Free will and logic

Abstract

Chapter One begins with a brief survey of the main participants in the Free Will dispute. It is argued, in general terms, that the dispute between them - whether or not Determinism is inconsistent with moral responsibility - can be settled only by a logical or conceptual enquiry. A contrary view - that we can settle the dispute by appeal to introspection - is examined and refuted. The question 'Are our wills contra-causally free?' is shown to have three presuppositions: One factual, and two logical. It is an improper question since it presupposes, mistakenly, the existence of a Will or Self; that the Will is the sort of thing of which 'freedom' can significantly be predicated; and that Determinism is the kind of thing that it makes logical sense to talk of being free from. In Chapter Three, I distinguish between the various members of the two families of theses that we call 'Determinism' and 'Libertarianism' and show that the failure to make these distinctions, or the neglect of them once they have been made, is the source of many confusions and fallacious reasonings. Following an analysis of some importantly different kinds of use of modal terms in the first part of Chapter Four, I go on to argue that the sense in which it can properly be said of a person who is morally responsible for a given action that he 'need not' have done it and 'could' have done otherwise, is different from any of the senses in which Determinists assert that everything is 'necessarily' what it is and 'could not' have been otherwise. I argue, in Chapter Five, that the credentials of Logical Determinism are logically impeccable, Logical Libertarianism mistakenly supposes that this form of Determinism entails Fatalism and so must be inconsistent with free will and moral responsibility. Next I examine some fashionable interpretations of the logical status of 'Every event has a cause. I claim that it is a genuine factual, but empirically unfalsifiable, proposition. The contrary view involves an epistemic-ontological confusion. The nature of this confusion is illustrated in the course of a detailed examination of the argument from physical indeterminacy. Finally, Causal Determinism-'my morrow is determined by what happens today' - is distinguished from fatalism - 'my morrow is determined no matter what I do today'. In the last chapter, it is shown that the Libertarian's analysis of the conditions of moral responsibility is erroneous. Determinism is consistent with ethics while the free Will Theory is not. Show more