Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism 7does that she is able to move her body in accord with her decisions. Imagine, for
instance, that a demon was manipulating your mind, causing the decisions that
result in your bodily motions. You might satisfy one necessary condition for
being morally responsible for what you do, that is, you are able to move your
body in accord with your decisions. But you would not satisfy a stronger con-
dition for being morally responsible because you would not be in control of the
decisions you make. Free will, as we understand it, is the strongest control con-
dition necessary for moral responsibility.
Third, on our proposed definition, exercises of free will are not limited to
morally significant action for which a person is morally responsible. It is just
that the ability identified by free will is the one required when a person is
morally responsible for what she does. But she can exercise this ability in non-
moral contexts as well. Indeed, it is possible for there to exist beings that are not
morally responsible for anything—perhaps wholly amoral beings—who exercise
the kind of control that is necessary for moral responsibility.^1 So on our pre-
ferred way of defining free will it is an ability whose exercise need not issue in
something for which the agent is morally responsible.
At the same time, how the term “free will” is defined is itself a matter of some
controversy. While numerous writers understand free will and free action in
essentially the way we have defined it, others do not. It will be instructive to
indicate how others use the term and register points of disagreement. Here we
restrict our attention to two further ways to define the term “free will.”
A number of participants in the debate define free will as having access to
alternative options for action, or, as it’s often put, the ability to do otherwise
from what one actually does (e.g., Clarke, 2003: 3; Ginet, 1990: 90; van
Inwagen, 1983: 8; Vihvelin, 2013). For instance, Carl Ginet writes:
By freedom of will is meant freedom of action. I have freedom of action at a
time if more than one alternative is then open to me. (1990: 90)Unlike our preferred definition, this way of defining free will is not pinned to
moral responsibility. Peter van Inwagen, who also defines free will in terms of
the ability to do otherwise, explicitly counsels against defining free will in terms
of “whatever sort of freedom is required for moral responsibility” (2008: 329,
n2). On the ability- to-do- otherwise proposal, one can attend to free will just as
well by ignoring moral contexts and reflecting upon whether we are able to pick
up a pencil or refrain from doing so, or choose grapes rather than bananas for a
morning snack.
What are we to make of this terminological difference? One might first note
that it is consistent with our proposal that free will, as the strongest sense of
control required for moral responsibility, will turn out to be the ability to do
otherwise. The difference, however, between Ginet/van Inwagen and us would
be that on our preferred strategy the proposal that free will is, or at least requires,
the ability to do otherwise would amount to a substantive thesis, not a claim that
is true just by how we define the term “free will.” Furthermore, suppose, as