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In compatibilists believe that we cannot act freely and be morally responsible for an action in a deterministic world, while compatibilists don’t deny the possibility of free action and moral responsibility for the agent, and they believe that we can find some kind of compatibility between moral responsibility and causal determination. This article will analyze Alfred Mele's zygote argument of manipulation, which is an argument in critique of compatibilism between moral responsibility and the deterministic world. Manipulation argument is an argument based on an agent's intuition of a situation in which the agent is under the control of another person or force. It wants to show that an agent in a manipulated situation, despite satisfying the compatibilists conditions, is not morally responsible for her action, and she is like the agent in a deterministic world.

At the end of the 20th century, a discipline of Buddhist ethics was formed in English-speaking countries, within the framework of which a community of closely interacting researchers is engaged in the comprehension and systematization of ethical positions within Buddhism, often resorting to the use of analytical philosophy tools. One of the directions within the discipline of Buddhist ethics is an attempt to embed the ethical content of Buddhism in a contemporary Western European philosophical context and to put before it questions characteristic of Western philosophy, for example, the questions of moral responsibility, free will and determinism. While some researchers believe that Buddhist texts reflect a compatibilist position, others see Buddhist ethical position as resembling incompatibilism. The first problem faced by Buddhist researchers interested in this topic is that Buddhism does not have a concept of “free will” similar to the one that exists in Western philosophy. Nevertheless, contemporary theorists believe that classical Buddhism contains enough material to allow for a conversation about causality and responsibility. The purpose of this research is to substantiate the possibility of discussing free will in the context of the ethics of Buddhism. In order to do this the research examines the key provisions of Buddhist teaching relevant in the context of free will: dependent arising, absence of self and karma. It is noted that one of the reasons for the difference in the conclusions of researchers of Buddhist ethics regarding the issue of free will and moral responsibility in Buddhism are the peculiarities of Theravada and Mahayana and their particular texts different theorists mainly refer to.

This article critically examines the experimental philosophy of free will, particularly the interplay between ordinary individuals' compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions. It explores key insights from research studies that propose "natural compatibilism" and "natural incompatibilism". These studies reveal a complex landscape of folk intuitions, where participants appear to exhibit both types of intuitions. Here, we examine error theories, which purport to explain the coexistence of apparently contradictory intuitions: the Affective Performance Error hypothesis, the "Free Will No Matter What" hypothesis, the Bypassing hypothesis, and the Intrusion hypothesis, and the article explores the cognitive errors that could shape individuals' inconsistent perceptions of free will. We then explore three possibilities regarding folk intuitions: most individuals may hold either compatibilist or incompatibilist intuitions, both simultaneously, or neither. Our aim is to deepen the understanding of the complex dynamics of intuitions about free will, and we close with suggestions for future studies in experimental philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Modern discussions about free will are reduced to the confrontation between compatibilism and incompatibilism. The desire of the former to connect the free will of the individual with physical conditioning actualizes the problem of responsibility for the moral actions performed by the individual. Theoretical analysis. The main socio-philosophical reflections on liberty and responsibility in the context of the 17th century liberalism theory are analyzed. The concepts of T. Hobbes, J. Locke and B. Spinoza are interpreted through the prism of the rational justification of liberty, understanding the correlation between a person’s choice and his actions. The paradigm of new thinking, created by liberal philosophers, made it possible to assess the meaning of freedom in a fundamentally different way – from the point of view of the interaction between an individual and society. A comparative analysis of the provisions on free will allows us to assert the aggravation of the problem of moral responsibility, caused by the rational awareness of free action criteria. Conclusion. The ideas of classical liberal-thinking philosophers acted as a theoretical foundation in the development of the compatibilism concept, the supporters of which associated freedom with necessity. Thus, we can talk about the continuity outlined back in antiquity – from freedom as a “cognized necessity” to its understanding as free will.

