## 1. Major Historical Contributions


### 1.1 Ancient and Medieval Period



One finds scholarly debate on the 'origin' of the notion
of free will in Western philosophy. (See, e.g., Dihle (1982) and, in
response Frede (2011), with Dihle finding it in St. Augustine
(354-430 CE) and Frede in the Stoic Epictetus (c. 55-c.
135 CE).) But this debate presupposes a fairly particular and highly
conceptualized concept of free will, with Dihle's later
'origin' reflecting his having a yet more particular
concept in view than Frede. If, instead, we look more generally for
philosophical reflection on choice-directed control over one's
own actions, then we find significant discussion in Plato and
Aristotle (cf. Irwin 1992). Indeed, on this matter, as with so many
other major philosophical issues, Plato and Aristotle give importantly
different emphases that inform much subsequent thought.



In Book IV of *The Republic*, Plato posits rational, spirited,
and appetitive aspects to the human soul. The wise person strives for
inner 'justice', a condition in which each part of the
soul plays its proper role--reason as the guide, the spirited
nature as the ally of reason, exhorting oneself to do what reason
deems proper, and the passions as subjugated to the determinations of
reason. In the absence of justice, the individual is enslaved to the
passions. Hence, freedom for Plato is a kind of self-mastery, attained
by developing the virtues of wisdom, courage, and temperance,
resulting in one's liberation from the tyranny of base desires
and acquisition of a more accurate understanding and resolute pursuit
of the Good (Hecht 2014).



While Aristotle shares with Plato a concern for cultivating virtues,
he gives greater theoretical attention to the role of choice in
initiating individual actions which, over time, result in habits, for
good or ill. In Book III of the *Nicomachean Ethics*, Aristotle
says that, unlike nonrational agents, we have the power to do or not
to do, and much of what we do is voluntary, such that its origin is
'in us' and we are 'aware of the particular
circumstances of the action'. Furthermore, mature humans make
choices after deliberating about different available means to our
ends, drawing on rational principles of action. Choose consistently
well (poorly), and a virtuous (vicious) character will form over time,
and it is in our power to be either virtuous or vicious.



A question that Aristotle seems to recognize, while not satisfactorily
answering, is whether the choice an individual makes on any given
occasion is wholly determined by his internal state--perception
of his circumstances and his relevant beliefs, desires, and general
character dispositions (wherever on the continuum between virtue and
vice he may be)--and external circumstances. He says that
"the man is the father of his actions as of
children"--that is, a person's character shapes how
she acts. One might worry that this seems to entail that the person
could not have done otherwise--at the moment of choice, she has
no control over what her present character is--and so she is not
responsible for choosing as she does. Aristotle responds by contending
that her present character is partly a result of *previous*
choices she made. While this claim is plausible enough, it seems to
'pass the buck', since 'the man is the father'
of those earlier choices and actions, too.



We note just a few contributions of the subsequent centuries of the
Hellenistic era. (See Bobzien 1998.) This period was dominated by
debates between Epicureans, Stoics, and the Academic Skeptics, and as
it concerned freedom of the will, the debate centered on the place of
determinism or of fate in governing human actions and lives. The
Stoics and the Epicureans believed that all ordinary things, human
souls included, are corporeal and governed by natural laws or
principles. Stoics believed that all human choice and behavior was
causally determined, but held that this was compatible with our
actions being 'up to us'. Chrysippus ably defended this
position by contending that your actions are 'up to you'
when they come about 'through you'--when the
determining factors of your action are not external circumstances
compelling you to act as you do but are instead your own choices
grounded in your perception of the options before you. Hence, for
moral responsibility, the issue is not whether one's choices are
determined (they are) but in what manner they are determined. Epicurus
and his followers had a more mechanistic conception of bodily action
than the Stoics. They held that all things (human soul included) are
constituted by atoms, whose law-governed behavior fixes the behavior
of everything made of such atoms. But they rejected determinism by
supposing that atoms, though law-governed, are susceptible to slight
'swerves' or departures from the usual paths. Epicurus has
often been understood as seeking to ground the freedom of human
willings in such indeterministic swerves, but this is a matter of
controversy. If this understanding of his aim is correct, how he
thought that this scheme might work in detail is not known. (What
little we know about his views in this matter stem chiefly from the
account given in his follower Lucretius's six-book poem, *On
the Nature of Things*. See Bobzien 2000 for discussion.)



A final notable figure of this period was
 Alexander of Aphrodisias,
 the most important Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle. In his
*On Fate*, Alexander sharply criticizes the positions of the
Stoics. He goes on to resolve the ambiguity in Aristotle on the
question of the determining nature of character on individual choices
by maintaining that, given all such shaping factors, it remains open
to the person when she acts freely to do or not to do what she in fact
does. Many scholars see Alexander as the first unambiguously
'libertarian' theorist of the will (for more information
about such theories see section 2 below).



Augustine (354-430) is the central bridge between the ancient
and medieval eras of philosophy. His mature thinking about the will
was influenced by his early encounter with late classical Neoplatonist
thought, which is then transformed by the theological views he
embraces in his adult Christian conversion, famously recounted in his
*Confessions*. In that work and in the earlier *On the Free
Choice of the Will*, Augustine struggles to draw together into a
coherent whole the doctrines that creaturely misuse of freedom, not
God, is the source of evil in the world and that the human will has
been corrupted through the 'fall' from grace of the
earliest human beings, necessitating a salvation that is attained
*entirely* through the actions of God, even as it requires,
constitutively, an individual's willed response of faith. The
details of Augustine's positive account remain a matter of
controversy. He clearly affirms that the will is by its nature a
self-determining power--no powers external to it determine its
choice--and that this feature is the basis of its freedom. But he
does not explicitly rule out the will's being internally
determined by psychological factors, as Chrysippus held, and Augustine
had theological reasons that might favor (as well as others that would
oppose) the thesis that all things are determined in some manner by
God. Scholars divide on whether Augustine was a libertarian or instead
a kind of compatibilist with respect to metaphysical freedom.
(Macdonald 1999 and Stump 2006 argue the former, Baker 2003 and
Couenhoven 2007 the latter.) It is clear, however, that Augustine
thought that we are powerfully shaped by wrongly-ordered desires that
can make it impossible for us to *wholeheartedly* will ends
contrary to those desires, for a sustained period of time. This
condition entails an absence of something more valuable, 'true
freedom', in which our wills are aligned with the Good, a
freedom that can be attained only by a transformative operation of
divine grace. This latter, psychological conception of freedom of will
clearly echoes Plato's notion of the soul's (possible)
inner justice.



Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) attempted to synthesize major strands
of Aristotle's systematic philosophy with Christian theology,
and so Aquinas begins his complex discussion of human action and
choice by agreeing with Aristotle that creatures such as ourselves who
are endowed with both intellect and will are hardwired to will certain
general ends ordered to the most general goal of goodness. Will is
*rational* desire: we cannot move towards that which does not
appear to us at the time to be good. Freedom enters the picture when
we consider various means to these ends and move ourselves to activity
in pursuit of certain of them. Our will is free in that it is not
fixed by nature on any particular means, and they generally do not
appear to us either as unqualifiedly good or as uniquely satisfying
the end we wish to fulfill. Furthermore, what appears to us to be good
can vary widely--even, over time, intra-personally. So much is
consistent with saying that in a given total circumstance (including
one's present beliefs and desires), one is necessitated to will
as one does. For this reason, some commentators have taken Aquinas to
be a kind of compatibilist concerning freedom and causal or
theological determinism. In his most extended defense of the thesis
that the will is not 'compelled' (*DM* 6), Aquinas
notes three ways that the will might reject an option it sees as
attractive: (i) it finds another option more attractive, (ii) it comes
to think of some circumstance rendering an alternative more favorable
"by some chance circumstance, external or internal", and
(iii) the person is momentarily disposed to find an alternative
attractive by virtue of a non-innate state that is subject to the will
(e.g., being angry vs being at peace). The first consideration is
clearly consistent with compatibilism. The second at best points to a
kind of contingency that is not grounded in the activity of the will
itself. And one wanting to read Aquinas as a libertarian might worry
that his third consideration just passes the buck: even if we do
sometimes have an ability to directly modify perception-coloring
states such as moods, Aquinas's account of will as rational
desire seems to indicate that we *will* do so only if it seems
to us on balance to be good to do so. Those who read Aquinas as a
libertarian point to the following further remark in this text:
"Will itself can interfere with the process [of some
cause's moving the will] either by refusing to consider what
attracts it to will or by considering its opposite: namely, that there
is a bad side to what is being proposed..." (Reply to 15;
see also DV 24.2). For discussion, see MacDonald (1998), Stump (2003,
ch. 9) and especially Hoffman & Michon (2017), which offers the
most comprehensive analysis of relevant texts to date.



John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) was the stoutest defender in the
medieval era of a strongly libertarian conception of the will,
maintaining on introspective grounds that will by its very nature is
such that "nothing other than the will is the total cause"
of its activity (*QAM*). Indeed, he held the unusual view that
not only up to but *at* the very instant that one is willing
*X*, it is possible for one to will *Y* or at least not to will
*X*. (He articulates this view through the puzzling claim that a
single instant of time comprises two 'instants of nature',
at the first but not the second of which alternative possibilities are
preserved.) In opposition to Aquinas and other medieval Aristotelians,
Scotus maintained that a precondition of our freedom is that there are
two fundamentally distinct ways things can seem good to us: as
practically advantageous to us or as according with justice. Contrary
to some popular accounts, however, Scotus allowed that the scope of
available alternatives for a person will be more or less constricted.
He grants that we are not capable of willing something in which we see
no good whatsoever, nor of positively repudiating something which
appears to us as unqualifiedly good. However, in accordance with his
uncompromising position that nothing can be the total cause of the
will other than itself, he held that where something does appear to us
as unqualifiedly good (perfectly suited both to our advantage and
justice)--viz., in the 'beatific vision' of God in
the afterlife--we still can *refrain from willing* it. For
discussion, see
 John Duns Scotus, SS5.2.


### 1.2 Modern Period and Twentieth Century



The problem of free will was an important topic in the modern period,
with all the major figures wading into it (Descartes 1641 [1988], 1644
[1988]; Hobbes 1654 [1999], 1656 [1999]; Spinoza 1677 [1992];
Malebranche 1684 [1993]; Leibniz 1686 [1991]; Locke 1690 [1975]; Hume
1740 [1978], 1748 [1975]; Edwards 1754 [1957]; Kant 1781 [1998], 1785
[1998], 1788 [2015]; Reid 1788 [1969]). After less sustained attention
in the 19th Century (most notable were Schopenhauer 1841 [1999] and
Nietzsche 1886 [1966]), it was widely discussed again among early
twentieth century philosophers (Moore 1912; Hobart 1934; Schlick 1939;
Nowell-Smith 1948, 1954; Campbell 1951; Ayer 1954; Smart 1961). The
centrality of the problem of free will to the various projects of
early modern philosophers can be traced to two widely, though not
universally, shared assumptions. The first is that without belief in
free will, there would be little reason for us to act morally. More
carefully, it was widely assumed that belief in an afterlife in which
a just God rewards and punishes us according to our right or wrong use
of free will was key to motivating us to be moral (Russell 2008, chs.
16-17). Life before death affords us many examples in which vice
is better rewarded than virtue and so without knowledge of a final
judgment in the afterlife, we would have little reason to pursue
virtue and justice when they depart from self-interest. And without
free will there can be no final judgement.



