Incompatibilism Vs Libertarianism

Andrew LaCombe

12/15/16

Mind and Reality 11:00am-12:15pm

Catherine Sutton

Short paper

The purpose of this paper is to explore an objection to the libertarian view on the topic of free will, as well as proposing the libertarian rebuttal to said objections. When discussing free will it is important to understand the various differing views as some are rather similar. To start off, Libertarianism is grounded in the incompatibilist position, which argues that determinism is false due to it’s logical incompatibility with the thought that agents have free will. Free will can be defined as the idiosyncratic ability of an individual to exercise control over oneself in a manner necessary for moral responsibility. A person is considered a morally

Semi-compatibilism is a view proposed by John Martin Fischer which only differs from compatibilism in the area of regulative control and moral responsibility. Fischer states that regulative control stems from the view of moral responsibility and is summarized as an agent who has alternative actions available to them. Agents can have guidance control even when they have no alternate possibilities available, and that moral responsibility is a product of the actual events in the causal sequence. The difference in semi-compatibilism from compatibilism is shown through the throwing out of regulative control in order to replace it with guidance control. Semi-compatibilism allows us to confidently attribute moral responsibility even if we are unsure about determinism. This sets Fischer aside from most philosophers of his time because they were all very interested in how free will and determinism are related (compatible) while Fischer glosses over the aspect of free will and states that moral responsibility and determinism are compatible regardless. Guidance control is comprised of two elements, the first being that one has to be a morally responsible agent whose actions must be the agents own, and secondly the crucial capacities used by a morally responsible agent are capacities for recognizing and responding to reasons for

The consequence argument revolves around power necessity, which concerns facts that an individual does not have power over. Mathematics is a common example because no person has power over the truths of mathematics (i.e., no person can act in such a way that the truths of mathematics would be false). The argument itself requires that determinism is true and that facts of the past are fixed as well as the laws of nature. The argument goes roughly as such: 1) No person can have power over past facts or the laws of