Against libertarianism
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Against libertarianism Alicia Finch
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract The so-called Mind argument aims at the conclusion that agents act freely only if determinism is true. The soundness of this argument entails the falsity of libertarianism, the two-part thesis that agents act freely, and free action and determinism are incompatible. In this paper, I offer a new formulation of the Mind argument. I argue that it is true by definition that if an agent acts freely, either (i) nothing nomologically grounds an agent’s acting freely, or (ii) the consequence argument for incompatibilism is unsound. I define the notion of nomological grounding, and argue that unless an agent’s acting freely is nomologically grounded, unacceptable consequences follow. I then argue that if agents act freely and the consequence argument is sound, a vicious regress ensues. I conclude by considering the libertarian’s dialectical options. Keywords Free will Libertarianism Incompatibilism Mind argument Consequence argument Grounding
1 Introduction Libertarianism is the two-part thesis that, necessarily,1 agents act freely only if determinism2 is false, and some agents act freely. The so-called
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Throughout this essay, the adverb ‘‘necessarily’’ should be read as ‘‘It is broadly logically necessary that.’’ Moreover, I treat metaphysical necessity and broadly logical necessity as equivalent.
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I will later define determinism more precisely; for now, it is enough to say that it is the thesis that given the past, and given the laws of nature, only one future is physically possible.
A. Finch (&) Department of Philosophy, Northern Illinois University, 915 Zulauf Hall, Dekalb, IL 60115, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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A. Finch
Mind argument3 aims at the conclusion that, necessarily, agents act freely only if determinism is true. A great debate about the Mind argument has arisen, and, at this point in the dialectic, many formulations have been offered, and many objections have been raised. My purpose here is to present a new formulation of the Mind argument. I will begin by examining the definition of free action, and, in so doing, I will consider what follows from the proposition that some agent acts freely. I will argue that it follows that either (i) nothing nomologically grounds an agent’s acting freely, or (ii) the consequence argument for incompatibilism is unsound. I will define the notion of nomological grounding and argue that the first horn of this dilemma is false. I will then argue that if agents act freely and the consequence argument is sound, a vicious regress ensues. This latter disjunct undermines libertarianism given that the consequence argument is widely regarded as the best argument for incompatibilism, which is the first conjunct of the libertarian thesis. I will conclude my presentation of the Mind argument by considering the libertarian’s dialectical options, and suggesting that if these are the only options before her, the reasonable conclusion is that libertarianism is necessarily fa
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