Free will, control, and the possibility to do otherwise from a causal modeler's perspective

Alexander Gebharter*, Maria Sekatskaya, Gerhard Schurz

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
67 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Strong notions of free will are closely connected to the possibility to do otherwise as well as to an agent’s ability to causally influence her environment via her decisions controlling her actions. In this paper we employ techniques from the causal modeling literature to investigate whether a notion of free will subscribing to one or both of these requirements is compatible with naturalistic views of the world such as non-reductive physicalism to the background of determinism and indeterminism. We argue that from a causal modeler’s perspective the only possibility to get both requirements consists in subscribing to reductive physicalism and indeterminism.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1889–1906
Number of pages18
JournalErkenntnis
Volume87
Early online date20-Jun-2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Keywords

  • EXCLUSION

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