Consequence Arguments

Authors

  • David Botting Postdoctoral Research Fellow IFL, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa LISBON, PORTUGAL

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v2i1.41

Keywords:

free will, libertarianism, the consequence argument

Abstract

The Consequence Argument, in various forms, has been popular in recent discussions of libertarianism. I want to ask: what is the nature of the ‘necessity’ involved in the claim that necessarilyone cannot change the past or the laws of nature? I will answer that this necessity is not peculiar to the thesis of determinism and does not depend directly on the unchangeability of facts about the remote past; parallel consequence arguments can be constructed to show that libertarian free will is equally incompatible with indeterminism, fatalism, and naturalism.

Author Biography

David Botting, Postdoctoral Research Fellow IFL, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa LISBON, PORTUGAL

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, IFL, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

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Published

2014-01-18

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2014)

Section

Essays

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