INTRODUCTION

All of the contributors to this volume have had insightful observations concerning the thicket of problems that compose the free will issue. Readers will be happy to learn that, in this area at least, nature remains uniform. You have in your hands a compilation of very fine articles written by very keen minds. You will be surprised, reassured, prodded, provoked, and engaged. Enjoy.

We open with Galen Strawson's discussion and endorsement of an argument - the 'Basic Argument' - which concludes that, regardless of the truth or falsity of determinism, we cannot be ultimately responsible for our actions. This apparently pessimistic result is a consequence of the fact that ultimate moral responsibility requires that we be the cause of ourselves (at least in some relevant respects), and that this requirement logically lies beyond our abilities. This general line of argument, as Strawson admits, is not novel; what he modestly omits to say is that his presentation is unusually detailed, forceful, and direct.

In Robert Kane's paper, we are permitted a rare look at the pro- gression of a philosopher's thoughts on a single issue over a quarter century. What results are no mere autobiographical musings, but rather a synoptic view of where we are and how we arrived at this point in our philosophical odyssey. No one in recent memory has tried more valiantly than Kane to try to establish a viable libertarianism, especially one which eschews references to somewhat mysterious and nonnatu- ralistic entities like Cartesian egos and Kantian noumenal selves. Part, but only part, of what Kane says in this rich paper can be viewed as his latest response to the challenge cast by Strawson: In and only in an indeterministic world can we be ultimately morally responsible for our actions; and I will show you, in a manner that science can confirm and disconfirm, how we can be this way.

Philosophical Studies 75: 1-3, 1994. © 1994 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

2 MARK BERNSTEIN

Mark Ravizza aims to defend 'semi-compatibilism', the view that moral responsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise, from a recent assault of Peter van Inwagen. Van Inwagen's argument, dubbed the 'Direct Argument ' , uses a principle structurally identical to the one used in his version of the Consequence Argument, an argument with great appeal that concludes that determinism and free will are incompatible. The principle used in the Direct Argument tells us roughly that if no one is morally responsible for p, and no one is morally responsible for p leading to q, then no one is morally responsible for q. By introducing a series of examples, Ravizza argues for the invalidity of this 'transfer-of-non-responsibility' principle, while leaving intact the counterpart principle in the Consequence Argument. We are left with a fecund result; we can accept the Consequence Argument and thus be an incompatibilist regarding freedom and determinism, and yet subscribe to a compatibilism between determinism and moral responsibility.

Peter van Inwagen defends some of the major theses he forwarded in "When Is the Will Free?" from attacks by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza. The paper focuses around the status of an inference rule 'Beta', a rule which, according to van Inwagen, has crucial import for any argument that purports to demonstrate the incompatibility between determinism and free will. Roughly, Beta (the counterpart to the transfer-of-non-responsibility principle discussed above) tells us that if no one has a choice about p, and no one has a choice about p leading to q, then no one has a choice about q. Van Inwagen maintains that his earlier conclusions about Beta - that it is essential to any incompatibilist argument, that it entails that we rarely if ever can act otherwise than we do, and that this entailment does not commit us to the view that we rarely if ever are morally responsible for our actions -escape unscathed from his critics' forays.

Kadri Vihvelin argues for the reinstatement of a currently unfashion- able view. The position, 'simple compatibilism' tells us that one who acts intentionally acts freely. This view no longer enjoys wide accep- tance since cases of acting from compulsive desires seem to present powerful counter-examples. Kleptomaniacs, for example, are typically characterized as acting intentionally but not freely. Vihvelin argues that it is best to understand psychologically compelled actions as free, and to

INTRODUC~ON 3

firmly distinguish this issue from the question of whether an agent who acts from a compulsive desire is morally responsible for her behavior. To Vihvelin, such an agent may be morally exculpable, but if she is, it is not as a result of suffering any unfreedom from the desire. Vihvelin garners additional support for simple compatibilism by arguing that other theories that try to explain the nature of psychological compulsion are seriously deficient.

We close with the most radical suggestion of all. Richard Double argues that the traditional way in which the free will problem is posed - as a question concerning the compatibility between free will and deter- minism - begs a substantive issue; we are presupposing that 'free will' refers to an objective, real property. Framing the problem differently allows us to investigate this assumption and, remarkably, we find this assumption to be false. Double powerfully argues for the revisionist position that 'free will', when taken to refer to an objective charac- teristic of the will (choice), is a logically incoherent notion. We can speak coherently of free choices only if this talk is understood in a sub- jectivized, idiosyncratic manner. Doublethan shows that the acceptance of an eminently reasonable meta-philosophical theory provides us with further reason to find his non-reality view of free will plausible.

A closing word of thanks to the Editor of Philosophical Studies and the volume's participants; to the former for the opportunity of unifying what I believe is a provocative set of papers and to the latter for helping me realize this opportunity.

Division of English, Classics and Philosophy University of Texas at San Antonio San Antonio, TX 78249 USA

MARK BERNSTEIN