Rejecting Pereboom's empirical objection to agent-causation

Jordan Baker

pp. 3085-3100

in: Andrea Kruse, Heinrich Wansing (eds), Doxastic agency and epistemic responsibility, Synthese 194 (8), 2017.

Abstract

In this paper I argue that Pereboom’s (Living without free will, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2001; in: Fischer, Kane, Pereboom and Vargas, Four views on free will, Blackwell, Malden, 2007; Free will, agency, and meaning in life, Oxford University Press, New York, 2014) empirical objection to agent causation fails to undermine the most plausible version of agent-causal libertarianism. This is significant because Pereboom concedes that such libertarianism is conceptually coherent and only falls to empirical considerations. To substantiate these claims I (i) outline Pereboom’s taxonomy of agent-causal views, (ii) develop the strongest version of his empirical objections (which I call the “Wild Coincidence” objection), and then (iii) show that this objection fails to undermine what I consider the most plausible view of agent-causal libertarianism, namely, reconciliatory integrationist agent-causalism. I then strengthen my criticism of Pereboom by responding to three objections to my view. I show that these objections, though initially challenging, fail to undermine my argument. I therefore conclude that, to this extent, agent-causal views remain a viable option in the contemporary free will debate.