Abstract
It may well be wondered whether further discussion of the free will problem can possibly be warranted. What William James wrote over nine decades ago at the beginning of his famous paper ‘The Dilemma of Determinism’ should hold a fortiori today, namely that “a common opinion prevails that the juice has ages ago been pressed out of the free-will controversy, and that no new champion can do more than warm up stale arguments which everyone has heard.” James went on to say, “This is a radical mistake. I know of no subject less worn out, or in which inventive genius has a better chance of breaking open new ground….” Since James wrote, the subject has gotten a good deal more ‘worn out’, but I believe that it still provides an instructive prolegomenon to, as well as an instructive application of, an adequate account of practical reasoning. Incidentally, I do not pretend to ‘inventive genius’, nor do I write as a ‘new champion’ of either determinism or of indeterminism — I have no idea to what extent events in the world fall under what may reasonably be accounted causal regularities.
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