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117 Free Will Essay Topics & Examples

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💡 interesting topics to write about free will, 📌 simple & easy free will essay topics, 👍 good free will essay topics, ❓ questions about free will.

• Concept of Free Will in “Paradise Lost” by John Milton All these kind of punishments provokes the image in the readers’ mind that God has done what he warned to Adam and Eve.
• Perspectives on Free Will: A Comparison of Hobbes and Berkeley Hobbes argued that God has a free will because his free will is not affected by anything that happens. On the other hand, George Berkeley believed that free will was controlled by God in his […]
• Free Will and Fate in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King Drama Even though the role of fate and prophecy is significant in influencing the life of Oedipus, the king’s destiny can be discussed as a direct result of his actions, choices, and decisions.
• Free Will: Towards Hume’s Compatibilist Approach According to Williams, libertarians are of the view that free will is rationally incompatible with the concept of determinism, and that a deterministic world may be rationally impossible or false.
• Free Will and Determinism According to William James and Jean-Paul Sartre What is important to note at this point is that both philosophers rejected the notions of free will and determinism albeit in varying levels and for different reasons.
• Calvinism and Wesleyanism: Predestination vs. Free Will On the one hand, the emphasis on the sovereignty of God has been the source of Reformed piety, the inspiration of the courage, self-sacrifice, and broad humanitarianism that has often marked the Children of Geneva.
• Free Will and Argument Against Its Existence Determinism is a theory which states that the course of the future is determined by a combination of past events and the laws of nature, creating a unique outcome.
• Determinism and Free Will Controversy The problem of determinism is that applying such a system to an individual would bring it to the point of absurdity.
• The Concept of Free Will by Susan Wolf In the Asymmetry of the Reason view, Wolf argues that responsibility depends on the aptitude to operate and act in agreement with the true and good.
• “The City of God” by Saint Augustine: Theme of Free Will I am going to analyze the theme of free will in the book written by Saint Augustine “City of God” as it is an imprescriptible symbol of religious text, aspects of morality, and the interpretation […]
• Hunting, Death, and Free Will: “No Country for Old Men” by the Coen Brothers From the beginning, the directors of the film warn the viewer that the movie is about at least two things: hunting and death.
• Predestination vs. Free Will The protagonists of free will acknowledge that God is always aware of the choices that people intend to make and the consequences thereof.
• Fatalism and Free Will: Terms Comparison Some of them, especially at the initial stages of the development of the mankind, kept to the point of view that certain supernatural forces control and predetermine all actions of people and events in the […]
• Saint Augustine and the Question of Free Will Applying Augustine’s idea of free will to the concept of an all-knowing God, one could think that after God deprived Adam and Eve of free will, the future choices we make are made by God […]
• Morality and Free Will in “Daisy Miller” by James Later on that evening, Daisy suggests to Winterborne about her wish to ride on the lake and willingly overlooks the appropriateness of the time.
• Free Will in Hinduism and Christianity: Ideologies on Both Religious Practices and Philosophy On the basis of the aspect of free will, the determination of the laws of karma is not favoring to particular people as everyone is treated the same, and has the same opportunity for personal […]
• Free Will and Determinism Analysis Jonathan Edwards, in his fundamental work The Freedom of the Will, argues that the will always choose according to its greatest desire at the moment of choice.
• Human Free Will in Philosophical Theories The above factors are completely out of our control thereby affirming the fact that we do not act out of free will. Essentially, we may seem to have free will but our actions and decisions […]
• The Divine Sovereignty of God and the Free Will of Man God’s intervention in history means for most biblical authors that the will of God ultimately determines the course of events, and human freedom is manifested in the fact that he either accepts this will of […]
• Moral Responsibility, Free Will and Determinism On the other hand, however, it would be unreasonable to assume that the phenomenon of free will is entirely applicable in today’s social and moral contexts as well.
• The Role of Free Will and Determinism Thus, the presence of free will is important for marking a person as guilty and subsequent punishment. We can define the soul as the consciousness of matter, its mental world, responsible for it.
• Machiavelli’s Views on Free Will and Class Conflict Thus, Machiavelli raised the question of the historical and political process laws and the need for both objective conditions and the role of the human factor, participants in political activity.
• The Book of Genesis: Predestination and Free Will The Book of Genesis sets the stage for the later books, explains the main concepts, laws, God’s promises to the people, and introduces the characters who played an essential role in God’s plans and God […]
• Free Will: Determinism and Libertarianism The first one constitutes a belief that there is no free will in nature and that all of the actions are already predetermined.
• Free Will vs. Determinism as Philosophical Concepts An objective and meticulous examination of the freedom and responsibility spectrum that highlights the difference between choice and causation explains whether human actions are free or predetermined.
• Free Will in Human Life: Reality or Fraud? The paradox of the question about free will for humans is also related to the role of God and the impossibility of great philosophers to provide a clear answer.
• Free Will and Its Possible Extent According to Compatibilism philosophy, Clarence’s murdering his girlfriend is a free action, because, as Hume states, “the conjunction between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as that between cause and effect in […]
• Against Free Will: Determinism and Prediction On the other hand, humans have the ability to make predictions about themselves and others, some of which will come true, undermining the idea of free will.
• Analysis and Comparison of Determinism, Compatibilism and Libertarianism, Free Will It would be safe to assume that a person’s environment is limited by the geography of the planet and the amount of possible places to visit, which is enormous but is nonetheless limited.
• Free Will and Choice in Islamic Psychology The free choice is concentrated on nafs that a human being has, according to Quran: nafs can be good or bad, and it is up to an individual whether to strive towards the higher potentials […]
• Free Will and Determinism: Discussion In particular, it would not provide the capacity to be the origin of one’s decisions and actions that according to incompatibilists is unavailable to compatibilists.
• Free Will and Willpower: Is Consciousness Necessary? This plainly makes it a duty to love ourselves and regard our own happiness by the value of the scale. It is our desire only that induces within us the spirit to help others therefore […]
• Van Inwagen’s Philosophical Argument on Free Will The notion of a state should be treated in such a way that the physical condition of the world remains independent of logic.
• Free Will in Philosophy and Society The emergence and popularization of democratic values all around the world raised the question of social and political pressures that used to be overlooked in the past.
• Philosophy: Free Will of Aristotle and Lucretius The philosopher says that every action having place under the influence of the external force is not a free will, which comes from the inner desire and motivation of an individual. Moreover, the movie is […]
• Ontology, Free Will, Fate and Determinism On the other hand, fate is simply the predetermined course of the events or the predetermined future. It is pragmatic that people should not believe in the cause and effect.
• Nielsen’s Free Will and Determinism: An Analysis and Critique Despite the proof that Nielsen provides for the fact that determinism and freedom can actually coexist and, moreover, complement each other, Nielsen makes it clear that the existence of moral luck defines the boundaries of […]
• Ethical Issue of Free Will in Business In this paper, we shall discuss and understand the importance of free will in the sphere of business. According to some people, social reforms are the duty of politicians and not the business community.
• Free Will Does Not Exist It cannot be imagined how the society would be is there was no thought in the minds of the people about the existence of God who oversees the actions of deeds of people in the […]
• Do Humans Have Free Will? However, he takes the view that some humans are not guided only by laws to act and they are not able to exercise their own free will.
• Free Will of a Heroin Addict This paper seeks to present the case of a heroin addict who makes herself and the other people surrounding her suffer evaluating whether she is the one to be fully responsible for her actions or […]
• What is the difference between compatibilsm and incompatibilist in relation to free will The no choice statement provides that if a person lacks choice in relation to p, and also lacks choice in relation to whether if p, then q, then there is no choice in relation to […]
• The Issue of the Free Will On the one hand, the opponents of the hard determinism state that free will exists and people do not base their own decisions on anything, however, it is possible to say that the decision was […]
• Faith or Free Will Used in the Movie – Minority Report and the Drama – Antigone In life, people have the freewill to choose what they want; however, in some cases, faith and fate takes the center stage despite the choices made through freewill.
• The Workings Of Destiny, Fate, Free Will And Free Choice In Oedipus The King
• The Natural Law on Free Will and the Nature of Evil According to St. Thomas Aquinas
• The Unalienable Right of Free Will in A Clockwork Orange, a Novel by Anthony Burgess
• Were Adam and Eve Influenced By the Snake or Free Will
• The Three Claims on the Debate on Free Will Between Libertarianism and Determinism
• What is The Meaning of Free Will in Life
• The Theme of Free Will in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a Novel by Mark Twain
• The Role of Fate Versus Free Will in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
• Determinism Vs. Indeterminism And The Existence Of Free Will
• Critically Examine the Claim That Free Will and Determinism Are Incompatible
• The Struggle Between Fate and Free Will in One Hundred Years of Solitude, a Novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• How Free Will And Inborn Neurological Hardwiring Influence Morality
• Triumph of Free Will in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange
• An Overview of the Imposition of Law as Free Will and the Myth of the Social Contract
• Destiny, Fate, Free Will and Free Choice – Prophecies in Oedipus, Antigone, and Agamemnon
• An Analysis of Fate and Free Will in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
• Baron D’holbach And William James On Free Will And Determinism
• Can Free Will And Determinism Co-exist
• The Theory Of Free Will And Determinism
• What is Frankfurt’s account of free will? Is it successful?
• Aeneas’s Free Will Despite His Fate in The Aeneid
• The Theme of Free Will and Spirituality in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• An Argument in Favor of Hard Determinism in the Debate on Free Will and Determinism
• Comparing Destiny, Fate, Free Will and Free Choice in Oedipus the King and Antigone
• Boundaries of Destiny, Fate, Free Will and Free Choice in Oedipus the King
• Analysis of the Actions of Macbeth and Doctor Faustus Based on Free Will and Fate
• Who Is Responsible for the Downfall of Oedipus Fate or Free Will
• The True Nature And Extent Of Influence Of Free Will Versus Fate
• The Varying Levels of Free Will in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon
• Understanding the Foreknowledge of God and Its Influence in Free Will and Predestination
• Concept Of Free Will In The Brothers Karamazov
• Understanding the Existence of Free Will and Determinism
• Compatibility Of Free Will In The Tenseless Theory Of Time
• Emotions and Free Will in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
• The Scorch Trials Movie And The Issue Of Free Will
• The Question of Free Will Versus Determinism in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
• Control and The Role of Destiny, Free Will, and Fate
• Existence, Conee And Sider Go Over The Description Of Free Will
• The Witches In Macbeth: Corruption And Fate Vs. Free Will In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
• Augustine´s View on the Origins of Sin, Grace, and Free Will
• The Issue of Free Will in The End of Evil, an Article by Ron Rosenbaum
• Destiny, Fate, Free Will and Free Choice in Oedipus the King – Fate and the Modern World
• Attitudes and Free Will in the Book of Genesis and Paradise Lost by John Milton
• How Do Our Duties and Responsibility Affect Our Free Will, Determinism, and Compatibilism?
• Why Does Galen Strawson Think Free Will Is Impossible?
• What Was Benjamin Libet‘s Free Will Experiment?
• Does Advertising Erode Free Will?
• How Does Pride Effect Free Will and Fate?
• Can You Put Free Will Into an Equation?
• How Can Quantum Brain Biology Rescue Conscious Free Will?
• Does Free Will Exist or Is It All an Illusion?
• Is Free Will a Third Option Aside From Chance and Necessity?
• How Do Race, Gender, and Socioeconomic Class Limit the Free Will of Americans?
• Are Our Lives Governed by Fate or Free Will?
• Does Oedipus Have Free Will?
• Can Free Will and Determinism Coexist?
• Does Free Will exist within Milton’s Hierarchy’s Constraints in Paradise Lost?
• How Does the Conflict Between Free Will and the Predestination Play Out?
• Does Macbeth Have Free Will?
• How Do Fate and Free Will Play a Part in the Odyssey?
• Were Adam and Eve Influenced by the Snake or Free Will?
• What’s the Problem With Free Will?
• Is the Theory of Evolution a Good Basis for an Argument Against Free Will?
• Why Did God Give Us Free Will?
• For Whom Does Determinism Undermine Moral Responsibility?
• How Does Shakespeare Present Macbeth as Having Free Will?
• What Is the Difference Between Free-Will and Randomness and or Non-determinism?
• Does Having Free Will Presuppose Consciousness, Can Philosophical Zombies Have It?
• What Are the Necessary Conditions for an Action to Be Regarded as a Free Choice?
• Is Free Will Reconcilable With a Purely Physical World?
• How Does Quantum Mechanics Affect the Modern Account of Free Will and Determinism?
• What Counters Are There to Spinoza’s Argument That Acts of Free Will Create Infinite Regress?
• Is Kant’s “Noumenal Self” Argument on Freedom Flawed?
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Sample essay on free will and moral responsibility.

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Free will is a fundamental aspect of modern philosophy. This sample philosophy paper explores how moral responsibility and free will represent an important area of moral debate between philosophers. This type of writing would of course be seen in a philosophy course, but many people might also be inclined to write an essay about their opinions on free will for personal reasons.

History of free will and moral responsibility

In our history, free will and moral responsibility have been longstanding debates amongst philosophers. Some contend that free will does not exist while others believe we have control over our actions and decisions. For the most part, determinists believe that free will does not exist because our fate is predetermined. An example of this philosophy is found in the Book of Genisis .

The biblical story states God created man for a purpose and designed them to worship him. Since God designed humans to operate in a certain fashion and he knew the outcome, it could be argued from a determinist point of view that free will didn't exist. Because our actions are determined, it seems that we are unable to bear any responsibility for our acts.

Galen Strawson has suggested that “in order to be truly deserving, we must be responsible for that which makes us deserving.”

However, Strawson also has implied that we are unable to be responsible. We are unable to be responsible because, as determinists suggest, all our decisions are premade; therefore, we do not act of our own free will. Consequently, because our actions are not the cause of our free will, we cannot be truly deserving because we lack responsibility for what we do.

Defining free will

Free will implies we are able to choose the majority of our actions ("Free will," 2013). While we would expect to choose the right course of action, we often make bad decisions. This reflects the thinking that we do not have free will because if we were genuinely and consistently capable of benevolence, we would freely decide to make the ‘right’ decisions.

In order for free will to be tangible, an individual would have to have control over his or her actions regardless of any external factors. Analyzing the human brain's development over a lifetime proves people have the potential for cognitive reasoning and to make their own decisions.

Casado has argued “the inevitability of free will is such that if one considers freedom an illusion, the internal perspective – and one’s own everyday life – would be totally contradictory” ( 2011, p. 369).

On the other hand, while we can determine whether or not we will wake up the next day, it is not an aspect of our free will because we cannot control this. Incidentally, determinism suggests everything happens exactly the way it should have happened because it is a universal law ("Determinism," 2013). In this way, our free will is merely an illusion.

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The determinism viewpoint

For example, if we decided the previous night that we would wake up at noon, we are unable to control this even with an alarm clock. One, we may die in our sleep. Obviously, as most would agree, we did not choose this. Perhaps we were murdered in our sleep. In that case, was it our destiny to become a victim of violent crimes, or was it our destiny to be murdered as we slept? Others would mention that the murderer was the sole cause of the violence and it their free will to decide to kill.

Therefore, the same people might argue that the murderer deserved a specific punishment. The key question, then, is the free will of the murderer. If we were preordained to die in the middle of the night at the hand of the murderer, then the choice of death never actually existed. Hence, the very question of choice based on free will is an illusion.

Considering that our wills are absolutely subject to the environment in which they are articulated in, we are not obligated to take responsibility for them as the product of their environment. For example, if we were born in the United States, our actions are the result of our country’s laws. Our constitutional laws allow us the right to bear arms and have access to legal representation. In addition, our constitutional laws allow us the freedom to express our thoughts through spoken and written mediums and the freedom to believe in a higher power or not. We often believe we are free to act and do what we want because of our free will.

Harris (2012) has agreed that “free will is more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot even be rendered coherent” conceptually.

Moral judgments, decisions, and responsibility for free will

Either our wills are determined by prior causes, and we are not responsible for them, or they are a product of chance, and we are not responsible for them” (p. 46). This being the case, can we be deserving if we can so easily deflect the root of our will and actions? Perhaps, our hypothetical murder shot us. It could be argued that gun laws in the United States provided them with the mean to commit murder.

Either the murderer got a hold of a gun by chance or he or she was able to purchase one. While the purchase is not likely, one would have to assume that someone, maybe earlier, purchased the weapon. Therefore, it was actually the buyer’s action that allowed this particular crime to take place. Essentially, both would ‘deserve’ some sort of punishment.

According to The American Heritage Dictionary (2001), the word “deserving” means "Worthy, as of reward or praise” (p. 236), so it regards to punishments, it seems deserving has a positive meaning.

Free will and changing societal views

However, the meanings will change depending on our position. For example, some would suggest that the murderer acted with his or her own free will. However, once they are caught and convicted, they are no longer free in the sense that they can go wherever they want. On the other hand, they are free to think however they want.

If they choose to reenact their crimes in their thoughts, they are free to do so. Some many say, in the case of the murderer, he or she is held responsible for his or her crime, thus he or she deserves blame. However, if the murderer had a mental illness and was unaware he or she committed a crime, should we still consider that the murderer acted with his or her free will? With that in mind, it seems that Strawson’s argument is valid because the murderer was not acting of his or her free will.

Many would consider Strawson to be a “free will pessimist” (Timpe c. Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, and Pessimism, 2006, para. 5). Strawson does not believe we have the ability to act on our own free will. However, he does not believe our actions are predetermined either.

Specifically, in his article “Luck Swallows Everything,” Strawson (1998) has claimed that “One cannot be ultimately responsible for one's character or mental nature in any way at all” (para. 33).

