The freedom of creatures like us

Abstract

P.F. Strawson rejects several assumptions shared by most compatibilists and incompatibilists in his account of free will. He rejects the view that our practices of viewing one another as free, and of holding one another responsible for our actions must, in order to be appropriate, answer to certain kinds of theoretical commitment about the nature of the world. He also rejects the view that we can achieve complete objectivity in the practice of holding others responsible, and argues that even if we could achieve it there is a risk that our lives would be impoverished by adopting it. In this thesis I argue that Strawson's approach can be interpreted as a humanistic one - an approach that emphasises both our psychological limitations as human beings and the central role that our existence as social creatures plays in endowing other aspects of our lives with meaning. My aim is to defend a Strawsonian approach, thus construed. In doing so, I offer critical analysis of libertarian and (non-Strawsonian) compatibilist approaches, arguing that they fail to successfully avoid a number of well-known challenges to the possibility of free will. I attempt to demonstrate that Strawson's humanistic approach does avoid these challenges. I draw on the work of other philosophers, especially Bernard Williams, in developing this argument. In setting up the project, I also offer a revised framework for classifying approaches to the free will debate, with a particular focus on the way that compatibilist approaches are classified.