The question seems to imply that 'true freedom' requires that agents must be the author of their own natures, and if one is the author of one's own nature, then no being--not even God--could predict how a truly free agent would act. The assumption that one needs to be the author of one's own nature in order to be free seems to be too strong, however, for it implies that only God can be free, because only God is traditionally conceived to be the author of His own nature. Suppose that one drops the requirement that a free agent must be the author of his/her own nature, and weakens it to the requirement that a free agent must be the author of his/her own choices. Then, the worry goes, if an agent is indeed the author of his/her own choices, then those choices cannot be foreseen. The assumption that God could not foreknow the actions of a truly free agent is extraordinarily problematic, for it would compromise God's omniscience, and hence would be rejected by most believers. ...

On certain conceptions of free will, freedom is bound up with rationality. On other conceptions of free will, however, freedom consists in a capacity to be a first cause of one's choices or actions, and so on such a conception, freedom seems to float free of rationality. Indeed, on such accounts, to be determined by reason seems to curtail freedom. In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Locke raises a good question for accounts of free will that do not tie freedom and rationality closely together. "Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool, and draw shame and misery upon a man's self? If to break loose from the conduct of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment, which keeps us from choosing or doing the worse, be liberty , true liberty, mad men and fools are the only free men: But yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty , but he that is mad already."

This question points to a tension in our pre-theoretical views aboutemotions. On the one hand, they seem to be mental states with respectto which we are passive, and over which we have no control. Thisreflects the phenomenology of emotional experience. On the other hand,we sometimes expect people to have certain emotions, and criticizepeople for having certain emotions. If, as many philosophersbelieve, responsibility presupposes control, given that emotions seemto be states over which we have no control, it would seem, then, thatwe cannot be responsible for our emotions. So, on the one hand, itwould seem that we ought not to be responsible for our emotions, whileon the other hand, we do hold people responsible for their emotions. Isthere any way to resolve this tension? I think that this tensionmay be resolved by reconceiving the notion of control at issue here.Rather than locating the control necessary for responsibility indecision, it could be relocated in rationality. So instead of requiringthat...

I wanted to add some remarks regarding the relation between divine foreknowledge and free will. According to most orthodox Christians, the fact that God is omniscient implies that He has foreknowledge. Indeed, if God didn't have foreknowledge, it would be difficult to see how all events could be subject to His providential control, as all orthodox Christians agree. Depending on how one conceives of free will, tdifferent questions arise regarding the nature of divine foreknowledge. If one holds an incompatibilist view of free will, according to which an agent's choice is free iff that choice is not determined by some preceding cause, then it is difficult to see what basis there is for God's foreknowledge of those free choices. One famous option for reconciling this conception of free will with divine foreknowledge was elaborated by Luis de Molina, and involves an appeal to 'middle knowledge'. Roughly, what the appeal to middle knowledge amounts to is the claim that God knows all possible free...

One way to respond to this question is to reconceive the notion of control at issue. Rather than accepting that the control that agents feel they have requires that they be able to make choices independent of the laws of nature, one might argue that all the control that agents need in order to be responsible for their choices is for their choices to be sensitive to their reasoning. On this conception of freedom, an agent would be responsible for her choices, and have control of them, because she chose for a reason. Rational control of this sort seems eminently compatible with determinism. On such an account, the feeling of control that one has is not taken to indicate that one is exempt from the laws of nature, but rather reflects the fact that one's choices are up to one because they reflect one's reasons.

A person is not free to act if she is constrained. So, for example, if a person is chained to his bed, he is not free to get out of bed (or even to remain in it). Suppose, however, that a person is the victim of brainwashing, an evil deceiver, a mad scientist, etc.. In the absence of external constraints, such a person might be free to act as she wants, but if her desires have been implanted in her, then what she wants wouldn't be up to her, and so she wouldn't be free to want what she wants. This suggests that there is something more to freedom than freedom of action--some philosophers call it 'freedom of will'. The trick, however, is to explain the nature of freedom of will. I won't even try to do that here.