Libertarian Accounts of Free Will by Randolph Clarke

Author:Randolph Clarke [Clarke, Randolph]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 019515987X

end p.116

account, like a compatibilist view, secures the exercise of sufficient active control for moral responsibility. And unlike the latter, a libertarian view of this sort can provide for varieties of difference-making and attributability that require not only the exercise of this degree of active control but also indeterminism and the openness of alternatives. Further, a libertarian account of the sort we are considering, unlike any compatibilist account, can provide for things' usually being as they generally seem to us in deliberation and in our thinking about the future. All of these additions—these varieties of difference-making and attributability and this nonillusoriness of our view of the future—are dignifying. Even if we do not need the indeterminism required by such a view to be morally responsible agents, satisfaction of the requirements of a centered event-causal libertarian view would secure some further things of value, even if we could reasonably prefer that in some cases we did not have some of those things.

Our conclusion given broad incompatibilism will be somewhat different. On this assumption, no event-causal libertarian view adequately characterizes free will, because none secures the active control required for responsibility. A centered account nevertheless provides for varieties of difference-making and attributability that are precluded by determinism, and it provides for the openness of alternatives that we generally presume in deliberating and in thinking about the future. This sort of libertarian account thus secures some good things that would be precluded by determinism, even if we might reasonably prefer that in some cases we did not have some of those things. The indeterminism required by an account of this sort is thus not entirely superfluous, even assuming broad incompatibilism. We have reason to care about whether we satisfy all the requirements of a view of this type, even if satisfying those requirements would not suffice for our having free will.

These judgments are less dismissive of event-causal libertarian accounts than are the judgments usually issued by critics of these views. But the judgments here are also far less favorable than are those made by proponents of these views. If we are to find a libertarian account that fares better, we shall have to consider views that impose more extravagant requirements than that certain events be nondeterministically rather than deterministically caused. We shall have to turn to accounts that differ in more fundamental ways from compatibilist views. Agent-causal libertarian accounts fit the bill. Chapters 8-10 focus on views of this type. Before turning to such accounts, however, in the next chapter I examine a question that arises for any view of free will.

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