Free will: Contemporary Views

More than 2000 years, the problem of free will and determinism vexed philosophers’ minds. It has been revived in recent years and continues to be a lively debate. In this article I first deal with the view of common sense and its challenge with determinism. Is free will compatible with determinism? In response to this question, two major views – compatibilism and incompatibilism - have emerged. A standard characterization ofdeterminism states that every event is causally necessitated by antecedent events. Compatibilism argues that free will and determinism are compatible. This is opposed to incompatibilism which is the view that there is no way to reconcile a belief in adeterministic universe with a belief in a concept of free will. Hard determinism is a version of incompatibilism that accepts the assumption of determinism and rejects the idea of free will. Libertarianism accepts the existence of free will. Each of these theories considers a meaning of free will that is not acceptable on another approach; therefore, providing a comprehensive definition of free will is impossible. I also consider views aboutscientific inquiries and their relationship to philosophical theories on free will. The final section of this paper is devoted to scientific experiments and their relations to the problem of free will.