Are the meanings of “chance” and “guidedness” consistent? The goal of this article is toprovide an affirmative answer to this question and thereby defend compatibilism (or accommodationism), which is the position that evolutionary theory and interventionist theism can coexist harmoniously. Compatibilists, such as van Inwagen (2003), Bartholomew (2008), Dowe (2011), Bradley (2012), and Sober (2014) argue that certain components or features of the biosphere exhibit both chancy and divinely guided aspects. What is chance?The concept of chance, in its scientific sense, is closely related to the concept of probability. One can interpret the probabilities used in scientific theories ontologically. If so, by “chance” we mean whatever objective property in the world the term “ontological probability” picks out (Suárez, 2022).[1] The received view suggests that chance and randomness are identical but technically speaking, “chance” describes the process that leads to the production of an outcome, while the term “random” describes the outcome itself.(Von Mises’ definition of randomness): A sequence, such as a sequence of zeroes and ones, is considered random when no successful gambling strategy can be made to predict the next number in the sequence. In other words, a sequence is random if it cannot be exploited by a gambling system for prediction. (Eagle, 2021)Furthermore, “chance” is often used synonymously with “coincidence.” Coincidence refers to the co-occurrence of two independent deterministic chains of events. In this sense, being chancy implies having a cause. Sometimes “chancy” is used synonymously with “accidental.” In this sense, a chance event does not possess a specific purpose. It is important to note that not every coincidence is considered an accident (Dowe, 2011).Genetic mutations serve as quintessential examples of chance events in evolutionary theory, as they do not occur in response to environmental threats or opportunities faced by species. In other words, there is no statistical relationship or correlation between the usefulness to a particular species of a potential mutation and the probability of that mutation occurring.The compatibility of “chance” and “guidedness”The incompatibilist might argue that chance processes cannot be divinely guided because the very meaning of being guided is not compatible with the meaning of being chancy. In response, van Inwagen (2003) points out that 1) the term “chancy” has multiple meanings, such that (2) some of these meanings can coexist with the idea of being guided, and (3) the meaning of “chancy” relevant to evolutionary theory falls within this category. Therefore, the argument just presented is not valid. Van Inwagen believes that the compatibilist perspective favors considering “chance” as coincidence. Being a coincidence requires having a cause, but having a cause does not necessarily imply having a purpose or being divinely guided. The question facing the compatibilist is whether chance is compatible with being divinely guided. Hence, van Inwagen mistakenly conflates having a cause with being guided.However, van Inwagen's approach can be modified. There are meanings of “chance” and “guided” according to which these two concepts can be considered compatible. To illustrate this, let’s consider a chain of events as follows:Mutation 1, the occurrence of feature 1 in species A; mutation 2, the occurrence of feature 2 in species B; mutation 3, the occurrence of feature 3 in species A; mutation 4, the occurrence of feature 4 in species C, and so on.This chain is random in the sense that knowing one part of it does not allow for predictions of the next event with significant probability. Genetic mutations are chance events; there is no statistical correlation between the usefulness of a particular mutation and the probability of its occurrence. If such a correlation existed, probabilistic predictions would be possible. However, it can still be argued that this chain is guided, meaning that its members are deliberately chosen by an intelligent agent. Having a pattern is a property that describes the relationship among the members of the sequence while being deliberately chosen is a property that results from the fact that each member, and consequently the whole sequence, is somehow related to an external entity, say an intelligent agent.Thus, there is no prima facie contradiction in considering a sequence of events to be random and at the same time divinely guided. One might object that although it may not seem contradictory at first, no truly random sequence can be guided. However, it remains unclear what kind of argument could support this claim solely through an analysis of the meanings of “chance” and “guidedness.” One might argue that being random suggests a lack of direction while being guided requires having a specific direction. Alternatively, one might argue that being random implies that attempting to regenerate the same sequence via a chance process would most likely fail, whereas being guided suggests otherwise. While these objections carry weight, they all require an additional premise beyond the mere meanings of “chance” and “guidedness.”One way to understand “chancy” as opposed to “guided” is to define chance within the incompatibilist sense as follows:The incompatibilist meaning of “chancy”: not being intentionally brought about by an intelligent agent, either human or non-human, nor being necessitated by the laws of nature. (van Woudenberg, 2013)In this sense, a chance event cannot be guided. However, it is worth noting that evolutionary theory itself does not make any claims about intentional agency. The defender of the incompatibilist meaning seems to have assumed ontological naturalism, but not methodological naturalism. It is evident that ontological naturalists tend to favor the incompatibilist meaning. Van Inwagen (2013) highlights that methodological naturalism does not necessitate a scientific theory to explicitly deny the existence and effects of supernatural agents. If a methodological naturalist wishes to adopt the incompatibilist meaning, she or he must make an additional argument that goes beyond merely considering the meanings of “chance” and “guidedness”. [1]. For a defense of the existence of chance in the world, see van Inwagen (1995), Sober (2010), Bradley (2012), and Emery (2022).

