The Free Will Problem 33Impossibilism about free will is the thesis that it is not metaphysically pos-
sible for anyone to have free will. (G. Strawson, 1986, 1994)One way to argue for impossibilism is by building on the view of hard incom-
patibilism and arguing that it is not metaphysically possible that if indeterminism
(in any form) is true any person has free will. But a quite different way to argue
for impossibilism is to argue that the concept of free will (or instead the concept
of moral responsibility) is at some deep level incoherent. On this view, it is not
possible for any persons to have free will, and this is so for reasons that have
nothing to do with determinism or indeterminism. It is instead a matter of the
structure of the concept of free will.
There are a number of other terms identifying a further range of positions
with respect to the free will problem. But the ones we have canvassed here are
adequate for current purposes.
2.2. Motivating the Problem: The Appeal of Free Will
and Determinism
We shall now consider free will’s appeal, highlighting the reasons which make it
credible that we have it and attractive to believe that we do. We’ll then do like-
wise with the thesis of determinism.
Free will’s plausibility and appeal arise from several sources. One is con-
nected with moral responsibility. In our ordinary practices, we distinguish
between persons who are morally responsible agents and persons who are not.
We distinguish between, for example, young children, or the severely mentally
handicapped, on the one hand, and, on the other, fully functioning adults capable
of normal interpersonal relations of a sort that includes our expectations that they
can be held to account for how they treat us and others. It is therefore at least
plausible to assume that there are morally responsible agents. Given that free
will is taken to be a necessary condition of morally responsible agency, it is
plausible to assume that some persons have free will. An open- minded philo-
sophical attitude should permit consideration of the skeptical possibility that
perhaps no one has free will, and hence that there are no morally responsible
agents. This is how free will skeptics, such as hard incompatibilists, see things.
To this end, these skeptics marshal forceful arguments designed to undermine
the credibility of these concepts. But in the absence of such powerful reasoning,
there is prima facie reason to believe that there are morally responsible agents,
agents who sometimes exercise their free will.
There are, however, other sources of the apparent plausibility of our having
free will. Consider the first- personal point of view. From my own perspective, I
have a sense, especially when deliberating about what to do in a context of
choice or decision, that it is up to me what I will do, and in doing it, I will be the
one who will settle if and how I will act. I experience my own agency as if I am
free to settle upon whether, how, and when to act. This arguably involves a sense
of ourselves as free—a way that makes the thought that we have free will appear