Gregg D. Caruso: Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will

Retributivism, Free Will, and the Public Health-Quarantine Model

“…I further maintain that non-causal accounts of free will suffer from the same problem (see Pereboom 2001Pereboom , 2014. While agent-causal libertarianism could, in theory, supply this sort of control, I argue that it cannot be reconciled with our best philosophical and scientific theories about the world (see Pereboom 2001Pereboom , 2014Caruso 2012Caruso , 2021a and faces additional problems accounting for mental causation (Caruso 2012(Caruso , 2021a. Since this exhausts the options for views on which we have the sort of free will at issue, I conclude that free will skepticism is the only remaining position.…”

“…It's a form of hard incompatibilism, which maintains that free will is incompatible with both causal determination by factors beyond the agent's control and with the kind of indeterminacy in action required by the most plausible versions of libertarianism. Against the view that free will is compatible with the causal determination of our actions by natural factors beyond our control, I argue that there is no relevant difference between this prospect and our actions being causally determined by manipulators (see Pereboom 2001Pereboom , 2014Caruso 2012Caruso , 2021a. Against event causal libertarianism, I object (among other things) that on such accounts agents are left unable to settle whether a decision occurs and hence cannot have the control required for moral responsibility (see Pereboom 2001, 2014l Caruso 2012, 2021a.…”

“…Hard determinists, for example, have long argued that determinism is true and incompatible with free will and basic desert moral responsibility-either because it precludes the ability to do otherwise (leeway incompatibilism) or because it is inconsistent with one's being the "ultimate source" of action (source incompatibilism). More recently, a number of contemporary philosophers have presented additional arguments against basic desert moral responsibility that are agnostic about determinism (e.g., Pereboom 2001Pereboom , 2014Strawson 1986;Levy 2011;Waller 2011;Caruso 2012Caruso , 2021aDennett and Caruso 2021).…”

“…In my own work, I have offered two distinct sets of arguments in support of free will skepticism (see Caruso 2012Caruso , 2021aDennett and Caruso 2021). The first features distinct arguments that target the three leading rival views-event-causal libertarianism, agent-causal libertarianism, and compatibilism-and then claims the skeptical position is the only defensible position that remains standing.…”

<i>Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice,</i> A Précis

“…The first features distinct arguments that target the three leading rival views about free will-event-causal libertarianism, agent-causal libertarianism, and compatibilism-and then claims the skeptical position is the only defensible position that remains standing. 2 It maintains that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism (see, e.g., Pereboom 2001Pereboom , 2014Caruso 2012Caruso , 2021. The second maintains that regardless of the causal structure of the universe, we lack free will and basic-desert moral responsibility because free will is incompatible with the pervasiveness of luck (see Levy 2011;Caruso 2021).…”