Objections to my view

What this very brief survey of the literature indicates is that, across a wide range of views about ‘the free will problem’, including views that are straightforwardly opposed to each other, there is a common thread: the view that free will is in some way implicated in our concept of a morally responsible agent. Specifically, it is taken to be a metaphysical condition for the correct attribution of moral responsibility to some agent (for some action). There may also be epistemic and situational conditions as well, although I will not consider them here, as they do not change the substance of my claim — I am not concerned with the actual conditions of moral responsibility at all, but rather am pitching my argument at one level of abstraction from that debate, as it were.

Now, libertarians suppose that we in fact meet this metaphysical condition, and that it has incompatibilist satisfaction

requirements. Hard incompatibilists such as Pereboom agree that meeting this condition requires the falsity of determinism — they simply disagree that we meet it. Thus, on this way of putting things, the hard incompatibilist says that we ‘lack the free will required for moral responsibility’, i.e. we fail to meet a metaphysical condition that is necessary for being morally responsible agents.

Many compatibilists also share the view that there is a certain metaphysical condition—i.e. having free will—which is necessary for us to be morally responsible: but they hold that meeting that condition is perfectly compatible with the truth (or indeed the falsity) of determinism. Often this type of view is put in terms of the ‘ability thesis’ indicated above, where ‘free will’ is characterised as the ability to do otherwise, and that ability is interpreted as being compatible with determinism. As we saw there, the disagreement between this type of compatibilist and the incompatibilist is not about whether agents need to meet this metaphysical condition, but rather it is about whether meeting that condition is compatible with the truth of determinism, and this turns on the particular analysis of abilities that is given in each case.

For example, consider the recent work by the ‘new dispositionalists’, which is aimed at providing a theory of abilities that is compatible with determinism, such that the compatibilist can agree (pace Frankfurt-style objections) that the agent must have the ability to do otherwise, without requiring the falsity of determinism.21

Finally, the revisionism developed by Vargas, for example, ends up in a position similar to the type of compatibilism just indicated (e.g. claims that there are metaphysical conditions on being morally responsible, and they are compatible with determinism), but does not claim that this is an accurate reflection of our ‘folk’ conception of free will. That is, unlike the compatibilist, who effectively claims that everything we ordinarily believe to be required for free will and moral responsibility in fact

turns out to be compatible with the truth of determinism, the revisionist just accepts that we probably do have incompatibilist intuitions about these matters. They simply claim that intuitions must give way to theory. The revisionist goes on to ‘prune’ the

See, for example, the recent monograph by Kadri Vihvelin (2013). For a 21

discussion of the ‘new dispositionalists’, and the origin of that label, see Clarke

concept of free will by eliminating those incompatibilist intuitions, guided explicitly by the demand for a normatively adequate account of the ‘freedom’ that is required to justify our attributions of moral responsibility.

I have suggested that ‘free will’ is usually understood as a metaphysical condition that is required for the possibility of moral responsibility (more precisely: for an agent to be morally responsible for an action). My claim is that we should drop the 22

term ‘free will’ and straightforwardly investigate what these conditions are. This simplifies the theoretical constraints on the theory: first, determine what the most adequate theory of moral responsibility is, and then whatever conditions (X) turn out to be necessary for ‘being morally responsible’ on that view are what we investigate when we are interested in whether some action is ‘free’. There is no need to look elsewhere for clues as to what ‘free will’ might be.

One possible objection to this way of characterising things might begin by pointing to the so-called ‘semicompatibilism’

Other than actions, agents may be thought to be potentially morally responsible 22

for omissions or outcomes. I will simply discuss the case of actions in what follows

because I do not believe the present issues are significantly affected by the

developed by John Fischer, and sometimes in conjunction with Mark Ravizza: this form of compatibilism is notably different from the kind indicated above (the compatibilist-abilities view), because it denies that free will—conceived as the ability to do otherwise—is necessary for moral responsibility. Thus, Fischer agrees with the incompatibilists that this ability is not compatible with determinism; but at the same time, he claims that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, because the facts that are relevant to this question are only facts about the ‘actual sequence’, and not what alternative possibilities there are. 23

At first, the claim that ‘free will is not required for moral responsibility’ seems to fly directly in the face of the argument I have been making here, part of which was the suggestion that most of the literature already takes ‘free will’ to mean something like ‘the conditions required for moral responsibility’. Now it seems that a prominent philosopher writing about these issues holds exactly the opposite view.

However, this is not the case. Firstly, of course, I could simply emphasise the revisionary nature of my argument and say ‘so much the worse for Fischer’s view’. Indeed, I only claimed that

See Fischer (1994) and the essays collected in (2006); Fischer and Ravizza (1998). 23

‘most’ of the literature already made the connection, not that it was

unanimously held. This would be a valid response, but in fact there is a stronger claim to make: I suggest that, on the contrary, Fischer’s view is basically an example of my own suggestion put into practise, albeit not explicitly under that rubric. Hence, examining the Fischer case will both deflect this putative objection to my view, and at the same time help the positive case for it.