Determining when free will is not applicable

While some would agree young children and disabled adults would not hold any responsibility, others would claim that criminals should bear responsibility when they commit a crime. What if the actions are caused by both nature and nurturing of the parents ? Or, what if they're caused by prior events including a chain of events that goes back before we are born, libertarians do not see how we can feel responsible for them. If our actions are directly caused by chance, they are simply random and determinists do not see how we can feel responsible for them (The Information Philosopher Responsibility n.d.).

After all, one would not argue that murderers are worthy of a positive reward; however, Strawson has argued that we, whether good or evil, do not deserve any types of rewards. Instead, our actions and their consequences are based on luck or bad luck. In order to have ultimate moral responsibility for an action, the act must originate from something that is separate from us.

We consider free will the ability to act or do as we want; however, there is a difference between freedom of action and freedom of will. Freedom of action suggests we are able to physically act upon our desire. In a way, some believe that freedom of will is the choice that precedes that action. In addition to freedom of act or will, free will also suggests we have a sense of moral responsibility. This moral responsibility, however, is not entirely specified. For example, is this responsibility to ourselves or those around us? While this is a question that may never be answered, no matter how many essays are written on the subject, it is one that many consider important to ask, nonetheless.

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Arguments for Incompatibilism

We believe that we have free will and this belief is so firmly entrenched in our daily lives that it is almost impossible to take seriously the thought that it might be mistaken. We deliberate and make choices, for instance, and in so doing we assume that there is more than one choice we can make, more than one action we are able to perform. When we look back and regret a foolish choice, or blame ourselves for not doing something we should have done, we assume that we could have chosen and done otherwise. When we look forward and make plans for the future, we assume that we have at least some control over our actions and the course of our lives; we think it is at least sometimes up to us what we choose and try to do.

Determinism is a highly general claim about the universe: very roughly, that everything that happens, including everything you choose and do, is determined by facts about the past together with the laws. Determinism isn’t part of common sense, and it is not easy to take seriously the thought that it might, for all we know, be true. The incompatibilist believes that if determinism turned out to be true, our belief that we have free will would be false. The compatibilist denies that the truth of determinism would have this drastic consequence. According to the compatibilist, the truth of determinism is compatible with the truth of our belief that we have free will. The philosophical problem of free will and determinism is the problem of deciding who is right: the compatibilist or the incompatibilist.

Much of the philosophical interest in the free will/determinism problem is motivated by concerns about moral responsibility because, it is generally agreed, having free will is a necessary condition of being morally responsible. So if determinism precludes free will, it also precludes moral responsibility. But it’s important to distinguish questions about free will (whether we have it, what it amounts to, whether it is compatible with determinism, whether it is compatible with other things we believe true) from questions about moral responsibility. Someone might believe that we have free will and that free will is compatible with determinism while also believing, for other reasons, that no one is ever morally responsible. And someone might believe that we don’t have free will (because of determinism or something else) while also believing, against conventional wisdom, that we are nevertheless morally responsible. What one believes about determinism and moral responsibility will depend, in large part, on what one believes about various matters within the scope of ethics rather than metaphysics. Among other things, it will depend on what one takes moral responsibility to be (P. Strawson 1962; G. Strawson 1986, 1994; Scanlon 2008; Watson 1996, 2004; Wolf 1990). For these reasons it is important not to conflate the question of the compatibility of free will and determinism with the question of whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism.

It must be acknowledged that a change in definitions has crept into the literature, and many contemporary theorists understand ‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ as claims about moral responsibility (or “moral freedom” or the freedom that “grounds” or “explains” “moral responsibility”) rather than claims about free will (Pereboom 1995, 2001, 2014. See Vihvelin 2011 for discussion). This entry will not follow that usage.

This encyclopedia entry is about the free will/determinism problem; more specifically, it is about arguments for the claim that free will is incompatible with determinism. Since so much of the contemporary free will literature is dominated by concerns about moral responsibility, some of the arguments considered will be arguments for the thesis that if determinism is true, we are never morally responsible because we never satisfy the “freedom requirement” for being morally responsible for our actions. But the focus, in this entry, will be on the question of whether free will (or acting with free will) is compatible with determinism.

1. Preliminaries

2. two reasons for thinking that free will is incompatible with determinism, 3.1 no forking paths argument.

• 3.2 Manipulation Arguments

4. Sourcehood Arguments

5. choice and the consequence argument, other internet resources, related entries.

In the literature, “determinism” is sometimes used as an umbrella term for a variety of different claims which have traditionally been regarded as threats to free will. Given this usage, the thesis that we are calling “determinism” (nomological determinism, also sometimes called ‘causal determinism’) is just one of several different kinds of determinism, and the free will/determinism problem we will be discussing is one of a family of related problems. For instance, logical determinism is the thesis that the principle of bivalence holds for all propositions, including propositions about the future, and the problem of free will and logical determinism is the problem of deciding whether our belief that we have free will is compatible with the existence of truths about all our future actions. (It should be noted that on this point there is almost universal agreement among philosophers that the answer is “yes”.) For more on logical determinism, see the entry on fatalism ; Taylor 1962; D. Lewis 1976; Merricks 2009; Fischer & Todd 2011; Van Cleve 2019; Vihvelin 2013 and 2020. Theological determinism is the thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledge of all true propositions including propositions about our future actions; the problem of free will and theological determinism is the problem of understanding how, if at all, we can have free will if God (who cannot be mistaken) knows what we are going to do. For more on theological determinism, see the entries on fatalism and divine foreknowledge and Fischer & Todd 2015.

In this entry, we will be restricting our attention to arguments for the incompatibility of free will and nomological determinism, but it is important to understand one preliminary point. Nomological and logical determinism are very different kinds of claims. Logical determinism is a claim about truth ; nomological determinism is a claim about the natural laws . Logical determinism doesn’t say anything about causation or the laws; it simply says that, regardless of whether we ever come to know them or not, there are timelessly true propositions about the past, present, and future, including our future actions. Logical determinism doesn’t entail nomological determinism; it might be true even if nomological determinism is false. But nomological determinism says (roughly) that facts about the past together with facts about the laws determine all the facts about the future. So if nomological determinism is true, there are true propositions about all our future actions.

Why does this matter? For the following reason. A common first response to logical determinism is the fatalist’s response:

If there are truths about what I will do in the future, then I must do whatever I will do, and so I have no free will.

While this response has a powerful intuitive grip (as can be seen from much of the popular and even scientific discussion of time travel), it is generally agreed, by philosophers, that the fatalist is making a mistake. Different diagnoses have been given of the “fatalist fallacy” or other mistake in modal reasoning, but the basic point is simple. Truth is not the same as necessity; it isn’t the same as logical necessity, metaphysical necessity, or even the relative necessity of unavoidability or lack of ability or power. The existence of a detailed set of truths about my future actions is consistent with my ability to do things other than the things I actually do.

It is of course possible to agree that the existence of truths about all our future actions is compatible with free will while denying that the existence of nomologically determined truths about all our future actions is compatible with free will. But an argument is needed for this conclusion, an argument which doesn’t rely on fatalist reasoning or an appeal to fatalist intuitions.

For comparisons between arguments for incompatibilism and arguments for fatalism, see van Inwagen 1983, Mackie 2003, Perry 2004, and Vihvelin 2008 and 2013.

At a first approximation, nomological determinism (henceforth “determinism”), is a contingent and empirical claim about the laws of nature: that they are deterministic rather than probabilistic, and that they are all-encompassing rather than limited in scope. At a second approximation, laws are deterministic if they entail exceptionless regularities (e.g., that all \(F\)s are \(G\)s, that all \(ABCD\)s are \(E\)s) and laws are probabilistic if they say that \(F\)s have an objective chance \(N\) (less than 1) of being \(G\)s (note that so-called “statistical laws” need not be probabilistic laws; see Armstrong 1983, Loewer 1996a). The laws of nature are all-encompassing if deterministic or probabilistic laws apply to everything in the universe, without any exceptions. If, on the other hand, some individuals or some parts of some individuals (e.g., the nonphysical minds of human beings) or some of the behaviors of some of the individuals (e.g., the free actions of human beings) do not fall under either deterministic or probabilistic laws, then the laws are limited rather than all-encompassing.

For a more precise articulation of determinism, the contemporary literature offers us two main choices.

Determinism is standardly defined in terms of entailment, along these lines: A complete description of the state of the world at any time together with a complete specification of the laws entails a complete description of the state of the world at any other time. (Hoefer 2002, Mele 2009, Beebee 2013; see also van Inwagen 1983, Ginet 1990, and the Encyclopedia entry on causal determinism ).

Alternatively, following D. Lewis 1973, we might understand determinism as the thesis that our world is governed by a set of natural laws which is such that any two possible worlds with our laws which are exactly alike at any time are also exactly alike at every other time (see also Earman 1986). This second definition of determinism is stronger than the first; if a possible world is deterministic according to the Lewis/Earman definition, it is deterministic according to the Entailment definition, but not vice versa.

Let’s call a possible world ‘deterministic’ iff the thesis of determinism is true at that world; ‘non-deterministic’ iff the thesis of determinism is false at that world. There are two very different ways in which a world might be non-deterministic. A world might be non-deterministic because at least some of its fundamental laws are probabilistic, or a world might be non-deterministic because it has no laws or because its laws are not all-encompassing. Let’s call worlds which are non-deterministic in only the first way ‘probabilistic worlds’ and let’s call worlds which are non-deterministic in the second way ‘lawless’ or ‘partly lawless’ worlds.

Determinism is a thesis about the statements or propositions that are the laws of our world; it says nothing about whether these statements or propositions are knowable by finite beings, let alone whether they could, even in principle, be used to predict all future events. (For more on the relation between determinism and predictability, see the Encyclopedia entry on Causal Determinism .)

Determinism, understood according to either of the two definitions above, is neutral with respect to different philosophical accounts of lawhood, ranging from the so-called “naïve regularity” account (Swartz 1986) to broadly Humean or “best system” accounts (D. Lewis 1973; Earman 1986; Loewer 1996a; Beebee 2000; Schaffer 2008) to various kinds of necessitarian accounts (Armstrong 1983; Carroll 2008). In the book that set the stage for much of the contemporary discussion of the free will/determinism problem, van Inwagen 1983 appealed only to two relatively uncontroversial assumptions about the laws of nature: that the propositions that are laws have this status independent of the history or present state of scientific knowledge and that the laws impose limits on our abilities. Most of the participants in the current debate agree, but there are dissenters who think that determinism must be defined in a metaphysically stronger way, as a kind of necessitation relation between particular events (Mumford & Anjum 2014). For critique, see Mackie 2014a and Franklin 2014.

Determinism (understood according to either of the two definitions above) is not a thesis about causation; it is not the thesis that causation is always a relation between events, and it is not the thesis that every event has a cause. If the fundamental laws turn out to be probabilistic rather than deterministic, this doesn’t mean that there is no causation; it just means that we have to revise our theories of causation to fit the facts. And this is what philosophers of causation have done; there are probabilistic versions of lawful entailment theories of causation, of counterfactual theories of causation, and so on, for all major theories of causation (see the entries on the metaphysics of causation and counterfactual theories of causation ). It is now generally accepted that it might be true that every event has a cause even if determinism is false and thus some events lack sufficient causes.

More controversially, it might be true that every event has a cause even if our world is neither deterministic nor probabilistic. If there can be causes without laws (if a particular event, object, or person can be a cause, for instance, without instantiating a law), then it might be true, even at a lawless or partly lawless world, that every event has a cause (Anscombe 1981; van Inwagen 1983).

It’s less clear whether determinism entails the thesis that every event has a cause. Whether it does depends on what the correct theory of causation is; in particular, it depends on what the correct theory says about the relation between causation and law.

What is clear, however, is that we should not make the assumption, almost universally made in the older literature, that the thesis that every event has a cause is equivalent to the thesis of determinism. This is an important point, because some of the older arguments in the literature against incompatibilism assume that the two claims are equivalent (Hobart 1934).

In the older literature, it was assumed that determinism is the working hypothesis of science, and that to reject determinism is to be against science. This no longer seems plausible. Some people think that quantum physics has shown determinism to be false. This remains controversial (Albert 1992; Loewer 1996b; P. Lewis 2016), but it is now generally agreed that we can reject determinism without accepting the view that the behavior of human beings falls outside the scope of natural laws. If naturalism is the thesis that human behavior can be explained in the same kind of way—in terms of events, natural processes, and laws of nature—as everything else in the universe, then we can reject determinism without rejecting naturalism.

Note, finally, that determinism neither entails physicalism nor is entailed by it. There are possible worlds where determinism is true and physicalism false; e.g., worlds where minds are nonphysical things which nevertheless obey deterministic laws (van Inwagen 1998). And there are possible worlds (perhaps our own) where physicalism is true and determinism is false.

So much for determinism. What about free will? How should we understand the disagreement between the compatibilist and the incompatibilist?

There’s lots of room for argument about how, exactly, we should understand our commonsense beliefs about ourselves as persons with free will. (Are we born with free will? If not, when do we acquire it, and in virtue of what abilities or powers do we have it? What is the difference between acting intentionally and acting with free will?) Luckily we don’t have to answer these questions in order to say what is at issue between the compatibilist and the incompatibilist. Let’s define the free will thesis as the thesis that at least one non-godlike (human-like) creature has free will, leaving it open what that amounts to. The free will thesis is a minimal claim about free will; it would be true if one person in the universe acted with free will (acted freely, acted while possessing free will) on one occasion. We won’t assume that the free will thesis is true or even possibly true, but let a free will world be any possible world where the free will thesis is true. Since non-determinism is the negation of determinism, and since determinism is a contingent thesis, we can divide the set of possible worlds into two non-overlapping subsets: deterministic worlds and non-deterministic worlds.

Given this apparatus, we could define incompatibilism and compatibilism in the following way: incompatibilism is the thesis that no deterministic world is a free will world . (Equivalently, incompatibilism is the claim that necessarily, if determinism is true, then the free will thesis is false.) And we could define compatibilism as the denial of incompatibilism; that is, as the claim that some deterministic worlds are free will worlds. (Equivalently, compatibilism is the claim that possibly, determinism and the free will thesis are both true.)

This way of defining compatibilism is unproblematic. There are compatibilists who are agnostic about the truth or falsity of determinism, so a compatibilist need not be a soft determinist (someone who believes that it is in fact the case that determinism is true and we have free will). And a compatibilist might believe that we don’t have free will for reasons independent of determinism. But all compatibilists believe that it is at least possible that determinism is true and we have free will. So all compatibilists are committed to the claim that there are deterministic worlds that are free will worlds.

But this definition of incompatibilism has a surprising consequence. Suppose, as some philosophers have argued, that we lack free will because free will is conceptually or metaphysically impossible, at least for nongodlike creatures like us (Taylor 1962; G. Strawson 1986, 1994). If these philosophers are right, there are no free will worlds. And if there are no free will worlds, it follows that there are no deterministic free will worlds. So if free will is conceptually or metaphysically impossible, at least for creatures like us, it follows that incompatibilism (as we have just defined it) is true. But this doesn’t seem right. If it is conceptually or metaphysically impossible for us to have free will, then we lack free will regardless of whether determinism is true or false. And if that is so, then the incompatibilist cannot say the kind of things she has traditionally wanted to say: that the truth or falsity of determinism is relevant to the question of whether or not we have free will, that if determinism were true, then we would lack free will because determinism is true, and so on.

If we want to avoid this counter-intuitive result, there is a remedy. Instead of understanding compatibilism and incompatibilism as propositions that are contradictories, we can understand them as propositions that are contraries. That is, we can understand compatibilism and incompatibilism as claims that can’t both be true, but that can both be false. Compatibilism and incompatibilism are both false if a third claim, impossibilism, is true. Impossibilism is the thesis that free will is conceptually or metaphysically impossible for non-godlike creatures like us.

If we accept this three-fold classification, we can define our terms as follows: Impossibilism is the thesis that there are no free will worlds. Incompatibilism is the thesis that there are free will worlds but no deterministic world is a free will world. Compatibilism is the thesis that there are free will worlds and free will worlds include deterministic worlds. (For some objections to this three-fold classification see McKenna 2010 and Mickelson 2015a. For defense, see Vihvelin 2008 and 2013.)

The term ‘impossibilism’ is being coined; however, the position it describes is recognized in the literature under a variety of names: the “no free will either way” view, “non-realism”, “illusionism”, “pessimism”. Theorists who defend impossibilism include G. Strawson 1986 and 1994, and Smilansky 2000. Another kind of impossibilist is the fatalist (Taylor 1962).

In the older literature, there were just two kinds of incompatibilists—hard determinists and libertarians. A hard determinist is an incompatibilist who believes that determinism is in fact true (or, perhaps, that it is close enough to being true so far as we are concerned, in the ways relevant to free will) and because of this we lack free will (Holbach 1770; Wegner 2003). A libertarian is an incompatibilist who believes that we in fact have free will and this entails that determinism is false, in the right kind of way (van Inwagen 1983). Traditionally, libertarians have believed that “the right kind of way” requires that agents have a special and mysterious causal power not had by anything else in nature: a godlike power to be an uncaused cause of changes in the world (Chisholm 1964). Libertarians who hold this view are committed, it seems, to the claim that free will is possible only at worlds that are at least partly lawless, and that our world is such a world (but see O’Connor 2000, Clarke 2003 and Steward 2012). But in the contemporary literature there are incompatibilists who avoid such risky metaphysical claims by arguing that free will is possible at worlds where some of our actions have indeterministic event causes (Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a; Ekstrom 2000; Balaguer 2010; Franklin 2018) or that free will is possible at worlds where some of our actions are uncaused (Ginet 1990). Note that none of these three kinds of incompatibilists (agent-causation theorists, indeterministic event-causation theorists, non-causal theorists) need be libertarians. They may reserve judgment about the truth or falsity of determinism and therefore reserve judgment about whether or not we in fact have free will. They might also be hard determinists because they believe that determinism is in fact true. But what they do believe—what makes them incompatibilists—is that it is possible for us to have free will and that our having free will depends on a contingent fact about the laws that govern the universe: that they are indeterministic in the right kind of way. (See the entry on incompatibilist theories of free will ).

Given these definitions and distinctions, we can now take the first step towards clarifying the disagreement between compatibilists and incompatibilists. Both sides agree that it is conceptually and metaphysically possible for us to have free will; their disagreement is about whether any of the possible worlds where we have free will are deterministic worlds. The compatibilist says ‘yes’; the incompatibilist says ‘no’. Arguments for incompatibilism must, then, be arguments for the claim that necessarily, if determinism is true, we lack the free will we might otherwise have.

A common first response to determinism is to think that it means that our choices make no difference to anything that happens because earlier causes have pre-determined or “fixed” our entire future (Nahmias 2011). It is easy to think that determinism implies that we have a destiny or fate that we cannot avoid, no matter what we choose or decide and no matter how hard we try.

Man, when running over, frequently without his own knowledge, frequently in spite of himself, the route which nature has marked out for him, resembles a swimmer who is obliged to follow the current that carries him along; he believes himself a free agent because he sometimes consents, sometimes does not consent, to glide with the stream, which, notwithstanding, always hurries him forward. (Holbach 1770 [2002]: 181; see also Wegner 2003)

It is widely agreed, by incompatibilists as well as compatibilists, that this is a mistake. Empirical discoveries about our brain and behavior might tell us that we don’t have as much conscious control as we think we have (Wegner 2003; Libet 1999). (For critique of arguments claiming that recent scientific research has shown that “conscious will is an illusion”, see Mele 2009, some of the essays in Sinnott-Armstrong & Nadel 2011, Mele 2015, and Roskies & Nahmias 2016.) And there are worries, arising from certain versions of physicalism, that our mental states don’t have the causal powers we think they have (Kim 1998). But these threats to free will have nothing to do with determinism. Determinism might imply that our choices and efforts have earlier sufficient causes; it does not imply that we don’t make choices or that our choices and efforts are causally impotent. Determinism is consistent with the fact that our deliberation, choices and efforts are part of the causal process whereby our bodies move and cause further effects in the world. And a cause is the kind of thing that “makes a difference” (Sartorio 2005, Menzies 2017, List 2019). If I raise my hand because I chose to do so, then it’s true, ceteris paribus , that if my choice had not occurred, my hand-raising would not have occurred.

Putting aside this worry, we may classify arguments for incompatibilism as falling into one of two main varieties:

• Arguments for the claim that determinism would make it impossible for us to cause and control our actions in the right kind of way.
• Arguments for the claim that determinism would deprive us of the power or ability to do or choose otherwise .

Arguments of the first kind focus on the notions of self, causation, and responsibility; the worry is that determinism rules out the kind of causation that we invoke when we attribute actions to persons (“It was Suzy who broke the vase”) and make judgments of moral responsibility (“It wasn’t her fault; Billy pushed her”). Someone who argues for incompatibilism in this way may concede that the truth of determinism is consistent with the causal efficacy of our deliberation, choices, and attempts to act. But, she insists, determinism implies that the only sense in which we are responsible for what we do is the sense in which a dog or young child is responsible. Moral responsibility requires something more than this, she believes. Moral responsibility requires autonomy or self-determination: that our actions are caused and controlled by, and only by , our selves. To use a slogan popular in the literature: We act freely and are morally responsible only if we are the ultimate source of our actions.

Each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we do, we cause certain events to happen, and nothing—or no one—causes us to cause these events to happen. (Chisholm 1964: 32) Free will…is the power of agents to be the ultimate creators or originators and sustainers of their own ends or purposes…when we trace the causal or explanatory chains of action back to their sources in the purposes of free agents, these causal chains must come to an end or terminate in the willings (choices, decisions, or efforts) of the agents, which cause or bring about their purposes. (Kane 1996: 4)

Arguments of the second kind focus on the notion of choice. To have a choice, it seems, is to have genuine options or alternatives—different ways in which we can act. The worry is that determinism entails that what we do is, always, the only thing we can do, and that because of this we never really have a choice about anything , as opposed to being under the (perhaps inescapable) illusion that we have a choice. Someone who argues for incompatibilism in this way may concede that the truth of determinism is consistent with our making choices, at least in the sense in which a dog or young child makes choices, and consistent also with our choices being causally effective. But, she insists, this is not enough for free will; we have free will only if we have a genuine choice about what actions we perform, and we have a genuine choice only if there is more than one action we are able to perform.

A person has free will if he is often in positions like these: he must now speak or be silent, and he can now speak and can now remain silent; he must attempt to rescue a drowning child or else go for help, and he is able to attempt to rescue the child and able to go for help; he must now resign his chairmanship or else lie to the members; and he has it within his power to resign and he has it within his power to lie. (van Inwagen 1983: 8)

van Inwagen is giving what he takes to be uncontroversial examples of persons who have free will; he isn’t saying that free will just is the ability to perform more than one overt action. Our choices include choices among purely mental actions (to pay attention to a lecture or to spend the time deciding what to cook for dinner) as well as choices about the actions we perform by moving our bodies. If the incompatibilist claims that determinism robs us of free will by robbing us of choice, this must be understood as the claim that determinism has the consequence that we are never able to do anything other than what we actually do, where “do” includes deciding, choosing, and other instances of mental agency as well as the things we do by moving our bodies.

We might question whether arguments based on self-determination and arguments based on choice are independent ways of arguing for incompatibilism for the following reason: I cause and control my actions in the self-determining way required for moral responsibility only if my actions are the product of my free will and my actions are the product of my free will only if I have the ability to do (choose to do, decide to do, intend to do, try to do) otherwise. If determinism has the consequence that I never have the ability to do otherwise, it also has the consequence that I never cause my actions in the self-determining way required for moral responsibility (Kane 1996).

At one time, this link between moral responsibility, self-determination, and the ability to do otherwise was common ground between compatibilists and incompatibilists. That is, everyone agreed that a person is morally responsible only if she has the right kind of control over what she does, and everyone assumed that a person has the right kind of control over something she does only if she is able to do (or at least decide, choose, intend, or try) otherwise . Given this assumption, anyone hoping to defend the claim that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism had to first show that the ability to do otherwise is compatible with determinism. During the heyday of ordinary language philosophy in the middle years of the last century, there was a further assumption: that the ability to do otherwise is compatible with determinism only if sentences like “\(S\) could have done \(X\)” (where \(X\) is something \(S\) did not do) were equivalent in meaning to counterfactual conditionals like “if \(S\) had chosen (or tried, wanted, preferred, etc.) to do \(X\), \(S\) would have done \(X\)”. This debate was crippled by the fact that it took place at a time when counterfactuals were still poorly understood, before the advent of the Lewis-Stalnaker possible worlds semantics (D. Lewis 1973). There were counterexamples to the analyses proposed, and there was a growing consensus that the prospects for a successful “Conditional Analysis” were dim (Austin 1956; Chisholm 1964; Lehrer 1968 and 1976). (For an argument that this pessimism was premature, see Vihvelin 2004 and 2013. For an argument that a compatibilist doesn’t need to defend a Conditional Analysis, see Lehrer 1976.)

It was against this background that Harry Frankfurt proposed his famous counterexample to the “Principle of Alternate Possibilities” (a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise). Frankfurt wanted to defend the claim that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism without having to defend the claim that the ability to do otherwise is compatible with determinism. His strategy took the form of an ingenious thought experiment that was supposed to show that no matter how you understand ability to do otherwise—whether you are a compatibilist or an incompatibilist—you should agree that the possession of this ability is not a necessary condition of being morally responsible (Frankfurt 1969).

There were two steps to the thought experiment. In the first step he invited you to imagine a person, Jones, who has free will, and who acts freely and who satisfies all the conditions you think necessary and sufficient for moral responsibility. You may imagine Jones in one of the scenarios van Inwagen describes, faced with a choice to speak or be silent, to try to rescue the child or go for help, to resign his chairmanship or to lie, and to imagine that Jones deliberates and decides, for his own reasons, in favor of one of his contemplated alternatives, and then successfully acts on his decision. In the second step you are invited to add to the story the existence of a powerful being, Black, who takes a great interest in what Jones does, including how he deliberates and decides. You may fill in the details however you like, but you must imagine that Black has the power to interfere with Jones in a way that ensures that Jones does exactly what Black wants him to do. And you must also imagine that Black is paying very close attention and is prepared to intervene instantly, should it be necessary, to stop Jones from doing something Black doesn’t want him to do. But, as it turns out, it wasn’t necessary. By lucky co-incidence, Jones did exactly what Black wanted him to do. (He even deliberated and decided the way Black wanted him to deliberate and decide.) So Black remained on the sidelines and only watched.

Because Black never laid a finger on Jones, or interfered in any way, it seems that Jones is as morally responsible in the second step of the story as he is in the first step. But it also seems that the existence of the powerful Black suffices to make it the case that Jones is unable to do otherwise (or, as Frankfurt put it, that he lacks “alternate possibilities”.)

Frankfurt’s story has strong intuitive force, and many were convinced that it shows that we were mistaken when we thought that a person has the right kind of control over what she does—the kind of control that is necessary for moral responsibility—only if she is able to do otherwise. These philosophers, who later became known as “Source” compatibilists or “semi-compatibilists”, took the moral to be that it is not relevant, so far as moral responsibility is concerned , whether determinism has the consequence that we don’t have the free will we think we have, that we never have any genuine choices, that we are never able to do otherwise. They said that what matters, so far as moral responsibility is concerned, is only what happens in the “actual sequence” (Fischer 1994; Fischer & Ravizza 1998; Sartorio 2016).

But a little reflection should make us wonder whether facts about the “actual sequence” can come apart from facts about free will in the way envisaged by Frankfurt. How can it be true that Black succeeds, not just in limiting the range of Jones’ alternative courses of action, but in making it the case that Jones has no alternatives? How can Black, sitting on the sidelines, deprive Jones of the ability to deliberate, decide, or try otherwise?

We can easily grant that Black has the power to directly manipulate Jones’ body so Jones loses the ability to move his body in any way other than the ways that Black wants. We might even grant that Black has the power to directly manipulate Jones’ mind/brain, so Jones loses the ability to “move” his mind in any way other than the ways that Black wants. But Black never exercises his power. There is a difference between the existence of a power and the exercise of a power. It is a modal fallacy to reason from “Black has the power to bring it about that Jones lacks the ability to do otherwise” to “Jones lacks the ability to do otherwise”. The truth about Jones is not that Black robs him of the ability to do otherwise; it is the more complicated truth that Black puts him at constant risk of losing the ability to do otherwise. Jones’ free will and his moral responsibility are dependent on the luck of his deliberations and intentions co-coinciding with those of Black (Vihvelin 2013; for some other criticisms of Frankfurt’s argument see Lamb 1993, Alvarez 2009, and Steward 2009).

Frankfurt’s argument has been enormously influential, though perhaps not in the way he intended. His thought experiment was a failure; while most compatibilists were convinced, most incompatibilists were not. (Compatibilists who were not convinced include Smith 1997, 2004; Campbell 2005; Fara 2008; Vihvelin 2000 and 2013.) These incompatibilists insisted, though not for the reason given above, that Black does not succeed in robbing Jones of all his freedom; there is something that remains up to Jones (Widerker 1995; Ginet 1996; Kane 1996). This response, famously dubbed the “flickers of freedom” reply, was criticized by defenders of Frankfurt’s argument on the ground that the “alternative possibilities” retained by Jones are not sufficiently “robust” (Fischer 1994, 2003; Fischer & Ravizza 1998). The critics of the argument rejected this charge, arguing that Jones retains a morally relevant ability to do otherwise, thus resurrecting the very debate that Frankfurt had hoped to undermine. Other defenders of Frankfurt’s argument told more complicated stories and argued that, even if Frankfurt’s story does not succeed, these new stories show that a person may be morally responsible for her action despite lacking any ability to do otherwise (Mele & Robb 1998; Pereboom 2003). More than fifty years after the publication of Frankfurt’s article, the debate continues. For a sample of some of this vast literature, see Widerker & McKenna 2003.

Frankfurt’s aim was to make it easier to defend the claim that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism and there is a case to be made that he was successful or, at least, successful against the “Source” incompatibilists who were convinced by his argument (Fischer 2003, Sartorio 2016). But there has been a cost. Our interest in free will is not limited to our interest in moral responsibility. Compatibilism has historically been charged with being “a wretched subterfuge” and a “quagmire of evasion”. Determinism seems prima facie incompatible with genuine choice and the ability to do otherwise, and while there was a time when the philosophical consensus was that the incompatibilist is guilty of some simple confusion or mistake akin to the fatalist’s mistake, this is no longer the case, thanks to the Consequence argument (to be discussed later). The influence of Frankfurt’s argument (and his other essays, especially Frankfurt 1971) has been so great that most compatibilists have turned their attention away from the free will/determinism problem and focused exclusively on problems about moral responsibility (and related topics, like blame, desert, and punishment). The term ‘compatibilism’ is now often used to refer to a thesis about moral responsibility—that the freedom sufficient for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism (Pereboom 1995), that the existence of actions free in the sense required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism (Markosian 1999), that the unique ability of persons to exercise control in the manner necessary for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism (McKenna 2004b [2015]). The literature on the traditional problem of free will and determinism is dominated by incompatibilists. There is a growing consensus that the incompatibilist is right: if our universe is a deterministic one, we never have the ability to choose and do anything other than what we actually do.

Before we ask whether this pessimism about the compatibility of free will with determinism is warranted, we should pause to ask whether there really is a substantive disagreement between compatibilists and incompatibilists. When an incompatibilist says that determinism would rob us of the free will we think we have, including genuine choices and the ability to do otherwise, and when the compatibilist denies this, are they asserting and denying the same proposition? Or is the incompatibilist asserting one thing while the compatibilist is denying something else?

Some of the things said in the literature suggest that there is no substantive debate. For instance, some philosophers contrast a “strong incompatibilist ability” with a “weak compatibilist ability” (or “libertarian free will” with “compatibilist free will”) and write in a way that suggests that they think that the only substantive question about free will is whether it is or entails the “strong” incompatibilist ability to do otherwise (since the “weak” compatibilist ability to do otherwise is, by definition , compatible with determinism). And one leading semantic proposal might seem to support the claim that there is no real dispute. According to the Lewis/Kratzer, proposal ‘can’ (and other modal words, including ‘is able’, ‘has the power’, ‘is free to’) means ‘compossible with relevant facts F’, and the relevant facts are determined by the context together with the intentions of the speaker (D. Lewis 1976, Kratzer 1977). For a different kind of contextualist proposal see Hawthorne 2001; for criticism, see Feldman 2004. Whittle 2021 is a book-length defense of a contextualist account of freedom and responsibility.

So, for instance, it might be true, given one context, that I can speak Finnish (I’m a native Estonian speaker, so it wouldn’t take that long for me to learn Finnish) and false, given another context (don’t take me to Finland as your interpreter). There is no contradiction in saying that I both can and can’t speak Finnish, so long as we understand that what we are saying is that my speaking Finnish is compossible with one set of facts (my ability to easily learn the language) and not compossible with another, more inclusive set of facts (my current inability to speak it). Given this understanding of ‘can, it might seem that there is no genuine disagreement between the compatibilist and the incompatibilist. When the compatibilist asserts that deterministic agents are often able to do otherwise, she has in mind contexts (the contexts of ordinary speakers, in daily life) in which the relevant facts \(F\) are restricted to some relatively local facts about the agent and her surroundings. When the incompatibilist denies that any deterministic agent is ever able to do otherwise, she has in mind contexts (the contexts of philosophers discussing the free will/determinism problem) in which the relevant facts include all the facts about the laws and the past . So the proposition denied by the incompatibilist is not the proposition asserted by the compatibilist.

The leading contemporary incompatibilist, van Inwagen, rejects any suggestion that the compatibilist and the incompatibilist have a merely verbal disagreement, either because they are using different senses of ‘can’ (‘ability’, ‘power’, “free will” etc.) or because they are focusing on different contexts of utterance. The debate, he says, is about whether determinism has the consequence that no one is ever able to do otherwise (equivalently, that no one ever has it in their power to do otherwise) given what ordinary speakers mean, in the contexts in which they use these words. The contexts to which he is referring are the contexts of deliberation and choice in which we consider our options, while believing that we are able to pursue each of them. When a compatibilist asserts, and an incompatibilist denies, that a person at a deterministic world is sometimes able to do otherwise, they mean exactly the same thing by ‘is able to’; they mean what ordinary English speakers mean (in these contexts). The proposition asserted by the compatibilist is the proposition denied by the incompatibilist. Citing David Lewis as his example of a compatibilist opponent, van Inwagen says that he and Lewis cannot both be right. One of them is wrong, but neither is muddled or making a simple mistake (van Inwagen 2008).

In what follows, we will assume that the debate about free will (including, but not necessarily limited to, genuine choice and the ability to do otherwise) and determinism is a substantive debate, and not one that can be dissolved by appeal to different senses or contexts of utterance. We will now turn to the arguments.

3. Arguments based on Intuition

Some arguments for incompatibilism don’t fall into either of the two varieties described above—arguments that determinism is incompatible with ultimate sourcehood and arguments that determinism is incompatible with choice and the ability to do otherwise. These are arguments that appeal primarily to our intuitions. There are many variations on this way of arguing for incompatibilism, but the basic structure of the argument is usually something like this:

If determinism is true, we are like: billiard balls, windup toys, playthings of external forces, puppets, robots, victims of a nefarious neurosurgeon who controls us by directly manipulating the brain states that are the immediate causes of our actions. Billiard balls (windup toys, etc.) have no free will. So if determinism is true, we don’t have free will.

