The Irrelevance of Indeterministic Counterexamples to Principle Beta

Abstract

Incompatibilism about freedom and causal determinism is commonly supported by appeal to versions of the well known Consequence argument. Critics of the Consequence argument have presented counterexamples to the Consequence argument's central inference principle. The thesis of this article is that proponents of the Consequence argument can easily bypass even the best of these counterexamples. I. The most influential defenses of Incompatibilism, the thesis that freedom and determinism are incompatible, have employed some version or other of the Consequence argument. Recently, however, the Consequence argument has fallen on hard times as counterexamples to the argument's central inference principle have emerged. In this paper we will show how proponents of the Consequence argument can sidestep the best and most influential of these counterexamples. II. The most important presentation of the Consequence argument appears in Peter van Inwagen's An Essay on Free Will. Here is van Inwagen's informal statement of the argument: