Response to ‘Free Will as Advanced Action Control for Human Social Life and Culture’ by Roy F. Baumeister, A. William Crescioni and Jessica L. Alquist

摘要

I am delighted to be able to comment on this piece by Baumeister, Crescioni andAlquist (henceforth BCA). Baumeister’s earlier work has had a huge influence on myown, and I find myself in very substantial agreement with what BCA have to say here.[superscript 1]In particular, I agree that if the philosophical debate on free will is to move forward weneed to pay close attention to what it is that agents are thinking when they talk of freewill, to the experiences that give rise to their conviction that they have free will, and tothe effects of such conviction. Moreover, I am in agreement with most of BCA’ssubstantive claims, especially the idea that the experience of free will is somehow tiedup with the phenomena of choice and of self-control.