Paleo-compatibilism is the view that the freedom required for moral responsibility is not incompatible with determinism about the factors relevant to moral assessment, since the claim that we are free and the claim that the psychophysical elements are causally determined are true in distinct and incommensurable ways. This is to be accounted for by appealing to the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth developed by Buddhist Reductionists. Paleo-compatibilists hold that the illusion of incompatibilism only arises when we illegitimately (...) mix two distinct vocabularies, one concerned with persons, the other concerned with the parts to which persons are reducible. I explore the view, its roots in Buddhist Reductionism, and its prospects. (shrink)

The “problem of present luck” targets a standard libertarian thesis about free will. It has been argued that there is an analogous problem about luck for compatibilists. This article explores similarities and differences between the alleged problems.

The claim that common sense regards free will and moral responsibility as compatible with determinism has played a central role in both analytic and experimental philosophy. In this paper, we show that evidence in favor of this “natural compatibilism” is undermined by the role that indeterministic metaphysical views play in how people construe deterministic scenarios. To demonstrate this, we re-examine two classic studies that have been used to support natural compatibilism. We find that although people give apparently compatibilist (...) responses, this is largely explained by the fact that people import an indeterministic metaphysics into deterministic scenarios when making judgments about freedom and responsibility. We conclude that judgments based on these scenarios are not reliable evidence for natural compatibilism. (shrink)

Humean compatibilism is the combination of a Humean position on laws of nature and the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. This article's aim is to situate Humean compatibilism in the current debate among libertarians, traditional compatibilists, and semicompatibilists about free will. We argue that a Humean about laws can hold that there is a sense in which the laws of nature are 'up to us' and hence that the leading style of argument for incompatibilism?the consequence (...) argument?has a false premiss. We also display some striking similarities between Humean compatibilism and libertarianism, an incompatibilist view. For example, standard libertarians face a problem about luck, and we show that Humean compatibilists face a very similar problem. (shrink)

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 incompatibilist in the traditional free will problem. As such, it fails to dispel the worries that determinism generates for the incompatibilist. Secondly, in spite of the ingenious use of the supervenience thesis and multiple realizability, the position still allows us to generate the old worry that determinism at the physical level would mean no alternate possibilities at the level of agency. In particular, I develop a new example, the ‘atomic slit case’ that demonstrates how physical level information is salient to what is possible at the agential level, motivating incompatibilism. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers, Saul Smilansky has argued that compatibilists have no principled way of resisting the view that prepunishment is at least sometimes appropriate, thus revealing compatibilism to be a radical position, out of keeping with our ordinary moral judgments. Recent attempts to resist this conclusion seem to have overlooked the biggest problem with Smilansky’s argument, which is this: Smilanksy argues that the most obvious objection to prepunishment—namely, that it is inappropriate because it involves punishing the (...) innocent for crimes they have not committed—is unavailable to compatibilists. If compatibilism is true, he says, then if it is causally determined that someone is going to commit a crime, the fact that one has not yet done so is a mere temporal matter bearing no moral significance. I argue that there is no reason for compatibilists to accept this point. Compatibilists can (and should) resist Smilansky's claim that one’s not yet having committed a crime is morally insignificant and so resist the temptation to prepunish. (shrink)

A determinism of decisions and actions, despite our experience of deciding and acting and also an interpretation of Quantum Theory, is a reasonable assumption. The doctrines of Compatibilism and Incompatibilism are both false, and demonstrably so. Whole structures of culture and social life refute them, and establish the alternative of Attitudinism. The real problem of determinism has seemed to be that of accomodating ourselves to the frustration of certain attitudes, at bottom certain desires. This project of Affirmation can run (...) up against a conviction owed to reflecting on your own past life. The conviction is that an attitude akin to one tied to indeterminism, a way of holding yourself morally responsible, has some basis despite the truth of determinism. We need to look for radical ideas here, as radical as Consciousness as Existence with the problem of perceptual consciousness. Could that doctrine help with determinism and freedom? Could a problem about causation and explanation do so? (shrink)

(1996). Compatibilist semantics in metaphysics: A case study. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 117-134. doi: 10.1080/00048409612347101.