Are the meanings of "chance" and "guidedness" consistent? The goal of this article is to provide an affirmative answer to this question and thereby defend compatibilism (or accommodationism), which is the position that evolutionary theory and interventionist theism can coexist harmoniously. Compatibilists, such as van Inwagen (2003), Bartholomew (2008), Dowe (2011), Bradley (2012), and Sober (2014) argue that certain components or features of the biosphere exhibit both chancy and divinely guided aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine compatibilism and incompatibilism about whether the self can be both a subject and an object in the same awareness at the same time. While this is an old debate that many traditions of philosophy have contributed to, my point of departure is the work of A.C. Mukerji (an Indian philosopher of the modern era) who worked on the possibility of self-awareness by articulating, what he called, the paradox of ego-centricity. I also consider Patañjali (an Indian philosopher of the classical era), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (a phenomenologist), and Arindam Chakrabarti (a contemporary Indian and Analytic philosopher) on the debate over compatibilism. First, I present Mukerji’s paradox, then I critically examine Patañjali and Merleau-Ponty’s arguments against incompatibilism. I move on to bring Mukerji’s paradox into contact with Chakrabarti’s arguments in favor of compatibilism. I critically examine Chakrabarti’s arguments in favor of compatibilism and against incompatibilism. While insightful and powerful, I argue that they can be resisted; and should be considered alongside Mukerji’s paradox. I close by offering an argument for compatibilism based on an analogy with particle-wave duality in quantum physics and the relation between conceivability and metaphysical modality.

Partial compatibilism says that there are basically two kinds of freedom of the will: some free volitions cannot be determined, while others can. My methodological choice is to examine what as- sumptions will appear necessary if we want to take seriously—and make understandable—our ordinary moral life. Sometimes, typically when we feel guilty about a choice of ours, we are sure enough that we, at the considered moment, actually could have taken a different option. At other times, however, typically when we are aware of some unquestionable moral reasons for a certain choice, we may perceive our choice as voluntary and free in spite of the fact that it is, in the given situation, unthinkable for us to choose otherwise than we actually do (there are situations when responsible agents, because of their strong moral reasons/motives, cannot choose differently). The assumption that experiences of the first kind are not always mistaken excludes our world being deterministic. Yet free will and determinism go together in some of those possible worlds which contain only the second kind of free volitions. Partial compatibilism represents a ‘third way’ between standard compatibilism and incompatibilism, a way to solve that old dilemma.

Shepherd defends an account of the universe founded on two causal principles: that effects necessarily have causes, and that like causes have like effects. Folding mind into the class of natural phenomena governed by these principles, Shepherd naturalizes the mind, but in doing so she sets herself the challenge of explaining how, within a deterministic universe, agents can be necessary causes of their own actions. With special attention to Shepherd’s resistance to materialism and to any reduction of the mental, the paper argues that we can read Shepherd as leveraging her original theory of causation to develop a distinctive compatibilist view of the psychology of intention, one that makes agents the necessary causal sources of their own actions.

The desire to die brings about the most radical consequences that can occur in a human life. It therefore requires a high degree of justification. Questions have been raised as to whether this justification can be given in the case of a suicide desire in mental illness. Landmark court decisions and the practice of assisted suicide organizations make the justification of a mentally ill person's suicide desire dependent on the desire not being an expression of the illness. This view is explained in detail and finally rejected as misleading. That argument is based on a conceptual analysis of the self, the nature of reasons for action, and the meaning of necessity with respect to personal autonomy. Against this background, it is shown that it is irrelevant for the assessment of the desire to die whether it has been causally brought about by the mental illness. On the other hand, what matters is whether the person has an internal reason that gives importance to his or her desire. This is to be distinguished from external, normative expectations of a person's "normal" desires. An internal reason that justifies the person's concern must give expression to who the person essentially is and what the person fundamentally cares about. Three objections to this view are formulated, critically evaluated, and rejected. From these considerations it follows that a professional assessment of the desire to die of mentally ill persons must consist primarily in clarifying whether the desire to die fulfills the stated conditions for freedom, irrespective of the mental illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Metafísica y Persona. Revista Sobre Filosofía, Conocimiento y Vida is the property of Universidad Popular Autonoma del Estado de Puebla A.C. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The desire to die brings about the most radical consequences that can occur in a human life. It therefore requires a high degree of justification. Questions have been raised as to whether this justification can be given in the case of a suicide desire in mental illness. Landmark court decisions and the practice of assisted suicide organizations make the justification of a mentally ill person’s suicide desire dependent on the desire not being an expression of the illness. This view is explained in detail and finally rejected as misleading. That argument is based on a conceptual analysis of the self, the nature of reasons for action, and the meaning of necessity with respect to personal autonomy. Against this background, it is shown that it is irrelevant for the assessment of the desire to die whether it has been causally brought about by the mental illness. On the other hand, what matters is whether the person has an internal reason that gives importance to his or her desire. This is to be distinguished from external, normative expectations of a person’s “normal” desires. An internal reason that justifies the person’s concern must give expression to who the person essentially is and what the person fundamentally cares about. Three objections to this view are formulated, critically evaluated, and rejected. From these considerations it follows that a professional assessment of the desire to die of mentally ill persons must consist primarily in clarifying whether the desire to die fulfills the stated conditions for freedom, irrespective of the mental illness.