The second widely shared assumption is that free will seems difficult
to reconcile with what we know about the world. While this assumption
is shared by the majority of early modern philosophers, what
specifically it is about the world that seems to conflict with freedom
differs from philosopher to philosopher. For some, the worry is
primarily theological. How can we make sense of contingency and
freedom in a world determined by a God who must choose the best
possible world to create? For some, the worry was primarily
metaphysical. The principle of sufficient reason--roughly, the
idea that every event must have a reason or cause--was a
cornerstone of Leibniz's and Spinoza's metaphysics. How
does contingency and freedom fit into such a world? For some, the
worry was primarily scientific (Descartes). Given that a proper
understanding of the physical world is one in which all physical
objects are governed by deterministic laws of nature, how does
contingency and freedom fit into such a world? Of course, for some,
all three worries were in play in their work (this is true especially
of Leibniz).



Despite many disagreements about how best to solve these worries,
there were three claims that were widely, although not universally,
agreed upon. The first was that free will has two aspects: the freedom
to do otherwise and the power of self-determination. The second is
that an adequate account of free will must entail that free agents are
morally responsible agents and/or fit subjects for punishment. Ideas
about moral responsibility were often a yard stick by which analyses
of free will were measured, with critics objecting to an analysis of
free will by arguing that agents who satisfied the analysis would not,
intuitively, be morally responsible for their actions. The third is
that compatibilism--the thesis that free will is compatible with
determinism--is true. (Spinoza, Reid, and Kant are the clear
exceptions to this, though some also see Descartes as an
incompatibilist [Ragland 2006].)



Since a detailed discussion of these philosophers' accounts of
free will would take us too far afield, we want instead to focus on
isolating a two-step strategy for defending compatibilism that emerges
in the early modern period and continued to exert considerable force
into the early twentieth century (and perhaps is still at work today).
Advocates of this two-step strategy have come to be known as
"classical compatibilists". The first step was to argue
that the contrary of freedom is not determinism but external
constraint on doing what one wants to do. For example, Hobbes contends
that liberty is "the absence of all the impediments to action
that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical quality of the
agent" (Hobbes 1654 [1999], 38; cf. Hume 1748 [1975] VIII.1;
Edwards 1754 [1957]; Ayer 1954). This idea led many compatibilists,
especially the more empiricist-inclined, to develop desire- or
preference-based analyses of both the freedom to do otherwise and
self-determination. An agent has the freedom to do otherwise than
\(\phi\) just in case if she *preferred* or *willed* to
do otherwise, she would have done otherwise (Hobbes 1654 [1999], 16;
Locke 1690 [1975]) II.xx.8; Hume 1748 [1975] VIII.1; Moore 1912; Ayer
1954). The freedom to do otherwise does not require that you are able
to act contrary to your strongest motivation but simply that your
action be dependent on your strongest motivation in the sense that
*had* you desired something else more strongly, then you would
have pursued that alternative end. (We will discuss this analysis in
more detail below in section 2.2.) Similarly, an agent self-determines
her \(\phi\)-ing just in case \(\phi\) is caused by her *strongest
desires* or *preferences* at the time of action (Hobbes
1654 [1999]; Locke 1690 [1975]; Edwards 1754 [1957]). (We will discuss
this analysis in more detail below in section 2.4.) Given these
analyses, determinism seems innocuous to freedom.



The second step was to argue that any attempt to analyze free will in
a way that putatively captures a deeper or more robust sense of
freedom leads to intractable conundrums. The most important examples
of this attempt to capture a deeper sense of freedom in the modern
period are Immanuel Kant (1781 [1998], 1785 [1998], 1788 [2015]) and
Thomas Reid (1788 [1969]) and in the early twentieth century C. A.
Campbell (1951). These philosophers argued that the above
compatibilist analyses of the freedom to do otherwise and
self-determination are, at best, insufficient for free will, and, at
worst, incompatible with it. With respect to the classical
compatibilist analysis of the freedom to do otherwise, these critics
argued that the freedom to do otherwise requires not just that an
agent could have *acted* differently if he had willed
differently, but also that he could have *willed* differently.
Free will requires more than free action. With respect to classical
compatibilists' analysis of self-determination, they argued that
self-determination requires that the agent--rather than his
desires, preferences, or any other mental state--cause his free
choices and actions. Reid explains:



> 
> 
> I consider the determination of the will as an effect. This effect
> must have a cause which had the power to produce it; and the cause
> must be either the person himself, whose will it is, or some other
> being.... If the person was the cause of that determination of
> his own will, he was free in that action, and it is justly imputed to
> him, whether it be good or bad. But, if another being was the cause of
> this determination, either producing it immediately, or by means and
> instruments under his direction, then the determination is the act and
> deed of that being, and is solely imputed to him. (1788 [1969] IV.i,
> 265)
> 
> 
> 



Classical compatibilists argued that both claims are incoherent. While
it is intelligible to ask whether a man willed to do what he did, it
is incoherent to ask whether a man willed to will what he did:



> 
> 
> For to ask whether a man is at liberty to will either motion or rest,
> speaking or silence, which he pleases, is to ask whether a man can
> *will* what he *wills*, or be pleased with what he is
> pleased with? A question which, I think, needs no answer; and they who
> make a question of it must suppose one will to determine the acts of
> another, and another to determine that, and so on *in
> infinitum*. (Locke 1690 [1975] II.xx.25; cf. Hobbes 1656 [1999],
> 72)
> 
> 
> 



In response to libertarians' claim that self-determination
requires that the agent, rather than his motives, cause his actions,
it was objected that this removes the agent from the natural causal
order, which is clearly unintelligible for human animals (Hobbes 1654
[1999], 38). It is important to recognize that an implication of the
second step of the strategy is that free will is not only compatible
with determinism but actually requires determinism (cf. Hume 1748
[1975] VIII). This was a widely shared assumption among compatibilists
up through the mid-twentieth century.



Spinoza's *Ethics* (1677 [1992]) is an important
departure from the above dialectic. He endorses a strong form of
necessitarianism in which everything is categorically necessary as
opposed to the conditional necessity embraced by most compatibilists,
and he contends that there is no room in such a world for divine or
creaturely free will. Thus, Spinoza is a free will skeptic.
Interestingly, Spinoza is also keen to deny that the nonexistence of
free will has the dire implications often assumed. As noted above,
many in the modern period saw belief in free will and an afterlife in
which God rewards the just and punishes the wicked as necessary to
motivate us to act morally. According to Spinoza, so far from this
being necessary to motivate us to be moral, it actually distorts our
pursuit of morality. True moral living, Spinoza thinks, sees virtue as
its own reward (Part V, Prop. 42). Moreover, while free will is a
chimera, humans are still capable of freedom or self-determination.
Such self-determination, which admits of degrees on Spinoza's
view, arises when our emotions are determined by true ideas about the
nature of reality. The emotional lives of the free persons are ones in
which "we desire nothing but that which must be, nor, in an
absolute sense, can we find contentment in anything but truth. And so
in so far as we rightly understand these matters, the endeavor of the
better part of us is in harmony with the order of the whole of
Nature" (Part IV, Appendix). Spinoza is an important forerunner
to the many free will skeptics in the twentieth century, a position
that continues to attract strong support (see Strawson 1986; Double
1992; Smilansky 2000; Pereboom 2001, 2014; Levy 2011; Waller 2011;
Caruso 2012; Vilhauer 2012. For further discussion see the entry
 skepticism about moral responsibility).



It is worth observing that in many of these disputes about the nature
of free will there is an underlying dispute about the nature of moral
responsibility. This is seen clearly in Hobbes (1654 [1999]) and early
twentieth century philosophers' defenses of compatibilism.
Underlying the belief that free will is incompatible with determinism
is the thought that no one would be morally responsible for any
actions in a deterministic world in the sense that no one would
*deserve* blame or punishment. Hobbes responded to this charge
in part by endorsing broadly consequentialist justifications of blame
and punishment: we are justified in blaming or punishing because these
practices deter future harmful actions and/or contribute to reforming
the offender (1654 [1999], 24-25; cf. Schlick 1939; Nowell-Smith
1948; Smart 1961). While many, perhaps even most, compatibilists have
come to reject this consequentialist approach to moral responsibility
in the wake of P. F. Strawson's 1962 landmark essay
'Freedom and Resentment' (though see Vargas (2013) and
McGeer (2014) for contemporary defenses of compatibilism that appeal
to forward-looking considerations) there is still a general lesson to
be learned: disputes about free will are often a function of
underlying disputes about the nature and value of moral
responsibility.


## 2. The Nature of Free Will


### 2.1 Free Will and Moral Responsibility



As should be clear from this short discussion of the history of the
idea of free will, free will has traditionally been conceived of as a
kind of power to control one's choices and actions. When an
agent exercises free will over her choices and actions, her choices
and actions are *up to her*. But up to her in what sense? As
should be clear from our historical survey, two common (and
compatible) answers are: (i) up to her in the sense that she is able
to choose otherwise, or at minimum that she is able not to choose or
act as she does, and (ii) up to her in the sense that she is the
source of her action. However, there is widespread controversy both
over whether each of these conditions is required for free will and if
so, how to understand the kind or sense of freedom to do otherwise or
sourcehood that is required. While some seek to resolve these
controversies in part by careful articulation of our experiences of
deliberation, choice, and action (Nozick 1981, ch. 4; van Inwagen
1983, ch. 1), many seek to resolve these
controversies by appealing to the nature of moral responsibility. The
idea is that the kind of control or sense of up-to-meness involved in
free will is the kind of control or sense of up-to-meness relevant to
moral responsibility (Double 1992, 12; Ekstrom 2000, 7-8;
Smilansky 2000, 16; Widerker and McKenna 2003, 2; Vargas 2007, 128;
Nelkin 2011, 151-52; Levy 2011, 1; Pereboom 2014, 1-2).
Indeed, some go so far as to define 'free will' as
'the strongest control condition--whatever that turns out
to be--necessary for moral responsibility' (Wolf 1990,
3-4; Fischer 1994, 3; Mele 2006, 17). Given this connection, we
can determine whether the freedom to do otherwise and the power of
self-determination are constitutive of free will and, if so, in what
sense, by considering what it takes to be a morally responsible agent.
On these latter characterizations of free will, understanding free
will is inextricably linked to, and perhaps even derivative from,
understanding moral responsibility. And even those who demur from this
claim regarding conceptual priority typically see a close link between
these two ideas. Consequently, to appreciate the current debates
surrounding the nature of free will, we need to say something about
the nature of moral responsibility.



It is now widely accepted that there are different species of moral
responsibility. It is common (though not uncontroversial) to
distinguish moral responsibility as *answerability* from moral
responsibility as *attributability* from moral responsibility
as *accountability* (Watson 1996; Fischer and Tognazzini 2011;
Shoemaker 2011. See Smith (2012) for a critique of this taxonomy).
These different species of moral responsibility differ along three
dimensions: (i) the kind of responses licensed toward the responsible
agent, (ii) the nature of the licensing relation, and (iii) the
necessary and sufficient conditions for licensing the relevant kind of
responses toward the agent. For example, some argue that when an agent
is morally responsible in the attributability sense, certain
*judgments* about the agent--such as judgments concerning
the virtues and vices of the agent--are *fitting*, and
that the fittingness of such judgments does not depend on whether the
agent in question possessed the freedom to do otherwise (cf. Watson
1996).



While keeping this controversy about the nature of moral
responsibility firmly in mind (see the entry on
 moral responsibility
 for a more detailed discussion of these issues), we think it is fair
to say that the most commonly assumed understanding of moral
responsibility in the historical and contemporary discussion of the
problem of free will is *moral responsibility as
accountability* in something like the following sense:



An agent \(S\) is morally accountable for performing an action
\(\phi\) \(=\_{df.}\) \(S\) deserves praise if \(\phi\) goes beyond
what can be reasonably expected of \(S\) and \(S\) deserves blame if
\(\phi\) is morally wrong.



