Richard Double

PUPPETEERS, HYPNOTISTS, AND NEUROSURGEONS

ConclusionThe objection to R-S accounts that was raised by the possibility of external agents requires the acceptance of two premises, viz., that all R-S accounts allow for puppeteers and that puppeteers necessarily make us unfree. The Metaphilosophical reply shows that to the extent that puppeteers are more problematic than determinism per se, pup-peteers may be explicitly excluded since they violate our paradigm of free will. The Metaphilosophical reply also suggests that we should not expect our mature R-S account to supply logically necessary and sufficient conditions for free will, but rather give us answers that agree with our intuitions regarding paradigms of free and unfree decisions. The Irrelevancy reply completed our reply to incompatibilists who continue to object that determinism per se destroys the R-S program. It may be debated whether my autonomy variable account is a satisfactory way to spell out the Irrelevancy reply, but I think that this type of approach suggests the way to vindicating the R-S view from an important type of objection.

How to frame the free will problem

ConclusionThe exchange is almost complete. I have argued that if we wish to view the free will problem in a non-question-begging way, we should frame the problem in more radical terms than we usually do. If we frame the problem this way, then we discover a compelling reason for rejecting all of the familiar “isms” in favor of my non-realism thesis. This thesis holds that “free choice” has a coherent meaning just in case it is treated as a subjective term; thus, if we try to view “free choice” as denoting classes of entities that themselves possess the characteristic of freeness, it is logically inconsistent. My thesis is supported by a certain metaphilosophical view. I admit that this metaphilosophical view — which tries to ‘locate’ everything ‘where it belongs’ — is neither provable nor refutable. But if my argument in this paper is correct, when we assert any of the positions that presuppose the coherence of “free will” (Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, Libertarianism, Incompatibilism, Compatibilism), we should add the fact that we have adopted a metaphilosophical view that supports these. Since these metaphilosophies are non-truth-tracking views, our joint declaration of our lower level free will theory and its supporting metaphilosophy will sound Pickwickian (e.g., “I believe that Libertarianism is true and I support that view with the metaphilosophical thesis that the most important role of philosophy is not to track truth, but to create an intellectual climate best for improving the human condition.”) If I have shown that my opponents are forced to such declarations, I will be satisfied.

The Non-Reality of Free Will.

This monograph offers a new argument concerning free will and moral responsibility. Double identifies hierarchical compatibilism - a view espoused by such philosophers as Frankfurt, Neely, Watson, Levin, and Dennett - as the most plausible account of free will, showing how compatibilism can be successfully defended against incompatibilist objections. He goes on, however, to demonstrate that even the compatibilist account of free will ultimately faces insuperable objections, and concludes that free will is an essentially incoherent notion.