Is Free-Will Coherent With Physics?

[structureoftruth (Matthew Dickau)]

@Rumraket

When you choose to do some option X instead of some other option Y, what explains why you chose X instead of Y? You might say your your desire for X over Y, but then that just pushes the question back to what explains why you desired X over Y? Are you in control of what you desire? If so, then what explains why you control your desires? Etc. etc.

You can’t escape it. There must either be in infinite regression of explanations (of which you have no control, and are merely subject to), or a brute fact (which, again, you also have no control over), or a vicious circle of explanations (which still isn’t something you control or can change).

Libertarian free will, the free will you seem to care about and want, appears to me logically incoherent.

@Rumraket, @John_Harshman, here’s how I (speculatively) think of libertarian free will. I don’t believe it is incoherent, but feel free to take a shot at it.

The basic idea is that an agent has libertarian free will when it is able to act in some way without being caused to act in that way by something other than the agent. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your argument that this is incoherent seems to be that either:

1. Something explains why the agent acted in that way, in which case the agent was (ultimately) caused to act in that way by something other than the agent.
2. Nothing explains why the agent acted in that way, in which case the agent’s action is a brute fact that the agent has no control over.

Here is the problem with this argument, from my perspective: neither of the implications in the second halves of those two options actually follow. Something can explain why the agent acted in some way without implying that the agent was caused to act by something else. For example, in my view a free agent might have made a choice A “because” of some reasons R. But the reasons R are not the cause of the agent acting that way. They are the reasons on which the agent acted, but the agent also had reasons S for making a different choice B instead of A, and could have chosen to act on those reasons instead. The agent itself is the cause of the action, and isn’t determined to act in one way or the other by something else.

It might be said, then, that it is a brute fact that the agent chose to act on reasons R (and so do A) rather than on reasons S (and so do B). But it would be begging the question against the concept of libertarian free will to claim that this renders LFW incoherent - this “brute fact” (that the agent acted on reasons R instead of S) is within the agent’s control. And, in fact, the agent’s choice to act on R rather than S isn’t entirely brute or inexplicable: it is explicable through the intelligibility of the reasons R. So the choice is neither caused by something other than the agent, nor it is inexplicable random chance outside the agent’s control.

Thus libertarian free will seems to me to be entirely coherent.