The central notions in this definition are *praise*,
*blame*, and *desert*. The majority of contemporary
philosophers have followed Strawson (1962) in contending that praising
and blaming an agent consist in experiencing (or at least being
disposed to experience (cf. Wallace 1994, 70-71)) reactive
attitudes or emotions directed toward the agent, such as gratitude,
approbation, and pride in the case of praise, and resentment,
indignation, and guilt in the case of blame. (See Sher (2006) and
Scanlon (2008) for important dissents from this trend. See the entry
on
 blame
 for a more detailed discussion.) These emotions, in turn, dispose us
to act in a variety of ways. For example, blame disposes us to respond
with some kind of hostility toward the blameworthy agent, such as
verbal rebuke or partial withdrawal of good will. But while these
kinds of dispositions are essential to our blaming someone, their
manifestation is not: it is possible to blame someone with very little
change in attitudes or actions toward the agent. Blaming someone might
be immediately followed by forgiveness as an end of the matter.



By 'desert', we have in mind what Derk Pereboom has called
*basic desert*:



> 
> 
> The desert at issue here is basic in the sense that the agent would
> deserve to be blamed or praised just because she has performed the
> action, given an understanding of its moral status, and not, for
> example, merely by virtue of consequentialist or contractualist
> considerations. (2014, 2)
> 
> 
> 



As we understand desert, if an agent deserves blame, then we have a
strong *pro tanto* reason to blame him simply in virtue of his
being accountable for doing wrong. Importantly, these reasons can be
outweighed by other considerations. While an agent may deserve blame,
it might, all things considered, be best to forgive him
unconditionally instead.



When an agent is morally responsible for doing something wrong, he is
blame*worthy*: he deserves hard treatment marked by resentment
and indignation and the actions these emotions dispose us toward, such
as censure, rebuke, and ostracism. However, it would seem unfair to
treat agents in these ways unless their actions were *up to
them*. Thus, we arrive at the core connection between free will
and moral responsibility: agents deserve praise or blame only if their
actions are up to them--only if they have free will.
Consequently, we can assess analyses of free will by their
implications for judgments of moral responsibility. We note that some
might reject the claim that free will is necessary for moral
responsibility (e.g., Frankfurt 1971; Stump 1988), but even for these
theorists an adequate analysis of free will must specify a
*sufficient* condition for the kind of control at play in moral
responsibility.



In what follows, we focus our attention on the two most commonly cited
features of free will: the freedom to do otherwise and sourcehood.
While some seem to think that free will consists exclusively in either
the freedom to do otherwise (van Inwagen 2008) or in sourcehood
(Zagzebski 2000), many philosophers hold that free will involves both
conditions--though philosophers often emphasize one condition
over the other depending on their dialectical situation or
argumentative purposes (cf. Watson 1987). In what follows, we will
describe the most common characterizations of these two
conditions.


### 2.2 The Freedom to Do Otherwise



For most newcomers to the problem of free will, it will seem obvious
that an action is up to an agent only if she had the freedom to do
otherwise. But what does this freedom come to? The freedom to do
otherwise is clearly a modal property of agents, but it is
controversial just what species of modality is at stake. It must be
more than mere *possibility*: to have the freedom to do
otherwise consists in more than the mere possibility of something
else's happening. A more plausible and widely endorsed
understanding claims the relevant modality is *ability* or
*power* (Locke 1690 [1975], II.xx; Reid 1788 [1969],
II.i-ii; D. Locke 1973; Clarke 2009; Vihvelin 2013). But
abilities themselves seem to come in different varieties (Lewis 1976;
Horgan 1979; van Inwagen 1983, ch. 1; Mele 2003; Clarke 2009; Vihvelin
2013, ch. 1; Franklin 2015; Cyr and Swenson 2019; Hofmann 2022;
Whittle 2022), so a claim that an agent has 'the ability to do
otherwise' is potentially ambiguous or indeterminate; in
philosophical discussion, the sense of ability appealed to needs to be
spelled out. A satisfactory account of the freedom to do otherwise
owes us both an account of the kind of ability in terms of which the
freedom to do otherwise is analyzed, and an argument for why this kind
of ability (as opposed to some other species) is the one constitutive
of the freedom to do otherwise. As we will see, philosophers sometimes
leave this second debt unpaid.



The contemporary literature takes its cue from classical
compatibilism's recognized failure to deliver a satisfactory
analysis of the freedom to do otherwise. As we saw above, classical
compatibilists (Hobbes 1654 [1999], 1656 [1999]; Locke 1690 [1975];
Hume 1740 [1978], 1748 [1975]; Edwards 1754 [1957]; Moore 1912;
Schlick 1939; Ayer 1954) sought to analyze the freedom to do otherwise
in terms of a simple conditional analysis of ability:



**Simple Conditional Analysis:** An agent \(S\) has the
ability to do otherwise if and only if, were \(S\) to choose to do
otherwise, then \(S\) would do otherwise.




Part of the attraction of this analysis is that it obviously
reconciles the freedom to do otherwise with determinism. While the
truth of determinism entails that one's action is inevitable
given the past and laws of nature, there is nothing about determinism
that implies that *if* one had chosen otherwise, then one would
not do otherwise.



There are two problems with the **Simple Conditional
Analysis**. The first is that it is, at best, an analysis of
free action, not free will (cf. Reid 1788 [1969]; Chisholm 1966; 1976,
ch. 2; Lehrer 1968, 1976). It only tells us when an agent has the
ability to *do* otherwise, not when an agent has the ability to
*choose* to do otherwise. One might be tempted to think that
there is an easy fix along the following lines:



**Simple Conditional Analysis\*:** An agent \(S\) has the
ability to choose otherwise if and only if, were \(S\) to desire or
prefer to choose otherwise, then \(S\) would choose otherwise.




The problem is that we often fail to choose to do things we want to
choose, even when it appears that we had the ability to choose
otherwise (one might think the same problem attends the original
analysis). Suppose that, in deciding how to spend my evening, I have a
desire to choose to read and a desire to choose to watch a movie.
Suppose that I choose to read. By all appearances, I had the ability
to choose to watch a movie. And yet, according to the **Simple
Conditional Analysis\***, I lack this freedom, since the
conditional 'if I were to desire to choose to watch a movie,
then I would choose to watch a movie' is false. I do desire to
choose to watch a movie and yet I do not choose to watch a movie. It
is unclear how to remedy this problem. On the one hand, we might
refine the antecedent by replacing 'desire' with
'strongest desire' (cf. Hobbes 1654 [1999], 1656 [1999];
Edwards 1754 [1957]). The problem is that this assumes, implausibly,
that we always choose what we most strongly desire (for criticisms of
this view see Reid 1788 [1969]; Campbell 1951; Wallace 1999; Holton
2009). On the other hand, we might refine the consequent by replacing
'would choose to do otherwise' with either 'would
probably choose to do otherwise' or 'might choose to do
otherwise'. But each of these proposals is also problematic. If
'probably' means 'more likely than not', then
this revised conditional still seems too strong: it seems possible to
have the ability to choose otherwise even when one's so choosing
is unlikely. If we opt for 'might', then the relevant
sense of modality needs to be spelled out.



Even if there are fixes to these problems, there is a yet deeper
problem with these analyses. There are some agents who clearly lack
the freedom to do otherwise and yet satisfy the conditional at the
heart of these analyses. That is, although these agents lack the
freedom to do otherwise, it is, for example, true of them that
*if* they chose otherwise, they would do otherwise. Picking up
on an argument developed by Keith Lehrer (1968; cf. Campbell 1951;
Broad 1952; Chisholm 1966), consider an agoraphobic, Luke, who, when
faced with the prospect of entering an open space, is subject not
merely to an irresistible desire to refrain from intentionally going
outside, but an irresistible desire to refrain from even
*choosing* to go outside. Given Luke's psychology, there
is no possible world in which he suffers from his agoraphobia and
chooses to go outside. It may well nevertheless be true that
*if* Luke chose to go outside, then he would have gone outside.
After all, any possible world in which he chooses to go outside will
be a world in which he no longer suffers (to the same degree) from his
agoraphobia, and thus we have no reason to doubt that in those worlds
he would go outside as a result of his choosing to go outside. The
same kind of counterexample applies with equal force to the
conditional 'if \(S\) desired to choose otherwise, then \(S\)
would choose otherwise'.



While simple conditional analyses admirably make clear the species of
ability to which they appeal, they fail to show that this species of
ability is constitutive of the freedom to do otherwise. Agents need a
stronger ability to do otherwise than characterized by such simple
conditionals. Some argue that the fundamental source of the above
problems is the *conditional* nature of these analyses
(Campbell 1951; Austin 1961; Chisholm 1966; Lehrer 1976; van Inwagen
1983, ch. 4). The sense of ability relevant to the freedom to do
otherwise is the 'all-in sense'--that is, holding
everything fixed up to the time of the decision or action--and
this sense, so it is argued, can only be captured by a categorical
analysis of the ability to do otherwise:



**Categorical Analysis:** An agent \(S\) has the ability
to choose or do otherwise than \(\phi\) at time \(t\) if and only if
it was possible, holding fixed everything up to \(t\), that \(S\)
choose or do otherwise than \(\phi\) at \(t\).




This analysis gets the right verdict in Luke's case. He lacks
the ability to do otherwise than refrain from choosing to go outside,
according to this analysis, because there is no possible world in
which he suffers from his agoraphobia and yet chooses to go outside.
Unlike the above conditional analyses, the **Categorical
Analysis** requires that we hold fixed Luke's agoraphobia
when considering alternative possibilities.



If the **Categorical Analysis** is correct, then free
will is incompatible with determinism. According to the thesis of
determinism, all deterministic possible worlds with the same pasts and
laws of nature have the same futures (Lewis 1979; van Inwagen 1983,
3). Suppose John is in deterministic world \(W\) and refrains from
raising his hand at time \(t\). Since \(W\) is deterministic, it
follows that any possible world \(W^\*\) that has the same past and
laws up to \(t\) must have the same future, including John's
refraining from raising his hand at \(t\). Therefore, John lacked the
ability, and thus freedom, to raise his hand.



This argument, carefully articulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s
by Carl Ginet (1966, 1990) and Peter van Inwagen (1975, 1983) and
refined in important ways by John Martin Fischer (1994), has come to
be known as the Consequence Argument. van Inwagen offers the following
informal statement of the argument:



> 
> 
> If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws
> of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what
> went on before we were born [i.e., we do not have the ability to
> change the past], and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature
> are [i.e., we do not have the ability to break the laws of nature].
> Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present
> acts) are not up to us. (van Inwagen 1983, 16; cf. Fischer 1994, ch.
> 1)
> 
> 
> 



Like the **Simple Conditional Analysis**, a virtue of the
**Categorical Analysis** is that it spells out clearly
the kind of ability appealed to in its analysis of the freedom to do
otherwise, but like the **Simple Conditional Analysis**,
critics have argued that the sense of ability it captures is not the
sense at the heart of free will. The objection here, though, is not
that the analysis is too permissive or weak, but rather that it is too
restrictive or strong.



While there have been numerous different replies along these lines
(e.g., Lehrer 1980; Slote 1982; Watson 1986. See the entry on
 arguments for incompatibilism
 for a more extensive discussion of and bibliography for the
Consequence Argument), the most influential of these objections is due
to David Lewis (1981). Lewis contended that van Inwagen's
argument equivocated on 'is able to break a law of
nature'. We can distinguish two senses of 'is able to
break a law of nature':



(Weak Thesis) I am able to do something such that, if I did it, a law
of nature would be broken.



(Strong Thesis) I am able to do something such that, if I did it, it
would constitute a law of nature's being broken or would cause a
law of nature to be broken.