In this paper, the author introduces the derivative consequence argument, which aims to demonstrate that moral responsibility is impossible in the world where physicalism and the strong realism about the laws of nature are both true. The basic intuition of the argument is that if the laws of nature determine the events, then nobody can be responsible for those events, because nobody is responsible for the laws of nature. This intuitive idea is formalized in the categories of derivative causation and motion. This argument is compatible with determinism and indeterminism, and all types of physicalism

This article presents the author’s attempt to analyze the argument “manipulation” versus “free will” by the philosopher Derk Pereboom. To demonstrate his position, Pereboom uses the “thought experiment” method, popular in analytical philosophy, and cites four similar cases. For the analysis and criticism of argumentation, developments from logic, a theory of argumentation, and science philosophy are used. An excursion into the history of “free will” was carried out, and the main directions in it were shown: compatibilism and incompatibilism, their differences, and strategies for arguing these positions. The article also examines the importance of free will in the context of the latest modern trends: globalization, COVID-19, civil society, foundations of democracy, a theory of law.

Free will is one of the philosophical topics that have important and significant function in the humanities. Various readings of free will have been provided; each of these readings has functions in the humanities that are completely different from other functions of the other reading. One of these functions is the use of legal theories about the punishment of offenders. In this paper, after introducing different theories of free will and two major legal theories about punishment (Retributivism and Utilitarianism) , the ratio of different forms of the free will to the legal theories of punishment is measured and the result is obtained that the legal theory Retributivism is based solely on an incompatible reading of free will, and it is only this type of freedom can apply the theory of punishment; contrary to the legal theory of Utilitarianism, which is non-conditioned to free will, and all the different forms, and even the attitude of hard determinism, can use this theory of punishment. According to this result, Mulla Sadra's view was drawn on punishment, and it was clear that he - as a Compatibilist philosopher - did not deny the ability to praise and deserve punishment; but in a diminishing approach, he reduces the concentration of these concepts in an incompatible intellectual system and reduces them in the sense that it can be used in the system of Compatibilism; this has led him to be very similar in terms of practical functions, to the theories of Utilitarian punishment.

This paper seeks to explain and evaluate, by an analytic method, the conflict between determinism and free will from the viewpoint of two physicalist reductionist philosophers, namely, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. Dennett is a compatibilist philosopher who tries to show compatibility between determinism and free will, while Sam Harris is a non-compatibilist philosopher who turns to determinism with the thesis that our thoughts and actions have been pre-determined by the neurobiological events associated with them, and thus, considers free will to be an illusion. Therefore according to him, we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions. However, Dennett tries to establish the existence of free will through the use of concepts like control and deliberation and defends ‘free will worth wanting’. Therefore, if we take the agency of the agent and the absence of determinism as two criteria for free will, Dennett accepts both and Harris denies them; since there is neurobiological determinism, and all of Dennett's deliberations, etc. are also determined neurobiologically. Between the two conditions of free will, Dennett accepts that the origin of action must be in the agent; however, he refutes the condition of alternate possibilities, establishing his view based on a causal theory. As a Neo-Darwinist, he explains human beings’ physical and mental phenomena based on evolution theory and despite accepting causal determinism, he shows how the agent can still have agency in decisions and actions. As a result, he does not consider determinism to requisite compulsion. In his philosophical system, one can change the future that has not yet taken place. This decision-making regarding the future takes place through the process of deliberation, which has a special place in Dennett’s view. On the other hand, by adhering to Libet’s neurological experiments, Harris refutes both conditions of free will and considers the cause of all human being actions to arise from activities of the brain and concludes that one cannot have any conscious control over one’s actions. As a result, he emerges as a non-compatibilist determinist. In both his works, The Moral Landscape and Free Will, Harris addresses the topic of free will. In Free Will, he criticizes the view of compatibilists like Dennett, who responds to those criticisms in his article, ‘Reflections on Free Will, Review of Sam Harris’ Free Will’. Like Harris, Dennett too addresses free will in his two important books, Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves. Following an analysis of the views of Dennett and Harris and explaining the criticisms of the two regarding each other, the present article will show that neither Dennett, considering the rest of the elements of his philosophical views in philosophy of mind and philosophy of action can well justify compatibilism, nor can Harris, considering his neurological approach defend his determinist idea. The conflict that is present in Dennett’s views causes his explanation of the agent being the origin of his action to also be indefensible. Furthermore, due to the incompatibility of the different elements of his view and the vagueness of his idea regarding the effect of unconscious intentions on action, Harris too is placed in a weak position. In contrast to Harris’ supposition, a human is not “a puppet [who] is free as long as he loves his strings”; rather, a human chooses, makes decisions and acts according to his own will. As a result, despite the objections that apply to both philosophers, Dennett’s view is more acceptable than Harris’ in terms of the effort to justify free will; even though neither have been apparently successful in defending their own ideas.

