Free Will: The P ositive Role of Illusion (Testing Saul Smilansky's view)

Illusionism is the view that illusion often have a large and positive role to play in the free will issue. According to this position; (1) There is no libertarian free will because libertarian free will is incoherent and thus impossible. (2) Compatibilism is generally insufficient as a basis for moral responsibility and related matters. (3) Hard determinism is also generally unconvincing, because there are basic morally beliefs that ought not to be abandoned, although they might based on incoherent conceptions. Now, we can see how illusion is important. This importance indirectly flows from the Fundamental Dualism of the partial validity of compatibilism and hard determinism, and directly from the absence of libertarian free will. In this paper, I will describe this view and give some argument against it.