If we are committed to the **Categorical Analysis**, then
those desiring to defend compatibilism seem to be committed to the
sense of ability in 'is able to break a law of nature'
along the lines of the strong thesis. Lewis agrees with van Inwagen
that it is "incredible" to think humans have such an
ability (Lewis 1981, 113), but maintains that compatibilists need only
appeal to the ability to break a law of nature in the weak sense.
While it is absurd to think that humans are able to do something that
*is* a violation of a law of nature or *causes* a law of
nature to be broken, there is nothing incredible, so Lewis claimed, in
thinking that humans are able to do something such that *if*
they did it, a law of nature would be broken. In essence, Lewis is
arguing that incompatibilists like van Inwagen have failed to
adequately motivate the restrictiveness of the **Categorical
Analysis**.



Some incompatibilists have responded to Lewis by contending that even
the weak ability is incredible (van Inwagen
2004). But there is a different and often overlooked problem for
Lewis: the weak ability seems to be too weak. Returning to the case of
John's refraining from raising his hand, Lewis maintains that
the following three propositions are consistent:



(i)
John is able to raise his hand.
(ii)
A necessary condition for John's raising his hand fails to
obtain (i.e., that the laws of nature or past are different than they
actually are).
(iii)
John is not able to do anything that would constitute this
necessary condition's obtaining or cause this necessary
condition to obtain (i.e., he is unable to do anything that would
constitute or cause a law of nature to be broken or the past to be
different).


One might think that (ii) and (iii) are incompatible with (i).
Consider again Luke, our agoraphobic. Suppose that his agoraphobia
affects him in such a way that he will only intentionally go outside
if he chooses to go outside, and yet his agoraphobia makes it
impossible for him to make this choice. In this case, a necessary
condition for Luke's intentionally going outside is his choosing
to go outside. Moreover, Luke is not able to choose or cause himself
to choose to go outside. Intuitively, this would seem to imply that
Luke *lacks* the freedom to go outside. But this implication
does not follow for Lewis. From the fact that Luke is able to go
outside only if he chooses to go outside and the fact that Luke is not
able to choose to go outside, it does not *follow*, on
Lewis's account, that Luke lacks the ability to go outside.
Consequently, Lewis's account fails to explain why Luke lacks
the ability to go outside (cf. Speak 2011). (For other important
criticisms of Lewis, see Ginet [1990, ch. 5] and Fischer [1994, ch.
4].)



While Lewis may be right that the **Categorical
Analysis** is too restrictive, his argument, all by itself,
doesn't seem to establish this. His argument is successful only
if (a) he can provide an alternative analysis of ability that entails
that Luke's agoraphobia robs him of the ability to go outside
and (b) does not entail that determinism robs John of the ability to
raise his hand (cf. Pendergraft 2010). Lewis must point out a
principled difference between these two cases. As should be clear from
the above, the **Simple Conditional Analysis** is of no
help. However, some recent work by Michael Smith (2003), Kadri
Vihvelin (2004; 2013), and Michael Fara (2008) have attempted to fill
this gap. What unites these theorists--whom Clarke (2009) has
called the 'new dispositionalists'--is their attempt
to appeal to recent advances in the metaphysics of dispositions to
arrive at a revised conditional analysis of the freedom to do
otherwise. The most perspicuous of these accounts is offered by
Vihvelin (2004), who argues that an agent's having the ability
to do otherwise is solely a function of the agent's intrinsic
properties. (It is important to note that Vihvelin [2013] has come to
reject the view that free will consists exclusively in the kind of
ability analyzed below.) Building on Lewis's work on the
metaphysics of dispositions, she arrives at the following analysis of
ability:



**Revised Conditional Analysis of Ability**: \(S\) has
the ability at time \(t\) to do \(X\) iff, for some intrinsic property
or set of properties \(B\) that \(S\) has at \(t\), for some time
\(t'\) after \(t\), if \(S\) chose (decided, intended, or tried) at
\(t\) to do \(X\), and \(S\) were to retain \(B\) until \(t'\),
\(S\)'s choosing (deciding, intending, or trying) to do \(X\)
and \(S\)'s having \(B\) would jointly be an \(S\)-complete
cause of \(S\)'s doing \(X\). (Vihvelin 2004, 438)




Lewis defines an '\(S\)-complete cause' as "a cause
complete insofar as havings of properties intrinsic to [\(S\)] are
concerned, though perhaps omitting some events extrinsic to
[\(S\)]" (cf. Lewis 1997, 156). In other words, an
\(S\)-complete cause of \(S\)'s doing \(\phi\) requires that
\(S\) possess all the intrinsic properties relevant to \(S\)'s
causing \(S\)'s doing \(\phi\). This analysis appears to afford
Vihvelin the basis for a principled difference between agoraphobics
and merely determined agents. We must hold fixed an agent's
phobias since they are intrinsic properties of agents, but we need not
hold fixed the laws of nature because these are not intrinsic
properties of agents. (It should be noted that the assumption that
intrinsic properties are wholly separable from the laws of nature is
disputed by 'dispositional essentialists.' See the entry
on
 metaphysics of causation.)
 Vihvelin's analysis appears to be restrictive enough to exclude
phobics from having the freedom to do otherwise, but permissive enough
to allow that some agents in deterministic worlds have the freedom to
do otherwise.



But appearances can be deceiving. The new dispositionalist claims have
received some serious criticism, with the majority of the criticisms
maintaining that these analyses are still too permissive (Clarke 2009;
Whittle 2010; Franklin 2011b). For example, Randolph Clarke argues
that Vihvelin's analysis fails to overcome the original problem
with the **Simple Conditional Analysis**. He writes,
"A phobic agent might, on some occasion, be unable to choose to
*A* and unable to *A* without so choosing, while
retaining all that she would need to implement such a choice, should
she make it. Despite lacking the ability to choose to *A*, the
agent might have some set of intrinsic properties *B* such
that, if she chose to *A* and retained *B*, then her
choosing to *A* and her having *B* would jointly be an
agent-complete cause of her *A*-ing" (Clarke 2009, p.
329).



The **Categorical Analysis**, and thus incompatibilism
about free will and determinism, remains an attractive option for many
philosophers precisely because it seems that compatibilists have yet
to furnish an analysis of the freedom to do otherwise that implies
that phobics clearly lack the ability to choose or do otherwise that
is relevant to moral responsibility and yet some merely determined
agents have this ability.


### 2.3 Freedom to Do Otherwise vs. Sourcehood Accounts



Some have tried to avoid these lingering problems for compatibilists
by arguing that the freedom to do otherwise is not required for free
will or moral responsibility. What matters for an agent's
freedom and responsibility, so it is argued, is the *source* of
her action--how her action was brought about. The most prominent
strategy for defending this move appeals to 'Frankfurt-style
cases'. In a ground-breaking article, Harry Frankfurt (1969)
presented a series of thought experiments intended to show that it is
possible that agents are morally responsible for their actions and yet
they lack the ability to do otherwise. While Frankfurt (1971) took
this to show that moral responsibility and free will come
apart--free will requires the ability to do otherwise but moral
responsibility does not--if we define 'free will' as
'the strongest control condition required for moral
responsibility' (cf. Wolf 1990, 3-4; Fischer 1994, 3; Mele
2006, 17), then if Frankfurt-style cases show that moral
responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise, then they
also show that free will does not require the ability to do otherwise.
Let us consider this challenge in more detail.



Here is a representative Frankfurt-style case:



> 
> Imagine, if you will, that Black is a quite nifty (and even generally
> nice) neurosurgeon. But in performing an operation on Jones to remove
> a brain tumor, Black inserts a mechanism into Jones's brain
> which enables Black to monitor and control Jones's activities.
> Jones, meanwhile, knows nothing of this. Black exercises this control
> through a sophisticated computer which he has programmed so that,
> among other things, it monitors Jones's voting behavior. If
> Jones were to show any inclination to vote for Bush, then the
> computer, through the mechanism in Jones's brain, intervenes to
> ensure that he actually decides to vote for Clinton and does so vote.
> But if Jones decides on his own to vote for Clinton, the computer does
> nothing but continue to monitor--without affecting--the
> goings-on in Jones's head. (Fischer 2006, 38)
> 



Fischer goes on to suppose that Jones "decides to vote for
Clinton on his own", without any interference from Black, and
maintains that in such a case Jones is morally responsible for his
decision. Fischer draws two interrelated conclusions from this case.
The first, negative conclusion, is that the ability to do otherwise is
not necessary for moral responsibility. Jones is unable to refrain
from deciding to vote for Clinton, and yet, so long as Jones decides
to vote for Clinton on his own, his decision is free and one for which
he is morally responsible. The second, positive conclusion, is that
freedom and responsibility are functions of the *actual
sequence*. What matters for an agent's freedom and moral
responsibility is not what might have happened, but how his action was
actually brought about. What matters is not whether the agent had the
ability to do otherwise, but whether he was the source of his
actions.



The success of Frankfurt-style cases is hotly contested. An early and
far-reaching criticism is due to David Widerker (1995), Carl Ginet
(1996), and Robert Kane (1996, 142-43). According to this
criticism, proponents of Frankfurt-style cases face a dilemma: either
these cases assume that the connection between the indicator (in our
case, the absence of Jones's showing any inclination to decide
to vote for Bush) and the agent's decision (here, Jones's
deciding to vote for Clinton) is deterministic or not. If the
connection is deterministic, then Frankfurt-style cases cannot be
expected to convince incompatibilists that the ability to do otherwise
is not necessary for moral responsibility and/or free will, since
Jones's action will be deterministically brought about by
factors beyond his control, leading incompatibilists to conclude that
Jones is not morally responsible for his decision. But if the
connection is nondeterministic, then it is possible even in the
absence of showing any inclination to decide to vote for Bush, that
Jones decides to vote for Bush, and so he retains the ability to do
otherwise. Either way Frankfurt-style cases fail to show that Jones is
both morally responsible for his decision and yet is unable to do
otherwise.



While some have argued that even Frankfurt-style cases that assume
determinism are effective (see, e.g., Fischer 1999, 2010, 2013 and
Haji and McKenna 2004 and for criticisms of this approach, see Goetz
2005, Palmer 2005, 2014, Widerker and Goetz 2013, and Cohen 2017), the
majority of proponents of Frankfurt-style cases have attempted to
revise these cases so that they are explicitly nondeterministic and
yet still show that the agent was morally responsible even though he
lacked the ability to do otherwise--or, at least that he lacked
any ability to do otherwise that could be relevant to
*grounding* the agent's moral responsibility (see, e.g.,
Mele and Robb 1998, 2003, Pereboom 2001, 2014, McKenna 2003, Hunt
2005, and for criticisms of these cases see Ginet 2002, Timpe 2006,
Widerker 2006, Franklin 2011c, Moya 2011, Palmer 2011, 2013, Robinson
2014, Capes 2016, Capes and Swenson 2017, and Elzein 2017).



Supposing that Frankfurt-style cases are successful, what exactly do
they show? In our view, they show neither that free will and moral
responsibility do not require an ability to do otherwise *in any
sense* nor that compatibilism is true. Frankfurt-style cases are
of clear help to the compatibilists' position (though see Speak
2007 for a dissenting opinion). The Consequence Argument raises a
powerful challenge to the cogency of compatibilism. But if
Frankfurt-style cases are successful, agents can act freely in the
sense relevant to moral responsibility while lacking the ability to do
otherwise in the all-in sense. This allows compatibilists to concede
that the all-in ability to do otherwise is incompatible with
determinism, and yet insist that it is irrelevant to the question of
the compatibility of determinism with moral responsibility (and
perhaps even free will, depending on how we define this) (cf. Fischer
1987, 1994. For a challenge to the move from not strictly necessary to
irrelevant, see O'Connor [2000, 20-22] and in reply,
Fischer [2006, 152-56].). But, of course, showing that an
argument for the falsity of compatibilism is irrelevant does not show
that compatibilism is true. Indeed, many incompatibilists maintain
that Frankfurt-style cases are successful and defend incompatibilism
not via the Consequence Argument, but by way of arguments that attempt
to show that agents in deterministic worlds cannot be the
'source' of their actions in the way that moral
responsibility requires (Stump 1999; Zagzebski 2000; Pereboom 2001,
2014). Thus, if successful, Frankfurt-style cases would be at best the
first step in defending compatibilism. The second step must offer an
analysis of the kind of sourcehood constitutive of free will that
entails that free will is compatible with determinism (cf. Fischer
1982).



