My question is about the free will problem. I hope it is not too stupid or

My question is about the free will problem. I hope it is not too stupid or

My question is about the free will problem. I hope it is not too stupid or anything. Many philosophers seem to argue against free will like this: "Either everything has a cause or not. If everything does have a cause, then it looks like you have no free will, because the chain of causes leading to your actions began before you were born. And if not everything has a cause, if in particular some of your actions are uncaused, then that doesn't seem like free will either. It seems just like a random event." This is from what Peter Lipton wrote in another question. I don't understand why if it is true that not everything has a cause, it must also be true that an uncaused event must be a "random" event. Suppose that a Cartesian "soul" caused an event, but there was no prior cause for the soul's causation of the event. That doesn't seem like a random event, it seems like an event which was caused by the soul, but which was not caused by anything else. To me it looks like this would be compatible with free will, because the soul is choosing something. I know that there are other objections which might be made against this sort of picture, but doesn't it at least avoid the argument that an uncaused event is random and so incompatible with free will?

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