236 Contemporary Incompatibilism: Libertarianism
probability that it will penetrate, but not certainty, because its position and
momentum are not both determinate as it moves towards the barrier.
Imagine that the choice (to overcome temptation) is like the penetration
event. The choice one way or the other is undetermined because the process
preceding it and potentially terminating in it (i.e. the effort of will to over-
come temptation) is indeterminate. (Kane, 1996: 128)The effort of will is indeterminate in the sense that its causal potential does
not become determinate prior to the occurrence of the choice. There are various
possibilities, consistent with the laws of nature, for how this causal potential can
be resolved. Thus when it is resolved, the choice that does in fact occur will be
undetermined. Kane warns against construing his view so that the indeterminacy
occurs after the effort is made: “One must think of the effort and the indetermin-
ism as fused; the effort is indeterminate and the indeterminism is a property of
the effort, not something that occurs before or after the effort.” He contends that
if an agent is morally responsible for a decision, it must be free in this sense or
else there must be some such free choice that is its sufficient ground, cause, or
explanation (1996: 35). Kane illustrates this conception by his example of a
businesswoman on her way to work—let’s call her Anne—and the assault victim
she encounters. Anne experiences an inner struggle between her moral con-
science, which counsels her to stop and help the victim, and her career ambi-
tions, which urge her not to miss her meeting. When the struggle is resolved in
favor of Anne’s decision to stop and help the victim, Kane supposes that the
effort of will from which the decision results is indeterminate, and that con-
sequently the decision in undetermined, and that this secures freedom of action
and moral responsibility.
In a recent article (2016), Kane sets out this key element of his position in an
illuminating way in response to Franklin’s requirement for the location of inde-
terminism. In Kane’s view, the indeterminism is not located between, on the one
hand, non- actional mental states that potentially lead to decision and overt action,
and on the other hand, decision and overt action, contrary to Franklin (2011b:
202). Kane maintains that freedom is primarily freedom of the will, not freedom
of action. For him, freedom of the will essentially involves multiple goal- directed
processes, formed over extended periods of time, which result in competing
efforts of will. These competing efforts are then resolved indeterministically—in
the central sort of case, either could have resulted in an action holding fixed the
exact past and the laws.
10.3. Luck Objections to Event- Causal Libertarianism
A prominent family of objections to libertarianism develops the idea that a non-
deterministic history of an action precludes an agent’s being morally responsible
for it. A classical presentation of this type of concern is found in Hume’s Trea-
tise of Human Nature (1739). There he argues, as we saw in Chapter 3 (Section
3.1), more specifically, that if an action is not causally determined, it will not