Steady advances in neuroscience have shaped understanding of brain and mind, in ways that challenge spiritual belief and can amplify misconceptions about biological determinism. The inability to reconcile spirituality and science risks faith being construed as "out of touch" with reality, and in worst‐case scenarios engendering clinical‐level crises of hope. The latter typically involve three central issues: the free will problem, desperate perceptions about mortality, and the constraint of individual identity. Here, we synthesize contemporary scientific and philosophical understanding to propose a reconciliation of faith and science of particular relevance to preservation of hope. In this approach, we review the compatibility of natural causation and human freedom, parameterize "meaning" on the basis of specific opportunities for decision‐making within the timeframe of a lifetime, and articulate a model of self‐transcendence predicated on these principles and on observed characteristics of human love. This model resides within "common ground" for faith and science by avoiding unnecessary dichotomization of the material and the Divine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims about freedom and predestination are ubiquitous in movies, novels, and myths. These claims touch upon the philosophical problem of the compatibility of free will and determination. In order to make an informed judgment about whether these claims are true, it is helpful to know what philosophers have to say about free will. However, philosophical discussions are usually absent in popular culture. It is perhaps no wonder, since free will is a topic that has been discussed for millennia. Consequently, these discussions have become quite complicated and not easy to decipher. This essay is a popular introduction to these discussions, accessible to readers without former acquaintance with the topic. I provide references to other works for readers interested in knowing more. My aim is to show that while there are persuasive arguments against free will, there are no fewer persuasive replies to these arguments. Free will is a fascinating topic, and I hope that acquaintance with the relevant philosophical discussion will prove useful for those who wonder if anyone is free to create their own destiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to the presentation of metaphysical ideas about the free will of the individual, hidden in political ideologies, through conceptual analysis and the thesaurus of analytical philosophy. In this paper, we analyze the extent to which the metaphysical postulates of the most famous ideological projects of modernism (communism, Nazism and liberalism) are compatible with modern theories of freedom in analytical metaphysics, and show their poor compatibility. At the same time, we have proposed an alternative to modern ideologies in the form of republicanism, which does not seem to have unsolvable metaphysical problems in its own definition of freedom. In this article we have demonstrated that the fundamental metaphysics of individual freedom is a legitimate criterion for assessing the relevance, validity and relevance of political ideologies, as it is not an abstract detached theorizing, but the founder of our ideas about the constitution of normative in terms of personal responsibility.

In this paper, I analyze the concept of an event that breaks a law of nature. My investigations are carried out in the context of David Lewis’s critique of Peter van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument for incompatibilism. It is argued that Lewis’s definition of a “law-breaking event” is too narrow. I offer an amended definition and explore its consequences for the prospects of van Inwagen’s argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Aufklärung: Revista de Filosofia is the property of Aufklarung: Revista de Filosofia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The issue of free will is a complex one that has occupied the minds of many theologians and philosophers through the ages. The two main aspects of free will are the freedom to do otherwise and the power of self-determination. This means that an agent must be able to choose from alternative possibilities and that he or she must be the author or source of that choice. Defined as such, it is clear that the issue of free will is undeniably closely linked with the concept of moral responsibility. However, if we live in a deterministic world, where everything is governed by the laws of nature, including our thoughts and behaviour, does this leave room for free will and moral responsibility? As Dutch neurobiologist and author Dick Swaab argues, the answer is an emphatic ‘no’. In this article, we will look at Swaab’s case against free will. We will also see what modern neuroscience has to say about this hot topic and whether it supports or discredits Swaab’s views. And finally, we will touch on what this all means for moral responsibility. Contribution: This article is part of a special collection that reflects on the evolutionary building blocks of our past, present and future. It is based on historical thought and contemporary research. It fits well with the intersectional and inter-disciplinary nature of this collection and journal.

