Two intuitions about free will: Alternative possibilities and intentional endorsement
Författare
Summary, in English
Free will is widely thought to require (i) the possibility of acting otherwise and (ii) the making of choices that are intentionally endorsed, not just indeterministically picked. According to (i), a necessary condition for free will is agential-level indeterminism: at some points in time, an agent’s prior history admits more than one possible continuation. According to (ii), however, this indeterminism may threaten freedom: if each of several distinct actions could have been actualized, then none of them is necessitated by the agent’s prior history, and the actual action
seems nothing more than the result of indeterministic picking. We argue that this tension is only
apparent, distinguishing between actions an agent can possibly do and actions he or she can do with endorsement (or rationally do). One can consistently say that someone who makes a particular choice has several alternative possibilities, and yet that, far from merely indeterministically picking one of them, the agent chooses an action he or she endorses. An implication is that although free will can consistently require (i) and (ii), it cannot generally require the possibility of acting otherwise with endorsement.
seems nothing more than the result of indeterministic picking. We argue that this tension is only
apparent, distinguishing between actions an agent can possibly do and actions he or she can do with endorsement (or rationally do). One can consistently say that someone who makes a particular choice has several alternative possibilities, and yet that, far from merely indeterministically picking one of them, the agent chooses an action he or she endorses. An implication is that although free will can consistently require (i) and (ii), it cannot generally require the possibility of acting otherwise with endorsement.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2014
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
155-172
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Philosophical Perspectives
Volym
28
Issue
1
Fulltext
- Available as PDF - 258 kB
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Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Wiley-Blackwell
Ämne
- Philosophy
Nyckelord
- free will
- freedom
- determinism
- indeterminism
- possibility
- endorsement
- alternative actions
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1520-8583