When is the Will Free?

There is, seems to me, something that might be called an orthodox or in history of thinking about problem of free will and determinism. This I see it, descends from Hobbes through Locke and Hume and Mill to present day. I say seems to me and as I see it because I am no historian and I freely grant that what appears to my untutored mind to be the classical tradition in debate about free will and determinism may be an artifact of certain historians-or even of editors of certain anthologies. (And, of course, in identifying this classical, I exhibit Anglo-Saxon bias that my education was designed to inculcate: Bergson, Heidegger, and Sartre are not going to appear in my list of members of anything called the classical tradition.) However this may be, I speak a member of this and I want to begin by describing its presuppositions-my presuppositions. According to the classical tradition, history of problem of free will and determinism is, primarily, story of a debate between two schools of philosophers, compatibilists and incompatibilists; that is between those who hold that free will is compatible with determinism and those who hold that free will is incompatible with determinism. Now I am going to have almost nothing to say about determinism in this paper. In fact, I am not going to talk about problem of free will and determinism-or not directly about it. I begin with a brief characterization of history of this problem because, while paper is not about problem of free