Against the Mind Argument

Abstract

The Mind Argument is an argument for the incompatibility of indeterminism and anyone's having a choice about anything that happens. Peter van Inwagen rejects the Mind Argument not because he is able to point out the flaw in it, but because he accepts both that determinism is incompatible with anyone's having a choice about anything that happens and that it is possible for someone to have a choice about something that happens. In this paper I first diagnose and clear up a confusion in recent discussions of the Mind Argument and then go on to show why it is a bad argument.Keywords Free will Á The Mind Argument Á Consequence Argument Á Determinism Á Indeterminism Peter van Inwagen has offered an argument-the Consequence Argument-for the claim that if determinism is true, no one has, or ever had, a choice about anything that happens. He has also offered an argument-the Mind Argument-for the claim that if determinism is false, no one has, or ever had, a choice about anything that happens. As van Inwagen is someone who holds that there are some things that happen that people sometimes do have a choice about, he is in a bit of a pickle. Of his two arguments, he is more sure of the Consequence Argument and so he has unhappily concluded that, though he cannot discern the problem with it, the Mind Argument is unsound. In this paper, I will try to point out what, in particular, is wrong with the Mind Argument. First, I will present both the Consequence Argument and the Mind Argument, and describe the back and forth of a recent discussion of their interrelation. Then, I will show how this discussion has been

Luck: Its Nature and Significance for Human Knowledge and Agency

“…In what follows, I will grant (MI-1) and consider five prominent recent arguments for (MI-2) -what I'll call, respectively, the 'Device Argument' (van Inwagen 1983, Graham 2010, the 'Promising Argument ' (van Inwagen , 2011, the 'Assimilation Argument' (Shabo 2013), the 'Nomological Grounding Argument' (Finch 2013), and the 'Selection Argument' (Haji 2001, Schlosser 2014. Before getting to these five prominent recent arguments for (MI-2), though, I want to briefly discuss two other lines of reasoning for the Unfreedom Lemma that, while historically salient, are much less interesting and promising than the five arguments that we'll focus on.…”

Why Free Will Remains a Mystery

“…142–150), several commentators have focused on the structural parallel between this argument and (a version of) the so‐called Consequence Argument, an argument for determinism‐free will incompatibilism. See Finch and Warfield, 1998; Nelkin, 2001; Graham, 2010. As will be seen, I take a different tack here.…”