In this paper I argue that Mill’s ‘Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity’ regarding the human will and action cannot apply on all cases, and that the human mind has potentially the capacity to create freely a will or action that, no matter what kind of knowledge we possess, cannot be predicted. More precisely, I argue against Mill’s attempt of conjunction between the freedom of the will and the ‘Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity’ while I attempt a comparison with the relevant Kantian approach. I then claim that a will cannot be free and be predicted at the same time, as both the elements of freedom and unpredictability of the will are founded on the very process of its formulation as an outcome of genuine creativity. I, thus, attempt to propose a more substantially free view of free will and action than the ones presented by the prominent conceptions.

Freedom or control of how we act is often and very naturally understood as a kind of power—a power to determine for ourselves how we act. Is freedom conceived as such a power possible, and what kind of power must it be? The paper argues that power takes many forms, of which ordinary causation is only one; and that if freedom is indeed a kind of power, it cannot be ordinary causation. Scepticism about the reality of freedom as a power can take two forms. One, found in Hume, now often referred to as the Mind argument, assumes incompatibilism, and concludes from incompatibilism that freedom cannot exist, as indistinguishable from chance. But another scepticism, found in Hobbes, does not assume incompatibilism, but assumes rather that the only possible form of power in nature is ordinary causation, concluding that freedom cannot for this reason exist as a form of power. This scepticism is more profound—it is in fact presupposed by Hume’s scepticism—and far more interesting, just because freedom cannot plausibly be modelled as ordinary causation.

There are several argumentative strategies for advancing the thesis that moral responsibility is incompatible with causal determinism. One prominent such strategy is to argue that agents who meet compatibilist conditions for moral responsibility can nevertheless be subject to responsibility-undermining manipulation. In this paper, I argue that incompatibilists advancing manipulation arguments against compatibilism have been shouldering an unnecessarily heavy dialectical burden. Traditional manipulation arguments present cases in which manipulated agents meet all compatibilist conditions for moral responsibility, but are (allegedly) not responsible for their behavior. I argue, however, that incompatibilists can make do with the more modest (and harder to resist) claim that the manipulation in question is mitigating with respect to moral responsibility. The focus solely on whether a manipulated agent is or is not morally responsible has, I believe, masked the full force of manipulation-style arguments against compatibilism. Here, I aim to unveil their real power.

In this article we study the question of free will from an interdisciplinary angle, drawing on philosophy, neurobiology and physics. We start by reviewing relevant neurobiological findings on the functioning of the brain, notably as presented in (Koch, 2009); we assess these against the physics of (in)determinism. These biophysics findings seem to indicate that neuronal processes are not quantum but classical in nature. We conclude from this that there is little support for the existence of an immaterial 'mind', capable of ruling over matter independently of the causal past. But what, then, can free will be? We propose a compatibilist account that resonates well with neurobiology and physics, and that highlights that free will comes in degrees -- degrees which vary with the conscious grasp the 'free' agent has over his actions. Finally, we analyze the well-known Libet experiment on free will through the lens of our model. We submit this interdisciplinary investigation as a typical case of naturalized philosophy: in our theorizing we privilege assumptions that find evidence in science, but our conceptual work also suggests new avenues for research in a few scientific disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's attempt to analyze the argument "manipulation" versus "free will" by the philosopher Derk Pereboom. To demonstrate his position, Pereboom uses the "thought experiment" method, popular in analytical philosophy, and cites four similar cases. For the analysis and criticism of argumentation, developments from logic, a theory of argumentation, and science philosophy are used. An excursion into the history of "free will" was carried out, and the main directions in it were shown: compatibilism and incompatibilism, their differences, and strategies for arguing these positions. The article also examines the importance of free will in the context of the latest modern trends: globalization, COVID-19, civil society, foundations of democracy, a theory of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines central arguments made in Sam Harris’ Free Will as well as key aspects of Daniel Dennett’s compatibilist conception of free will. I argue that while Dennett makes thoughtful replies to Harris’ critique of compatibilism, his compatibilism continues to be plagued by critical points raised by Bruce Waller. Additionally, I argue that Harris’ rejection of the libertarian view of free will is ill-informed and I explain the basics of Robert Kane’s libertarian view, arguing that it can be defended against points raised by both Dennett and Harris.