Free agency and moral responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism because causal determinism, properly understood, entails that originating conditions beyond the agent's control ultimately compel all human choices and actions. If causal determinism is true, then causal antecedents and laws of nature nomologically necessitate all deliberation, choice and action. If conditions beyond the agent's control ultimately compel the agent's behaviors, then the agent is not free and is not morally responsible. Compatibilists claim that externally compelled acts are not free, but (...) fail to recognize that causally determined acts are, ultimately, externally compelled. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett’s compatibilism based on redefining free will via broadening the concept of self to include unconscious processes seems to disappoint certain intuitions. As Sam Harris points out, it changes the subject from the free will we seem to intuitively care about – conscious free will. This compatibilism is untenable since conscious will seems to be an illusion. However, if we take Dennett’s idea of “atmosphere of free will” and view conscious will as an important concept or “user (...) illusion” which is one of the atmosphere’s building blocks, we can see how a new compatibilism could be reached. Although from the point of view of scientific thinking conscious will seems illusory, inspired by Wilfrid Sellars’s conception of manifest and scientific images we can start to understand free will as existing on its own conceptual level. The confusion stems from mixing the two frameworks. Kompatibilismus Daniela Dennetta, založený na redefinování svobodné vůle skrze rozšíření konceptu „já“ o nevědomé procesy, se zdá být v nesouladu s jistými intuicemi. Jak upozorňuje Sam Harris, vyhýbá se té svobodné vůli, o kterou nám zřejmě intuitivně jde – vědomé svobodné vůli. Tento kompatibilismus je neudržitelný, protože vědomá vůle se zdá být iluzí. Když ale přijmeme Dennettovu myšlenku „atmosféry svobodné vůle“ a nahlédneme vědomou vůli jako důležitý koncept nebo „uživatelskou iluzi“, která je součástí této atmosféry, můžeme najít cestu k novému kompatibilismu. Ačkoliv se z vědeckého pohledu zdá být vědomá vůle iluzí, inspirováni koncepcí zjevného a vědeckého obrazu Wilfrida Sellarse můžeme porozumět svobodné vůli jako existující na své vlastní konceptuální úrovni. Zmatení přichází právě s mícháním zmiňovaných dvou rámců. (shrink)

Compatibilism is the thesis that an act may be both free and determined by previous events and the laws of nature. I assume that in normal cases a condition of a person's performing an act freely is that the person is able to refrain from performing the act. Thus, I accept that if determinism entails that agents do not have this ability, we must give up compatibilism. In this paper I try to contribute to the rethinking of (...) class='Hi'>compatibilism by distinguishing between strong and weak accounts of laws and strong and weak accounts of ability. I argue that compatibilism is a tenable position when combined with either a weak account of laws, or a weak account of ability, or both. I shall concentrate on influential arguments for incompatibilism due to Peter van Inwagen, often called collectively the "consequence argument". (shrink)

In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions. In a recent paper, Feltz and Millan have challenged this conclusion by claiming that most laypeople are only compatibilists in appearance and are in fact willing to attribute free will to people no matter what. As evidence for this claim, they have shown that an important proportion of laypeople still attribute free will to agents in fatalistic universes. In this paper, we first argue that (...) Feltz and Millan’s error-theory rests on a conceptual confusion: it is perfectly acceptable for a certain brand of compatibilist to judge free will and fatalism to be compatible, as long as fatalism does not prevent agents from being the source of their actions. We then present the results of two studies showing that laypeople’s intuitions are best understood as following a certain brand of source compatibilism rather than a “free-will-no-matter-what” strategy. (shrink)

The compatibility question lies at the center of the free will problem. Compatibilists think that determinism is compatible with moral responsibility and the concomitant notions, while incompatibilists think that it is not. The topic of this paper is a particular form of charge against compatibilism: that it is shallow. This is not the typical sort of argument against compatibilism: most of the debate has attempted to discredit compatibilism completely. The Argument From Shallowness maintains that the compatibilists do (...) have a case. However, this case is only partial, and shallow. This limited aim proves itself more powerful against compatibilists than previous all-or-nothing attempts. It connects to the valid instincts of compatibilists, making room for them, and hence is harder for compatibilists to ignore. (shrink)

