Abstract
Strong notions of free will are closely connected to the possibility to do otherwise as well as to an agent’s ability to causally influence her environment via her decisions controlling her actions. In this paper we employ techniques from the causal modeling literature to investigate whether a notion of free will subscribing to one or both of these requirements is compatible with naturalistic views of the world such as non-reductive physicalism to the background of determinism and indeterminism. We argue that from a causal modeler’s perspective the only possibility to get both requirements consists in subscribing to reductive physicalism and indeterminism.
Highlights
Free will is still one of the most heavily discussed issues in philosophy
We understand the two latter positions as views about the fundamental physical level. It seems that non-reductive physicalism as well as reductionism allow for a strong incompatibilist notion of free will subscribing to both (PDO) and (CTRL) if the world is indeterministic
We think that it makes sense to start such an endeavor with strong incompatibilist notions of freedom, committed to an actualist interpretation of the ability to do otherwise (PDO) as well as to the view that an agent can control her environment via her willful decisions exerting probabilistic causal influence (CTRL)
Summary
Free will is still one of the most heavily discussed issues in philosophy. Most philosophers (except free will sceptics, hard determinists, and hard incompatibilists) as well as most non-philosophers (cf. Nahmias et al 2005; Nahmias 2011; Sarkissian et al 2010) believe that we have free will. We are interested in the consequences of analyzing strong notions of free will to the background of a causal modeler’s understanding of causation We show that this analysis produces unexpected results concerning the possibility of reconciling different demands that certain theories of free will make with different combinations of four broad ontological positions: determinism, indeterminism, and non-reductive and reductive physicalism. We understand the two latter positions as views about the fundamental physical level At first glance, it seems that non-reductive physicalism as well as reductionism allow for a strong incompatibilist notion of free will subscribing to both (PDO) and (CTRL) if the world is indeterministic. It seems that non-reductive physicalism as well as reductionism allow for a strong incompatibilist notion of free will subscribing to both (PDO) and (CTRL) if the world is indeterministic This combination of claims constitutes the core of all libertarian accounts. (CTRL) and non-reductive accounts of consciousness, which would imply (ONI), cannot have all four of them. But first, we will briefly introduce the basics of the causal Bayes net formalism required for this analysis
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