Most of these intuition-based arguments are not very good. Even if determinism entails that there is something we have in common with things which lack free will, it doesn’t follow that there are no relevant differences. Billiard balls, toys, puppets, and simple robots lack minds, and having a mind is a necessary condition of having free will. And determinism doesn’t have the consequence that all our actions are caused by irresistible desires that are, like the neurosurgeon’s direct manipulations, imposed on us by external forces outside our control. (For criticism of “intuition pumps”, see Dennett 1984. For discussion of cases involving more subtle kinds of manipulation, see Section 3.2 .)

With this caveat in mind, let’s take a closer look at the two most influential intuition-based arguments.

The No Forking Paths argument (van Inwagen 1983; Fischer 1994; Ekstrom 2000) begins by appealing to the idea that whenever we make a choice we are doing (or think we are doing) something like what a traveler does when faced with a choice between different roads. The only roads the traveler is able to choose are roads which are a continuation of the road she is already on. By analogy, the only choices we are able to make are choices which are a continuation of the actual past and consistent with the laws of nature . If determinism is false, then making choices really is like this: one “road” (the past) behind us, two or more different “roads” (future actions consistent with the laws) in front of us. But if determinism is true, then our journey through life is like traveling (in one direction only) on a road which has no branches. There are other roads, leading to other destinations; if we could get to one of these other roads, we could reach a different destination. But we can’t get to any of these other roads from the road we are actually on. So if determinism is true, our actual future is our only possible future ; we are never able to choose or do anything other than what we actually do. (See also Flint 1987 and Warfield 2003 for discussion of a related argument that appeals to the metaphor of our freedom to “add” to the list of truths about the world.)

This is intuitively powerful, since it’s natural to think of our future as being “open” in the branching way suggested by the road analogy and to associate this kind of branching structure with freedom of choice. But several crucial assumptions have been smuggled into this picture: assumptions about time and causation and assumptions about possibility. The assumptions about time and causation needed to make the analogy work include the following: that we “move” through time in something like the way that we move down a road, that our “movement” is necessarily in one direction only, from past to future, that the past is necessarily “fixed” or beyond our control in some way that the future is not. These assumptions are all controversial; on some theories of time and causation (the four-dimensionalist theory of time, a theory of causation that permits time travel and backwards causation), they are all false (D. Lewis 1976; Horwich 1987; Sider 2001; Hoefer 2003).

The assumption about possibility is that possible worlds are concrete spatio-temporal things (in the way that roads are) and that worlds can overlap (literally share a common part) in the way that roads can overlap. But most possible worlds theorists reject the first assumption and nearly everyone rejects the second assumption (D. Lewis 1986).

Determinism (without these additional assumptions) does not have the consequence that our “journey” through life is like moving down a road; the contrast between non-determinism and determinism is not the contrast between traveling on a branching road and traveling on a road with no branches.

As an argument for incompatibilism, the appeal to the metaphor of the branching roads (“the garden of forking paths”) fails. If we strip away the metaphors, the main premise of the argument turns into the claim that we have genuine choices between alternative course of action only if our choosing and doing otherwise is compossible with the actual past and the actual laws . But this claim is none other than a statement of what the incompatibilist believes and the compatibilist denies.

If the intuitions to which the No Forking Paths argument appeals nevertheless continue to engage us, it is because we think that our range of possible choices is constrained by two factors: the laws and the past. We can’t change or break the laws; we can’t causally affect the past. (Even if backwards causation is logically possible, it is not within our power.) These beliefs—about the laws and the past—are the basis of the most influential contemporary argument for incompatibilism: the Consequence argument. More of this later.

3.2 Manipulation and Design Arguments

We turn now to a family of arguments that work by appealing to our intuitive response to cases involving two persons, whom we will call “Victim” and “Producer”. Producer designs or manipulates Victim (in some of the stories, in the way the maker of a robot designs his robot or a god creates a human being; in other stories, by employing techniques of behavioral engineering or neural manipulation). Producer’s purpose is to ensure either that Victim performs a specific action (Mele 1995, 2006, 2019; Rosen 2002; Pereboom 1995, 2001, 2008, 2014) or that he will have the kind of psychology and motivational structure which will ensure or make probable that he performs certain kinds of actions and leads a certain kind of life. (See Kane 1996 for discussion of Huxley’s Brave New World and Skinner’s Walden Two .)

We are supposed to agree that Victim is not morally responsible because he acts unfreely and that he acts unfreely because of Producer’s role in the causation of his actions. Victim performs the actions he performs because that’s what he was designed or more directly manipulated to do, and it was Producer who made him be that way or do those things.

The argument then goes as follows:

• Victim doesn’t act freely and, for that reason, is not morally responsible for what he does.
• If determinism is true, there is no relevant difference between Victim and any normal case of apparently free and morally responsible action.
• Therefore, if determinism is true no one ever acts freely or is morally responsible for what he does.

We are supposed to accept premise 1 on the grounds of our intuitive response to the story about Victim. The argument for premise 2 is that if determinism is true, then we are like Victim with respect to the fact that we are merely the proximate causes of our actions. We do what we do because of the way we are (our psyche or “design” together with the total mix of our thoughts, desires, and other psychological states at the time of action) and the causes of these psychological characteristics ultimately come from outside us, from forces and factors beyond our control . The only difference between us (in this imagined scenario in which determinism is true) and Victim is that our psychological features are not the causal upshot of the work of a single Producer who had a specific plan for us. But this fact about the remote causes of our actions—that they are caused by a variety of natural causes rather than the intentional acts of a single agent—is not relevant to questions about our freedom and responsibility. Or so it is argued, by the advocates of Manipulation arguments.

Manipulation arguments may be seen as the Source incompatibilist’s response to Frankfurt’s thought experiment. Frankfurt was trying to show that determinism isn’t as bad as we might think. In his story, Black was a stand-in for determinism, and Frankfurt was trying to convince us that the facts about Black are consistent with the facts, as we know them, about how we actually deliberate, decide, and act, and these facts are the only facts that matter, so far as moral responsibility is concerned. So even if Jones lacks the ability to do otherwise, he is still morally responsible. The Manipulation argument says, in effect:

Frankfurt’s thought experiment is faulty. Determinism isn’t a powerful agent, standing by, in the background, like Black. Determinism is part of the “actual sequence”. Let me tell you a story to make this clear…

And then Producer is introduced, and we are told that he has a plan concerning the action or actions of another person, Victim, the power to enforce his plan, and moreover, unlike Black , he does enforce it.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that manipulation of one person by another automatically undermines freedom. In real life, we know that we may be manipulated by others to do things we would not have done, but for their arguments or other ways of persuading us to change our minds. Absent further reasons, we don’t think that this kind of manipulation robs us of free will or the ability to act freely in the way required for moral responsibility. We think that we could have resisted the argument (or the sales pitch or the subtle pressures exerted by our manipulative friend or colleague) and we might blame ourselves later for not doing so.

The question, then, is whether there is a case that can serve the purposes of a manipulation argument: a case where Victim lacks the freedom that is a necessary condition of moral responsibility while not being different, in any relevant way, from a normal agent in normal circumstances at a deterministic world (that is, from someone who we think acts freely and is morally responsible for what she does).

There are cases and cases, and many of the ones in the literature are under-described. The first three Plums of Pereboom 2001 are an example. Depending on how the details are spelled out, our verdict about Plum might be that he is unfree and not morally responsible because he is different, in relevant ways that don’t require the falsity of determinism, from a normal agent in normal circumstances (Fischer 2004; Mickelson 2010; Sripada 2012). Alternatively, the story might be fleshed out in a way that supports the judgment that Plum is not different, in any relevant way, from a normal agent (deterministic or indeterministic) in normal circumstances. But this leaves it open to the compatibilist to take the hard-line reply (McKenna 2004a, 2008; Jeppsson 2020) that since the normal deterministic agent is morally responsible, so is Plum. Opinions vary as to whether the intuitive cost of the hard-line reply is too great (Pereboom 2008; McKenna 2014).

Consider, next, cases of the Brave New World variety—cases where children are subjected to intensive behavioral engineering from birth, in a way intended to make them accept their assigned roles in a rigidly hierarchical society. Everything depends on the details, but it is surely not implausible to think that the subjects of some Brave New World cases lack a morally significant freedom because their cognitive, evaluational, and volitional capacities have been stunted or impaired in certain ways:

they are incapable of effectively envisaging or seeing the significance of certain alternatives, of reflecting on themselves and on the origins of their motivations. (Watson 1987)

Wolf 1990 argues, on the basis of similar cases, that the ability that grounds our freedom and responsibility is the unimpaired capacity to choose and act in accordance with “the True and the Good” (see also Nelkin 2011). But determinism doesn’t have the consequence that everyone’s cognitive, evaluational and volitional capacities are impaired in these sorts of ways.

There are cases where Victim is under the direct control of Producer in a way that makes it true that Victim is not morally responsible for what she does because she no longer has the kind of causal control that is a necessary condition acting freely. Producer might, for instance, directly manipulate Victim’s limbs so that Victim finds her body moving, puppetlike, in ways she does not intend. Or Producer might directly manipulate the brain states that are the neural realizers of Victim’s first order desires so Victim is, like Frankfurt’s unwilling addict, acting intentionally but “against her will” (Frankfurt 1971). But determinism doesn’t have the consequence that we never act intentionally and it doesn’t have the consequence that we always act contrary to our second order volitions or that we are always subject to psychological compulsions, addictive or “irresistible” desires, phobias, and other pathological aversions.

Defenders of Manipulation arguments claim, however, that the argument works even if these kinds of cases are set aside. They say that the intuitive force of the argument depends only on the fact that deterministically caused actions are ultimately caused, as are Victim’s, by factors and forces outside the agent’s control. They say that the argument succeeds even in cases where Producer designs a Victim with unimpaired capacities and a normal psychology, perhaps the kind we’d like our children to have, perhaps a rationally egoistic psychology of a kind we would prefer our children not to have. They also say that the argument succeeds even when Producer is such a sophisticated designer of Victim that Victim has a past history that satisfies the requirements of those compatibilist accounts of free agency that include a historical condition. (For a helpful account of the difference between historical and nonhistorical compatibilist accounts in the context of Manipulation arguments, see McKenna 2004a. For argument that the best explanation for our belief that manipulated agents act unfreely is the belief that these agents don’t have it in their power to do otherwise, see Berofsky 2012. For argument that Manipulation arguments fail given a Strawsonian account of responsibility, see Latham and Tierney 2022.)

The best example of this kind of case is Mele’s Ernie. Ernie was created as a zygote \(Z\) in Mary by goddess Diana because Diana wanted a certain event to take place 30 years later, and she was able to use her knowledge of the deterministic laws and the state of the entire universe to deduce that placing a zygote with precisely \(Z\)’s constitution in Mary would produce a normal (or better than normal: ideally self-controlled, rational, etc.) adult who would, 30 years later, judge, on the basis of rational deliberation, that it is best to do \(A\) and who would \(A\) on the basis of her judgment, thereby bringing about \(E\) (Mele 2006, 2019).

To many people, it seems intuitively clear that Ernie acts unfreely and is for that reason not morally responsible for what he does. But if that’s right, it looks like this version of the Manipulation argument succeeds. For consider this: Ernie has an atom-for-atom duplicate, Bert, a normal guy in every way, exactly like Ernie (ideally self-controlled, rational, etc.) except for the fact that he was not created by a goddess. Bert finds himself in circumstances exactly like the ones Ernie is in, and Bert also judges, on the basis of rational deliberation, that it is best to do \(A\), and he also acts on the basis of his judgment, thereby bringing about \(E\). There appears to be no relevant difference between Ernie and Bert. Therefore, Bert also acts unfreely and is also not morally responsible for what he does. But Bert (like Ernie) is normal in every way, and we can also stipulate that he (like Ernie) satisfies all plausible compatibilist conditions (historical as well as nonhistorical) for being a free and morally responsible agent. If Bert acts unfreely, so does every deterministic agent on every occasion. Therefore the kind of freedom necessary for moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism.

Mele claims that the case of Ernie is an improvement on earlier Manipulation cases in two ways. First, it is a case where it is clear that the causes of Ernie’s action are deterministic rather than the kinds of causes that might be found at a non-deterministic world. Second, it is a case where it is clear that there is no relevant difference between Ernie and any case of apparently free and responsible action at a deterministic world.

Deery and Nahmias 2017 appeal to interventionist theories of causation to argue that Mele is wrong about the second claim. Tierney and Glick 2020 criticise Deery and Nahmias. (See also Herdova 2020.)

Suppose, however, that there is no relevant difference between Ernie and Bert. It does not follow that the argument succeeds. If there really is no freedom-relevant difference between Bert and Ernie, why should we reason from the unfreedom of Ernie to the unfreedom of Bert rather than the other way around, from the freedom of Bert to the freedom of Ernie?

After all, our grounds for saying that there is no relevant difference between the two is that the historical facts about Ernie’s creation (that he was created by a goddess, with the powers of a Laplacian predictor, with certain intentions, and so on) are not relevant to the question of whether Ernie acts freely or unfreely 30 years later. If they are not relevant, they don’t provide us with reasons for thinking that Ernie is unfree. By contrast, we do have reasons for thinking that Bert acts freely and is morally responsible for what he does; he satisfies the ordinary conditions we use in real life, as well as all the conditions of the best compatibilist accounts on offer. If we started out with reasons for thinking Bert free and responsible (either because we are already compatibilists or because we have never thought about determinism), the Zygote argument hasn’t given us any reason to change our minds. (For further elaboration on this critique, including some helpful counter-thought experiments, see Fischer 2011, 2021; Kearns 2012.)

A defender of the Zygote argument might respond by claiming that the intuitions that favor the unfreedom and lack of responsibility of Ernie are stronger than the intuitions that favor the freedom and responsibility of Bert. But this is problematic. Intuitions are not always evidentially trustworthy and there are, as we have already noted, reasons for being wary of our intuitive response to descriptions of deterministic worlds: we have a natural tendency to confuse “it will be” with “it must be”. There are further reasons for not giving evidential credence to our intuitions about Ernie’s unfreedom: he was created by a goddess, with the kind of foreknowledge that no human being could have, for the express purpose of performing a certain action 30 years later. Perhaps our intuitions are explained (though not justified) by the belief that being created in this way robs Ernie of the freedom required for responsibility. The first premise of the Zygote argument must be defended by something more than appeal to intuition.

(For some recent empirical work on intuitions about free will, determinism, and moral responsibility, see Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner 2006, Nahmias 2011 and Murray & Nahmias 2014. For a critique of the use of intuitions in Manipulation arguments, see Vihvelin 2013 and Spitzley 2015.)

Defenders of the Zygote argument don’t dispute these points. The Manipulation argument works only if the second premise is true, and the second premise says that there is no relevant difference between Victim (in this case, Ernie) and any normal deterministic case of apparently free and responsible action (in this case, Bert). Ernie differs from Bert with respect to certain historical facts about his creation: the fact that he was created by a goddess with foreknowledge, and intentions about his future. So none of these facts can be counted relevant, even if they affect our intuitions . But one historical fact is relevant, according to the defender of the argument: the fact that the deterministic causes of Ernie’s action trace back thirty years to conditions outside his control. The claim, then, is that Ernie acts unfreely and without responsibility because determinism is true. But this claim was supposed to be the conclusion of the argument, not the premise.

There is one remaining possibility. Perhaps our intuitions are best explained by our belief that Ernie doesn’t have it in his power to do anything other than act according to Diana’s plan. (We think it unfair to blame someone who wasn’t able to avoid doing what he did.) If that’s the case, then the back story of Ernie’s creation functions as a way of making vivid one of the possible ways that an otherwise normal agent at a deterministic world might have got to be the way that he is at a certain moment in his life. Should we reason from our belief that Ernie isn’t, on that occasion, able to do otherwise to the belief that Bert and every normal deterministic agent also lacks this ability, or should we reason in the opposite direction, from Bert’s ability to do otherwise to Ernie’s? This requires further discussion, which we will take up in the section on the Consequence argument. (See also Mickelson 2015b and Huoranskzi 2021.)

What has this boy to do with it? He was not his own father; he was not his own mother; he was not his own grandparents. All of this was handed to him. He did not surround himself with governesses and wealth. He did not make himself. And yet he is to be compelled to pay (Darrow 1924: 65).

Let’s turn now to arguments for incompatibilism based on the idea that a free and responsible action is an action that is caused and controlled by its agent in a special “the buck stops here” way, a way that is incompatible with deterministic event-causation.

The most popular instance of this kind of argument is an argument that we will call “the desperate defense attorney’s argument” (Darrow 1924). The defense attorney’s argument is simple:

• My client is responsible for his crime only if he “made himself”—that is, only if he caused himself to be the kind of person he is.
• My client did not make himself.
• Therefore my client is not responsible for his crime.

The defense attorney is trying to persuade the jurors that his client is not responsible for his action, but not for any of the standard excusing conditions—insanity, accident, mistaken belief, duress, mental handicap, and so on. Nor does he claim that there is anything that distinguishes his client from any of the rest of us. His argument is that his client is not responsible because he did not make himself. But none of us has made ourselves (at least not from scratch)—we are all the products of heredity and environment. So if we accept the defense attorney’s argument, it appears that we are committed to the conclusion that no one is ever responsible for anything .

It’s not clear that this is an argument for incompatibilism. It’s an argument for incompatibilism only if it’s an argument for hard determinism—that is, if it’s an argument for the thesis that determinism is true and because of this we are never responsible for anything. Let’s take a closer look.

What’s the argument for premise (2)? After all, we do make our selves, at least in the garden-variety way in which we make other things: we plant gardens, cook dinners, build boats, write books and, over the course of our lives, re-invent, re-create, and otherwise “make something of ourselves”. Of course we don’t do any of these things “from scratch”, without help from anyone or anything else, but it’s impossible (or at least impossible for human beings) to make anything from scratch. The truth or falsity of determinism has no bearing on this point.