Lately, the attitude of philosophers generally toward the free will issue has taken what I regard as an inauspicious turn. Where the predominant opinion had been that determinism and freedom were at harmony with one another, today it is incompatibilism which seems to prevail, and new voices raised in defense of libertarianism now offer their promise that problems once thought prohibitive to an acceptance of contra-causal freedom might be surmounted. I shall attempt to show that this recent rejection of (...) class='Hi'>compatibilism in fact rests on a mistake, and I shall suggest the outline of a solution to the free will issue which reconciles determinism and freedom.We shall say that an event is nomologically necessary if and only if given a specified set of conditions and the actually existing laws of nature, the statement of that event could in principle be deduced as the conclusion of a valid deductive argument having the statement of initial conditions and the statement of the relevant law as premises. (shrink)

Terry Horgan University of Memphis In this paper I address the problem of causal exclusion, specifically as it arises for mental properties (although the scope of the discussion is more general, being applicable to other kinds of putatively causal properties that are not identical to narrowly physical causal properties, i.e., causal properties posited by physics). I summarize my own current position on the matter, and I offer a defense of this position. I draw upon and synthesize relevant discussions in various (...) <blockquote> [1] </blockquote> other papers of mine (some collaborative) that bear on this topic. (shrink)

Causal compatibilism claims that even though physics is causally closed, and even though mental properties are multiply realizable and are not identical to physical causal properties, mental properties are causal properties nonetheless. This position asserts that there is genuine causation at multiple descriptive/ontological levels; physics-level causal claims are not really incompatible with mentalistic causal claims. I articulate and defend a version of causal compatibilism that incorporates three key contentions. First, causation crucially involves robust patterns of counterfactual dependence among (...) properties.Second, often several distinct such patterns, all subsuming a single phenomenon, exist at different descriptive/ontological levels (e.g., microphysical, neurobiological, macrobiological, and psychological). Third, the concept of causation is governed by an implicit contextual parameter that normally determines a specific descriptive/ontological level as the contextually relevant level, for the context-sensitive semantic evaluation of causal statements. (shrink)

Philosophical compatibilism reconciles moral responsibility with determinism, and some neurolaw scholars think that it can also reconcile legal views about responsibility with scientific findings about the neurophysiological basis of human action. Although I too am a compatibilist, this paper argues that philosophical compatibilism cannot be transplanted “as-is” from philosophy into law. Rather, before compatibilism can be re-deployed, it must first be modified to take account of differences between legal and moral responsibility, and between a scientific and a (...) deterministic world view, and to address a range of conceptual, normative, empirical and doctrinal problems that orbit its capacitarian core. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of traditional compatibilism. Traditional compatibilism is, roughly, the view that free will is essential to moral responsibility, free will requires alternative possibilities of action, or alternatives for short, and moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Traditional compatibilism is a version of the traditional theory of free will. According to the traditional theory, a person S performed an action a freely only if S could have done otherwise, that is, only if S had (...) alternatives. The traditional theory is often contrasted with the source theory: S performed a freely only if S was the source of a. One may adopt a combined view of free will that sanctions both the traditional and source theories. As I use the terms ‘source theorist’ and ‘traditional theorist,’ the former refers to folks who accept the source theory and reject the traditional theory; the latter refers to folks who accept the traditional theory whether or not they accept the source theory. (shrink)

I examine the extent to which Dennett’s account in Freedom Evolves might be construed as revisionist about free will or should instead be understood as a more traditional kind of compatibilism. I also consider Dennett’s views about philosophical work on free agency and its relationship to scientific inquiry, and I argue that extant philosophical work is more relevant to scientific inquiry than Dennett’s remarks may suggest.