Furthermore, while proponents of Frankfurt-style cases often maintain
that these cases show that no ability to do otherwise is necessary for
moral responsibility ("I have employed the Frankfurt-type
example to argue that this sense of control [i.e. the one required for
moral responsibility] need not involve *any* alternative
possibilities" [Fischer 2006, p. 40; emphasis ours]), we believe
that this conclusion overreaches. At best, Frankfurt-style cases show
that the ability to do otherwise in *the all-in sense*--in
the sense defined by the **Categorical
Analysis**--is not necessary for free will or moral
responsibility (cf. Franklin 2015). To appreciate this, let us assume
that in the above Frankfurt-style case Jones lacks the ability to do
otherwise in the all-in sense: there is no possible world in which we
hold fixed the past and laws and yet Jones does otherwise, since all
such worlds include Black and his preparations for preventing Jones
from doing otherwise should Jones show any inclination. Even if this
is all true, it should take only a little reflection to recognize that
in this case Jones is able to do otherwise in certain weaker senses we
might attach to that phrase, and compatibilists in fact still think
that the ability to do otherwise in some such senses is necessary for
free will and moral responsibility. Consequently, even though
Frankfurt-style cases have, as a matter of fact, moved many
compatibilists away from emphasizing ability to do otherwise to
emphasizing sourcehood, we suggest that this move is best seen as a
weakening of the ability-to-do-otherwise condition on moral
responsibility (but see Cyr 2017 and Kittle 2019 for criticisms of
this claim). (A potentially important exception to this claim is
Sartorio [2016], who appealing to some controversial ideas in the
metaphysics of causation appears to argue that no sense of the ability
to do otherwise is necessary for control in the sense at stake for
moral responsibility, but instead what matters is whether the agent is
the cause of the action. We simply note that Sartorio's account
of causation is a modal one [see especially Sartorio (2016,
94-95, 132-37)] and thus it is far from clear that her
account of freedom and responsibility is really an exception.)


### 2.4 Compatibilist Accounts of Sourcehood



In this section, we will assume that Frankfurt-style cases are
successful in order to consider two prominent compatibilist attempts
to construct analyses of the sourcehood condition (though see the
entry on
 compatibilism
 for a more systematic survey of compatibilist theories of free will).
The first, and perhaps most popular, compatibilist model is a
reasons-responsiveness model. According to this model, an
agent's action \(\phi\) is free just in case the agent or manner
in which the action is brought about is responsive to the reasons
available to the agent at the time of action. While compatibilists
develop this kind of account in different ways, the most detailed
proposal is due to John Martin Fischer (1994, 2006, 2010, 2012;
Fischer and Ravizza 1998. For similar compatibilist treatments of
reasons-responsiveness, see Wolf 1990, Wallace 1994, Haji 1998, Nelkin
2011, McKenna 2013, Vargas 2013, Sartorio 2016). Fischer and Ravizza
argue that an agent's action is free and one for which he is
morally responsible only if the mechanism that issued in the action is
moderately reasons-responsive (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, ch. 3). By
'mechanism', Fischer and Ravizza simply mean "the
way the action was brought about" (38). One mechanism they often
discuss is practical deliberation. For example, in the case of Jones
discussed above, his decision to vote for Clinton on his own was
brought about by the process of practical deliberation. What must be
true of this process, this mechanism, for it to be moderately
reasons-responsive? Fischer and Ravizza maintain that moderate
reasons-responsiveness consists in two conditions: reasons-receptivity
and reasons-reactivity. A mechanism's reasons-receptivity
depends on the agent's cognitive capacities, such as being
capable of understanding moral reasons and the implications of their
actions (69-73). The second condition is more important for us
in the present context. A mechanism's reasons-reactivity depends
on how the mechanism *would* react given different reasons for
action. Fischer and Ravizza argue that the kind of reasons-reactivity
at stake is weak reasons-reactivity, where this merely requires that
there is some possible world in which the laws of nature remain the
same, the same mechanism operates, there is a sufficient reason to do
otherwise, and the mechanism brings about the alternative action in
response to this sufficient reason (73-76). On this analysis,
while Jones, due to the activity of Black, lacks the 'all-in' sense of
the ability to do otherwise, he is nevertheless morally responsible
for deciding to vote for Clinton because his action finds its source
in Jones's practical deliberation that is moderately
reasons-responsive.



Fischer and Ravizza's theory of freedom and responsibility has shifted
the focus of much recent debate to questions of sourcehood. Moreover,
one might argue that this theory is a clear improvement over classical
compatibilism with respect to handling cases of phobia. By focusing on
mechanisms, Fischer and Ravizza can argue that our agoraphobic Luke is
not morally responsible for deciding to refrain from going outside
because the mechanism that issues in this action--namely his
agoraphobia--is not moderately reasons-responsive. There is no
world with the same laws of nature as our own, this mechanism
operates, and yet it reacts to a sufficient reason to go outside. No
matter what reasons there are for Luke to go outside, when acting on
this mechanism, he will always refrain from going outside (cf. Fischer
1987, 74).



Before turning to our second compatibilist model, it is worth noting
that it would be a mistake to think that Fischer and Ravizza's
account is a sourcehood account to the exclusion of the ability to do
otherwise in *any* sense. As we have just seen, Fischer and
Ravizza place clear *modal* requirements on mechanisms that
issue in actions with respect to which agents are free and morally
responsible. Indeed, this should be clear from the very idea of
reasons-responsiveness. Whether one is responsive depends not merely
on how one does respond, but also on how one *would* respond.
Thus, any account that makes reasons-responsiveness an essential
condition of free will is an account that makes the ability to do
otherwise, in some sense, necessary for free will (Fischer [2018]
concedes this point, though, as noted above, the reader should
consider Sartorio [2016] as a potential counterexample to this
claim).



The second main compatibilist model of sourcehood is an identification
model. Accounts of sourcehood of this kind lay stress on
self-determination or autonomy: to be the source of her action the
agent must self-determine her action. Like the contemporary discussion
of the ability to do otherwise, the contemporary discussion of the
power of self-determination begins with the failure of classical
compatibilism to produce an acceptable definition. According to
classical compatibilists, self-determination simply consists in the
agent's action being determined by her strongest motive. On the
assumption that some compulsive agents' compulsions operate by
generating irresistible desires to act in certain ways, the classical
compatibilist analysis of self-determination implies that these
compulsive actions are self-determined. While Hobbes seems willing to
accept this implication (1656 [1999], 78), most contemporary
compatibilists concede that this result is unacceptable.



Beginning with the work of Harry Frankfurt (1971) and Gary Watson
(1975), many compatibilists have developed identification accounts of
self-determination that attempt to draw a distinction between an
agent's desires or motives that are internal to the agent and
those that are external. The idea is that while agents are not (or at
least may not be) identical to any motivations (or bundle of
motivations), they are *identified* with a subset of their
motivations, rendering these motivations internal to the agent in such
a way that any actions brought about by these motivations are
*self*-determined. The identification relation is not an
identity relation, but something weaker (cf. Bratman 2000, 39n12).
What the precise nature of the identification relation is and to which
attitudes an agent stands in this relation is hotly disputed.
Lippert-Rasmussen (2003) helpfully divides identification accounts
into two main types. The first are "authority" accounts,
according to which agents are identified with attitudes that are
*authorized* to speak for them (368). The second are
authenticity accounts, according to which agents are identified with
attitudes that *reveal* who they truly are (368). (But see
Shoemaker 2015 for an ecumenical account of identification that blends
these two accounts.) Proposed attitudes to which agents are said to
stand in the identification relation include higher-order desires
(Frankfurt 1971), cares or loves (Frankfurt 1993, 1994; Shoemaker
2003; Jaworska 2007; Sripada 2016), self-governing policies (Bratman
2000), the desire to make sense of oneself (Velleman 1992, 2009), and
perceptions (or judgments) of the good (or best) (Watson 1975; Stump
1988; Ekstrom 1993; Mitchell-Yellin 2015).



The distinction between internal and external motivations allows
identification theorists to enrich classical compatibilists'
understanding of constraint, while remaining compatibilists about free
will and determinism. According to classical compatibilists, the only
kind of constraint is external (e.g., broken cars and broken legs),
but addictions and phobias seem just as threatening to free will.
Identification theorists have the resources to concede that some
constraints are internal. For example, they can argue that our
agoraphobic Luke is not free in refraining from going outside even
though this decision was caused by his strongest desires because he is
not identified with his strongest desires. On compatibilist
identification accounts, what matters for self-determination is not
whether our actions are determined or undetermined, but whether they
are brought about by motives with which the agent is identified:
exercises of the power of self-determination consists in an
agent's actions being brought about, in part, by an
agent's motives with which she is identified. (It is important
to note that while we have distinguished reasons-responsive accounts
from identification accounts, there is nothing preventing one from
combing both elements in a complete analysis of free will.)



Even if these reasons-responsive and identification compatibilist
accounts of sourcehood might successfully side-step the Consequence
Argument, they must come to grips with a second incompatibilist
argument: the Manipulation Argument. The general problem raised by
this line of argument is that whatever proposed compatibilist
conditions for an agent \(S\)'s being free with respect to, and
morally responsible for, some action \(\phi\), it will seem that
agents can be manipulated into satisfying these conditions with
respect to \(\phi\) and, yet, precisely because they are manipulated
into satisfying these conditions, their freedom and responsibility
seem undermined. The two most influential forms of the Manipulation
Argument are Pereboom's Four-case Argument (2001, ch. 4; 2014,
ch. 4) and Mele's Zygote Argument (2006, ch. 7. See Todd 2010,
2012 for developments of Mele's argument). As the structure of
Mele's version is simpler, we will focus on it.



Imagine a goddess Diana who creates a zygote \(Z\) in Mary in some
deterministic world. Suppose that Diana creates \(Z\) as she does
because she wants Jones to be murdered thirty years later. From her
knowledge of the laws of nature in her world and her knowledge of the
state of the world just prior to her creating \(Z\), she knows that a
zygote with precisely \(Z\)'s constitution located in Mary will
develop into an agent Ernie who, thirty years later, will murder Jones
as a result of his moderately reasons-responsive mechanism and on the
basis of motivations with which he is identified (whatever those might
be). Suppose Diana succeeds in her plan and Ernie murders Jones as a
result of her manipulation.



Many judge that Ernie is not morally responsible for murdering Jones
even though he satisfies both the reasons-responsive and
identification criteria. There are two possible lines of reply open to
compatibilists. On the soft-line reply, compatibilists attempt to show
that there is a relevant difference between manipulated agents such as
Ernie and agents who satisfy their account (McKenna 2008, 470). For
example, Fischer and Ravizza propose a second condition on sourcehood:
in addition to a mechanism's being moderately
reasons-responsive, an agent is morally responsible for the output of
such a mechanism only if the agent has come to take responsibility for
the mechanism, where an agent has taken responsibility for a mechanism
\(M\) just in case (i) she believes that she is an agent when acting
from \(M\), (ii) she believes that she is an apt target for blame and
praise for acting from \(M\), and (iii) her beliefs specified in (i)
and (ii) are "based, in an appropriate way, on [her]
evidence" (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 238). The problem with this
reply is that we can easily imagine Diana creating Ernie so that his
murdering Jones is a result not only of a moderately
reasons-responsive mechanism, but also a mechanism for which he has
taken responsibility. On the hard-line reply, compatibilists concede
that, despite initial appearances, the manipulated agent is free and
morally responsible and attempt to ameliorate the seeming
counterintuitiveness of this concession (McKenna 2008, 470-71).
Here compatibilists might point out that the idea of being manipulated
is worrisome only so long as the manipulators are interfering with an
agent's development. But if the manipulators simply create a
person, and then allow that person's life to unfold without any
further inference, the manipulators' activity is no threat to
freedom (McKenna 2008; Fischer 2011; Sartorio 2016, ch. 5). (For other
responses to the Manipulation Argument, see Kearns 2012; Sripada 2012;
McKenna 2014.)