What is at stake in the debate between those, such as Sam Harris and me, who contend that we would lack free will on the supposition that we are causally determined agents, and those that defend the claim that we might then retain free will, such as Daniel Dennett? I agree with Dennett that on the supposition of causal determination there would be robust ways in which we could shape, control, and cause our actions. But I deny that on this supposition we would have the control in action required for us to basically deserve to be blamed, praised, punished or rewarded. In this response, I argue that this is the core issue that divides compatibilists and incompatiblists about free will and causal determination, and that the incompatibilist position is the right one to accept.

The long dispute between incompatibilists (namely, the advocates of the contemporary version of the illusory nature of freedom) and compatibilists is further exemplified in the discussion between Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. In this article I try to add to the discussion by outlining a concept of free will linked to five operating conditions and proposing its operationalization and quantification. The idea is to empirically and pragmatically define free will as we need it for moral blame and legal liability, while separating it from the debate on global determinism, local determinism, automatisms and priming phenomena on a psychological level. This is made possible by weakening the claims of determinisms and psychological automatisms, based on the latest research, and by giving a well-outlined definition of free will as I want to defend it.

In his book Free Will Sam Harris tries to persuade us to abandon the morally pernicious idea of free will. The following contribution articulates and defends a more sophisticated model of free will that is not only consistent with neuroscience and introspection but also grounds a variety of responsibility that justifies both praise and blame, reward and punishment. This begins with the long lasting parting of opinion between compatibilists (who argue that free will can live comfortably with determinism) and incompatibilists (who deny this). While Harris dismisses compatibilism as a form of theology, this article aims at showing that Harris has underestimated and misinterpreted compatibilism and at defending a more sophisticated version of compatibilism that is imprevious to Harris’ criticism.

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions.

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one's actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one's actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies one of the two current conceptions of free will i.e negative conception or the definition of free will to having alternative possibilities; and tries to assess and ascertain the validity of this historically popular conception, by exhausting all possible approvals and also its disapprovals. The investigations indicate that the disagreement on this issue causes philosophers to revolt against one another in the debate of free between the two camps of Compatibilist and incompatibilist. The dispute of these two groups begins with debating on the relation between negative free will and Determinism, and continues with the possibility of free will in a determined world and finally reaches its peak by posing two fundamental objections against each other: The harm-mind hypothesis of Determinism on side of Incompatibilists and Intelligibility challenge on side of Compatibilists. And thus confirming or rejecting of such conception at last depends on assessing these two objections. I conclude our assessment by rejecting the negative conception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Free will is an apparent paradox because it requires a historical identity to escape its history in a self-guided fashion. Philosophers have itemized design features necessary for this escape, scaling from action to agency and vice versa. These can be organized into a coherent framework that neurocognitive capacities provide and that form a basis for neurocognitive free will. These capacities include (1) adaptive access to unpredictability, (2) tuning of this unpredictability in the service of hierarchical goal structures, (3) goal-directed deliberation via search over internal cognitive representations, and (4) a role for conscious construction of the self in the generation and choice of alternatives. This frames free will as a process of generative self-construction, by which an iterative search process samples from experience in an adaptively exploratory fashion, allowing the agent to explore itself in the construction of alternative futures. This provides an explanation of how effortful conscious control modulates adaptive access to unpredictability and resolves one of free will's key conceptual problems: how randomness is used in the service of the will. The implications provide a contemporary neurocognitive grounding to compatibilist and libertarian positions on free will, and demonstrate how neurocognitive understanding can contribute to this debate by presenting free will as an interaction between our freedom and our will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While agreeing with Fischborn’s (2018) contention that, according to one traditional definition of compatibilism, my position should be classified as that of a libertarian incompatibilist, I argue here for a different view of compatibilism. This view involves, on the one hand, local probabilistic causation of decisions (rather than universal strict determinism) and, on the other, free will conceived as involving decisions generated by a decision-making process carried out by the brain, which consciously contemplates different alternatives and could in principle have been different from what it was, implying that the agent could in normal conditions have done otherwise in the same circumstances. After discussing different views of causation (including determinism) and of free will, I make a revision of some passages from my earlier work, quoted by Fischborn. I conclude that what is crucial in the question of (in) compatibilism is the (in)compatibility between freedom of decisions and natural causation of human actions. According to this looser and, I argue, more pertinent view of compatibilism, I maintain my previous classification of my position on the matter as compatibilist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Testament indicates that Judas Iscariot's betrayal of Jesus was foreknown by God and by Jesus, and that it was in fulfilment of Scripture, and yet at the same time it judges him culpable for his actions. In that case, to what extent is divine foreknowledge compatible with human free will? Through exegetical, philosophical and theological analyses of the relevant passages, the study arrives at a number of conclusions about the nature and pastoral function of compatibilism in the specific test case of Judas Iscariot. It is observed for example, that all the New Testament passages in relation to Judas Iscariot underline the interplay between divine foreknowledge and human free will in a non-contrastive transcendent manner, even though they place different emphases on the degree of this compatibility, while others underline a complicated role for even Satan. Some of the differences in emphases between the Gospels with regard to Judas Iscariot are also shown to reflect respective sociopastoral contexts of their first readers. The article concludes that God held Judas Iscariot culpable for his action, though God foreknew it and that it fulfilled scripture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to criticize Daniel Dennett's main argument which has been formulated to explain and justify the compatibility of Human's mental phenomena, particularly his free will, with causal determinism on the basis of ontological naturalism (Physicalism). The article begins with the formulation of this argument. Then, the theories of naturalism and evolution as the backgrounds of Dennett's thesis are explained. Dennett tries to justify the premises of his argument by a novel interpretation of casual determinism based on a difference between casual determinism and inevitability. Finally, it is shown that Dennett's solution for making a compatibility between free will and causal determinism is insufficient and unsatisfactory, and, thus, he has not solved the deep and historical problem of compatibilism.