In this thesis, I will defend a new kind of compatibilist account of free action, indirect conscious control compatibilism (or indirect compatibilism for short), and argue that some of our actions are free according to it. My argument has three components, and involves the development of a brand new tool for experimental philosophy, and the use of cognitive neuroscience. The first component of the argument shows that compatibilism (of some kind) is a conceptual truth. Contrary to the (...) current orthodoxy in the free will literature, which is that our concept of free will is an incompatibilist concept - a concept according to which we have free will only if determinism is false - I will show that our concept of free will is in fact a compatibilist concept - a concept according to which we can have free will even if determinism is true - and I do so using a new experimental philosophy methodology inspired by two-dimensional semantics. -/- Of course, even if our concept of free will is a compatibilist concept, this does not mean that there are any free actions in the world: the current empirical evidence from the brain sciences appears to show that there might be no, or very few, free actions in the world, even on many compatibilist understandings of what it would take for there to be free will. The second component of the argument addresses this concern by extending our understanding of compatibilism. Agents act freely either when their actions are caused by compatibilistically acceptable psychological processes, or are indirectly caused by those same processes. Hence the name of my account: indirect compatibilism. -/- The final component of the argument defends my new account against some interesting objections and provides evidence from cognitive neuroscience that some of our actions count as free by the lights of indirect compatibilism. (shrink)

Compatibilism is the view that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Natural compatibilism is the view that in ordinary social cognition, people are compatibilists. Researchers have recently debated whether natural compatibilism is true. This paper presents six experiments (N = 909) that advance this debate. The results provide the best evidence to date for natural compatibilism, avoiding the main methodological problems faced by previous work supporting the view. In response to simple scenarios about familiar activities, people (...) judged that agents had moral responsibilities to perform actions that they were unable to perform (Experiment 1), were morally responsible for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 2), were to blame for unavoidable outcomes (Experiments 3-4), deserved blame for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 5), and should suffer consequences for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 6). These findings advance our understanding of moral psychology and philosophical debates that depend partly on patterns in commonsense morality. (shrink)

Matthias Steup (Steup 2008) has recently argued that our doxastic attitudes are free by (i) drawing an analogy with compatibilism about freedom of action and (ii) denying that it is a necessary condition for believing at will that S's having an intention to believe that p can cause S to believe that p . In this paper, however, I argue that the strategies espoused in (i) and (ii) are incompatible.

In the free will literature, some compatibilists and some incompatibilists claim that their views best capture ordinary intuitions concerning free will and moral responsibility. One goal of researchers working in the field of experimental philosophy has been to probe ordinary intuitions in a controlled and systematic way to help resolve these kinds of intuitional stalemates. We contribute to this debate by presenting new data about folk intuitions concerning freedom and responsibility that correct for some of the shortcomings of previous studies. (...) These studies also illustrate some problems that pertain to all of the studies that have been run thus far. (shrink)

The past ten years have seen multiple attempts to estimate the relation between the global personality trait extraversion and compatibilist free will judgments. Here, we contribute to that line of research by conducting a meta-analysis of 17 published and eight unpublished studies (N = 2,811) estimating that relation. Overall, the mean effect size was modest but remarkably robust across materials, locations, and labs (z =.19, 95% CI.15-.24, p <.001). No significant publication bias was detected in the studies (t (23) = (...) 1.88, p =.07). While there was no significant heterogeneity in the studies (Q (24) = 34.42, p =.08, I2 = 26.05), a moderator analysis suggested that the effect is strongest in cases that contain highly affective actions (e.g., murder) (z =.22, 95% CI.17-.28, p <.001) and weakest in cases that contain actions with low affect (e.g., asking whether free will is compatible with determinism) (z =.09, 95% CI -.05-.23, p =.22). The meta-analysis provides additional evidence that extraversion is related to compatibilist free will judgments and helps to identify opportunities to discover boundary conditions and more proximal causal mechanisms for the relation. The results of the meta-analysis also have implications for informed decision making. (shrink)

