Time, Determinism & Free Will
Metaphysical Libertarianism
Holds that free will is real and requires indeterminism to be true — that some human choices are not fully fixed by prior causes, leaving room for a person to be the genuine, undetermined origin of their own action.
Proponents
Epicurus, Robert Kane, Peter van Inwagen
Evidence For
Preserves the strong, pre-theoretic intuition that people are the ultimate source of their own actions and genuinely could have done otherwise; Kane grounds this in undetermined "self-forming actions" arising from indeterminacy in the brain at moments of genuine inner conflict.
Evidence Against
The "luck objection": if an action truly isn't determined by an agent's prior character and reasons, it looks like a matter of chance rather than a controlled, rational choice — which critics argue undermines responsibility rather than securing it.
Real Sources
Transmissions
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