A Minimal Libertarianism: Free Will and the Promise of Reduction

In this book, Christopher Evan Franklin develops and defends a novel version of event-causal libertarianism. This view is a combination of libertarianism--the view that humans sometimes act freely and that those actions are the causal upshots of nondeterministic processes--and agency reductionism--the view that the causal role of the agent in exercises of free will is exhausted by the causal role of mental states and events (e.g., desires and beliefs) involving the agent. Franklin boldly counteracts a dominant theory that has similar aims, put forth by well-known philosopher Robert Kane. Many philosophers contend that event-causal libertarians have no advantage over compatibilists when it comes to securing a distinctively valuable kind of freedom and responsibility. To Franklin, this position is mistaken. Assuming agency reductionism is true, event-causal libertarians need only adopt the most plausible compatibilist theory and add indeterminism at the proper juncture in the genesis of human action. The result is minimal event-causal libertarianism: a model of free will with the metaphysical simplicity of compatibilism and the intuitive power of libertarianism. And yet a worry remains: toward the end of the book, Franklin reconsiders his assumption of agency reductionism, arguing that this picture faces a hitherto unsolved problem. This problem, however, has nothing to do with indeterminism or determinism, or even libertarianism or compatibilism, but with how to understand the nature of the self and its role in the genesis of action. Crucially, if this problem proves unsolvable, then not only is event-causal libertarianism untenable, so also is event-causal compatibilism.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I Toward a Minimal Libertarianism Chapter 1 Minimal Event-causal Libertarianism Chapter 2 A Theory of Moral Accountability Chapter 3 Abilities, Opportunities, and Determinism Chapter 4 The Role and Location of Indeterminism Part II The Promise of Reduction Chapter 5 The Problem of Luck Chapter 6 The Problem of Enhanced Control Chapter 7 The Limits of Event-causal Libertarianism Conclusion Appendix: Against Frankfurt-style Cases

About the Author :
Christopher Evan Franklin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Grove City College. His primary research is in ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of action and mind and he is author of many articles on topics pertaining to free will, moral responsibility, the self, motivation, blame, ability, causation, indeterminism, and reductionism.

Review :
"This book is a thoughtful, detailed defense of a particular "event-causal" view of free will and moral responsibility that is incompatible with determinism--in short, an event-causal libertarian view. Franklin's "minimal event-causal" view is a worthy competitor to "agent-causal" and "non-causal" libertarian views. And even if compatibilism is true, Franklin's view, or something in its vicinity, might characterize an important range of free actions of actual human beings." --Alfred Mele, Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University "This book is carefully argued, richly informed by the relevant work of others, and philosophically rigorous. At its heart is an ancient and venerable view: responsibility requires that we have free will, understood as entailing that, given the past and the laws, we have dual control over our actions and omissions. This libertarian view is adeptly supported by scrupulous argument. The book will be of significant interest to all interested in free will, moral responsibility, and agency reductionism." --Ishtiyaque Haji, Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary