The Philosophy of Free Will

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers several of the key philosophical arguments against the possibility of free will. It begins by defining the term “free will,” and evaluates what conditions are necessary to attain a free will that meets this definition. It then considers positions that are compatible or incompatible with determinism. It considers the consequence argument against compatibilism, the exclusion argument against mental causation, and the luck argument against the possibility of free will. It counters these arguments and concludes that the conditions required for a libertarian free will are met in the human brain, assuming ontological indeterminism to be the case. This chapter examines evidence from physics in support of the view that reality is ontologically indeterministic. It concludes that there are two types of libertarian free will: one involving the weighing and the selection of options (which might really happen, and could have turned out otherwise) and the other involving choosing to become a new kind of chooser in the future.