ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I presented and criticized two compatibilist theories of freedom. Each seeks to show that freedom doesn’t require the absence of causality; both say that an action is free when it arises by a certain sort of causal process. In this chapter, I present a third compatibilist theory, one inspired by an idea suggested by my colleagues Dennis Stampe and Martha Gibson (in their “Of One’s Own Free Will,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 52, 1992, pp. 529–56). After presenting a simplified version of this theory, I’ll describe an objection to it. I won’t propose a way of meeting this objection, but will leave the problem of free will unsolved. However, I do hope to convince you that compatibilism is a plausible view, even though I don’t claim that a completely plausible compatibilist theory has yet been articulated.