Most compatibilists have sought to defend their view by means of an analysis of the concept of ‘can’ in terms of subjunctive conditionals. Keith Lehrer opposes this analysis; he nevertheless embraces compatibilism. In a recent paper he has proposed a novel analysis of the concept of ‘can’ within the framework of possible-world semantics. The paper has provoked considerable discussion. In it Lehrer claims that he demonstrates the truth of compatibilism. Others have claimed that this is not so, but (...) at least one commentator has asserted that Lehrer's analysis strongly supports compatibilism. In this section I shall give a brief exposition of relevant portions of Lehrer's account of ‘can’ and then in the next section I shall seek to show that it fails to render compatibilism any more plausible than incompatibilism. Indeed, I shall seek to show that, if one of Lehrer's primitive concepts is understood as it seems it should be understood, then there would seem to be good reason to believe that his analysis supports not compatibilism but incompatibilism. (shrink)

A common compatibilist view says that we are free and morally responsible in virtue of the ability to respond aptly to reasons. Many hold a version of this view despite disagreement about whether free will requires the ability to do otherwise. The canonical version of this view is reductive. It reduces the pertinent ability to a set of modal properties that are more obviously compatible with determinism, like dispositions. I argue that this and any reductive view of abilities faces a (...) significant challenge: it cannot adequately explain the freedom-grounding element of this ability. The problem has the form of a dilemma. This leaves reasons-responsive compatibilists with two options: abandon theories of free will grounded in abilities or abandon reductive theories of abilities. (shrink)

행위자 원인론을 통해 자유의지 문제를 해명하려고 하는 대부분의 철학자들은 자유와 결정론이 양립할 수 없다고 생각하는 양립불가론들이다. 그러나 마코시언은 우리가 가장 전망 있다고 생각해야 하는 행위자 원인론은 양립가능론의 형태라고 주장한다. 이 글의 목적은 그가 제시하는 ‘양립가능론적 행위자 원인론’에 대해 비판적으로 고찰하는 것이다. 이를 위해 나는 먼저 행위자 원인이 존재한다고 가정하면서 그것이 결정론과 조화를 이룰 수 있는 다섯 가지 방식에 대해 검토한다. 그런 다음, 나는 마코시언의 양립가능론적 행위자 원인론이 결정론과 행위자 원인을 어떤 방식으로 조화시키고 있는지, 그리고 그것이 자유의지 문제를 해결하는 데 도움이 (...) 될 수 있는지 비판적으로 고찰한다. 이러한 고찰에 근거하여, 나는 마코시언이 제시한 양립가능론적 행위자 원인론은 자유의지 문제를 해결하는 데 도움을 주지 않는다고 결론짓는다. (shrink)

This chapter develops compatibilist replies to the most popular styles of argument for incompatibilism, and concludes that these arguments leave compatibilism in the running. Differences among various kinds of compatibilism, including semicompatibilism, are examined.

Compatibilists disagree over whether there are historical conditions on moral responsibility. Historicists claim there are, whilst structuralists deny this. Historicists motivate their position by claiming to avoid the counter-intuitive implications of structuralism. I do two things in this paper. First, I argue that historicism has just as counter-intuitive implications as structuralism when faced with thought experiments inspired by those found in the personal identity literature. Hence, historicism is not automatically preferable to structuralism. Second, I argue that structuralism is much more (...) plausible once we accept that personal identity is irrelevant to moral responsibility. This paves the way for a new structuralist account that makes clear what it takes to be the diachronic ownership condition (which is normally taken to be personal identity) and the locus of moral responsibility (which is normally taken to be ‘whole’ person), and helps to alleviate the intuitive unease many have with respect to structuralism. (shrink)

In this paper I will introduce a new compatibilist account of free action: indirect conscious control compatibilism, or just indirect compatibilism for short. On this account, actions are free either when they are caused by compatibilist‐friendly conscious psychological processes, or else by sub‐personal level processes influenced in particular ways by compatibilist‐friendly conscious psychological processes. This view is motivated by a problem faced by a certain family of compatibilist views, which I call conscious control views. These views hold that (...) we act freely when we act in a way that is caused by certain conscious psychological processes. One problem for such views is that current neuroscience suggests that most of our actions are not caused by such processes. Instead, many of the actions we typically suppose are free are caused by sub‐personal level processes and hence would count as not free according to contemporary conscious control views. I argue, contra these views, that many actions caused by these sub‐personal level processes are indirectly free. Further, most of the actions we ordinarily judge to be free are free in this indirect manner. (shrink)

