Free Will and Naturalism: How to be a Libertarian and a Naturalist Too
Abstract
As pop naturalists tell it, free will is incompatible with naturalism. And apparently many scientists
agree. Philosopher Daniel Dennett reports, for example, that he has “learned from discussions
with a variety of scientists…[that] free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with
naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they
cheerfully insist that of course they don’t have free will” (2013, 47). Many philosophers, however,
disagree (e.g., Mele 2014; Nahmias 2014; Vargas 2014), since compatibilist forms of free
will seem amendable to purely naturalist underwriting. There is nevertheless, among philosophers,
a near consensus on this: naturalism is certainly incompatible with libertarian free will.
We aim to show in this paper that free will is not incompatible with naturalism. Even the
purportedly “spooky” – or “colossally whackadoodle”2 – libertarian form of free will known
as agent causation can be situated within a naturalistic metaphysical framework. Neither of
us, though, is a naturalist,3 and you know what they say about enemies bearing gifts. Still,
our goal in this chapter is to offer a framework for an agent‐causal account of free will that
naturalists should be able to accept.