the article explores the putatively non-metaphysical – non-voluntarist, and even non-causal – concept of freedom outlined in Hegel’s work and discusses its influential interpretation by robert Pippin as an ‘essentially practical’ concept. I argue that Hegel’s affirmation of freedom must be distinguished from that of Kant and Fichte, since it does not rely on a prior understanding of self-consciousness as an originally teleological relation and it has not the nature of a claim ‘from a practical point of view’.

For years, experimental philosophers have attempted to discern whether laypeople find free will compatible with a scientifically deterministic understanding of the universe, yet no consensus has emerged. The present work provides one potential explanation for these discrepant findings: People are strongly motivated to preserve free will and moral responsibility, and thus do not have stable, logically rigorous notions of free will. Seven studies support this hypothesis by demonstrating that a variety of logically irrelevant (but motivationally relevant) features influence compatibilist judgments. In Study 1, participants who were asked to consider the possibility that our universe is deterministic were more compatibilist than those not asked to consider this possibility, suggesting that determinism poses a threat to moral responsibility, which increases compatibilist responding (thus reducing the threat). In Study 2, participants who considered concrete instances of moral behavior found compatibilist free will more sufficient for moral responsibility than participants who were asked about moral responsibility more generally. In Study 3a, the order in which participants read free will and determinism descriptions influenced their compatibilist judgments–and only when the descriptions had moral significance: Participants were more likely to report that determinism was compatible with free will than that free will was compatible with determinism. In Study 3b, participants who read the free will description first (the more compatibilist group) were particularly likely to confess that their beliefs in free will and moral responsibility and their disbelief in determinism influenced their conclusion. In Study 4, participants reduced their compatibilist beliefs after reading a passage that argued that moral responsibility could be preserved even in the absence of free will. Participants also reported that immaterial souls were compatible with scientific determinism, most strongly among immaterial soul believers (Study 5), and evaluated information about the capacities of primates in a biased manner favoring the existence of human free will (Study 6). These results suggest that people do not have one intuition about whether free will is compatible with determinism. Instead, people report that free will is compatible with determinism when desiring to uphold moral responsibility. Recommendations for future work are discussed.

Although the free will debate of contemporary analytic philosophy lacks almost any kind of historical perspective, some scholars (for instance Zimmerman 2000; Salles 2001, 2005) have pointed out a striking similarity between Stoic approaches to free will and Frankfurt’s well-known hierarchical theory (Frankfurt 1969, 1971, 1988). However, the scholarly agreement is only apparent because they disagree about the way of similarity between the Stoic and the Frankfurtian theories. The main thesis of my paper is that commentators have so far missed the crucial difference between the Stoics’ approach to free will and Frankfurt’s, a difference that renders the former as the superior theory. I make three main claims. In the first section, I argue that it is misleading and ultimately false to say that Frankfurt’s and the Stoics’ conception of free will are the same or notably similar to each other (pace Zimmerman 2000). Nevertheless, in the second section I show that there is indeed a relevant similarity between the two approaches. Both of them provide a semi-compatibilist reason- and reflectivity-based theory of moral responsibility. Finally, in the third section, I describe the difference that I take to be the most relevant between these theories regarding the problem of moral responsibility. I consider this difference as a crucial one because a serious disadvantage of the Frankfurtian view follows therefrom.