Causes, Laws, and Free Will: Why Determinism Doesn't Matter

by Kadri Vihvelin

Common sense tells us that we are morally responsible for our actions only if we have free will -- and that we have free will only if we are able to choose among alternative actions. Common sense tells us that we do have free will and are morally responsible for many of the things we do. Common sense also tells us that we are objects in the natural world, governed by its laws. Nevertheless, many contemporary philosophers deny that we have free will or that free will is a necessary prerequisite for moral responsibility. Some hold that we are morally responsible only if we are somehow exempt from the laws of nature. Causes, Laws, and Free Will defends a thesis that has almost disappeared from the contemporary philosophical landscape by arguing that this philosophical flight from common sense is a mistake. We have free will even if everything we do is predictable given the laws of nature and the past, and we are morally responsible whatever the laws of nature turn out to be. The
impulses that tempt us into thinking that determinism robs us of free will spring from mistakes -- mistakes about the metaphysics of causation, mistakes about the nature of laws, and mistakes about the logic of counterfactuals.

Genres: Philosophy

296 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2013

Reviews

[Dominick Cancilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well thought out and complete. The author covered many points of argument I'd never considered, and thoroughly discussed those I already had.

I have mainly considered the question of free will from a moral perspective (tentatively concluding that determinism is morally irrelevant), and this book gave me an excellent perspective on the question from a more (for want of a better term) metaphysical angle.

[Tynan Brooks]

I thought this made a compelling case for compatibilism, though I already leaned in that direction. Most valuable was Vihvelin's articulation of what free will consists of, regardless of determinism's truth or falsity.