Abstract

I begin with two compatibilist analyses of freedom: the conditional analysis and Lehrer's possible-worlds analysis. While certain arguments fail to undermine the conditional analysis, I present one which shows the inadequacy of the simple conditional analysis and a class of refinements of it. I find reason to reject the simple conditional analysis, refinements designed to account for "schizophrenic" objects, and Lehrer's conjunction of conditionals. ;I show how we might modify Lehrer's possible-worlds analysis to avoid compatibilist objections, by replacing the notion of an "advantage" with that of an "obstacle". This produces an analysis which, though acceptable to a compatibilist, will not satisfy an incompatibilist. This is because the account of an obstacle entails the debatable proposition that it need not be unreasonably difficult to violate a natural law. ;I discuss a family of arguments designed to show that any compatibilist analysis will be inadequate. I sketch a preliminary version of the "standard argument for incompatibilism about determinism and freedom", and I compare this argument with a parallel argument for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. I show how we can refine the Ockhamist response in such a way as to defend compatibilism about freedom and divine foreknowledge without also defending compatibilism about freedom and causal determinism. ;The refinement of Ockhamism shows that the compatibilist about divine foreknowledge and freedom need not say either that a person can so act that a natural law which actually holds wouldn't hold or that a person can so act that a fact which is simply about the past wouldn't be a fact. ;I next examine critically a general formulation of the standard argument for the incompatibility of freedom and causal determinism and draw out its implications. ;I sketch an account of moral responsibility which doesn't require freedom to do otherwise--an actual-sequence account--contrast it with various alternate-sequence approaches to responsibility, and show how it needn't entail compatibilism about determinism and moral responsibility