making sense of a free will that is incompatible with determinism: a fourth way forward

For a half century, i have been developing a view of free will that is incompatible with determinism and, in the process, attempting to answer the intelligibility question about such a free will: can one make sense of an incompatibilist or libertarian free will without reducing it to mere chance, or mystery, and can such a free will be reconciled with modern views of the cosmos and human beings? in this paper, i discuss recent refinements to my earlier writings on such a view, refinements developed in recent years in response to the large critical literature on my views in the past several decades. my view has usually been designated an eventcausal (ec) view of libertarian free will and distinguished from noncausal (nc) and agentcausal (ac) libertarian views. but i was never happy with this designation of my view as “eventcausal” and did not use it myself in earlier writings. in this paper, i explain why i now reject it altogether. i have come to believe that to avoid numerous misunderstandings in current debates about free will, we must distinguish four different kinds of libertarian theories, not merely three: in addition to noncausal (nc), agentcausal (ac), and eventcausal (ec) theories, we need to add a fourth kind, which might be called an agentcausal/eventcausal (ac/ec) theory. my view has always been of this fourth kind. it represents what i call in the title of this paper the “fourth way forward” for making sense of an incompatibilist free will.

Making Sense of a Free Will that is Incompatible with Determinism: A Fourth Way Forward

For a half century, I have been developing a view of free will that is incompatible with determinism and, in the process, attempting to answer the Intelligibility Question about such a free will: Can one make sense of an incompatibilist or libertarian free will without reducing it to mere chance, or mystery, and can such a free will be reconciled with modern views of the cosmos and human beings? In this paper, I discuss recent refinements to my earlier writings on such a view, refinements developed in recent years in response to the large critical literature on my views in the past several decades. My view has usually been designated an eventcausal (EC) view of libertarian free will and distinguished from noncausal (NC) and agentcausal (AC) libertarian views. But I was never happy with this designation of my view as “eventcausal” and did not use it myself in earlier writings. In this paper, I explain why I now reject it altogether. I have come to believe that to avoid numerous misunderstandings in current debates about free will, we must distinguish four different kinds of libertarian theories, not merely three: in addition to noncausal (NC), agentcausal (AC), and eventcausal (EC) theories, we need to add a fourth kind, which might be called an agentcausal/eventcausal (AC/EC) theory. My view has always been of this fourth kind. It represents what I call in the title of this paper the “fourth way forward” for making sense of an incompatibilist free will.