Non-reductive physicalism and free will

Whittington, Benjamin (2024). Non-reductive physicalism and free will. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

Imagine that God has two shelves of ingredients. With these two shelves, God creates the whole cosmos. The first shelf exclusively contains physical ingredients (e.g., electrons). The second shelf is a shelf of non-physical ingredients (e.g., ghostly ectoplasm). The central question of this thesis is whether or not God needs to reach up to the second shelf (the non-physical shelf) in order to create free creatures. Put another way, the central question of this thesis is whether physicalism- particularly, non-reductive physicalism- is sufficient for free will (or free agency).
To address the above question, I develop a novel version of the modal consequence argument purporting to establish that non-reductive physicalism and free will are incompatible. This argument consists of three crucial elements: (i) Rule Beta, according to which if you cannot change some state of affairs x and x necessarily entails y, then, therefore, you cannot change y, (ii) the thesis that, given non-reductive physicalism, there is nothing anyone can do that would change the microphysical states on which a person’s decisions depend on, (iii) the thesis that if a person cannot do anything other than what she actually does, then she cannot have free will.
To argue for element (i), I utilize Alexander Pruss’s argument from weakening to show that Rule Beta is a valid modal inference rule and defend it from an objection from Michael Mckenna and Derk Pereboom. I defend element (ii), which functions as the fixity principle, by building on L.A. Paul’s argument from additivity and defending it from objections anticipated by Christian List and Jessica Wilson. Element (iii) implies that free will necessarily requires alternative possibilities. To establish this premise, I utilize and augment John Maier’s modal theory of abilities to craft a new definition of alternative possibilities and defend it from Frankfurt-style Objections. I conclude that the modal consequence argument gives us a reason to think that God does indeed need to reach up to the second shelf

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

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