(See G. Strawson 1986 and 1994 for an argument for the impossibility of “true responsibility” that is a more sophisticated version of the defense attorney’s argument. See also Smilansky 2000. See Mele 1995 and Clarke 2005 for a critique of Strawson’s argument.)

If we pressed our defense attorney (or brought in a philosopher to help him out), we might get the following reply: The kind of garden-variety self-making possible at a deterministic world is not good enough for the kind of moral responsibility required for deserved blame and punishment. Granted, we can never have complete control over the actions we perform because of our choices (Nagel 1979), and this limits the control we have over our self-making . But we are morally responsible for our actions only if we have at least some control over our self-making, and we have control over our self-making only if we have control over the choices that are the causes of the actions whereby we make our selves. And we have control over these choices only if we cause our choices and no one and nothing causes us to make them (Chisholm 1964).

The defense attorney (or philosopher) is defending premise (2) by arguing for a certain interpretation of premise (1)—that our responsibility for our actions requires that we have “made ourselves” in the sense that, over the course of our lives, we have frequently been the first cause of the choices that result in actions and thus eventually (albeit often in ways we can neither predict nor control) to changes in our selves. In arguing this way, he has shifted the focus of the argument from the obviously impossible demand that the freedom required for moral responsibility requires entirely self-made selves to the intuitively appealing and at least not obviously impossible demand that the freedom required for moral responsibility requires what Robert Kane has called “ultimate responsibility” (that we are the ultimate sources or first causes of at least some of our choices—those choices that are the causes of “self-forming actions”). (See Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a. See also Chisholm 1964; Clarke 1993, 1996, 2003; O’Connor 1995a, 2000, 2011; Pereboom 2001, 2009b, 2014; Steward 2012).

This brings us to the philosopher’s version of the defense attorney’s argument. (For variations on this kind of argument, see Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a and Pereboom 2001, 2005, 2014.)

• We act freely (in the way necessary for moral responsibility) only if we are the ultimate sources (originators, first causes) of at least some of our choices.
• If determinism is true, then everything we do is ultimately caused by events and circumstances outside our control.
• If everything we do is ultimately caused by events and circumstances outside our control, then we are not the ultimate sources (originators, first causes) of any of our choices.
• Therefore, if determinism is true, we are not the ultimate sources of any of our choices.
• Therefore, if determinism is true, we never act freely and we are never morally responsible.

Premise (2) follows from the definition of determinism (at least given two widely accepted assumptions: that there is causation in a deterministic universe and that causation is a transitive relation). (For some doubts about the latter assumption, see Hall 2000.) Premise (3) is clearly true. So if we want to reject the conclusion, we must reject Premise (1).

Compatibilists have argued against (1) in two different ways. On the positive side, they have argued that we can give a satisfactory account of the (admittedly elusive) notion of self-determination without insisting that self-determination requires us to be the first causes of our choices (Frankfurt 1971, 1988; Watson 1975, 1987, 2004; Dennett 1984; Wolf 1990; Fischer 1994; Fischer & Ravizza 1998; Bok 1998; Nelkin 2011; Sartorio 2016). On the negative side, compatibilists have challenged (1) by arguing that it is of no help to the incompatibilist: if we accept (1), we are committed to the conclusion that free will and moral responsibility are impossible , regardless of whether determinism is true or false.

The challenge to (1) takes the form of a dilemma: Either determinism is true or it’s not. If determinism is true, then my choices are ultimately caused by events and conditions outside my control, so I am not their first cause and therefore, if we accept (1), I am neither free nor responsible. If determinism is false, then something that happens inside me (something that I call “my choice” or “my decision”) might be the first event in a causal chain leading to a sequence of body movements that I call “my action”. But since this event has no sufficient cause, whether or not it happens is not under my control any more than the spinning of a roulette wheel inside my brain is under my control. Therefore, if determinism is false, I am not the first cause or ultimate source of my choices and, if we accept (1), I am neither free nor responsible (Ayer 1954; Wolf 1990).

In order to defend (1) against the “determined or random” dilemma, above, the incompatibilist has to offer a positive account of the puzzling claim that persons are the first causes of their choices. The traditional incompatibilist answer is that this claim must be taken literally, at face value. We—agents, persons, enduring things—are causes with a very special property: we initiate causal chains, but nothing and no one causes us to do this. Like God, we are uncaused causers, or first movers. If Joe deliberately throws a rock, which breaks a window, then the window’s breaking (an event) was caused by Joe’s throwing the rock (another event), which was caused by Joe’s choice (another event). But Joe’s choice was not caused by any further event, not even the event of Joe’s thinking it might be fun to throw the rock; it was caused by Joe himself . And since Joe is not an event, he is not the kind of thing which can be caused. (Or so it is argued, by agent-causalists. See Chisholm 1964; O’Connor 1995a, 2000, 2011; Pereboom 2001.)

Many philosophers think that agent-causation is either incoherent or impossible, due to considerations about causation. What sense does it make to say that a person, as opposed to a change in a person, or the state of a person at a time, is a cause? (Bok 1998). (See also Clarke 2003 for a detailed and sympathetic examination of the metaphysics of agent-causation, which ends with the conclusion that there are, on balance, reasons to think that agent-causation is impossible.)

Others (van Inwagen 2000; Mele 2006) have argued that even if agent-causation is possible, it would not solve the problem of transforming an undetermined event into one which is in our control in the way that our free choices must be. And others have argued that if agent-causation is possible, it is possible at deterministic as well as non-deterministic worlds (Markosian 1999; Nelkin 2011; Franklin 2016).

Some incompatibilists have responded to the “determined or random” dilemma in a different way: by appealing to the idea of probabilistic causation (Kane 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011a). If our choices are events which have probabilistic causes (e.g., our beliefs, desires, and other reasons for acting), then it no longer seems plausible to say that we have no control over them. We make choices for reasons, and our reasons cause our choices, albeit indeterministically. Kane’s reply may go some way towards avoiding the second (no control) horn of the dilemma. But it doesn’t avoid the first horn. If our choices are caused by our reasons, then our choices are not the first causes of our actions. And our reasons are presumably caused, either deterministically or probabilistically, so they are not the first causes of our actions either. But then our actions are ultimately caused by earlier events over which we have no control and we are not the ultimate sources of our actions.

We think that we make choices, and we think that our choices typically make a difference to our future. We think that there is a point to deliberation: how we deliberate—what reasons we consider—makes a difference to what we choose and thus to what we do. We also think that when we deliberate there really is more than one choice we are able to make, more than one action we are able to perform, and more than one future which is, at least partly, in our power to bring about.

Our beliefs about our powers with respect to the future contrast sharply with our beliefs about our lack of power with respect to the past. We don’t think we have any choice about the past. We don’t deliberate about the past; we think it irrational to do anything aimed at trying to change or affect the past (“You had your chance; you blew it. It’s too late now to do anything about it”). Our beliefs about our options, opportunities, alternatives, possibilities, abilities, powers, and so on, are all future-directed. We may summarize this contrast by saying that we think that the future is “open” in some sense that contrasts with the non-openness or “fixity” of the past.

Although we don’t think we (now) have a choice about the past, we have beliefs about what was possible for us in the past. When called upon to defend what we did, or when we blame or reproach ourselves, or simply wonder whether we did the right thing (or the sensible thing, the rational thing, and so on), we evaluate our action by comparing it to what we believe were our other possible actions, at that time . We blame, criticize, reproach, regret, and so on, only insofar as we believe we had alternatives. And if we later discover that we were mistaken in believing that some action \(X\) was among our alternatives, we think it is irrational to criticize or regret our failure to do \(X\).

Is determinism compatible with the truth of these beliefs? In particular, is it compatible with the belief that we are often able to choose and do more than one action?

Incompatibilists have traditionally said “No”. And it’s not hard to see why. If we think of ‘can’ in the “open future” way suggested by the commonsense view, then it’s tempting to think that the past is necessary in some absolute sense. And it’s natural to think that we are able to do otherwise only if we can do otherwise given this “fixed” past ; that is, only if our doing otherwise is a possible continuation of the actual past. If we follow this train of thought, we will conclude that we are able to do otherwise only if our doing otherwise is a possible continuation of the past consistent with the laws. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible continuation of the past consistent with the laws. And thus we get the incompatibilist conclusion. If determinism is true, our actual future is our only possible future. What we actually do is the only thing we are able to do.

But this argument is too quick. It rests on assumptions about the nature of time which are arguably at odds with what physics tells us. (Hoefer 2003 [2016], Ismael 2016.) There is an alternative explanation for our beliefs about the “open” future as opposed to the “fixed” past—the direction of causation. Causes are always earlier than their effects. Our deliberation causes our choices, which cause our actions. But not the other way around. Our choices cause future events; they never cause past events. Why causation works this way is a deep and difficult question, but the leading view, among philosophers of science, is that the temporal asymmetry of causation is a fundamental but contingent fact about our universe. If things were different enough—if we could travel backwards in time—then we would sometimes have an ability that we don’t actually have—the ability to causally affect past persons and things (Horwich 1987; D. Lewis 1976). If this is right, then we don’t need to suppose that the past is metaphysically or absolutely necessary in order to explain the fixed past/open future contrast. The past could have been different . But, given the way things actually are, there is nothing that we are able to do that would causally affect the past .

This alternative explanation of our commonsense belief about the contrast between fixed past and open future allows the compatibilist to say the kind of things that compatibilists have traditionally wanted to say: The ‘can’ of our freedom of will and freedom of action is the ‘can’ of causal and counterfactual dependence. Our future is open because it depends, causally and counterfactually, on our choices, which in turn depend, causally and counterfactually, on our deliberation and on the reasons we take ourselves to have. (At least in the normal case, where there is neither external constraint nor internal compulsion or other pathology.) If our reasons were different (in some appropriate way), we would choose otherwise, and if we chose otherwise, we would do otherwise. And our reasons can be different, at least in the sense that we, unlike simpler creatures and young children, have the ability to critically evaluate our reasons (beliefs, desires, values, principles, and so on) and that we have, and at least sometimes exercise, the ability to change our reasons (Bok 1998; Dennett 1984; Fischer 1994; Fischer & Ravizza 1998; Frankfurt 1971, 1988; Lehrer 1976, 1980, 2004; Watson 1975, 1987, 2004; Wolf 1990; Smith 1997, 2004; Pettit & Smith 1996; Nelkin 2011; Vihvelin 2004, 2013). All this is compatible with determinism. So the truth of determinism is compatible with the truth of our commonsense belief that we really do have a choice about the future, that we really can choose and do other than what we actually do.

Incompatibilists think that this, and any compatibilist account of the ‘can’ of freedom of choice, is, and must be , mistaken. The Consequence Argument (Ginet 1966, 1983, 1990; van Inwagen 1975, 1983, 2000; Wiggins 1973; Lamb 1977) is widely regarded as the best argument for this conclusion. In the remainder of this section we will take a closer look at van Inwagen’s version of this important and influential argument.

In An Essay on Free Will (1983), van Inwagen presents three formal arguments which, he says, are intended as three versions of the same basic argument, which he characterized as follows:

If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequence of laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it’s not up to us what went on before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us. (1983: 56)

We will begin by looking at the third version of the argument (the Rule Beta argument). The Rule Beta argument uses a modal sentential operator which van Inwagen defines as follows: ‘\(\mathbf{N}p\)’ abbreviates ‘\(p\) and no one has, or ever had, any choice about whether \(p\)’. Van Inwagen tells us that the logic of ‘\(\mathbf{N}\)’ includes these two inference rules, where \(\Box p\) asserts that it is logically necessity that \(p\):

Alpha : From \(\Box p\), we may infer \(\mathbf{N}p\).

Beta : From \(\mathbf{N}p\) and \(\mathbf{N}(p \supset q)\), we may infer \(\mathbf{N}q\).

In the argument below, ‘\(L\)’ is an abbreviation for a sentence expressing a conjunction of all the laws of nature; ‘\(H\)’ is a sentence expressing a true proposition about the total state of the world at some time in the distant past before any agents existed; ‘\(\Box\)’ is ‘it is logically necessary that’; ‘\(\supset\)’ is the material conditional, and ‘\(P\)’ is a dummy for which we may substitute any sentence which expresses a true proposition.

The argument is a conditional proof: Assume determinism and show that it follows that no one has, or ever had, a choice about any true proposition, including propositions about the apparently free actions of human beings.

Premises (1) and (2) follow from determinism. (3) follows from (2), by application of rule Alpha. Rule Alpha seems uncontroversial. (But see Spencer 2017).

Premises 4 and 6 also look uncontroversial. \(N\) necessity isn’t logical or metaphysical necessity. We can insist that the laws and the distant past could , in the broadly logical sense, have been different, so neither \(\Box H\) nor \(\Box L\) are true. But it still seems undeniably true that we have no choice about whether the laws and the distant past are the way they are; there is nothing that we are able to do that would make it the case that either the laws or the distant past are different from the way they actually are.

Rule Beta is the key to the argument. It’s what makes the difference between this version of the Consequence Argument and an argument widely agreed to be fallacious.

\(\Box(P \supset Q)\) \(P\) Therefore, \(\Box Q\)

An example of this invalid inference is an argument sometimes called “the fatalist fallacy”:

\(\Box\)(it’s true that it will rain tomorrow \(\supset\) it will rain tomorrow) It’s true that it will rain tomorrow Therefore, \(\Box\)(it will rain tomorrow)

Another example:

\(\Box((H \amp L) \supset P)\) \(H \amp L\) Therefore, \(\Box P\)

On the other hand, the following is a valid inference:

\(\Box P\) \(\Box(P \supset Q)\) Therefore, \(\Box Q\)

The necessity expressed by the ‘no choice about’ operator is not logical or metaphysical necessity. But it might nevertheless be similar enough for Beta to be a valid rule of inference. Or so argued van Inwagen, and gave examples:

\(\mathbf{N}\)(The sun explodes in the year 2000) \(\mathbf{N}\)(The sun explodes in the year 2000 \(\supset\) All life on earth ends in the year 2000) Therefore, \(\mathbf{N}\)(All life on earth ends in the year 2000)

An early response to the Consequence argument was to argue that Beta is invalid because a compatibilist account of the ability to do otherwise is correct (Gallois 1977; Foley 1979; Slote 1982; Flint 1987). For instance, if “\(S\) is able to do \(X\)” means “if \(S\) tried to do \(X\), \(S\) would do \(X\)”, then the premises of the argument are true (since even if \(S\) tried to change the laws or the past, she would not succeed), but the conclusion is false (since determinism is consistent with the truth of counterfactuals like “if \(S\) tried to raise her hand, she would”).

Incompatibilists were unmoved by this response, saying, in effect, that the validity of Beta is more plausible than the truth of any compatibilist account of ability to do otherwise. They pointed out that there was no agreement, even among compatibilists, about how such an account should go, and that the simplest accounts (so-called “Conditional Analyses”, originally proposed by Hume) had been rejected, even by compatibilists.

(For criticism of Simple Conditional Analyses, see Austin 1956; Chisholm 1964; Lehrer 1968, 1976; van Inwagen 1983. For defense of a compatibilist account of ability to do otherwise, see Moore 1912; Hobart 1934; Kapitan 1991, 1996, 2011; Lehrer 1980, 2004; Bok 1998; Smith 1997, 2004; Campbell 2005; Perry 2004, 2008, 2010; Vihvelin 2004, 2013; Fara 2008; Schlosser 2017; Menzies 2017; List 2019.)

More recently, van Inwagen has conceded that Beta is invalid (van Inwagen 2000). McKay and Johnson (1996) showed that Beta entails Agglomeration:

\(\mathbf{N}p\) \(\mathbf{N}q\) Therefore, \(\mathbf{N}(p \amp q)\)

Agglomeration is uncontroversially invalid. To see this, let ‘\(p\)’ abbreviate ‘The coin does not land heads’, let ‘q’ abbreviate ‘The coin does not land tails’, and suppose that it’s a fair coin which isn’t tossed but someone could have tossed it (McKay and Johnson 1996).

(For counterexamples to Beta, see Widerker 1987, Huemer 2000, and Carlson 2000.)

Van Inwagen proposed to repair the Consequence argument by replacing ‘\(\mathbf{N}\)’ with ‘\(\mathbf{N}\)*’, where ‘\(\mathbf{N}*p\)’ says “\(p\) and no one can, or ever could, do anything such that if she did it, \(p\) might be false”. Agglomeration is valid for ‘\(\mathbf{N}\)*’, and thus this particular objection to the validity of Beta does not apply.

It has also been suggested (Finch & Warfield 1998) that the Consequence argument can be repaired by keeping ‘\(\mathbf{N}\)’ and replacing Beta with Beta 2:

Beta 2 : From \(\mathbf{N}p\) and \(\Box(p \supset q)\), we may infer \(\mathbf{N}q\)

This would yield the following argument:

Other ways of repairing the argument have been proposed by O’Connor 1993 and Huemer 2000.

So it still looks as though the compatibilist is in trouble. For it seems plausible to suppose that there is nothing that we are able to do that might make it the case that either \(H\) or \(L\) is false. And it seems plausible to suppose that we have no choice about whether \((H \amp L)\). We need to dig deeper to criticize the argument.

David Lewis tells us to think of the argument as a reductio (Lewis 1981). A compatibilist is someone who claims that the truth of determinism is compatible with the existence of the kinds of abilities that we assume we have in typical choice situations. Let’s call these ‘ordinary abilities’. The Consequence argument, as Lewis articulates it, says that if we assume that a deterministic agent has ordinary abilities, we are forced to credit her with incredible abilities as well.

Here, with some modifications, is Lewis’s statement of the argument:

Pretend that determinism is true, and that I did not raise my hand (at that department meeting, to vote on that proposal) but had the ability to do so. If I had exercised my ability—if I had raised my hand—then either the remote past or the laws of physics would have been different (would have to have been different). But if that’s so, then I have at least one of two incredible abilities—the ability to change the remote past or the ability to change the laws. But to suppose that I have either of these abilities is absurd. So we must reject the claim that I had the ability to raise my hand.

This counterfactual version of the Consequence argument nicely highlights a point that the rule Beta version glosses over. The argument relies on a claim about counterfactuals. The argument says that if determinism is true, then at least one of these counterfactuals is true:

Different Past: If I had raised my hand, the remote past would have been different.

Different Laws: If I had raised my hand, the laws would have been different.

Both these counterfactuals strike many people as incredible. But there is a reason for that—we are not used to thinking in terms of determinism and we are not accustomed to counterfactual speculation about what would have been the case, beforehand , if anything at a deterministic world had happened in any way other than the way it actually happened.

On the other hand, we are good at evaluating counterfactuals, or at least some counterfactuals, and we are especially good at evaluating those counterfactuals that we entertain in contexts of choice, when we ask questions about the causal upshots of our contemplated actions. (What would happen if… I struck this match, put my finger in the fire, threw this rock at that window, raised my hand?) And when we contemplate our options, we take for granted the existence of many facts—including facts about the laws and the past.

In other words, when we evaluate counterfactuals in real life, we do so by considering imaginary situations which are very like the situation we are actually in, and we do not suppose that there are any gratuitous departures from actuality. And to suppose a difference in the past or the laws seems like a gratuitous difference.

So it is no surprise that when our attention is directed to Different Past and Different Laws , these counterfactuals strike us as incredible, or at least odd . But that doesn’t mean that they are false, and if determinism is true, then either Different Past or Different Laws is true.

So the first point is that we all need a theory of counterfactuals, and if determinism is true, the true counterfactuals will include either Different Past or Different Laws .

The second point is that the details of the correct compatibilist solution to the free will/determinism problem will turn on the details of the correct theory of counterfactuals.

(For similar criticisms of the Consequence argument, see Fischer 1983, 1988; Horgan 1985; Watson 1987; Vihvelin 1988, 2008, 2013; Rummens 2021.)

If Lewis’s theory of counterfactuals (D. Lewis 1973, 1979) is correct, or even more or less correct (Schaffer 2004), then the relevant counterfactuals about the past and laws, at a deterministic world, are:

Almost the Same Past: If I had raised my hand, the past would have been exactly the same until a time shortly before the time of my decision to raise my hand.

Slightly Different Laws: If I had raised my hand, the laws would have been ever so slightly different in a way that permitted a divergence from the lawful course of actual history shortly before the time of my decision to raise my hand.

On the other hand, if Lewis’s theory is wrong, and counterfactuals are always evaluated by holding the laws constant, then the relevant counterfactuals, at a deterministic world, are:

Same Laws : If I had raised my hand, the laws would still have been exactly the same.

Different Past : If I had raised my hand, past history would have been at least somewhat different all the way back to the Big Bang.

(For critique of Lewis’s theory, and defense of a theory of counterfactuals that holds the laws fixed, see Bennett 1984; Dorr 2016; Vihvelin 2017b.)

We’ve got to choose. We all need a theory of counterfactuals, and our theory should provide the correct verdicts for the uncontroversially true counterfactuals at deterministic as well as indeterministic worlds. Our choice is limited to a theory that accepts Different Laws or Different Past . Which theory we choose has nothing to do with the free will/determinism problem and everything with how we evaluate counterfactuals.

We can now explain the essence of Lewis’s reply to the counterfactual version of the Consequence argument in a way that doesn’t require you to accept Lewis’s theory of counterfactuals.

The argument trades on an equivocation between two counterfactuals.

There is a corresponding equivocation between two ability claims:

The problem with the argument, says Lewis, is that it equivocates between these two ability claims. To count as a reductio against the compatibilist, the argument must establish that the compatibilist is committed to (A2) . But the compatibilist is committed only to (C1) and thus only to (A1) . The compatibilist is committed only to saying that if determinism is true, we have abilities we would exercise only if the past (or the laws) had been different in the appropriate ways. And while this may sound odd, it is no more incredible than the claim that the successful exercise of our abilities depends, not only on us, but also on the co-operation of things not in our control: the good or bad luck of our immediate surroundings. Since we are neither superheroes nor gods, we are always in this position, regardless of the truth or falsity of determinism.

The Consequence Argument was intended as an argument from premises that we must all accept—premises about our lack of control over the past and the laws—to the conclusion that if determinism is true, we don’t have the free will common sense says we have. The counterfactual version of the argument claims that if we attribute ordinary abilities to deterministic agents, we are forced to credit them with incredible past or law-changing abilities as well. But no such incredible conclusion follows. All that follows is something that we must accept anyway, as the price of our non-godlike nature: that the exercise of our abilities always depends, in part, on circumstances outside our control. (See also Fischer 1983, 1988, 1994; Watson 1987; Nelkin 2001; Vihvelin 2008, 2011, 2013, 2017; Kapitan 1991, 2011; Carlson 2000.)

If the aim of the Consequence argument was to show that no compatibilist account of ‘could have done otherwise’ can succeed, then Lewis is surely right; the reductio fails. The distinction between (A1) and (A2) permits the compatibilist to avoid making incredible claims about the powers of free determined agents. On the other hand, the incompatibilist surely has a point when she complains that it is difficult to believe that anyone has the ability described by (A1) . We believe that our powers as agents are constrained by the past and by the laws. One way to understand this belief is compatible with determinism: we lack causal power over the past and the laws . But it’s natural to understand the constraint in a different, simpler way: we are able to do only those things which are such that our doing of them does not counterfactually require a difference in either the past or the laws. And this leads more or less directly to the incompatibilist conclusion that if determinism is true, then we are never able to do otherwise.

This brings us back to our starting point. Our common sense web of beliefs about ourselves as deliberators, choosers, and agents includes the belief that the future is open in some sense that the past is not. It also includes the belief that our abilities and powers are constrained by the laws. One way of understanding these beliefs leads to incompatibilism; another way does not. Which one is right?

The Consequence argument is an attempt to provide an argument in defense of the incompatibilist’s way of understanding these common sense beliefs. Even if it fails as a reductio, it has been successful in other ways. It has made it clear that the free will/determinism problem is a metaphysical problem and that the underlying issues concern questions about our abilities and powers, as well as more general questions about the nature of causation, counterfactuals, and laws of nature. Can the abilities or powers of choosers and agents be understood as a kind of natural capacity or disposition? Is there a viable incompatibilist alternative? How should we understand counterfactuals about the alternative actions and choices of agents at deterministic worlds? Is the compatibilist proposal about the way in which the laws and past constrain us defensible? Are incompatibilists committed to the defense of a particular view about the nature of laws of nature? Are they committed to the rejection of a Humean view, for instance?

Insofar as the Consequence argument has pointed us in the direction of these deep and difficult underlying metaphysical questions, it represents a significant step forward in the discussion of one of the most intractable problems of philosophy. (For discussion of some of these issues, see D. Lewis 1979; Dennett 1984, 2003; Hoefer 2002; Berofsky 2003, 2012; Beebee & Mele 2002; Beebee 2000; Schaffer 2004, 2008; Vihvelin 1990, 2004, 2013, 2017; Perry 2004, 2008, 2010; van Inwagen 2004a; Fara 2008; Holton 2009; Wilson 2014; Clarke 2015; Ismael 2016; van Inwagen 2017; Spencer 2017; Franklin 2018; List 2019, Esfeld 2021; Loew and Huttemann 2022)

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• –––, 2004b, “Van Inwagen on Free Will ”, in Campbell, O’Rourke, & Shier 2004: 213–230. Reprinted in van Inwagen 2017.
• –––, 2008, “How to Think about the Problem of Free Will”, The Journal of Ethics , 12(3–4): 327–341. doi:10.1007/s10892-008-9038-7. Reprinted in van Inwagen 2017.
• –––, 2011, “A Promising Argument”, in Kane 2011b: 475–481. Reprinted in van Inwagen 2017.
• –––, 2017, Thinking About Free Will , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• van Inwagen, Peter and Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), 2008, Metaphysics: The Big Questions , Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
• Vargas, Manuel, 2013, “How to Solve the Problem of Free Will”, in Russell & Deery 2013: ch. 21.
• Vihvelin, Kadri, 1988, “The Modal Argument for Incompatibilism”, Philosophical Studies , 53(2): 227–244. doi:10.1007/BF00354642
• –––, 1990, “Freedom, Necessity, and Laws of Nature as Relations between Universals”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 68(4): 371–381. doi: 10.1080/00048409012344381
• –––, 2000, “Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30(1): 1–24. doi:10.1080/00455091.2000.10717523
• –––, 2004, “Free Will Demystified: A Dispositional Account”, Philosophical Topics , 32(1–2): 427–450. Reprinted in Russell & Deery 2013: ch. 9. doi:10.5840/philtopics2004321/211
• –––, 2008, “Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, and Impossibilism”, in Sider, Hawthorne, Zimmerman 2008.
• –––, 2011, “How to Think about the Free Will/Determinism Problem”, in Campbell, O’Rourke, & Slater 2011: 313–340. doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262015936.003.0014
• –––, 2013, Causes, Laws, and Free Will: Why Determinism Doesn’t Matter , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795185.001.0001
• –––, 2017, “How the Laws Constrain: Causation, Counterfactuals, and Free Will”, Free Will and Causation, Philosophie de la Connaissance , edited by Claudine Tiercelin, Paris: College de France Press.
• –––, 2020, “Killing Time Again”, The Monist 103(3): 312–327. doi:10.1093/monist/onaa006
• Warfield, Ted A., 2000, “Causal Determinism and Human Freedom are Incompatible: A New Argument for Incompatibilism”, in Tomberlin 2000: 167–180.
• –––, 2003, “Compatibilism and Incompatibilism: Some Arguments”, in The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics , Michael J. Loux and Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 614–630.
• Watson, Gary, 1975, “Free Agency”, Journal of Philosophy , 72(8): 205–220. Reprinted in Watson 2003: ch. 17 and Watson 2004: ch. 1. doi:10.2307/2024703
• –––, 1987, “Free Action and Free Will”, Mind , 96(382): 145–72. Reprinted in Watson 2004: ch. 6. doi:10.1093/mind/XCVI.382.145
• –––, 1996, “Two Faces of Responsibility”, Philosophical Topics , 24(2): 227–248. Reprinted in Watson 2004: ch. 9. doi:10.5840/philtopics199624222
• –––, (ed.), 2003, Free Will , second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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• Westphal, Jonathan, 2006, “The Future and the Truth-Value Links: A Common Sense View”, Analysis , 66: 1–9. doi:10.1093/analys/66.1.1
• –––, 2012, “Is There a Modal Fallacy in van Inwagen’s ‘First Formal Argument’?”, Analysis , 72(1): 36–41. doi:10.1093/analys/anr138
• Whittle, Ann, 2016, “Ceteris Paribus, I Could Have Done Otherwise”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 92(1): 73–85. doi:10.1111/phpr.12111
• –––, 2021, Freedom and Responsibility in Context , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wilson, Jessica, 2014, “Hume’s Dictum and the Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence”, in Chance and Temporal Asymmetry , edited by Jessica M. Wilson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 258–279.
• Wolf, Susan, 1987, “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility”, in Responsibility, Character, and Emotions , Ferdinand David Schoeman (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 46–62. Reprinted in Russell & Deery 2013: ch. 15.
• –––, 1990, Freedom within Reason , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Widerker, David, 1987, “On an Argument for Incompatibilism”, Analysis , 47(1): 37–41. doi:10.1093/analys/47.1.37
• –––, 1995, “Libertarianism and Frankfurt’s Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities”, The Philosophical Review , 104(2): 247–261. Reprinted in Watson 2003: ch. 9. doi:10.2307/2185979
• Widerker, David and Michael McKenna (eds.), 2003, Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities , Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company.
• Wiggins, David, 1973, “Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism”, in Essays on Freedom of Action , Ted Honderich (ed.), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Reprinted in Watson 2003: ch. 5.

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Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility

--> Arthurs, Frank (2014) Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.

The first half of this thesis is a survey of the PSR, followed by consideration of arguments for and against the principle. This survey spans from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, and gives the reader a sense of the ways in which the PSR has been used both implicitly and explicitly throughout the history of philosophy. I argue that, while none of the arguments either for or against the PSR provide conclusive evidence of its truth or falsity, we should adopt a presumption in its favour. The best hope the PSR sceptic has of demonstrating the PSR’s falsity would be to find empirical evidence of something non-deterministic, since the PSR entails determinism. The theory of libertarianism is considered as just such a counterexample; but I argue the evidence for libertarianism is flimsy, and so the presumption in favour of the PSR remains. The second half starts from the premise that the PSR—and hence also determinism—is true, and goes on to examine what implications this has for our moral responsibility practices. We examine incompatibilist arguments by van Inwagen and Galen Strawson, both of which appeal to the origination condition. I contend that these arguments are compelling precisely because the origination condition to which they appeal is compelling. This leaves us with a dilemma: it seems like we can either accept these incompatibilist arguments, which would require us to abandon our moral responsibility practices; or we could save our moral responsibility practices by adopting some form of compatibilism, but at the cost of denying the intuitively appealing origination condition. In fact, to avoid the costs of each horn of this dilemma, we can seek to create a ‘mixed view’ instead. We consider Vargas’s revisionism, Double’s free will subjectivism, and Smilansky’s illusionism and fundamental dualism, which help to shape the mixed view I argue for here: a consequentialist compatibilist theory of moral responsibility. This theory allows us to acknowledge the impossibility of true desert without dispensing with our responsibility practices.

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Our Fate: Essays on God and Free Will

John Martin Fischer, Our Fate: Essays on God and Free Will , Oxford University Press, 2016, 243pp., $74.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199311293.

Reviewed by Martijn Boot, Waseda University

Contemporary debates about free will are dominated by two questions: ‘Is causal determinism true?’ and ‘Is free will compatible with causal determinism?’ These issues are important with respect to the question of to what extent we are morally responsible for our choices and actions. Moral responsibility cannot be detached from some form of free will and self-determination. Parallel to the issue of (in)compatibilism of free will and causal determinism is the question of whether free will and moral responsibility are compatible with divine foreknowledge.

John Martin Fischer investigates the relationship between divine foreknowledge, human freedom and moral responsibility. His book is a collection of eleven previously published essays. Fischer starts with a new introductory article in which he summarizes, extends and applies elements of the analyses presented in the other essays.

Fischer mainly concentrates on the question of whether God’s foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom to do otherwise. But he also pays attention to the still more important question about the compatibility of God’s foreknowledge and human moral responsibility.

Fischer tries to show that the answer to the first question is negative: God’s foreknowledge excludes human freedom to do otherwise. This seems to imply that the answer to the second question is negative as well: God’s foreknowledge is incompatible with human moral responsibility. However, Fischer believes that this doesn’t follow, because, according to him, moral responsibility does not require freedom to do otherwise. I will describe and discuss some of the main arguments Fischer adduces in his book to support these views.

Are divine foreknowledge and freedom to do otherwise reconcilable?

Fischer points out that the arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom to do otherwise are in important ways similar to arguments for the incompatibility of causal determinism and freedom to do otherwise. Both kinds of arguments are related to ideas about the “fixity of the past”. Still there are also relevant differences, which have to be taken into account because the conclusions of the two kinds of arguments with respect to moral responsibility may differ.

Fischer discusses different families of arguments for the incompatibility of God’s foreknowledge and human freedom to do otherwise (‘the Arguments for Incompatibilism’), which are largely based on the premise of ‘the fixity of the past’ and on the so-called Transfer Principle. This principle shows circumstances in which doing X means doing Y , so that if we cannot do Y , we cannot do X . The incompatibilist uses the Transfer Principle by showing that we cannot do X (e.g. we cannot do otherwise) because we cannot do Y (e.g. we cannot bring it about that God held a false belief) . Fischer investigates several challenges to the Arguments for Incompatibilism, such as

• ‘Scotism’: counterexamples to the Transfer Principle, attributed to Duns Scotus and developed by Anthony Kenny;
• ‘Ockhamism’: based on ideas of William of Ockham who made a distinction between ‘hard’ (temporally nonrelational) and ‘soft’ (temporally relational) facts about the past;
• ‘Molinism’: inspired by doctrines of the Jesuit philosopher Luis de Molina about God’s ‘middle knowledge’ — knowledge of what free agents would do in various situations.

Fischer defends the Arguments for Incompatibilism against these challenges. He argues that some versions of these Arguments are vulnerable to some challenges, while these challenges do not affect other versions. For instance, Kenny’s counterexamples to one of the versions of the Transfer Principle do not apply to another version. Besides, the Arguments for Incompatibilism do not exclusively depend on the Transfer Principle. So, one could reject some specific Arguments for Incompatibilism without thereby having to reject others. According to Fischer, Molinism provides an interesting model of divine providence but is not a response to the Arguments for Incompatibilism. He shows that, with respect to the issue of incompatibilism, it begs the question and doesn’t help with the specific problem of reconciling God’s foreknowledge with human freedom.

