Is Libertarian Free Will an Inescapably Incoherent Concept?

Abstract

In this thesis I examine whether libertarian theories of freedom and responsibility should be considered to be inescapably incoherent. Despite arguably having an intuitive appeal, the libertarian approach – with its requirement to reconcile a particular understanding of free will with an indeterministic universe – is often considered to be unintelligible due to its necessary focus on undetermined acts and its attempts to posit a form of non-necessitating control, which its proponents then wish to claim is sufficient for a justifiable ascription of responsibility. Critics claim that libertarian theorists can only ever be led into what I have called the Catch-22 of Libertarianism, whereby undetermined acts can only be the result of random processes for which the agent cannot be considered responsible and any attempts to remove this randomness by positing determining factors can only undermine the libertarian position and negatively affect their own stated requirements for ascribing responsibility. Despite these issues, a number of philosophers remain committed to developing libertarian models for free action and, more recently, researchers working in the various sciences have also joined the debate on the side of libertarianism. I therefore consider six specific libertarian theories in the attempt to answer my main question concerning the coherence of the position. Three of these are from philosophers, who each represent one of the main strands of libertarian thought: Robert Kane’s event-causal theory, Carl Ginet’s non-causal theory, and Timothy O’Connor’s agent-causal theory. The other three are from scientists who each take a different approach to the problem: Peter Ulric Tse’s Criterial Causation theory, Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff’s Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory, and Henry Stapp’s Quantum Interactive Dualism theory. In order to properly (and systematically) assess each theory – and give proper consideration to whether each manages to meet all the goals of the libertarian project in a coherent manner – I have developed what I call my Criteria for Coherence, which contains six key principles that I believe fully represent the stated aims of all the researchers whose work I consider. It is my contention that any libertarian theory needs to adequately meet all six principles if it is to be considered fully coherent yet, after assessing each theory against the Criteria, I ultimately conclude that none of them manage to do so. This done, I move on to consider what it is about the Criteria that makes adhering to its principles so problematic and argue that it is in fact the explicit focus on incorporating indeterminism into their models that is the libertarian’s undoing. I go on to show that, despite what they might believe, indeterminism is not actually required to meet either of their key conditions for free and responsible action. I conclude by arguing that both indeterminism and determinism should be considered irrelevant to the debate on freedom and responsibility and that the focus should instead be on expanding the explanatory network of the concept of agency, irrespective of any questions over the fundamental physics of the universe.