy of these views is inadequate, and that a new taxonomy is needed to clarify the free-will debate. Significantly, Vihvelin notes that the standard formal definition of ‘incompatibilism’ does not capture the historically popular view that deterministic laws pose a threat to free will. Vihvelin's proposed solution is to redefine ‘incompatibilism.’ However, Vihvelin's (...) formal definition of ‘incompatibilism’ is flawed according to her own arguments. In addition, Vihvelin's characterization of ‘compatibilism’ is incomplete, and at least two important free-will views are missing from her proposed taxonomy. Given the problems with Vihvelin's arguments for 3-FC, her novel view of the dialectic between the major free-will views lacks support. (shrink)

There is a new objection to the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism. I argue that the objection is more wide-ranging than originally thought. In particular: if it tells against the Consequence Argument, it tells against other arguments for incompatibilism too. I survey a few ways of dealing with this objection and show the costs of each. I then present an argument for incompatibilism that is immune to the objection and that enjoys other advantages.

NOTE TO READERS: My current research program is firmly grounded in the technical aspects of this dissertation. That said, my views have evolved significantly since writing it, e.g. I've flipped my views on the best working definition of 'determinism', and I no longer defend the viability of incompatibilist-impossibilism (I still grant the superficial logical consistency of the two views, but now contend that there is no way to defend one without rejecting the other). I have also given up on the (...) general project of rehabilitating the terms 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism', as I now see them as unhelpful hangovers from a degenerated research program. (shrink)

Determinism is a claim about the laws of nature: very roughly, it is the claim that everything that happens is determined by antecedent conditions together with the natural laws. Incompatibilism is a philosophical thesis about the relevance of determinism to free will: that the truth of determinism rules out the existence of free will. The incompatibilist believes that if determinism turned out to be true, it would also be true that we don't have, and have never had, free will. The (...) compatibilist denies that determinism has the consequences the incompatibilist thinks it has. According to the compatibilist, the truth of determinism does not preclude the existence of free will. (Even if we learned tomorrow that determinism is true, it might still be true that we have free will.) The philosophical problem of free will and determinism is the problem of understanding, how, if at all, the truth of determinism might be compatible with the truth of our belief that we have free will. That is, it's the problem of deciding who is right: the compatibilist or the incompatibilist. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the conceptual relationship between laws of nature and free will. In order to clarify the discussion, I begin by distinguishing several questions with respect to the nature of a law: i) do the laws of nature cover everything that happens? ii) are they deterministic? iii) can there be exceptions to universal and deterministic laws? iv) do the laws of nature govern everything in the world? In order to answer these questions I look at three widely endorsed accounts (...) of laws: "Humean" regularity accounts, laws as relations among universals, and the dispositional essentialist account. I argue that there is nothing in the very nature of a law - in any of the accounts surveyed - that implies a positive answer to questions (i) and (ii). I show that this has important consequences for the free will problem. I then turn to the compatibility of free will and determinism. I focus on the Humean view and the dispositional essentialist account of laws. And the bulk of this discussion concerns the consequence argument, especially the question of whether the laws of nature are "up to us". I show that, on the dispositional conception of laws, there is no sense in which the laws of nature are up to us, contrary to the Humean view. However, this does not mean that there is no room for free will on the dispositional account. I argue that free will requires the laws of nature to be limited in scope, rather than being indeterministic. I conclude by showing that this allows one to resist the claim that indeterminism rules out free will. (shrink)