Free Will A Contemporary Introduction

The Free Will Problem 39

node” that identifies a potential locus of free will, a point at which an agent is
just then able to exercise her free will ability and act freely within the leeway
remaining open by the various paths. Her relation to her future, on this model, is
one of an agent navigating her life, shaping her path into the future, and deciding
for herself how she will live and indeed how she will be.
Using the Garden of Forking Paths Model to help represent leeway freedom,
we can now set out one important problem for free will. Here is an expanded
version of F1, namely F3:

1. Determinism is true.


2. At least some persons have free will.


3. Free will requires the ability to do otherwise.


4. The ability to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism.

This formulation, F3, allows us to fix on this problem: Is determinism incompat-
ible with the ability to do otherwise?
Now consider a different way to think about free will. First, start with a
typical exercise of agency by a person, setting aside the issue of freedom for a
moment. An agent’s action, as an event with which she is intimately connected,
differs from all sorts of other events that might be part of her life. The warm sun
shining on her face and the beating of her heart are events over which in a clear
sense she has no control. But now consider her actions. It is an interesting ques-
tion in its own right what distinguishes actions as events from other sorts of
events. But however that is settled, it is also the case that in certain sorts of situ-
ations, an agent’s actions are also not events over which she has control. A vis-
ceral reaction to a spider, for instance, can be an act over which an agent has no
control. But on other occasions, events issue from agency in a way that involves
an agent’s control over those events. Recall again Kane’s businesswoman and
her being torn about what to do. On the Garden of Forking Paths Model we’d fix
on her choosing among a number of options, and in doing so we might highlight
considerations of leeway freedom. However, instead we might fix on another
dimension of her freedom. In her making a choice, say to stay and help the
victim of the assault, she is the source of her so acting. She brings it about and
thereby settles her indecision about what to do. If in this way it was up to her,
she then acted freely as the source—the initiating source—of her action. So, con-
sider Figure 2.2 representing the Source Model of freedom and what we shall
call source freedom.
The arrow to the left of the dot represents a free agent’s past. The “x” just
above the asterisk is an event that is not an action that simply happens to the
agent, like the event of the sun warming her face. The “+” that is embedded in
the agent’s past prior to the dot is a compulsive act that the agent was not able to
control and so did not freely initiate. Suppose maybe she is a compulsive hand
washer and “+” picks out an event in which she unfreely washed her hand. The
point at which the dot is placed, just after the arrow’s point, as in the previous
model, represents an action node that is an occasion for a free act. Now treat the