Supervenient Freedom and the Free Will Deadlock

Abstract Supervenient libertarianism maintains that indeterminism may exist at a supervening agency level, consistent with determinism at a subvening physical level. It seems as if this approach has the potential to break the longstanding deadlock in the free will debate, since it concedes to the traditional incompatibilist that agents can only do otherwise if they can do so in their actual circumstances, holding the past and the laws constant, while nonetheless arguing that this ability is compatible with physical determinism. However, we argue that supervenient libertarianism faces some serious problems, and that it fails to break us free from this deadlock within the free will debate.

[1]  Michael Smith,et al.  Rational Capacities, or:How to Distinguish Recklessness, Weakness, and Compulsion , 2003 .

[2]  Tuomas K. Pernu.  Can Physics Make Us Free? , 2017, Front. Phys..

[3]  Keith Lehrer,et al.  Cans without ifs , 1968 .

[4]  J. Smart,et al.  I.—FREE-WILL, PRAISE AND BLAME , 1961 .

[5]  Peter van Inwagen,et al.  Free Will Remains a Mystery , 2005 .

[6]  Kadri Vihvelin.  How to Think about the Free Will/Determinism Problem , 2011 .

[7]  J. Ismael.  How Physics Makes Us Free , 2016 .

[8]  Bernard Berofsky,et al.  Ifs, Cans, and Free Will: The Issues , 2005 .

[9]  Kadri Vihvelin.  Causes, Laws, and Free Will: Why Determinism Doesn't Matter , 2013 .

[10]  A. Roskies.  DON’T PANIC: SELF‐AUTHORSHIP WITHOUT OBSCURE METAPHYSICS , 2012 .

[11]  Daniel C. Dennett,et al.  Who's afraid of determinism? Rethinking causes and possibilities , 2011 .

[12]  C. A. Campbell.  I.—IS ‘FREEWILL’ A PSEUDO-PROBLEM? , 1951 .

[13]  Bernard Berofsky.  Nature's Challenge to Free Will , 2012 .

[14]  R. Kane,et al.  Revisionism about Free Will: A Statement and Defense , 2016 .

[15]  Christian List.  Free Will, Determinism, and the Possibility to Do Otherwise , 2011 .

[16]  R. Chisholm.  Human Freedom and the Self , 1964 .

[17]  J. Fischer.  My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility , 2006 .

[18]  Michael Fara,et al.  Masked Abilities and Compatibilism , 2008 .

[19]  Manuel Vargas.  Revisionism about free will: a statement & defense , 2009 .

[20]  Kadri Vihvelin,et al.  Free Will Demystified: A Dispositional Account , 2004 .

[21]  J. Ismael.  Causation, Free Will, and Naturalism 1 , 2012 .

[22]  D. Lewis.  Are we free to break the laws , 2008 .

[23]  C. List,et al.  My brain made me do it: The exclusion argument against free will, and what’s wrong with it , 2014 .

[24]  Manuel Vargas.  The Revisionist’s Guide to Responsibility , 2005 .

[25]  Angelika Kratzer,et al.  What ‘must’ and ‘can’ must and can mean , 1977 .

[26]  C. List.  What’s wrong with the consequence argument: In defence of compatibilist libertarianism , 2015 .

[27]  N. Elzein.  Basic desert, conceptual revision, and moral justification , 2013 .

[28]  John Maier,et al.  The Agentive Modalities , 2015 .

[29]  P. Inwagen.  Freedom to Break the Laws , 2004 .

[30]  Robert Young,et al.  An Essay on Free Will , 2009 .

[31]  Peter van Inwagen,et al.  How to Think about the Problem of Free Will , 2008 .

[32]  Principia Ethica , 1922, Nature.

[33]  Harry G. Frankfurt,et al.  Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility , 2017 .

[34]  Bernard Berofsky.  Free Will and the Mind–Body Problem , 2010 .

[35]  Friedrich Engels.  Freedom and Necessity , 1951 .

[36]  Justin A. Capes.  Mitigating Soft Compatibilism , 2013 .

[37]  R. Kane.  Responsibility, Luck, and Chance: Reflections on Free Will and Indeterminism , 1999 .