Editing Incompatibilism (section)

== Libertarianism ==
{{Main|Libertarianism (metaphysics)}}

Free-will [[Libertarianism (metaphysics)|libertarianism]] is the view that the free-will thesis (that we, ordinary humans, have free will) is true and that [[determinism]] is false; in first-order language, it is the view that we (ordinary humans) have free will and the world does not behave in the way described by [[determinism]].<ref>{{Citation |last=Wolff |first=Jonathan |title=Libertarianism |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780415249126-s036-2 |encyclopedia=Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy |date=2016 |access-date=2023-08-22 |place=London |publisher=Routledge|doi=10.4324/9780415249126-s036-2 |isbn=9780415250696 |url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last1=van der Vossen |first1=Bas |title=Libertarianism |date=2023 |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/libertarianism/ |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |access-date=2023-08-22 |edition=Fall 2023 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |last2=Christmas |first2=Billy |editor2-last=Nodelman |editor2-first=Uri}}</ref><ref>{{Citation |title=Free Will: New Perspectives on an Ancient Problem |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A61X-5b847U |access-date=2023-08-22 |language=en}}</ref> Libertarianism is one of the popular solutions to the problem of free will, roughly the problem of settling the question of whether we have free will and the logically prior question of what free will amounts to.<ref>{{Citation |title=The Problem of Free Will |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irz9mKKZlIM |access-date=2023-08-22 |language=en}}</ref> The main rivals to libertarianism are [[soft determinism]] and [[hard determinism]].

Libertarian [[Robert Kane (philosopher)|Robert Kane]] (editor of the ''Oxford Handbook of Free Will'') is a leading incompatibilist philosopher in favour of free will. Kane seeks to hold persons morally responsible for decisions that involved indeterminism in their process.<ref name="Kane-1999"/><ref name="Kane-2014"/><ref name="Kane-2016"/> Critics maintain that Kane fails to overcome the greatest challenge to such an endeavor: "the argument from luck".<ref name="Clarke-2017"/> Namely, if a critical moral choice is a matter of luck (indeterminate quantum fluctuations), then the question of holding a person responsible for their final action arises. Moreover, even if we imagine that a person can make an act of will ahead of time, to make the ''moral'' action more probable in the upcoming critical moment, this act of 'willing' was itself a matter of luck. Kane objects to the validity of the argument from luck because the latter misrepresents the chance as if it is external to the act of choosing.{{r|Kane-1989|p=247-248|quote =But it is misleading to say the outcome depends "on chance," if this is going to suggest to the unwary that there are two separable events or processes involved, the "effort" and the "chance." Preceding the choice, we do not have the effort occurring and then chance, or chance occurring and then an effort. We merely have the effort, and it turns out that this effort is indeterminate. So we cannot say of an agent that she made just this much effort, and then she got lucky (or unlucky), because chance took over. Such claims will not make sense, because, first, there is no such thing as "this exact amount of effort" and, second, the chance is not separable from the effort, it is the indeterminacy of the effort.}} The [[free will theorem]] of [[John Horton Conway|John H. Conway]] and [[Simon B. Kochen]] further establishes that if we have free will, then quantum particles also possess free will.<ref name="Conway-2006"/><ref name="Conway-2009"/> This means that starting from the assumption that humans have free will, it is possible to pinpoint the origin of their free will in the quantum particles that constitute their brain.{{r|Georgiev-2021|p=10-11|quote=The free will does not pop in and out of existence in violation of physical laws. In fact, in the evolutionary history of the animal nervous systems, the narrative is reversed, that is the brain possesses free will exactly because the physical components from which it is built possess free will.}}

Such philosophical stance risks an [[infinite regress]], however;<ref>Clarke, Randolph (2003). ''Libertarian Accounts of Free Will''. New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.</ref>{{r|Strawson-1994|p=7|quote=True self-determination is impossible because it requires the actual completion of an infinite series of choices of principles of choice.}} if any such mind is real, an objection can be raised that free will would be impossible if the choosing is shaped merely by luck or chance.{{r|Strawson-1998|p=743-744|quote = For suppose that not every event is determined, and that some events occur randomly, or as a matter of chance. How can our claim to moral responsibility be improved by the supposition that it is partly a matter of chance or random outcome that we and our actions are as they are?}}

[[Libertarianism (metaphysics)|Libertarianism]] in the philosophy of mind is unrelated to the [[libertarianism|like-named political philosophy]]. It suggests that we actually do have free will, that it is incompatible with determinism, and that therefore the future is not determined. 

