Why Free Will Remains a Mystery

Abstract

Peter van Inwagen contends that free will is a mystery. Here I present an argument in the spirit of van Inwagen's. According to the Assimilation Argument, libertarians cannot plausibly distinguish causally undetermined actions, the ones they take to be exercises of free will, from overtly randomized outcomes of the sort nobody would count as exercises of free will.

The Two‐Stage Luck Objection

“…For this reason, defenders of the Luck Objection may do well to avoid couching the challenge to libertarianism in terms of agents' control, power, or abilities. 5 Shabo 2011Shabo , 2013Shabo , and 2014. That said, the version presented here is different in some ways, including ways that help to connect the two stages of the larger argument.…”

“…Shabo , , and . That said, the version presented here is different in some ways, including ways that help to connect the two stages of the larger argument.…”

From the Ontology of Interaction to the Semiotics of Education

“…But does our science bound ontology allow this kind of freedom if every event in the world is caused and at least in principle is possible to explain by some other previous events (see e.g. Shabo, 2011)? If this freedom does not exist then such traditional ideas of pedagogy-referenced often by a German term Bildung, (Siljander, Kivelä, & Sutinen, 2012)-like the open possibilities for a human being to master and transcend any cultural contents and for a society and human kind to cultivate still better and more just unforeseen social and cultural structures are only vain hopes and pious words.…”

The Assimilation Argument and the Rollback Argument

“…Shabo does not think that the Rollback Argument proves that indeterminism is incompatible with the power to settle, but he does think it ‘[forces] a reasonable question: if nothing prior to the decision varies between [the various rollbacks]– if there is no difference in the agent's states or actions – in virtue of what does the outcome qualify as up to her ? What makes it an exercise of her power over the course she adopts?’ 28 .…”

“…1 1 Shabo, 2011; forthcoming. I will assume, as does Shabo, the truth of incompatibilism – the thesis that free will is incompatible with determinism.…”