Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem
Mark Balaguer
Abstract
This largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of its argument, the book provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, it argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, the book claims that, contrary to traditional wisdom, the libertarian question can be reduced to a ... More
This largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of its argument, the book provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, it argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, the book claims that, contrary to traditional wisdom, the libertarian question can be reduced to a question of indeterminacy—in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way. In other words, it argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, the book suggests that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way which is required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question.
Keywords:
free will,
determinism,
neural events,
naturalistic defense,
indeterminacy,
libertarian,
empirical question
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262013543 |
| Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262013543.001.0001 |
