Free Will and Moral Responsibility in Islamic Philosophy

Abstract

According to a common view among Muslim philosophers, a moral agent has free will if and only if she is able to do an action when she wants to and is able to avoid it when she wants otherwise. Implicit in this view is the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). On the other hand, according to this view, free will is dependent on requirements such as conception, judgement, tendency, decision, and personal volition. In this paper, I discuss the bilateral defects of this view and present a reformed view on free will and moral responsibility in relation to causal predetermination in an Islamic context.