24 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism
Bok and Dennett both express the view in terms of explanation, and so there is
an epistemological orientation to their formulation, but one could express it in
terms of the way human agency is, not about how it could in principle be
explained or understood. On this metaphysical rendering of the thesis, mech-
anism is the view that human agency is causally rooted in, and in other ways
supervenes on, complex neurophysiological states, events, and processes, as well
as the causal antecedents of these. These states, events, and processes behave in
mechanistic ways, are governed by mechanistic laws, and there exists no feature
of human agency that is not in this way rooted in these mechanistic ingredients.
This thesis is true regardless of whether the physical states realizing the mechan-
istic goings- on are deterministic or instead indeterministic.
The sort of indeterminism discussed above, almost- determinism, and mech-
anism, as well as determinism itself, might all be captured under the very general
umbrella of naturalism. It is difficult to state clearly what naturalism is, and it
seems that in philosophy it is embraced pervasively but with little consensus to
its meaning (Baker, 2013: 3–27; De Caro and Macarthur, 2010; De Caro and
Voltolini, 2010). Nevertheless, there is a fairly simple sense of naturalism which
bears on the free will debate and in which, if determinism is true, or instead
almost- determinism is true, or mechanism is true, then this form of naturalism is
also true. The simple sense is just that there is no feature of reality as it bears on
human activity that does not have its causal roots in the kinds of states that are
widely featured in nature and are governed by natural laws that do involve the
intentions of conscious agents. If naturalism is true in this sense, then all human
action is causally rooted either deterministically or indeterministically in states
of this sort.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Useful and extended discussions of the three basic concepts discussed in this
chapter, free will, determinism, and moral responsibility, can be found in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Eshleman, Andrew. 2014. “Moral Responsibility.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral- responsibility/.
Hoefer, Carl. 2010. “Causal Determinism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://
plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism- causal/.
O’Connor, Timothy. 2010. “Free Will.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring
2002 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2002/entries/
freewill/.
Numerous writers begin their books by offering initial definitions of free will
and determinism (not so much for moral responsibility). Here are a few that are
especially informative, even if their proposals differ from ours, see:
Fischer, John Martin. 1994. The Metaphysics of Free Will. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Kane, Robert. 1996. The Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.