Free will, determinism, and the possibility of doing otherwise

List, Christian ORCID: 0000-0003-1627-800X (2014) Free will, determinism, and the possibility of doing otherwise. Noûs, 48 (1). pp. 156-178. ISSN 0029-4624

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Abstract

I argue that free will and determinism are compatible, even when we take free will to require the ability to do otherwise and even when we interpret that ability modally, as the possibility of doing otherwise, and not just conditionally or dispositionally. My argument draws on a distinction between physical and agential possibility. Although in a deterministic world only one future sequence of events is physically possible for each state of the world, the more coarsely defined state of an agent and his or her environment can be consistent with more than one such sequence, and thus different actions can be “agentially possible”. The agential perspective is supported by our best theories of human behaviour, and so we should take it at face value when we refer to what an agent can and cannot do. On the picture I defend, free will is not a physical phenomenon, but a higher-level one on a par with other higher-level phenomena such as agency and intentionality.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28...
Additional Information:	© 2013 Wiley Periodicals Inc.
Divisions:	Government Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method CPNSS
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BC Logic
Date Deposited:	07 May 2013 15:26
Last Modified:	14 Apr 2024 04:24
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/46931

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