In addition to the previously published articles, Fischer offers some new reflections on related issues. He defends the theological incompatibilist’s argument against the challenge that it begs the question. Further he tries to show that a rejection of Ockhamism does not depend on the claim that God’s beliefs concern hard instead of soft facts about the past. Finally, he argues (against William Hasker, Patrick Todd and others) that, even in a causally indeterministic world (a world in which events are not causally determined), God can know with certainty that some future event will occur. A causally indeterministic world does not prevent an ordinary human being from having a justified and more or less certain belief in what a particular person, given his personal characteristics, will do in a future choice situation. God’s foreknowledge may be partly conceived in a similar way. But unlike a human being, whose beliefs are fallible, God knows that what He believes is true, because he knows that He is omniscient. God can thus ‘bootstrap’ his first-order belief to a second order of certain knowledge (Fischer calls this approach of God’s foreknowledge the Bootstrapping View). In this perspective God’s foreknowledge may be compatible with a causally indeterministic world. This is important with respect to the question of whether God’s foreknowledge can be reconciled with human moral responsibility. Indeed, if God’s foreknowledge would be inextricably bound up with a causally deterministic world, it would probably exclude human moral responsibility. Still, Fischer recognizes that, also if God’s foreknowledge is unrelated to causal determinism, it may be problematic to reconcile it with human moral responsibility, if it excludes the freedom to do otherwise. This problem forms the second main question to which the book pays attention.

Are God’s foreknowledge and moral responsibility reconcilable?

For a detailed discussion and defense of his theory of moral responsibility Fischer refers to previous publications. Many philosophers believe that the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility requires that the agent could have acted differently (the argument of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities). This would mean that incompatibility of God’s foreknowledge and the freedom to do otherwise implies that God’s foreknowledge is incompatible with moral responsibility. However, Fischer tries to make plausible that incompatibility of God’s foreknowledge and human freedom to do otherwise — a freedom that he calls ‘regulative control’ — does not imply that God’s foreknowledge is irreconcilable with human moral responsibility. Moral responsibility requires another kind of freedom than regulative control, namely ‘guidance control’. An individual exhibits guidance control to the extent that he acts from his own mechanism of practical reasoning and human deliberation, as a response to divergent reasons for alternative choices. An agent’s mechanism becomes his own when he ‘takes responsibility’. Thus guidance control consists of two important components: ownership and reasons-responsiveness .

Fischer adduces the following example — inspired by examples given by Harry Frankfurt — to demonstrate that somebody can be held morally responsible for his choice, although he could not have chosen otherwise.

Black has secretly inserted a chip in Jones’s brain. This enables Black to monitor and control Jones’s activities. If, in the presidential election, Jones were to show any inclination to vote for anyone other than the Democrat candidate, then the chip in Jones’s brain would intervene to ensure that he actually decides to vote for the Democrat. But if Jones decides on his own to vote for the Democrat, the chip does nothing. Suppose that Jones decides to vote for the Democrat on his own, just as he would have if Black had not inserted the chip in his head. It seems, upon first thinking about this case, that Jones can be held morally responsible for his choice, although he could not have done otherwise.

Fischer uses this Frankfurt-like approach to support his semicompatibilist view: he believes that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with free choices between alternative possibilities, but compatible with moral responsibility, because moral responsibility does not require freedom to do otherwise.

Some other philosophers, including Derk Pereboom, also do not believe that moral responsibility requires freedom to do otherwise, but they nevertheless hold that moral responsibility requires that the agent be the ‘ultimate source’ of his behavior. Causal determination is incompatible with the agent being the ultimate source of his behavior. Therefore, even if moral responsibility does not require freedom to do otherwise, causal determination seems incompatible with moral responsibility if the ultimate source requirement is right.

However, according to Fischer, his semicompatibilism is not vulnerable to the challenge of source-incompatibilism because, unlike causal determinism, the conception of divine foreknowledge does not exclude that the agent remains the source of his behavior, insofar as God’s foreknowledge is not conceived as causing human action. Still, Fischer points out that, also in the context of God’s foreknowledge and the Frankfurt Cases, something entirely external to the agent and out of his control is sufficient for his behavior. In this sense the source of his behavior is external to him. If, as Fischer believes, this is still compatible with guidance control — and, therefore, with moral responsibility — then this may mean that likewise the external source of the agent’s behavior in the case of causal determinism need not imply that moral responsibility is excluded. Therefore, Fischer argues, his Frankfurt-like approach casts doubt not only on the requirement of alternative possibilities for moral responsibility, but also on the requirement that, to be morally responsible, the agent must be the ultimate source of his behavior.

In sum, Fischer argues that it is at least plausible that, if God knows everything about our future, it follows that we are never free to do otherwise. But he further argues that it does not follow from this lack of regulative control that we lack guidance control of our future. If guidance control is the freedom-relevant condition for moral responsibility, then we can be morally responsible for our behavior, even if God knows everything we will ever do in advance.

Robert Kane notices in the Introduction of The Oxford Handbook of Free Will that contemporary debates about free will in the light of God’s foreknowledge “surpassed even medieval discussions in labyrinthine complexity.” Also Fischer’s profound analyses are complicated and not easily to follow for readers who are not specialized in the relevant issues. Therefore, the book is relevant and important mainly for specialists. Fischer’s argument is interesting not only for specialists who are interested in the (in)compatibility of God’s foreknowledge , the freedom to choose otherwise and moral responsibility but also for specialists who are interested in the (in)compatibility of causal determinism , the freedom to choose otherwise and moral responsibility. The reason is that the two issues have much ground in common, while there are also relevant differences, which Fischer elucidates.

Fischer’s approach consists of subtle conceptual analyses and rigorous evaluations of premises and the logical validity of arguments adduced in the free will debate. For instance, he discusses and defends the premise of the fixity of the past against challenges; he shows that the distinction between hard and soft facts may both reveal and conceal something, and that this distinction should be distinguished from the distinction between fixed and nonfixed facts; he points at confusions about the meaning of concepts such as various senses of ‘can’; he reveals logical fallacies such as equivocation and begging-the-question; he uncovers the fallacy of moving from one ‘language game’ to another (warned against by Wittgenstein).

Fischer recognizes that Frankfurt-type examples (which he adduces to make plausible that moral responsibility does not depend on freedom to do otherwise) are contentious and that he offers only a sketch of his theory of moral responsibility without a thorough defense. This may be one of the reasons why Fischer’s distinction between regulative and guidance control does not take away the doubt whether guidance control — in the absence of the possibility to do otherwise — is sufficient to make the agent morally responsible for his actions. The doubt especially applies to his suggestion that guidance control may be sufficient for moral responsibility even if causal determinism is true (causal determinism obtains if the initial state of the world together with the laws of nature entails every truth about what happens in the future).

Suppose Peter murders John, while he has guidance control (he ‘acts from his own suitably reasons-responsive mechanism’) but not regulative control. Not having regulative control means that Peter is not free to do otherwise and, thus, that it is impossible that Peter does not murder John. It is true that Peter acts from his own reasons-responsive mechanism and that he deliberately murders John. However, if causal determinism is true, then not only Peter’s actions but also his guidance control (and ‘every truth’ related to it, for instance, whether and how and with what results he exercises this control) are entirely determined by factors outside of him. The conditions sufficient for the necessary outcome of his deliberation and choice were already in place long before he even existed. As Fischer recognizes, the fixity of the past means that “the past is like the dog’s tail, and it is the tail that wags the dog”, not the other way round. Therefore, guidance control seems insufficient for rescuing moral responsibility, if the latter requires at least a minimum of self-determination. It seems inappropriate to blame somebody and hold him morally responsible for something entirely caused by external factors, which he, despite his guidance control, could not possibly influence, change or remove.

It is true that the unavoidability with respect to causal determinism differs from the unavoidability with respect to divine foreknowledge, insofar as God’s foreknowledge is not conceptualized as bringing about human action. However, as Fischer points out, it is questionable whether this difference makes a difference . Besides, Fischer admits that his ‘bootstrapping’ argument (which detaches God’s foreknowledge from causal determinism) is controversial. If we take into account these uncertainties, the conclusion seems justified that, if we are not free to do otherwise, it is implausible that divine foreknowledge and causal determinism are compatible with human moral responsibility.

Kane refers to Milton’s Paradise Lost , in which the angels, debating their freedom in the light of God’s foreknowledge, were lost in “endless mazes”. As he notices, this is “not a comforting thought for us mortals.” Fischer does not pose the question whether human beings are sufficiently capable of understanding the relationship between an omniscient God and human freedom, but he recognizes that every major view about God’s knowledge of the future “has at least a mystery associated with it, if not a significant problem.” This may mean that the problems under consideration are irresolvable, even in principle, due to a fundamental incompleteness of human knowledge with respect to the relation between God and man.

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Free will thesis.

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            In the article, The Problem of Free Will, one of the first issues addressed is Walter Stace's opinion with the problem of free will. First off, the Free Will Thesis states that some of the actions that humans perform are free actions. An action is only a free action if the agent could have done otherwise than perform the action. That is, being able to do otherwise is a requirement for a free action. Stace says that if there is no free will, there can be no morality. He continues to say, "Morality is concerned with what men ought and ought not to do. But if a man has no freedom to choose what he will do, if whatever he does is under compulsion, then it does not make sense to tell him that he ought not to have done what he did and that he ought to do something different". .              Stace tries to reconcile the Free Will Thesis with determinism. Determinism says that every event is fixed by previous events and the laws of nature. The determinist claims that every event is fixed in this way by previous events and the laws of nature. Stace says that the problem with free will was created by the fact that "learned men", especially philosophers, have assumed an incorrect definition of free will, and then finding that there is nothing in the world which answers to their definition, have denied its existence. The philosophers who denied free will and by those who defended it say that determinism is inconsistent with free will.              Stace also tries to reconcile moral responsibility with determinism. Stace says, "To be held morally responsible for one's actions means that one may be justly punished or rewarded, blamed or praised, for them". If we assume that determinism is true, but that we are nevertheless free, it might be asked whether such a deterministic free will is compatible with moral responsibility. But determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility as is much as that it is incompatible with free will.

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Thesis Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

How do I create a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to  be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:

Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.

You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.

• Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?

After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.

Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

You begin to analyze your thesis:

• Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.

Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

• Do I answer the question? Yes!
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”

After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Think of yourself as a member of a jury, listening to a lawyer who is presenting an opening argument. You'll want to know very soon whether the lawyer believes the accused to be guilty or not guilty, and how the lawyer plans to convince you. Readers of academic essays are like jury members: before they have read too far, they want to know what the essay argues as well as how the writer plans to make the argument. After reading your thesis statement, the reader should think, "This essay is going to try to convince me of something. I'm not convinced yet, but I'm interested to see how I might be."

An effective thesis cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no." A thesis is not a topic; nor is it a fact; nor is it an opinion. "Reasons for the fall of communism" is a topic. "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" is a fact known by educated people. "The fall of communism is the best thing that ever happened in Europe" is an opinion. (Superlatives like "the best" almost always lead to trouble. It's impossible to weigh every "thing" that ever happened in Europe. And what about the fall of Hitler? Couldn't that be "the best thing"?)

A good thesis has two parts. It should tell what you plan to argue, and it should "telegraph" how you plan to argue—that is, what particular support for your claim is going where in your essay.

Steps in Constructing a Thesis

First, analyze your primary sources.  Look for tension, interest, ambiguity, controversy, and/or complication. Does the author contradict himself or herself? Is a point made and later reversed? What are the deeper implications of the author's argument? Figuring out the why to one or more of these questions, or to related questions, will put you on the path to developing a working thesis. (Without the why, you probably have only come up with an observation—that there are, for instance, many different metaphors in such-and-such a poem—which is not a thesis.)

Once you have a working thesis, write it down.  There is nothing as frustrating as hitting on a great idea for a thesis, then forgetting it when you lose concentration. And by writing down your thesis you will be forced to think of it clearly, logically, and concisely. You probably will not be able to write out a final-draft version of your thesis the first time you try, but you'll get yourself on the right track by writing down what you have.

Keep your thesis prominent in your introduction.  A good, standard place for your thesis statement is at the end of an introductory paragraph, especially in shorter (5-15 page) essays. Readers are used to finding theses there, so they automatically pay more attention when they read the last sentence of your introduction. Although this is not required in all academic essays, it is a good rule of thumb.

Anticipate the counterarguments.  Once you have a working thesis, you should think about what might be said against it. This will help you to refine your thesis, and it will also make you think of the arguments that you'll need to refute later on in your essay. (Every argument has a counterargument. If yours doesn't, then it's not an argument—it may be a fact, or an opinion, but it is not an argument.)

This statement is on its way to being a thesis. However, it is too easy to imagine possible counterarguments. For example, a political observer might believe that Dukakis lost because he suffered from a "soft-on-crime" image. If you complicate your thesis by anticipating the counterargument, you'll strengthen your argument, as shown in the sentence below.

Some Caveats and Some Examples

A thesis is never a question.  Readers of academic essays expect to have questions discussed, explored, or even answered. A question ("Why did communism collapse in Eastern Europe?") is not an argument, and without an argument, a thesis is dead in the water.

A thesis is never a list.  "For political, economic, social and cultural reasons, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" does a good job of "telegraphing" the reader what to expect in the essay—a section about political reasons, a section about economic reasons, a section about social reasons, and a section about cultural reasons. However, political, economic, social and cultural reasons are pretty much the only possible reasons why communism could collapse. This sentence lacks tension and doesn't advance an argument. Everyone knows that politics, economics, and culture are important.

A thesis should never be vague, combative or confrontational.  An ineffective thesis would be, "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because communism is evil." This is hard to argue (evil from whose perspective? what does evil mean?) and it is likely to mark you as moralistic and judgmental rather than rational and thorough. It also may spark a defensive reaction from readers sympathetic to communism. If readers strongly disagree with you right off the bat, they may stop reading.

An effective thesis has a definable, arguable claim.  "While cultural forces contributed to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of economies played the key role in driving its decline" is an effective thesis sentence that "telegraphs," so that the reader expects the essay to have a section about cultural forces and another about the disintegration of economies. This thesis makes a definite, arguable claim: that the disintegration of economies played a more important role than cultural forces in defeating communism in Eastern Europe. The reader would react to this statement by thinking, "Perhaps what the author says is true, but I am not convinced. I want to read further to see how the author argues this claim."

A thesis should be as clear and specific as possible.  Avoid overused, general terms and abstractions. For example, "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because of the ruling elite's inability to address the economic concerns of the people" is more powerful than "Communism collapsed due to societal discontent."

Copyright 1999, Maxine Rodburg and The Tutors of the Writing Center at Harvard University

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25 Thesis Statement Examples That Will Make Writing a Breeze

Understanding what makes a good thesis statement is one of the major keys to writing a great research paper or argumentative essay. The thesis statement is where you make a claim that will guide you through your entire paper. If you find yourself struggling to make sense of your paper or your topic, then it's likely due to a weak thesis statement.

Let's take a minute to first understand what makes a solid thesis statement, and what key components you need to write one of your own.

A thesis statement always goes at the beginning of the paper. It will typically be in the first couple of paragraphs of the paper so that it can introduce the body paragraphs, which are the supporting evidence for your thesis statement.

Your thesis statement should clearly identify an argument. You need to have a statement that is not only easy to understand, but one that is debatable. What that means is that you can't just put any statement of fact and have it be your thesis. For example, everyone knows that puppies are cute . An ineffective thesis statement would be, "Puppies are adorable and everyone knows it." This isn't really something that's a debatable topic.

Something that would be more debatable would be, "A puppy's cuteness is derived from its floppy ears, small body, and playfulness." These are three things that can be debated on. Some people might think that the cutest thing about puppies is the fact that they follow you around or that they're really soft and fuzzy.

All cuteness aside, you want to make sure that your thesis statement is not only debatable, but that it also actually thoroughly answers the research question that was posed. You always want to make sure that your evidence is supporting a claim that you made (and not the other way around). This is why it's crucial to read and research about a topic first and come to a conclusion later. If you try to get your research to fit your thesis statement, then it may not work out as neatly as you think. As you learn more, you discover more (and the outcome may not be what you originally thought).

Additionally, your thesis statement shouldn't be too big or too grand. It'll be hard to cover everything in a thesis statement like, "The federal government should act now on climate change." The topic is just too large to actually say something new and meaningful. Instead, a more effective thesis statement might be, "Local governments can combat climate change by providing citizens with larger recycling bins and offering local classes about composting and conservation." This is easier to work with because it's a smaller idea, but you can also discuss the overall topic that you might be interested in, which is climate change.

So, now that we know what makes a good, solid thesis statement, you can start to write your own. If you find that you're getting stuck or you are the type of person who needs to look at examples before you start something, then check out our list of thesis statement examples below.

Thesis statement examples

A quick note that these thesis statements have not been fully researched. These are merely examples to show you what a thesis statement might look like and how you can implement your own ideas into one that you think of independently. As such, you should not use these thesis statements for your own research paper purposes. They are meant to be used as examples only.

