Van Inwagen on Free Will

Peter van Inwagen

This paper is an overview of my thinking about the problem of free will. I discuss my arguments for the incompatibility of free will and determinism, for the thesis that at most only a very small proportion of our acts are free, and for the thesis that "Frankfurt counterexamples" fail to establish the conclusion that moral responsibility can exist in a world in which no one is ever able to do otherwise. I also discuss my response to a recent counterexample to "Rule Beta," and my recent argument for the conclusion that agent causation, even if it exists, is irrelevant to the problem of free will.