The Zygote Argument Is Still Invalid: So What?
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The Zygote Argument Is Still Invalid: So What? Kristin M. Mickelson 1,2 Received: 3 March 2020 / Revised: 26 June 2020 / Accepted: 30 June 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In “The Zygote Argument is Invalid: Now What?”, Kristin Mickelson argues that Alfred Mele’s original Zygote Argument is invalid: its two premises tell us merely that the truth of determinism is (perhaps spuriously) correlated with the absence of free human agents, but the argument nonetheless concludes with a specific explanation for that correlation, namely that deterministic laws (of the sort described by determinism) preclude—rule out, destroy, undermine, make impossible, rob us of—free will. In a recent essay, Gabriel De Marco grants that the original Zygote Argument is invalid for the reasons that Mickelson has identified, and claims that he has developed two new solutions to her invalidity objection. In this essay, I argue that both of his proposed solutions are nonstarters, the first fails as a “rescue” because it simply restates an extant solution in new jargon and the second fails because it consists in another invalid variant of the original Zygote Argument. Keywords Free will . Determinism . Manipulation arguments . Best-explanation argument
1 Introduction In “The Zygote Argument is Invalid: Now What?” (2015b), I argued that Alfred Mele’s original Zygote Argument (Mele 2006, 2008, 2012) is invalid: its two premises tell us merely that the truth of determinism is (perhaps spuriously) correlated with the absence of free human agents, but the argument nonetheless concludes with a specific explanation for that correlation, namely that deterministic laws (of the sort described by determinism) preclude—rule out, destroy, make impossible, conflict with, rob people of—free will. As such, the original Zygote Argument is deductively invalid (in classical logic), and to infer the Zygote Argument’s explanatory conclusion from its two
* Kristin M. Mickelson [email protected]
1
University of Minnesota, Morris, 600 E 4th St, Morris, MN 56267, USA
2
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Philosophia
premises is to commit the cum hoc, ergo propter hoc (with this, therefore because of/on account of this) fallacy. In a recent essay, Gabriel De Marco (2016) grants that the original Zygote Argument is invalid for the reasons that I identified, and claims that he has developed two new solutions to my objection. In this essay, I argue that both of his proposed solutions fail. The first fails as a “rescue” because it merely repeats (in slightly different jargon) a candidate solution that I proposed in Mickelson 2015b. The second solution fails because it consists in another invalid variant of the original Zygote Argument. This essay as four main sections. I begin (§2) with a brief overview of the traditional problem of free will and determinism, the problem that the Zygote Argument purports to solve. I then address De Marco’s first reply (§3) and second reply (§4) to my invalidity objection in turn. In closing (§5), I identify t
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