Traditional compatibilism about free will is widely considered to be untenable. In particular, the conditional analysis of the ability to do otherwise appears to be subject to clear counterexamples. I will propose a new version of traditional compatibilism that provides a conditional account of both the ability to do otherwise and the ability to choose to do otherwise, and I will argue that this view withstands the standard objections to traditional compatibilism. For this, I will assume with (...) incompatibilists that the mere possession of a general ability to do otherwise is not sufficient for having the ability that is required for free will. This concession distinguishes the view from the traditional conditional analysis and from recent dispositional accounts of the ability to do otherwise, and we will see that this concession enables a straightforward response to the counterexamples. This, in turn, will play a crucial role in my response to the strongest version of the consequence argument for incompatibilism. (shrink)

Compatibilists argue, famously, that it is a simple incompatibilist confusion to suppose that determinism implies fatalism. Incompatibilists argue, on the contrary, that determinism implies fatalism, and thus cannot be consistent with the necessary conditions of moral responsibility. Despite their differences, however, both parties are agreed on one important matter: the refutation of fatalism is essential to the success of the compatibilist strategy. In this paper I argue that compatibilism requires a richer conception of fatalistic concern; one that recognizes the (...) _legitimacy_ of (pessimistic) concerns about the origination of character and conduct. On this basis I argue that any plausible compatibilist position must concede that determinism has fatalistic implications of some significant and relevant kind, and thus must allow that agents may be legitimately held responsible in circumstances where they are subject to fate. The position generated by these compatibilist concessions to incompatibilism will be called 'compatibilist-fatalism'. (shrink)

One debate in the experimental exploration of everyday judgments about free will is whether most people are compatibilists or incompatibilists. Some recent research suggests that many people who have incompatibilist intuitions are making a mistake; as such, they do not have genuine incompatibilist intuitions. Another worry is whether most people appropriately understand determinism or confuse it with similar, but different, notions such as fatalism. In five studies we demonstrate people distinguish determinism from fatalism. While people overall make this distinction, a (...) large percentage of people still judge that a person who is fated to perform an action is both free and morally responsible for that action. Those who thought that one freely performs and is morally responsible for a fated action had much stronger compatibilist judgments. These data suggest that a substantial percentage of people have “free will no matter what” intuitions. As a result, even though many people may appear to be compatibilist.. (shrink)

Two issues are raised with regard to Ted Honderich's A Theory of Determinism. First, regarding the relation between a token identity theory of mental and physical events and Honderich's ?psychoneural union theory?, it is suggested that a token identity theory would serve Honderich's purposes while securing a simpler ontology. Second, it is argued that there is a substantive philosophical issue dividing compatibilists and incompatibilists on the question of whether persons possess free will, contrary to Honderich's contention that the compatibilist and (...) incompatibilist differ only in responsive attitude. (shrink)

