The Free Will Show Episode 6: The Problem of Luck with Alfred Mele
Sep 28, 2020
Alfred Mele discusses the problem of luck for libertarianism and various perspectives on free will. He explores different types of libertarian views, such as event causal and agent causation, and discusses the distinction between them. Mele proposes a solution to the problem of luck that incorporates its existence without negating free decisions, addressing antecedent probabilities and the first free choice.
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Alfred Mele Academic Background And Interests
- Alfred Mele's background: PhD (1979) from University of Michigan, long career at Davidson College, now at Florida State University.
- He began as an Aristotle scholar and moved into naturalistic agency topics, publishing Autonomous Agents (1995) before Free Will and Luck (2006).
Libertarianism Requires Indeterminism
- Libertarianism combines two claims: free will is incompatible with determinism and some people act freely.
- Alfred Mele defines determinism as complete laws plus a complete state entailing everything that follows, so libertarianism requires indeterminism.
Actions Are Caused By Reasons
- Actions aren't plausibly uncaused because acting for reasons implies those reasons (or their neural realizers) are among the causes.
- Mele invokes Donald Davidson's argument: when an action is done for a reason, that reason causally explains why it occurred.