![]() ![]() Libertarianism is generally explained in introductory volumes as a multiply conjunctive doctrine – and I propose to consider some possible forms of objection to its naturalistic credentials in an order suggested by this conjunctive form. In this paper, therefore, I want to try to defend libertarianism against the charge that it flies in the face of what we know or are justified in believing about the order of nature – and indeed, try to make out the beginnings of a case for the view that libertarianism should, on the contrary, be regarded as the position of choice for those who take their science seriously. But I am both a libertarian and an atheist. ![]() To accept this, without taking oneself to have other grounds for embracing the idea that the powers of human beings need not be rooted in ordinary sorts of physics and metaphysics, seems to them wildly unmotivated it is therefore inferred that probably, their libertarian opponents do believe themselves to have such other grounds. Though the world might conceivably be indeterministic, these compatibilists believe, there is no scientifically acceptable ground for supposing that the indeterminism involved might be of such a kind as to provide for anything like freedom of the will – and they are therefore wary and mistrustful of the libertarian's willingness to accept that the will itself might be the locus (at least on some occasions) of an indeterministic form of operation. This readiness, they imagine, is borne of an assumption that many of those compatibilists eschew – the assumption that the universe is theistic and that an omniscient and benevolent god has provided for human beings to be specially positioned within it. There is a rather thinly-veiled suspicion amongst some compatibilists that libertarians are able to embrace their claims about the nature of the human will only in virtue of a general readiness to suppose that human beings occupy a very special place within the order of nature. I then turn to shown how these commitments are not very demanding: either they are perfectly consistent with contemporary science, or they regard areas that are beyond scientific reach, in principle or in practice, and conflict only with metaphysical assumptions about which there is little to no consensus. After arguing for agent-causal libertarianism's philosophical merits, I present its main assumptions and the empirical commitments they entail: neuronal indeterminism, downward causation and a non-aggregational self. However, this view is often accused of being implausible as it seems to contradict our current best science. The best alternative is agent-causal libertarianism, according to which it is the agent as an irreducible substance that brings about her undetermined decisions and actions. The disappearing agent objection put forward by Derk Pereboom shows how such a view comes short of endowing the agent with sufficient control over her action. I also try to rebut the worry that Agency Incompatibilism is committed to the existence of an unintelligible and/or naturalistically impossible variety of irreducible agent causation.Īccording to event-causal libertarian accounts of free will, human actions are indeterministically caused by some of the agent's mental states and events, or their neural correlates. The paper moves on to consider and respond to various objections to Agency Incompatibilism, including the claim that to embrace the conception of agency that makes incompatibilism plausible is to beg the question against the compatibilist, and also the worry that determinism is an empirical thesis which ought not to be straightforwardly falsifiable by such a priori reasoning as Agency Incompatibilism appears to involve. These are (1) the question how animals should figure in the philosophy of action (2) the question what the lesson is of ‘Frankfurt-style’ examples and (3) the distinction between so-called ‘leeway’ incompatibilism and ‘source’ incompatibilism. The relations between my own views and those of others writing on the issues of free will and moral responsibility, in three crucial and inter-connected areas are then explored. The paper accordingly proceeds by setting out the orthodox philosophical position concerning what it takes for agency to exist, before going on to explain why and how that orthodoxy should be challenged. The most important part of this task is the characterisation of the conception of agency on which the position depends for unless this is understood, the rationale for the position is likely to be missed. The paper attempts to explicate and justify the position I call ‘Agency Incompatibilism’ – that is to say, the view that agency itself is incompatible with determinism. ![]()
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