The empiricist-compatibilist strategy falls, essentially, into two distinct stages of argument. Historically speaking, the first stage was initiated by Hobbes and the second stage was initiated by Hume. The first stage, which I shall refer to as the "compulsion argument" seeks to describe the general significance of the distinction between causation and compulsion for the "free will" dispute. The second stage of the empiricist-compatibilist strategy, which I shall refer to as the "regularity argument," endeavours to reconstruct the compulsion argument on (...) the foundation of the regularity theory of causation. My primary concern in this paper will be to examine the relation between these two stages of the empiricist-compatibilist strategy. Proponents of this strategy claim that the regularity argument strengthens the compatibilist position. I will argue, on the contrary, that the regularity argument generates serious difficulties for the compulsion argument and that it therefore weakens the compatibilist position. In this way I will be concerned to show that the traditional empiricist-compatibilist strategy suffers from significant internaltensions and that these tensions indicate that the regularity theory of causation does not serve as a particularly secure or congenial metaphysical foundation upon which to rest the compatibilist position as it is generally understood. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga defends Theological Compatibilism (TC) and Essential- ism about property possession (E). TC is the claim that human freedom to act otherwise and God’s essential omniscience are compatible, while E is the claim that every individual entity whatsoever has a modal profile consisting in having both essential and accidental properties. I purport to show that, if E is assumed in the argument for TC, then the latter leads to a very puzzling upshot. I also intend to show that, (...) even if TC is suitably fixed in order to avoid that upshot, TC is still unconvincing in that it merges into one the de re and the de dicto rendering of ‘human freedom to act otherwise’; I end up by briefly sketching why the two renderings should instead be kept well apart. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The contemporary epistemological debate regarding the epistemic role of memory is dominated by the dispute between two different views: memory preservationism and memory generativism. While the former holds that memory only preserves the epistemic status already acquired through another source, the latter advocates that there are situations where memory can function as a generative epistemic source. Both views are problematic and have to deal with important objections. In this paper, I suggest a novel argument for granting memory the status (...) of a generative source of justification and knowledge that overcomes objections raised for both preservationism and generativism. I shall call this view Memory Compatibilism. I argue that the proposed view better explains the generative epistemic character of memory.RESUMO O debate epistemológico contemporâneo acerca do papel epistêmico da memória tem sido dominado pela disputa entre duas visões diferentes: o preservacionismo da memória e o gerativismo da memória. Enquanto o primeiro sustenta que a memória apenas preserva o status epistêmico já adquirido via outra fonte, o último defende que existem situações em que a memória pode funcionar como uma fonte epistêmica geradora. Ambas as visões são problemáticas e têm de lidar com objeções importantes. Neste artigo, sugiro um novo argumento para conceder à memória o status de fonte geradora de justificação e conhecimento que supera as objeções levantadas contra o preservacionismo e o geracionismo. Chamarei esta visão de compatibilismo da memória. Argumento que a visão proposta melhor explica o caráter epistêmico gerativo da memória. (shrink)

This article distinguishes among and examines three different kinds of argument for the thesis that moral responsibility and free action are each incompatible with the truth of determinism: straight manipulation arguments; manipulation arguments to the best explanation; and original-design arguments. Structural and methodological matters are the primary focus.

The problem of freedom and determinism has vexed philosophers for several millennia, and continues to be a topic of lively debate today. One of the proposed solutions to the problem that has received a great deal of attention is the Theory of Agent Causation. While the theory has enjoyed its share of advocates, and perhaps more than its share of critics, the theory’s advocates and critics have always agreed on one thing: the Theory of Agent Causation is an incompatibilist theory. (...) That is, both believers and nonbelievers in the theory have taken it for granted that the most plausible version of the Theory of Agent Causation is one according to which freedom and determinism are incompatible. In fact, so entrenched is this assumption that no one on either side of the debate has ever questioned it. Yet it turns out that this assumption is wrong – the most plausible version of the Theory of Agent Causation is a compatibilist one. (shrink)

The advent of Frankfurt-style counterexamples in the early 1970s posed a problem not merely for incompatibilists, but for compatibilists also. At that time compatibilists too were concerned to hold that the presence of alternative possibilities was necessary for moral responsibility. Such a classical compatibilism, I argue in this paper, should not have been left behind. I propose that we can use a Kratzer-style semantics of ‘can’ to model ‘could have done otherwise’ statements in such a way that the truth (...) of such expressions is both (i) evidently consistent with determinism, and (ii) clearly such that Frankfurt-style counterexamples do not count as cases where the agent could not have done otherwise. (shrink)

Although free will compatibilists are typically focused on arguing that determinism is compatible with free will, most compatibilists also think that indeterminism is compatible with free will too—and I am one of those compatibilists. In this chapter, I will look at this issue from the perspective of a compatibilist view I have defended elsewhere : a view that takes our freedom to be a function of the actual causal histories of our behavior. In the first part of the chapter I (...) argue that, assuming this view, it follows that indeterminism is in fact compatible with free will. Still, the assumption of indeterminism gives rise to some novel and interesting questions concerning the nature of indeterministic causation. The second part of the chapter is concerned with motivating and discussing those questions. (shrink)