Free Will A Contemporary Introduction

The Free Will Problem 43

establish that an agent has an ability to settle which of those options is realized.
The worry here is that there are options that are physically open or possible, but
that nothing about the agent would allow her to settle which option is realized.
Dumb luck would be in the driver’s seat, and not the agent. Here, then, is a
formulation of a structurally similar problem to F5, namely, F7:

1. Indeterminism is true.


2. At least some persons are morally responsible for what they do.


3. Moral responsibility requires free will.


4. Free will requires the ability to do otherwise.


5. The ability to do otherwise is incompatible with indeterminism.

A similar case can be made for thinking about source freedom. An agent’s being
an initiating source of her action cannot be something that just happens to her.
Here, then, is a formulation of a structurally similar problem to F6, F8:

1. Indeterminism is true.


2. At least some persons are morally responsible for what they do.


3. Moral responsibility requires free will.


4. Free will requires that an agent is able to be the initiating source of her
   actions.


5. The ability to be the initiating source of actions is incompatible with
   indeterminism.

Our goal in this section has been to make clear that the free will problem is
better understood as a set of problems. Some will dispute how we have
developed some of these formulations. For instance, we think it reasonable to
join questions of free will to the topic of moral responsibility, and so we built F5
and F6 from F3 and F4. But those who disagree with us about the significance of
moral responsibility will insist that the latter iterations F5 and F6 (as well as F7
and F8) are unnecessary and misleading. Others will also contend that we can
get all of the features of action that matter for free will just out of the leeway
feature of action. On this view, free will is the ability to do otherwise, and so a
formulation like F3 is where discussion of formulating the free will problem
should stop. But here we think it most fruitful to frame the range of free will
problems that have been formulated in the literature, and we commend F5
through F8 as a useful way to understand some important contemporary work on
this topic.^10

2.4. Situating Compatibilism and Incompatibilism

We close this chapter with some broad brush strokes intended to situate the
range of views we have covered. One way to understand the dispute between
compatibilists and incompatibilists, as facing problems such as those identified
in F5 through F8, is in the broader context of how best to negotiate two