How Much of the Free Will Problem Does (the Right Kind of) Indeterminism Solve?

Abstract

This paper takes up an idea that has interested me for some years: the idea that, contrary to a very widely shared assumption, a radically indeterministic metaphysics does provide a way of understanding human freedom as a real and important feature of the world. However, whereas I used to think of this as a solution to the free will problem within the tradition of radical voluntarism, I now prefer to present it under the rubric of indeterminist compatibilism. In the most crucial respects this position remains true to the voluntarist tradition, but in its current incarnation it aims to capture the powerful intuitions that underlie compatibilist thinking.