Abstract
Either all our decisions are determined in advance by physical law, or they are undetermined. In both cases, it is difficult to see how free will could exist. Claiming that we are free, even though our decisions are parts of a single causal chain billions of years long, seems paradoxical. But could we be free if our decisions are undetermined? Examples of undetermined happenings are events such as coin flips or die rolls'all but random processes. If our decisions are like that, we would be no more than 'the slaves of chance'. Given the choice between slavery to nature?s laws and to blind luck, philosophers, theorists of law and laymen are increasingly dismissing free will as an illusion. This project will approach this dilemma from a new perspective. Could our actions be undetermined, yet more than a matter of brute chance? I will attempt to make room for a positive answer by contrasting chancy actions with actions that happen for a reason. Suppose I decide to study History. Though I might have decided to study Literature, this is not just a matter of chance: I had my reasons for preferring History, and thus I chose freely. The distinction between chance events and rational actions remains undeveloped, because the free will debate assumes that actions happen for a reason if they are caused by a reason. Reasons have a certain chance of bringing an action about. This situation is surprising, as recent developments in the philosophy of action argue against seeing reasons as links in the causal chain. They suggest that acting for a reason is knowing why you act in a distinctively non-causal way. Enlisting these new theories, I will investigate whether undetermined actions must truly be matters of chance, attempting to move the debate beyond the current stalemate.