Abstract

The argument that free will and indeterminism are incompatible is known as the Luck Argument. This argument has been put forward against the libertarians who deny determinism to prove free will. The basic idea of the argument is that in an undetermined world, free will cannot be imagined. There are various formulations for this argument. They all seek to explain why, if the choice is undetermined, it is by chance; but the focus of this article is on the explanatory formulation. The basic idea of this formulation is that in undetermined situations, there is no contrastive explanation and in this case, there is no free will. This argument is formulated as follows: If a choice is undetermined, it means that it is possible to make a different choice by assuming the past before the choice is completely identical. If it is possible to make different choices with the same past, it is not possible to provide a contrastive explanation for the choice. If there is no contrastive explanation for choice, then that choice is by chance. If a choice happens by chance, it’s not free. Therefore, if a choice is undetermined, it is not free. Libertarian responses to this argument can be divided into three main categories. The first group confesses that the argument is question-begging. The main contention is that since only in determined situations is it possible to have contrastive explanations, it is impossible to seek them for undetermined situations. However, this is not the case in this particular case, and the claim is another form of the combination of the first and second premises. The second group of responses to the Luck Argument focusing on the third premise of the argument argues that although there is no contrastive explanation for undetermined choices, another type of explanation which is non-contrastive is possible. In this case, the choice is no longer by chance and it is free. But it seems that non-contrastive explanations are not sufficient for explaining undetermined choices. The third answer claims that it is not that we do not have contrastive explanations for all undetermined situations, and that there is a contrastive explanation at least for some undetermined choices. In fact, this group argues that the combination of the first and second premise of the Luck Argument – that if a choice is undetermined, there is no contradictory explanation - is wrong. Among the different perspectives of this category, is the focus on describing and evaluating Clark’s response. He proposes different scenarios to answer this argument. Their evaluation shows that in the first and second scenarios, there was a different definition of indeterminism and although at first glance, they were considered a response to the Luck Argument, the evil consequence of this presupposition and its incompatibility with free choices has been explained. Clark’s third scenario is consistent with the definition of indeterminism that the Luck Argument had in the first premise, but Clark himself also acknowledges that we have no contrastive explanations for such situations. Taken together, with all of these scenarios, Clark’s attempt to illustrate the contrast between undetermined choices seems to have failed. In conclusion, Evaluation of the three responses presented in the explanatory formulation of the Luck Argument shows that they have failed to solve the problem and explaining free will in undetermined situations continues to be challenging.