### 2.5 Libertarian Accounts of Sourcehood



Despite these compatibilist replies, to some the idea that the
entirety of a *free* agent's life can be determined, and
in this way controlled, by another agent will seem incredible. Some
take the lesson of the Manipulation Argument to be that no
compatibilist account of sourcehood or self-determination is
satisfactory. True sourcehood--the kind of sourcehood that can
actually ground an agent's freedom and
responsibility--requires, so it is argued, that one's
action not be causally determined by factors beyond one's
control.



Libertarians, while united in endorsing this negative condition on
sourcehood, are deeply divided concerning which further positive
conditions may be required. It is important to note that while
libertarians are united in insisting that compatibilist accounts of
sourcehood are insufficient, they are not committed to thinking that
the conditions of freedom spelled out in terms either of
reasons-responsiveness or of identification are not necessary. For
example, Stump (1988, 1996, 2010) builds a sophisticated libertarian
model of free will out of resources originally developed within
Frankfurt's identification model (see also Ekstrom 1993, 2000;
Franklin 2014) and nearly all libertarians agree that exercises of
free will require agents to be reasons-responsive (e.g., Kane 1996; Clarke 2003, chs. 8-9; Franklin 2018, ch.
2). Moreover, while this section focuses on libertarian accounts of
sourcehood, we remind readers that most (if not all) libertarians
think that the freedom to do otherwise is also necessary for free will
and moral responsibility.



There are three main libertarian options for understanding sourcehood
or self-determination: non-causal libertarianism (Ginet 1990, 2008;
McCann 1998; Lowe 2008; Goetz 2009; Pink 2017; Palmer 2021),
event-causal libertarianism (Wiggins 1973; Kane 1996, 1999, 2011,
2016; Mele 1995, chs. 11-12; 2006, chs. 4-5; 2017; Ekstrom
2000, 2019; Clarke 2003, chs. 2-6; Franklin 2018), and
agent-causal libertarianism (Reid 1788 [1969]; Chisholm 1966, 1976;
Taylor 1966; O'Connor 2000; Clarke 1993; 1996;
2003, chs. 8-10; Griffith 2010; Steward 2012). Non-causal
libertarians contend that exercises of the power of self-determination
need not (or perhaps even cannot) be caused or causally structured.
According to this view, we control our volition or choice simply in
virtue of its being ours--its occurring in us. We do not exert a
special kind of causality in bringing it about; instead, it is an
intrinsically active event, intrinsically something we *do*.
While there may be causal influences upon our choice, there need not
be, and any such causal influence is wholly irrelevant to
understanding why it occurs. Reasons provide an autonomous, non-causal
form of explanation. Provided our choice is not wholly determined by
prior factors, it is free and under our control simply in virtue of
being ours. Non-causal views have failed to garner wide support among
libertarians since, for many, self-*determination* seems to be
an essentially causal notion (cf. Mele 2000 and Clarke 2003, ch. 2). This dispute hinges on the necessary
conditions on the concept of causal power, and relatedly on whether
power simpliciter admits causal and non-causal variants. For
discussion, see O'Connor (2021).



Most libertarians endorse an event-causal or agent-causal account of
sourcehood. Both these accounts maintain that exercises of the power
of self-determination consist partly in the agent's bringing
about her choice or action, but they disagree on how to analyze *an
agent's bringing about her choice*. While event-causal
libertarianism admits of different species, at the heart of this view
is the idea that self-determining an action requires, at minimum, that
the agent cause the action and that an agent's causing his
action is *wholly reducible* to mental states and other events
involving the agent nondeviantly causing his action. Consider an
agent's raising his hand. According to the event-causal model at
its most basic level, an agent's raising his hand consists in
the agent's causing his hand to rise and his causing his hand to
rise consists in *apt* mental states and events involving the
agent--such as the agent's desire to ask a question and his
belief that he can ask a question by raising his
hand--*nondeviantly* causing his hand to rise. (The
nondeviance clause is required since it seems possible that an event
be brought about by one's desires and beliefs and yet not be
self-determined, or even an action for that matter, due to the unusual
causal path leading from the desires and beliefs to action. Imagine a
would-be accomplice of an assassin believes that his dropping his
cigarette is the signal for the assassin to shoot his intended victim
and he desires to drop his cigarette and yet this belief and desire so
unnerve him that he accidentally drops his cigarette. While the event
of dropping the cigarette is caused by a relevant desire and belief it
does not seem to be self-determined and perhaps is not even an action
[cf. Davidson 1973].) To fully spell out this account, event-causal
libertarians must specify which mental states and events are apt (cf.
Brand 1979)--which mental states and events are the springs of
self-determined actions--and what nondeviance consists in (cf.
Bishop 1989). (We note that this has proven very difficult, enough so
that some take the problem to spell doom for event-causal theories of
action. Such philosophers [e.g., Taylor 1966 and Sehon 2005] take
agential power to be conceptually and/or ontologically primitive and
understand reasons explanations of action in irreducibly teleological
terms. See Stout 2010 for a brisk survey of discussions of this
topic.) For ease, in what follows we will assume that apt mental
states are an agent's reasons that favor the action.



Event-causal libertarians, of course, contend that self-determination
requires more than nondeviant causation by agents' reasons: for
it is possible that agents' actions in deterministic worlds are
nondeviantly caused by apt mental states and events.
Self-determination requires *nondeterministic* causation, in a
nondeviant way, by an agent's reasons. While historically many
have thought that nondeterministic causation is impossible (Hobbes
1654 [1999], 1656 [1999]; Hume 1740 [1978], 1748 [1975]), with the
advent of quantum physics and, from a very different direction, an
influential essay by G.E.M. Anscombe (1971), it is now widely
assumed that nondeterministic (or probabilistic) causation is
possible. There are two importantly different ways to understand
nondeterministic causation: as the causation of probability or as the
probability of causation. Under
the causation of probability model, a nondeterministic cause \(C\)
causes (or causally contributes to) the objective probability of the
outcome's occurring rather than the outcome itself. On this
account, \(S\)'s reasons do not cause his decision but there
being a certain antecedent objective probability of its occurring, and
the decision itself is uncaused. On the competing probability of
causation model, a nondeterministic cause \(C\) causes the outcome of
a nondeterministic process. Given that \(C\) is a nondeterministic
cause of the outcome, it was possible given the exact same past and
laws of nature that \(C\) not cause the outcome (perhaps because it
was possible that some other event cause some other outcome)--the
probability of this causal transaction's occurring was less than
\(1\). Given that event-causal libertarians maintain that
self-determined actions, and thus free actions, must be caused, they
are committed to the probability of causation model of
nondeterministic causation (cf. Franklin 2018, 25-26). (We note
that Balaguer [2010] is skeptical of the above distinction, and it is
thus unclear whether he should best be classified as a non-causal or
event-causal libertarian, though see Balaguer [2014] for evidence that
it is best to treat him as a non-causalist.) Consequently, according
to event-causal libertarians, when an agent \(S\) self-determines his
choice \(\phi\), then \(S\)'s reasons \(r\_1\)
nondeterministically cause (in a nondeviant way) \(\phi\), and it was
possible, given the past and laws, that \(r\_1\) not have caused
\(\phi\), but rather some of \(S\)'s other reasons \(r\_2\)
nondeterministically caused (in a nondeviant way) a different action
\(\psi\).



Agent-causal libertarians contend that the event-causal picture fails
to capture self-determination, for it fails to accord the agent with a
power to *settle* what she does. Pereboom offers a forceful
statement of this worry:



> 
> 
> On an event-causal libertarian picture, the relevant causal conditions
> antecedent to the decision, i.e., the occurrence of certain
> agent-involving events, do not settle whether the decision will occur,
> but only render the occurrence of the decision about \(50\%\)
> probable. In fact, because no occurrence of antecedent events settles
> whether the decision will occur, and only antecedent events are
> causally relevant, *nothing* settles whether the decision will
> occur. (Pereboom 2014, 32; cf. Watson 1987, 1996; Clarke 2003 [ch. 8], 2011; Griffith 2010; Shabo 2011, 2013;
> Steward 2012 [ch. 3]; and Schlosser 2014); and for critical
> assessment, see Clarke 2019.
> 
> 
> 



On the event-causal picture, the agent's causal contribution to
her actions is exhausted by the causal contribution of her reasons,
and yet her reasons leave open which decisions she will make, and this
seems insufficient for self-determination.



But what more must be added? Agent-causal libertarians maintain that
self-determination requires that *the agent herself* play a
causal role over and above the causal role played by her reasons. Some
agent-causal libertarians deny that an agent's reasons play any
direct causal role in bringing about an agent's self-determined
actions (Chisholm 1966; O'Connor 2000, ch. 5), whereas
others allow or even require that self-determined actions be caused in
part by the agent's reasons (Clarke 2003, ch. 9; Steward 2012,
ch. 3). But all agent-causal libertarians insist that exercises of the
power of self-determination do not reduce to nondeterministic
causation by apt mental states: agent-causation does not reduce to
event-causation.



Agent-causal libertarianism seems to capture an aspect of
self-determination that neither the above compatibilists accounts nor
event-causal libertarian accounts capture. (Some compatibilists even
accept this and try to incorporate agent-causation into a
compatibilist understanding of free will. See Markosian 1999, 2012;
Nelkin 2011.) These accounts reduce the causal role of the self to
states and events to which the agent is not identical (even if he is
identified with them). But how can *self*-determination of my
actions wholly reduce to determination of my actions by things
*other* than the self? Richard Taylor nicely expresses this
intuition: "If I believe that something not identical to myself
was the cause of my behavior--some event wholly external to
myself, for instance, or even one internal to myself, such as a nerve
impulse, volition, or whatnot--then I cannot regard the behavior
as being an act of mine, unless I further believed that I was the
cause of that external or internal event" (1974, 55; cf.
Franklin 2016).



Despite its powerful intuitive pull for some, many have argued that
agent-causal libertarianism is obscure or even incoherent. The stock
objection used to be that the very idea of
agent-causation--causation by agents that is not reducible to
causation by mental states and events involving the agent--is
incoherent, but this objection has become less common due to
pioneering work by Chisholm (1966, 1976), Taylor (1974),
O'Connor (2000, 2011), Clarke (2003), and Steward 2012, ch. 8). More common objections now concern, first, how to understand the
relationship between agent-causation and an agent's reasons (or
motivations in general), and, second, the empirical adequacy of
agent-causal libertarianism. With respect to the first worry, it is
widely assumed that the only (or at least best) way to understand
reasons-explanation and motivational influence is within a causal
account of reasons, where reasons cause our actions (Davidson 1963;
Mele 1992). If agent-causal libertarians accept that self-determined
actions, in addition to being agent-caused, must also be caused by
agents' reasons that favored those actions, then agent-causal
libertarians need to explain how to integrate these causes (for a
detailed attempt to do just this, see Clarke 2003, ch. 8). Given that
these two causes seem distinct, is it not possible that the agent
cause his decision to \(\phi\) and yet the agent's reasons
simultaneously cause an incompatible decision to \(\psi\)? If
agent-causal libertarians side-step this difficult question by denying
that reasons cause action, then they must explain how reasons can
explain and motivate action without causing it; and this has turned
out to be no easy task. (For more general attempts to
understand reasons-explanation and motivation within a non-causal
framework see Schueler 1995, 2003; Sehon 2005). For further discussion
see the entry on
 incompatibilist (nondeterministic) theories of free will.