One famous proponent of this view was [[Lucretius]], who asserted that the free will arises{{r|Lucretius|p=51|quote=besides blows and weights there is another cause of motions, from which this power of free action has been begotten in us, since we see that nothing can come from nothing. For weight forbids that all things be done by blows through as it were an outward force; but that the mind itself does not feel an internal necessity in all its actions and is not as it were overmastered and compelled to bear and put up with this, is caused by a minute swerving of first beginnings at no fixed part of space and no fixed time.}} out of the random, chaotic movements of atoms, called "[[clinamen]]".{{r|Lucretius|p=48-49|quote=when bodies are borne downwards sheer through void by their own weights, at quite uncertain times and uncertain spots they push themselves a little from their course: you just and only just can call it a change of inclination. If they were not used to swerve, they would all fall down, like drops of rain, through the deep void, and no clashing would have been begotten nor blow produced among the first-beginnings: thus nature never would have produced aught.}} One major objection to this view is that science has gradually shown that more and more of the physical world obeys completely deterministic laws, and seems to suggest that our minds are just as much part of the physical world as anything else. If these assumptions are correct, incompatibilist libertarianism can only be maintained as the claim that free will is a supernatural phenomenon, which does not obey the laws of nature (as, for instance, maintained by some religious traditions).

However, many libertarian view points now rely upon an [[indeterministic]] view of the physical universe, under the assumption that the idea of a deterministic, [[clockwork universe]] has become [[quantum indeterminacy|outdated]] since the advent of [[quantum mechanics]].{{r|Georgiev-2021|p=4|quote=With the advent of modern quantum mechanics, however, we now know that classical mechanics in inadequate to describe the physical world and physical reality is governed by indeterministic quantum physical laws. Modern quantum physics no longer clashes with the existence of free will and supports the possibility of genuine choice making.}}
By assuming an indeterministic universe, libertarian philosophical constructs can be proposed under the assumption of [[physicalism]].{{r|Georgiev-2017|p=200|quote=Since quantum physics is inherently indeterministic, it is able to accommodate free will in the physical process of actualization of one out of many possible future choices.}}

There are libertarian view points based upon indeterminism and [[physicalism]], which is closely related to [[Naturalism (philosophy)|naturalism]].<ref name="Williams-2002"/> A major problem for [[Metaphysical naturalism|naturalistic]] libertarianism is to explain how indeterminism can be compatible with rationality and with appropriate connections between an individual's beliefs, desires, general character and actions. A variety of naturalistic libertarianism is promoted by [[Robert Kane (philosopher)|Robert Kane]],<ref name="Clarke-2017"/><ref name="Kane-2011-chapter"/> who emphasizes that if our ''character'' is formed indeterministically (in "self-forming actions"), then our actions can still flow from our character, and yet still be incompatibilistically free.

Alternatively, libertarian view points based upon indeterminism have been proposed without the assumption of naturalism. At the time [[C. S. Lewis]] wrote ''[[Miracles (book)|Miracles]]'',<ref name="Lewis-1947"/> [[quantum mechanics]] (and physical [[Quantum indeterminacy|indeterminism]]) was only in the initial stages of acceptance, but still Lewis stated the logical possibility that, if the physical world was proved to be indeterministic, this would provide an entry (interaction) point into the traditionally viewed closed system, where a scientifically described physically probable/improbable event could be philosophically described as an action of a non-physical entity on physical reality (noting that, under a physicalist point of view, the non-physical entity must be independent of the self-identity or mental processing of the sentient being). Lewis mentions this only in passing, making clear that his thesis does not depend on it in any way.

Others may use some form of [[Donald Davidson (philosopher)|Donald Davidson]]'s [[anomalous monism]] to suggest that although the mind is in fact part of the physical world, it involves a different level of description of the same facts, so that although there are deterministic laws under the physical description, there are no such laws under the mental description, and thus our actions are free and not determined.