libertarian free will

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Libertarian free will is the technical philosophical view that genuine freedom requires real indeterminism and available alternatives, rather than merely acting according to desires in a predetermined world. RB1 uses the label only in a minimal structural sense for its own account. No political meaning is intended, and accepting real openness does not by itself require a supernatural agent, unrestricted choice or any particular agent-causal theory.

Explanation

The taxonomy contrasts hard determinism, compatibilism and libertarianism while acknowledging sophisticated compatibilist accounts of reasons-responsiveness and self-governance. The proposal preserves that fair contrast rather than defining compatibilism as an inability to deliberate or portraying every libertarian position as an identical mechanism. The native Kane and Dennett apparatus retains the respective attributions.

The author asks for physical openness inherited by agency but declines the specific self-forming-action and agent-causal machinery associated with other views. Kastner’s own agent-cause proposal remains hers; following her physical interpretation is not adopting that further account. List’s agential-level route is described as complementary, not refuted merely because the author chooses another route.

The standard luck and control objections still require an answer: indeterminism alone can look arbitrary, while control need not be understood as deterministic entailment. AB’s freedom chapter answers through organized character and constraints. The entry consequently records a position in the debate without claiming the taxonomy or quantum theory settles that debate.

Scope and attribution

Retain the taxonomy, real alternatives and the author’s deliberately limited identification with libertarianism.

AB — The Actual Book

The positive response to luck and control relies on organized agency rather than indeterminism alone.

Occurrence locators: 70, 71; Notes: 240.

PB — The Possible Book

Freedom requires outcome openness together with authorship through structure.

Occurrence locators: 95.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

The label is technical and minimally structural, with competing routes and mechanisms distinguished.

Occurrence locators: 294, 295, 296, 298, 299, 303; Notes: 294, 295.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.