Finally, we note that some recent philosophers have questioned the
presumed difference between event- and agent-causation by arguing that
*all* causation is object or substance causation. They argue
that the dominant tendency to understand 'garden variety'
causal transactions in the world as relations between events is an
unfortunate legacy of David Hume's rejection of substance and
causation as basic metaphysical categories. On the competing
metaphysical picture of the world, the event or state of an
object's having some property such as mass is its having a
causal power, which in suitable circumstances it exercises to bring
about a characteristic effect. Applied to human agents in an account
of free will, the account suggests a picture on which an agent's
having desires, beliefs, and intentions are rational powers to will
particular courses of action, and where the agent's willing is
not determined in any one direction, she wills freely. An advantage
for the agent-causalist who embraces this broader metaphysics is
'ideological' parsimony. For different developments and
defenses of this approach, see Lowe (2008), Swinburne (2013), and O'Connor (2021); and for reason
to doubt that a substance-causal metaphysics helps to allay skepticism
concerning free will, see Clarke and Reed (2015).


## 3. Do We Have Free Will?



Most philosophers theorizing about free will take themselves to be
attempting to analyze a near-universal power of mature human beings.
But as we've noted above, there have been free will skeptics in
both ancient and (especially) modern times. (Israel 2001 highlights a
number of such skeptics in the early modern period.) In this section,
we summarize the main lines of argument both for and against the
reality of human freedom of will.


### 3.1 Arguments *Against* the Reality of Free Will



There are both a priori and empirical arguments against free will (See
the entry on
 skepticism about moral responsibility).
 Several of these start with an argument that free will is
incompatible with causal determinism, which we will not rehearse here.
Instead, we focus on arguments that human beings lack free will,
against the background assumption that freedom and causal determinism
are incompatible.



The most radical a priori argument is that free will is not merely
contingently absent but is impossible. Nietzsche 1886 [1966] argues to
this effect, and more recently it has been argued by Galen Strawson
(1986, ch. 2; 1994, 2002). Strawson associates free will with being
'ultimately morally responsible' for one's actions.
He argues that, because how one acts is a result of, or explained by,
"how one is, mentally speaking" (\(M\)), for one to be
responsible for that choice one must be responsible for \(M\). To be
responsible for \(M\), one must have chosen to be \(M\)
itself--and that not blindly, but deliberately, in accordance
with some reasons \(r\_1\). But for that choice to be a responsible
one, one must have chosen to be such as to be moved by \(r\_1\),
requiring some further reasons \(r\_2\) for such a choice. And so on,
*ad infinitum*. Free choice requires an impossible infinite
regress of choices to be the way one is in making choices.



There have been numerous replies to Strawson's argument. Mele
(1995, 221ff.) argues that Strawson misconstrues the locus of freedom
and responsibility. Freedom is principally a feature of our actions,
and only derivatively of our characters from which such actions
spring. The task of the theorist is to show how one is in rational,
reflective control of the choices one makes, consistent with there
being no freedom-negating conditions. While this seems right, when
considering those theories that make one's free control to
reside directly in the causal efficacy of one's reasons (such as
compatibilist reasons-responsive accounts or event-causal
libertarianism), it is not beside the point to reflect on how one came
to be that way in the first place and to worry that such reflection
should lead one to conclude that true responsibility (and hence
freedom) is undermined, since a complete distal source of any action
may be found external to the agent. Clarke (2003, 170-76) argues
that an effective reply may be made by indeterminists, and, in
particular, by nondeterministic agent-causal theorists. Such theorists
contend that (i) aspects of 'how one is, mentally
speaking', fully *explain* an agent's choice
without causally determining it and (ii) the agent himself causes the
choice that is made (so that the agent's antecedent state, while
grounding an explanation of the action, is not the complete causal
source of it). Since the agent's exercise of this power is
causally undetermined, it is not true that there is a sufficient
'ultimate' source of it external to the agent. Finally,
Mele (2006, 129-34, and 2017, 212-16) and O'Connor
(2009b) suggest that freedom and moral responsibility come in
degrees and grow over time, reflecting the fact that 'how one
is, mentally speaking' is increasingly shaped by one's own
past choices. Furthermore, some choices for a given individual may
reflect more freedom and responsibility than others, which may be the
kernel of truth behind Strawson's sweeping argument. (For
discussion of the ways that nature, nurture, and contingent
circumstances shape our behavior and raise deep issues concerning the
*extent* of our freedom and responsibility, see Levy 2011 and
Russell 2017, chs. 10-12.)



A second family of arguments against free will contend that, in one
way or another, nondeterministic theories of freedom entail either
that agents lack control over their choices or that the choices cannot
be adequately explained. These arguments are variously called the
'Mind', 'Rollback', or 'Luck'
argument, with the latter admitting of several versions. (For
statements of such arguments, see van Inwagen 1983, ch. 4; 2000; Haji
2001; Mele 2006; Shabo 2011, 2013, 2020; Coffman 2015). We note that
some philosophers advance such arguments not as parts of a general
case against free will, but merely as showing the inadequacy of
specific accounts of free will [see, e.g., Griffith 2010].) They each
describe imagined cases--individual cases, or comparison of
intra- or inter-world duplicate antecedent conditions followed by
diverging outcomes--designed to elicit the judgment that the
occurrence of a choice that had remained unsettled given *all*
prior causal factors can only be a 'matter of chance',
'random', or 'a matter of luck'. Such terms
have been imported from other contexts and have come to function as
quasi-technical, unanalyzed concepts in these debates, and it is
perhaps more helpful to avoid such proxies and to conduct the debates
directly in terms of the metaphysical notion of control and epistemic
notion of explanation. Where the arguments question whether an
undetermined agent can exercise appropriate control over the choice he
makes, proponents of nondeterministic theories often reply that
control is not exercised prior to, but at the time of the
choice--in the very act of bringing it about (see, e.g., Clarke
2005 and O'Connor 2007). Where the arguments question whether
undetermined choices can be adequately explained, the reply often
consists in identifying a form of explanation other than the form
demanded by the critic--a 'noncontrastive'
explanation, perhaps, rather than a 'contrastive'
explanation, or a species of contrastive explanation consistent with
indeterminism (see, e.g., Kane 1999;
Clarke, 2003, ch. 8; and Franklin 2011a; 2018, ch. 5).



We now consider empirical arguments against human freedom. Some of
these stem from the physical sciences (while making assumptions
concerning the way physical phenomena fix psychological phenomena) and
others from neuroscience and psychology.



It used to be common for philosophers to argue that there is empirical
reason to believe that the world in general is causally determined,
and since human beings are parts of the world, they are too. Many took
this to be strongly confirmed by the spectacular success of Isaac
Newton's framework for understanding the universe as governed
everywhere by fairly simple, exceptionless laws of motion. But the
quantum revolution of the early twentieth century has made that
'clockwork universe' image at least doubtful at the level
of basic physics. While quantum mechanics has proven spectacularly
successful as a framework for making precise and accurate predictions
of certain observable phenomena, its implications for the causal
structure of reality is still not well understood, and there are
competing indeterministic and deterministic interpretations. See the
entry on
 quantum mechanics
 for detailed discussion.) It is possible that indeterminacy on the
small-scale, supposing it to be genuine, 'cancels out' at
the macroscopic scale of birds and buildings and people, so that
behavior at this scale is virtually deterministic. But this idea, once
common, is now being challenged empirically, even at the level of
basic biology. Furthermore, the social, biological, and medical
sciences, too, are rife with merely statistical generalizations.
Plainly, the jury is out on all these inter-theoretic questions. But
that is just a way to say that current science does *not*
decisively support the idea that everything we do is pre-determined by
the past, and ultimately by the distant past, wholly out of our
control. For discussion, see Balaguer (2009), Koch (2009), Roskies
(2014), Ellis (2016).



Maybe, then, we are subject to myriad causal influences, but the sum
total of these influences doesn't determine what we do, they
only make it more or less likely that we'll do this or that. Now
some of the a priori no-free-will arguments above center on
nondeterministic theories according to which there are objective
antecedent probabilities associated with each possible choice outcome.
Why objective probabilities of this kind might present special
problems beyond those posed by the absence of determinism has been
insufficiently explored to date. (For brief discussion, see Vicens
2016 and O'Connor 2016.) But one philosopher who argues that
there is reason to hold that our actions, if undetermined, are
governed by objective probabilities and that this fact calls into
question whether we act freely is Derk Pereboom (2001, ch. 3; 2014,
ch. 3). Pereboom notes that our best physical theories indicate that
statistical laws govern isolated, small-scale physical events, and he
infers from the thesis that human beings are wholly physically
composed that such statistical laws will also govern all the physical
components of human actions. Finally, Pereboom maintains that
agent-causal libertarianism offers the correct analysis of free will.
He then invites us to imagine that the antecedent probability of some
physical component of an action occurring is \(0.32\). If the action
is free while not violating the statistical law, then, in a scenario
with a large enough number of instances, this action would have to be
freely chosen close to \(32\) percent of the time. This leads to the
problem of "wild coincidences":



> 
> 
> if the occurrence of these physical components were settled by the
> choices of agent-causes, then their actually being chosen close to 32
> percent of the time would amount to a coincidence no less wild than
> the coincidence of possible actions whose physical components have an
> antecedent probability of about 0.99 being chosen, over large enough
> number of instances, close to 99 percent of the time. The proposal
> that agent-caused free choices do not diverge from what the
> statistical laws predict for the physical components of our actions
> would run so sharply counter to what we would expect as to make it
> incredible. (2014, 67)
> 
> 
> 



Clarke (2010) questions the implicit assumption that free agent-causal
choices should be expected *not* to conform to physical
statistical laws, while O'Connor (2009a) challenges the more
general assumption that freedom requires that agent-causal choices not
be governed by statistical laws of any kind, as they plausibly would
be if the relevant psychological states/powers are strongly emergent
from physical states of the human brain. Finally, Runyan 2018 argues
that Pereboom's case rests on an implausible empirical assumption
concerning the evolution of objective probabilities concerning types
of behavior over time. 



Pereboom's empirical basis for free will skepticism is very
general. Others see support for free will skepticism from specific
findings and theories in the human sciences. They point to evidence
that we can be unconsciously influenced in the choices we make by a
range of factors, including ones that are not motivationally relevant;
that we can come to believe that we chose to initiate a behavior that
in fact was artificially induced; that people subject to certain
neurological disorders will sometimes engage in purposive behavior
while sincerely believing that they are not directing them. Finally, a
great deal of attention has been given to the work of neuroscientist
Benjamin Libet (2002). Libet conducted some simple experiments that
seemed to reveal the existence of 'preparatory' brain
activity (the 'readiness potential') shortly before a subject engages
in an ostensibly spontaneous action. (Libet interpreted this activity
as the brain's 'deciding' what to do before we are
consciously settled on a course of action.) Wegner (2002) surveys all
of these findings (some of which are due to his own work as a social
psychologist) and argues on their basis that the experience of
conscious willing is 'an illusion'. For criticism of such
arguments, see Mele (2009); Nahmias (2014);
Mudrik et al. (2022); and several contributions to Maoz and
Sinnott-Armstrong (2022). Libet's interpretation of the readiness
potential has come in for severe criticism. After extensive subsequent
study, neuroscientists are uncertain what it signifies. For thorough
review of the evidence, see Schurger et al. (2021).



