In Why Free Will is Real Christian List defends a compatibilist libertarian position in the metaphysical debate over free will. List’s position is compatibilist because it holds that an agent’s free will is compatible with a scientific worldview. It is libertarian, according to List, because it requires a commitment to three positions. (1) Bearers of free will are intentional agents. In other words, they act with goals and purposes in mind. (2) Bearers of free will have alternative possibilities. Put simply, when an agent does something, she could have done otherwise. (3) Bearers of free will have causal control over at least some of their actions. Thus, at least some of an agent’s actions are the result of the agent’s intentions and are not mere reflexes. 

In order to provide a credible defense of compatibilist libertarianism, List defends all three claims against serious challenges. In what follows, I reconstruct these challenges and state how the author addresses each one. I then give my evaluation of his overall argument.

The challenge to intentional agency comes from the claim that a belief in intentionality is left over from folk psychology. According to this objection, over time, science has found non-intentional explanations of countless phenomena which were once explained as intentional. In light of this history, it seems undeniable that human behavior should also have a non-intentional explanation, and one should either be an eliminativist or a reductionist about intentionality. The former claims that language about intentionality is language that we can do without. The latter claims that language about intentionality is reducible to language about brain states. 

List answers both the eliminativist and the reductionist. To the eliminativist, he argues that unless human agents are considered intentional beings, their behavior is completely mysterious. To the reductionist, List claims that language about intentionality is not identical to language about brain states, because intentional properties can be multiply realized. Just as one can have twenty dollars through many possible combinations of coins and bills, an agent’s intentional property can be instantiated through many possible ways in her physical brain. 

The challenge to the claim that agents have alternative possibilities is as follows. According to physics, everything in the universe is governed by laws of nature. But libertarianism tells us that human choice is the one phenomena which is undetermined by these laws and this seems implausible. List answers this objection by arguing that while physical determinism is true, physical determinism does not imply that agential determinism must also be true. At the physical level, List argues, determinism is true, but at the psychological level where agents make decisions, determinism is false. 

The challenge to causal control is the challenge of epiphenomenalism, or the thesis that mental states lack causal powers. According to epiphenomenalism, there are no non-physical causes and if some effect has a sufficient physical cause, it does not have any other cause. 

List answers this challenge by first giving an account of causation as difference making. According to this account, given any cause and effect, not only is it true that if the cause occurs, the effect will occur, but if the cause does not occur, then the effect will not occur either. But if this account of causation is correct, List argues, then given that mental states can be likely multiply realized through physical states, it follows that epiphenomenalism must be false. 

In order to grasp List’s argument, suppose my belief that my house is on Main Street precedes my turning right on Main Street. For the epiphenomenalist, my belief did not cause me to turn right. Rather, my action was caused by a physical brain state. But suppose five different brain states could have caused my belief. If I had one of those brain states, then while it is true that because I had this brain state, I turned right on Main, it is false that if I had not had this brain state, I would not have turned right on Main. Indeed, four other possible brain states could have caused me to turn right. Nonetheless, it is both true that my belief that my house is on Main caused me to turn right, and if I did not believe my house is on Main, then I would not have turned right. Thus, given List’s difference making account of causation and his claim that mental states are multiply realized, mental causation is real and cannot be reduced to physical causation.  

List does an excellent job of arguing that libertarianism is compatible with a scientific worldview. But as convincing as his defense is, he does little to address the randomness objection to libertarianism. According to this objection, if an agent could have done otherwise when she made a decision, then her action happened at random rather than being something for which she bears responsibility. List attempts to answer this objection by making a distinction between choices that are merely possible for the agent and choices the agent rationally endorsed. He argues that when an agent chooses among one or more options, only one of those options is rationally endorsed by the agent, namely the option the agent chose. But the unchosen options were at least possible for the agent. 

List’s distinction between rationally endorsed options and merely possible options may be just what he needs to address the randomness objection, but I don’t see where he ever explains how this distinction addresses it. He simply seems to assume that mentioning this distinction is all that is necessary, but this seems odd given the effort he makes to thoroughly address all the other objections to his position. 

Despite this single criticism of List’s defense of compatibilist libertarianism, there can be no doubt that his book makes a serious contribution to the metaphysical debate about the possibility of free will. It should be considered required reading for anyone wishing to stay informed about this debate.

Rich Holmes, Malone University

Categories: Philosophical

Keywords: free will, philosophy