While Pereboom and others point to these empirical considerations in
defense of free will skepticism, other philosophers see them as
reasons to favor a more modest free will agnosticism (Kearns 2015) or
to promote revisionism about the 'folk idea of free will'
(Vargas 2013; Nichols 2015).


### 3.2 Arguments *for* the Reality of Free Will



If one is a compatibilist, then a case for the reality of free will
requires evidence for our being effective agents who for the most part
are aware of what we do and why we are doing it. If one is an
incompatibilist, then the case requires *in addition* evidence
for causal indeterminism, occurring in the right locations in the
process leading from deliberation to action. Many think that we
already have third-personal 'neutral' scientific evidence
for much of human behavior's satisfying modest compatibilist
requirements, such as Fischer and Ravizza's
reasons-responsiveness account. However, given the immaturity of
social science and the controversy over whether psychological states
'reduce' in some sense to underlying physical states (and
what this might entail for the reality of mental causation), this
claim is doubtful. A more promising case for our satisfying (at least)
compatibilist requirements on freedom is that effective agency is
*presupposed* by all scientific inquiry and so cannot
rationally be doubted (which fact is overlooked by some of the more
extreme 'willusionists' such as Wegner).



However, effective intervention in the world (in scientific practice
and elsewhere) does not (obviously) require that our behavior be
causally undetermined, so the 'freedom is rationally
presupposed' argument cannot be launched for such an
understanding of freedom. Instead, incompatibilists usually give one
of the following two bases for rational belief in freedom (both of
which can be given by compatibilists, too).



First, philosophers have long claimed that we have introspective
evidence of freedom in our experience of action, or perhaps of
consciously attended or deliberated action. Augustine and Scotus,
discussed earlier, are two examples among many. In recent years,
philosophers have been more carefully scrutinizing the experience of
agency and a debate has emerged concerning its contents, and in
particular whether it supports an indeterministic theory of human free
action. For discussion, see Deery et al. (2013), Guillon (2014),
Horgan (2015), and Bayne (2017).



Second, philosophers (e.g., Reid 1788 [1969], Swinburne 2013)
sometimes claim that our belief in the reality of free will is
epistemically basic, or reasonable without requiring independent
evidential support. Most philosophers hold that some beliefs have that
status, on pain of our having no justified beliefs whatever. It is
controversial, however, just which beliefs do because it is
controversial which criteria a belief must satisfy to qualify for that
privileged status. It is perhaps necessary that a basic belief be
'instinctive' (unreflectively held) for all or most human
beings; that it be embedded in regular experience; and that it be
central to our understanding of an important aspect of the world. Our
belief in free will seems to meet these criteria, but whether they are
sufficient is debated. (O'Connor 2019 proposes that free will
belief is epistemically basic but defeasible.) Other philosophers
defend a variation on this stance, maintaining instead that belief in
the reality of moral responsibility is epistemically basic, and that
since moral responsibility entails free will, or so it is claimed, we
may *infer* the reality of free will (see, e.g., van Inwagen
1983, 206-13).


## 4. Theological Wrinkles


### 4.1 Free Will and God's Power, Knowledge, and Goodness



A large portion of Western philosophical work on free will has been
written within an overarching theological framework, according to
which God is the ultimate source, sustainer, and end of all else. Some
of these thinkers draw the conclusion that God must be a sufficient,
wholly determining cause for everything that happens; all of them
suppose that every creaturely act necessarily depends on the
explanatorily prior, cooperative activity of God. It is also commonly
presumed by philosophical theists that human beings are free and
responsible (on pain of attributing evil in the world to God alone,
and so impugning His perfect goodness). Hence, those who believe that
God is omni-determining typically are compatibilists with respect to
freedom and (in this case) theological determinism. Edwards (1754
[1957]) is a good example. But those who suppose that God's
sustaining activity (and special activity of conferring grace) is only
a necessary condition on the outcome of human free choices need to
tell a more subtle story, on which omnipotent God's cooperative
activity can be (explanatorily) prior to a human choice and yet the
outcome of that choice be settled only by the choice itself. For
important medieval discussions--the apex of philosophical
reflection on theological concerns--see the relevant portions of
Al-Ghazali *IP*, Aquinas *BW* and Scotus *QAM*.
Three positions (given in order of logical strength) on God's
activity vis-a-vis creaturely activity were variously defended
by thinkers of this area: mere conservationism, concurrentism, and
occasionalism. These positions turn on subtle distinctions, which have
recently been explored by Freddoso (1988), Kvanvig and McCann (1991),
Koons (2002), Grant (2016 and 2019), and Judisch (2016).



Many suppose that there is a challenge to human freedom stemming not
only from God's perfect power but also from his perfect
knowledge. A standard argument for the incompatibility of free will
and causal determinism has a close theological analogue. Recall van
Inwagen's influential formulation of the 'Consequence
Argument':



> 
> 
> If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws
> of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what
> went on before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws
> of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including
> our present acts) are not up to us. (van Inwagen 1983, 16)
> 
> 
> 



And now consider an argument that turns on God's comprehensive
and infallible knowledge of the future:



> 
> 
> If infallible divine foreknowledge is true, then our acts are the
> (logical) consequences of God's beliefs in the remote past.
> (Since God *cannot* get things wrong, his believing that
> something will be so entails that it will be so.) But it is not up to
> us what beliefs God had before we were born, and neither is it up to
> us that God's beliefs are necessarily true. Therefore, the
> consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up
> to us.
> 
> 
> 



An excellent discussion of these arguments in tandem and attempts to
point to relevant disanalogies between causal determinism and
infallible foreknowledge may be found in the introduction to Fischer
(1989). See also the entry on
 foreknowledge and free will.




Another issue concerns how knowledge of God, the ultimate Good, would
impact human freedom. Many philosophical theologians, especially the
medieval Aristotelians, were drawn to the idea that human beings
cannot but will that which they take to be an unqualified good. (As
noted above, Duns Scotus is an exception to this consensus, as were
Ockham and Suarez subsequently, but their dissent is limited.) Hence,
if there is an afterlife, in which humans 'see God face to
face,' they will *inevitably* be drawn to Him. Following
Pascal, Murray (1993, 2002) argues that a good God would choose to
make His existence and character less than certain for human beings,
for the sake of preserving their freedom. (He will do so, the argument
goes, at least for a period of time in which human beings participate
in their own character formation.) If it is a good for human beings
that they freely choose to respond in love to God and to act in
obedience to His will, then God must maintain an 'epistemic
distance' from them lest they be overwhelmed by His goodness or
power and respond out of necessity, rather than freedom. (See also the
other essays in Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002.)



If it is true that God withholds our ability to be certain of his
existence for the sake of our freedom, then it is natural to conclude
that humans will lack freedom in heaven. And it is anyways common to
traditional Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologies to maintain that
humans cannot sin in heaven. Even so, traditional Christian theology
at least maintains that human persons in heaven are free. What sort of
freedom is in view here, and how does it relate to mundane freedom?
Two good recent discussions of these questions are Pawl and Timpe
(2009) and Tamburro (2017).


### 4.2 God's Freedom



Finally, there is the question of the freedom of God himself. Perfect
goodness is an essential, not acquired, attribute of God. God cannot
lie or be in any way immoral in His dealings with His creatures
(appearances notwithstanding). Unless we take the minority position on
which this is a trivial claim, since whatever God does
*definitionally* counts as good, this appears to be a
significant, inner constraint on God's freedom. Did we not
contemplate immediately above that human freedom would be curtailed by
our having an unmistakable awareness of what is in fact the Good? And
yet is it not passing strange to suppose that God should be less than
perfectly free?



One suggested solution to this puzzle takes as its point of departure
the distinction noted in section 2.3 between the ability to do
otherwise and sourcehood, proposing that the core metaphysical feature
of freedom is being the ultimate source, or originator, of one's
choices. For human beings or any created persons who owe their
existence to factors outside themselves, the only way their acts of
will could find their ultimate origin in themselves is for such acts
not to be determined by their character and circumstances. For if all
my willings were wholly determined, then if we were to trace my causal
history back far enough, we would ultimately arrive at external
factors that gave rise to me, with my particular genetic dispositions.
My motives at the time would not be the *ultimate* source of my
willings, only the most *proximate* ones. Only by there being
less than deterministic connections between external influences and
choices, then, is it be possible for me to be an ultimate source of my
activity, concerning which I may truly say, "the buck stops
here."



As is generally the case, things are different on this point in the
case of God. As Anselm observed, even if God's character
absolutely precludes His performing certain actions in certain
contexts, this will not imply that some external factor is in any way
a partial origin of His willings and refrainings from willing. Indeed,
this would not be so even if he were determined by character to will
*everything* which He wills. God's nature owes its
existence to nothing. Thus, God would be the sole and ultimate source
of His will even if He couldn't will otherwise.



Well, then, might God have willed otherwise in *any* respect?
The majority view in the history of philosophical theology is that He
indeed could have. He might have chosen not to create anything at all.
And given that He did create, He might have created any number of
alternatives to what we observe. But there have been noteworthy
thinkers who argued the contrary position, along with others who
clearly felt the pull of the contrary position even while resisting
it. The most famous such thinker is Leibniz (1710 [1985]), who argued
that God, being both perfectly good and perfectly powerful, cannot
fail to will the best possible world. Leibniz insisted that this is
consistent with saying that God is able to will otherwise, although
his defense of this last claim is notoriously difficult to make out
satisfactorily. Many read Leibniz, *malgre lui*, as one
whose basic commitments imply that God could not have willed other
than He does in any respect.



One might challenge Leibniz's reasoning on this point by
questioning the assumption that there is a uniquely best possible
Creation (an option noted by Adams 1987, though he challenges instead
Leibniz's conclusion based on it). One way this could be is if
there is no well-ordering of worlds: some pairs of worlds are
sufficiently different in kind that they are incommensurate with each
other (neither is better than the other, nor are they equal) and no
world is better than either of them. Another way this could be is if
there is no upper limit on goodness of worlds: for every possible
world God might have created, there are others (infinitely many, in
fact) which are better. If such is the case, one might argue, it is
reasonable for God to arbitrarily choose which world to create from
among those worlds exceeding some threshold value of overall
goodness.



However, William Rowe (2004) has countered that the thesis that there
is no upper limit on goodness of worlds has a very different
consequence: it shows that there could not be a morally perfect
Creator! For suppose our world has an on-balance moral value of \(n\)
and that God chose to create it despite being aware of possibilities
having values higher than \(n\) that He was able to create. It seems
we can now imagine a morally better Creator: one having the same
options who chooses to create a better world. For critical replies to
Rowe, see Almeida (2008, ch. 1), Kray (2010), and Zimmerman (2018).



Finally, Norman Kretzmann (1997, 220-25) has argued in the
context of Aquinas's theological system that there is strong
pressure to say that God must have created something or other, though
it may well have been open to Him to create any of a number of
contingent orders. The reason is that there is no plausible account of
how an absolutely perfect God might have a *resistible*
motivation--one consideration among other, competing
considerations--for creating something rather than nothing. (It
obviously cannot have to do with any sort of utility, for example.)
The best general understanding of God's being motivated to
create at all--one which in places Aquinas himself comes very
close to endorsing--is to see it as reflecting the fact that
God's very being, which is goodness, necessarily diffuses
itself. Perfect goodness will naturally communicate itself outwardly;
God who is perfect goodness will naturally create, generating a
dependent reality that imperfectly reflects that goodness. Wainwright
(1996) discusses a somewhat similar line of thought in the Puritan
thinker Jonathan Edwards. Alexander Pruss (2016), however, raises
substantial grounds for doubt concerning this line of thought;
O'Connor (2022) offers a rejoinder.