• Vaccinations Because many children are unable to vaccinate due to illness, we must require that all healthy and able children be vaccinated in order to have herd immunity.
• Educational Resources for Low-Income Students Schools should provide educational resources for low-income students during the summers so that they don't forget what they've learned throughout the school year.
• School Uniforms School uniforms may be an upfront cost for families, but they eradicate the visual differences in income between students and provide a more egalitarian atmosphere at school.
• Populism The rise in populism on the 2016 political stage was in reaction to increasing globalization, the decline of manufacturing jobs, and the Syrian refugee crisis.
• Public Libraries Libraries are essential resources for communities and should be funded more heavily by local municipalities.
• Cyber Bullying With more and more teens using smartphones and social media, cyber bullying is on the rise. Cyber bullying puts a lot of stress on many teens, and can cause depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts. Parents should limit the usage of smart phones, monitor their children's online activity, and report any cyber bullying to school officials in order to combat this problem.
• Medical Marijuana for Veterans Studies have shown that the use of medicinal marijuana has been helpful to veterans who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Medicinal marijuana prescriptions should be legal in all states and provided to these veterans. Additional medical or therapy services should also be researched and implemented in order to help them re-integrate back into civilian life.
• Work-Life Balance Corporations should provide more work from home opportunities and six-hour workdays so that office workers have a better work-life balance and are more likely to be productive when they are in the office.
• Teaching Youths about Consensual Sex Although sex education that includes a discussion of consensual sex would likely lead to less sexual assault, parents need to teach their children the meaning of consent from a young age with age appropriate lessons.
• Whether or Not to Attend University A degree from a university provides invaluable lessons on life and a future career, but not every high school student should be encouraged to attend a university directly after graduation. Some students may benefit from a trade school or a "gap year" where they can think more intensely about what it is they want to do for a career and how they can accomplish this.
• Studying Abroad Studying abroad is one of the most culturally valuable experiences you can have in college. It is the only way to get completely immersed in another language and learn how other cultures and countries are different from your own.
• Women's Body Image Magazines have done a lot in the last five years to include a more diverse group of models, but there is still a long way to go to promote a healthy woman's body image collectively as a culture.
• Cigarette Tax Heavily taxing and increasing the price of cigarettes is essentially a tax on the poorest Americans, and it doesn't deter them from purchasing. Instead, the state and federal governments should target those economically disenfranchised with early education about the dangers of smoking.
• Veganism A vegan diet, while a healthy and ethical way to consume food, indicates a position of privilege. It also limits you to other cultural food experiences if you travel around the world.
• University Athletes Should be Compensated University athletes should be compensated for their service to the university, as it is difficult for these students to procure and hold a job with busy academic and athletic schedules. Many student athletes on scholarship also come from low-income neighborhoods and it is a struggle to make ends meet when they are participating in athletics.
• Women in the Workforce Sheryl Sandberg makes a lot of interesting points in her best-selling book, Lean In , but she only addressed the very privileged working woman and failed to speak to those in lower-skilled, lower-wage jobs.
• Assisted Suicide Assisted suicide should be legal and doctors should have the ability to make sure their patients have the end-of-life care that they want to receive.
• Celebrity and Political Activism Although Taylor Swift's lyrics are indicative of a feminist perspective, she should be more politically active and vocal to use her position of power for the betterment of society.
• The Civil War The insistence from many Southerners that the South seceded from the Union for states' rights versus the fact that they seceded for the purposes of continuing slavery is a harmful myth that still affects race relations today.
• Blue Collar Workers Coal miners and other blue-collar workers whose jobs are slowly disappearing from the workforce should be re-trained in jobs in the technology sector or in renewable energy. A program to re-train these workers would not only improve local economies where jobs have been displaced, but would also lead to lower unemployment nationally.
• Diversity in the Workforce Having a diverse group of people in an office setting leads to richer ideas, more cooperation, and more empathy between people with different skin colors or backgrounds.
• Re-Imagining the Nuclear Family The nuclear family was traditionally defined as one mother, one father, and 2.5 children. This outdated depiction of family life doesn't quite fit with modern society. The definition of normal family life shouldn't be limited to two-parent households.
• Digital Literacy Skills With more information readily available than ever before, it's crucial that students are prepared to examine the material they're reading and determine whether or not it's a good source or if it has misleading information. Teaching students digital literacy and helping them to understand the difference between opinion or propaganda from legitimate, real information is integral.
• Beauty Pageants Beauty pageants are presented with the angle that they empower women. However, putting women in a swimsuit on a stage while simultaneously judging them on how well they answer an impossible question in a short period of time is cruel and purely for the amusement of men. Therefore, we should stop televising beauty pageants.
• Supporting More Women to Run for a Political Position In order to get more women into political positions, more women must run for office. There must be a grassroots effort to educate women on how to run for office, who among them should run, and support for a future candidate for getting started on a political career.

Still stuck? Need some help with your thesis statement?

If you are still uncertain about how to write a thesis statement or what a good thesis statement is, be sure to consult with your teacher or professor to make sure you're on the right track. It's always a good idea to check in and make sure that your thesis statement is making a solid argument and that it can be supported by your research.

After you're done writing, it's important to have someone take a second look at your paper so that you can ensure there are no mistakes or errors. It's difficult to spot your own mistakes, which is why it's always recommended to have someone help you with the revision process, whether that's a teacher, the writing center at school, or a professional editor such as one from ServiceScape .

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• What Is a Thesis? | Ultimate Guide & Examples

What Is a Thesis? | Ultimate Guide & Examples

Published on September 14, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on November 21, 2023.

A thesis is a type of research paper based on your original research. It is usually submitted as the final step of a master’s program or a capstone to a bachelor’s degree.

Writing a thesis can be a daunting experience. Other than a dissertation , it is one of the longest pieces of writing students typically complete. It relies on your ability to conduct research from start to finish: choosing a relevant topic , crafting a proposal , designing your research , collecting data , developing a robust analysis, drawing strong conclusions , and writing concisely .

Thesis template

You can also download our full thesis template in the format of your choice below. Our template includes a ready-made table of contents , as well as guidance for what each chapter should include. It’s easy to make it your own, and can help you get started.

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Table of contents

Thesis vs. thesis statement, how to structure a thesis, acknowledgements or preface, list of figures and tables, list of abbreviations, introduction, literature review, methodology, reference list, proofreading and editing, defending your thesis, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about theses.

You may have heard the word thesis as a standalone term or as a component of academic writing called a thesis statement . Keep in mind that these are two very different things.

• A thesis statement is a very common component of an essay, particularly in the humanities. It usually comprises 1 or 2 sentences in the introduction of your essay , and should clearly and concisely summarize the central points of your academic essay .
• A thesis is a long-form piece of academic writing, often taking more than a full semester to complete. It is generally a degree requirement for Master’s programs, and is also sometimes required to complete a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts colleges.
• In the US, a dissertation is generally written as a final step toward obtaining a PhD.
• In other countries (particularly the UK), a dissertation is generally written at the bachelor’s or master’s level.

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The final structure of your thesis depends on a variety of components, such as:

• Your discipline
• Your theoretical approach

Humanities theses are often structured more like a longer-form essay . Just like in an essay, you build an argument to support a central thesis.

In both hard and social sciences, theses typically include an introduction , literature review , methodology section ,  results section , discussion section , and conclusion section . These are each presented in their own dedicated section or chapter. In some cases, you might want to add an appendix .

Thesis examples

We’ve compiled a short list of thesis examples to help you get started.

• Example thesis #1:   “Abolition, Africans, and Abstraction: the Influence of the ‘Noble Savage’ on British and French Antislavery Thought, 1787-1807” by Suchait Kahlon.
• Example thesis #2: “’A Starving Man Helping Another Starving Man’: UNRRA, India, and the Genesis of Global Relief, 1943-1947″ by Julian Saint Reiman.

The very first page of your thesis contains all necessary identifying information, including:

• Your full title
• Your full name
• Your department
• Your institution and degree program
• Your submission date.

Sometimes the title page also includes your student ID, the name of your supervisor, or the university’s logo. Check out your university’s guidelines if you’re not sure.

Read more about title pages

The acknowledgements section is usually optional. Its main point is to allow you to thank everyone who helped you in your thesis journey, such as supervisors, friends, or family. You can also choose to write a preface , but it’s typically one or the other, not both.

Read more about acknowledgements Read more about prefaces

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An abstract is a short summary of your thesis. Usually a maximum of 300 words long, it’s should include brief descriptions of your research objectives , methods, results, and conclusions. Though it may seem short, it introduces your work to your audience, serving as a first impression of your thesis.

Read more about abstracts

A table of contents lists all of your sections, plus their corresponding page numbers and subheadings if you have them. This helps your reader seamlessly navigate your document.

Your table of contents should include all the major parts of your thesis. In particular, don’t forget the the appendices. If you used heading styles, it’s easy to generate an automatic table Microsoft Word.

Read more about tables of contents

While not mandatory, if you used a lot of tables and/or figures, it’s nice to include a list of them to help guide your reader. It’s also easy to generate one of these in Word: just use the “Insert Caption” feature.

Read more about lists of figures and tables

If you have used a lot of industry- or field-specific abbreviations in your thesis, you should include them in an alphabetized list of abbreviations . This way, your readers can easily look up any meanings they aren’t familiar with.

Read more about lists of abbreviations

Relatedly, if you find yourself using a lot of very specialized or field-specific terms that may not be familiar to your reader, consider including a glossary . Alphabetize the terms you want to include with a brief definition.

Read more about glossaries

An introduction sets up the topic, purpose, and relevance of your thesis, as well as expectations for your reader. This should:

• Ground your research topic , sharing any background information your reader may need
• Define the scope of your work
• Introduce any existing research on your topic, situating your work within a broader problem or debate
• State your research question(s)
• Outline (briefly) how the remainder of your work will proceed

In other words, your introduction should clearly and concisely show your reader the “what, why, and how” of your research.

Read more about introductions

A literature review helps you gain a robust understanding of any extant academic work on your topic, encompassing:

• Selecting relevant sources
• Determining the credibility of your sources
• Critically evaluating each of your sources
• Drawing connections between sources, including any themes, patterns, conflicts, or gaps

A literature review is not merely a summary of existing work. Rather, your literature review should ultimately lead to a clear justification for your own research, perhaps via:

• Addressing a gap in the literature
• Building on existing knowledge to draw new conclusions
• Exploring a new theoretical or methodological approach
• Introducing a new solution to an unresolved problem
• Definitively advocating for one side of a theoretical debate

Read more about literature reviews

Theoretical framework

Your literature review can often form the basis for your theoretical framework, but these are not the same thing. A theoretical framework defines and analyzes the concepts and theories that your research hinges on.

Read more about theoretical frameworks

Your methodology chapter shows your reader how you conducted your research. It should be written clearly and methodically, easily allowing your reader to critically assess the credibility of your argument. Furthermore, your methods section should convince your reader that your method was the best way to answer your research question.

A methodology section should generally include:

• Your overall approach ( quantitative vs. qualitative )
• Your research methods (e.g., a longitudinal study )
• Your data collection methods (e.g., interviews or a controlled experiment
• Any tools or materials you used (e.g., computer software)
• The data analysis methods you chose (e.g., statistical analysis , discourse analysis )
• A strong, but not defensive justification of your methods

Read more about methodology sections

Your results section should highlight what your methodology discovered. These two sections work in tandem, but shouldn’t repeat each other. While your results section can include hypotheses or themes, don’t include any speculation or new arguments here.

Your results section should:

• State each (relevant) result with any (relevant) descriptive statistics (e.g., mean , standard deviation ) and inferential statistics (e.g., test statistics , p values )
• Explain how each result relates to the research question
• Determine whether the hypothesis was supported

Additional data (like raw numbers or interview transcripts ) can be included as an appendix . You can include tables and figures, but only if they help the reader better understand your results.

Read more about results sections

Your discussion section is where you can interpret your results in detail. Did they meet your expectations? How well do they fit within the framework that you built? You can refer back to any relevant source material to situate your results within your field, but leave most of that analysis in your literature review.

For any unexpected results, offer explanations or alternative interpretations of your data.

Read more about discussion sections

Your thesis conclusion should concisely answer your main research question. It should leave your reader with an ultra-clear understanding of your central argument, and emphasize what your research specifically has contributed to your field.

Why does your research matter? What recommendations for future research do you have? Lastly, wrap up your work with any concluding remarks.

Read more about conclusions

In order to avoid plagiarism , don’t forget to include a full reference list at the end of your thesis, citing the sources that you used. Choose one citation style and follow it consistently throughout your thesis, taking note of the formatting requirements of each style.

Which style you choose is often set by your department or your field, but common styles include MLA , Chicago , and APA.

Create APA citations Create MLA citations

In order to stay clear and concise, your thesis should include the most essential information needed to answer your research question. However, chances are you have many contributing documents, like interview transcripts or survey questions . These can be added as appendices , to save space in the main body.

Read more about appendices

Once you’re done writing, the next part of your editing process begins. Leave plenty of time for proofreading and editing prior to submission. Nothing looks worse than grammar mistakes or sloppy spelling errors!

Consider using a professional thesis editing service or grammar checker to make sure your final project is perfect.

Once you’ve submitted your final product, it’s common practice to have a thesis defense, an oral component of your finished work. This is scheduled by your advisor or committee, and usually entails a presentation and Q&A session.

After your defense , your committee will meet to determine if you deserve any departmental honors or accolades. However, keep in mind that defenses are usually just a formality. If there are any serious issues with your work, these should be resolved with your advisor way before a defense.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Research bias

• Survivorship bias
• Self-serving bias
• Availability heuristic
• Halo effect
• Hindsight bias
• Deep learning
• Generative AI
• Machine learning
• Reinforcement learning
• Supervised vs. unsupervised learning

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation shouldn’t take up more than 5–7% of your overall word count.

If you only used a few abbreviations in your thesis or dissertation , you don’t necessarily need to include a list of abbreviations .

If your abbreviations are numerous, or if you think they won’t be known to your audience, it’s never a bad idea to add one. They can also improve readability, minimizing confusion about abbreviations unfamiliar to your reader.

When you mention different chapters within your text, it’s considered best to use Roman numerals for most citation styles. However, the most important thing here is to remain consistent whenever using numbers in your dissertation .

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.

Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation , such as:

• Your anticipated title
• Your abstract
• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review , research methods , avenues for future research, etc.)

A thesis is typically written by students finishing up a bachelor’s or Master’s degree. Some educational institutions, particularly in the liberal arts, have mandatory theses, but they are often not mandatory to graduate from bachelor’s degrees. It is more common for a thesis to be a graduation requirement from a Master’s degree.

Even if not mandatory, you may want to consider writing a thesis if you:

• Plan to attend graduate school soon
• Have a particular topic you’d like to study more in-depth
• Are considering a career in research
• Would like a capstone experience to tie up your academic experience

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Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements

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This resource provides tips for creating a thesis statement and examples of different types of thesis statements.

Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement

1. Determine what kind of paper you are writing:

• An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience.
• An expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience.
• An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. The claim could be an opinion, a policy proposal, an evaluation, a cause-and-effect statement, or an interpretation. The goal of the argumentative paper is to convince the audience that the claim is true based on the evidence provided.

If you are writing a text that does not fall under these three categories (e.g., a narrative), a thesis statement somewhere in the first paragraph could still be helpful to your reader.

2. Your thesis statement should be specific—it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence.

3. The thesis statement usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper.

4. Your topic may change as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper.

Thesis Statement Examples

Example of an analytical thesis statement:

The paper that follows should:

• Explain the analysis of the college admission process
• Explain the challenge facing admissions counselors

Example of an expository (explanatory) thesis statement:

• Explain how students spend their time studying, attending class, and socializing with peers

Example of an argumentative thesis statement:

• Present an argument and give evidence to support the claim that students should pursue community projects before entering college

Free Thesis statement generator

Create a strong thesis statement with our online tool and clearly express ideas in your paper.

Need to write a thesis statement, but don’t know how to do it the right way? A free thesis statement generator will help you easily cope with it.

How to generate a thesis statement the right way

Want to write the best thesis statement? Our free thesis statement generator can be a perfect solution for you. The greatest thing about this service is that you get original writing on request. Moreover, it has other advantages as well: you get results immediately and the service is free.

How do you use a thesis statement generator? You just have to complete a few steps before you get a thesis statement example:

• Formulate the key idea of your statement
• Give 1-3 reasons to support your idea
• Mention the objections you have to the chosen topic, and also the limitations this subject has
• Add statistics or well-known facts

Just press “Generate Thesis Statement” in our free thesis statement generator to create an original and well-built thesis statement. This way, the readers will easily get the essence of your writing piece.

What is a thesis statement?

To begin with, let’s find out what it is. So, a thesis statement reflects the main idea of your paper and expresses your personal attitude toward, or your conception of, the subject of your writing. It tells the reader what your academic essay, report, speech, or research paper is about and helps to keep arguments organized. Therefore, it’s important to make it short and accurate.

Free Thesis Statement Generator

Free Thesis statement generator: it is an essay writing tool that can help you create a thesis statement for your paper. A thesis statement is the first or last sentence in your first paragraph of the essay that states what you are going to talk about in your paper. It’s important to have a strong thesis statement to guide you through your writing. However, sometimes you may not be able to find a good thesis statement. If you are stuck, then our free thesis statement generator can help you.

Tips for making a good thesis statement

Want to write a good thesis statement? How to make it strong and precise? There are common mistakes students often commit while completing it. So, if you want to write a thesis statement properly, ensure to follow these pieces of advice:

• State the main point of your paper
• Choose clear and concise language instead of abstract, vague, and technical words
• Avoid using long introductions (e.g. The key idea of my research is…)
• Use one sentence, or unite two sentences by the means of conjunctions (although, despite, since, etc.)

These simple pieces of advice can help you build a solid thesis statement for your research.

How to write a thesis statement

Writing an effective thesis statement isn’t the most straightforward task in the world, but it’s definitely not impossible, either. The key is to start by choosing a topic you’re interested in or passionate about. Once you’ve picked a topic, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the thesis statement debatable? This should evoke differing opinions from the readers. For example; At least 25 per cent of the federal budget should be spent on limiting pollution.
• Is the thesis statement narrow? A narrow thesis statement translates to a more effective argument. For example; America’s anti-pollution efforts should focus on privately owned cars because it would allow most citizens to contribute to national efforts and care about the outcome.
• What kind of claim does your thesis statement contain? There are four different types of claims, and these are; claims of fact or definition, claims of cause and effect, claims about value and claims about solutions or policies. For example; Rather than encouraging all students to attend four-year colleges, we should instead emphasize the validity of two-year colleges, technical schools, and trade schools as well.

Use our free thesis statement generator to nail this four points

Main Types Of Thesis Statement

There are some kinds of essay paper that have its ideas and purposes. Therefore, it is logical that for each particular type of essay you should use your own corresponding thesis creator. Each of them has specific skills to find an appropriate one analyzing all information you brought in and producing a well-directed idea in accordance to the essay type.  Also, each of them has its own system of calculation.

• Informative speech statement  generator

The main its idea is to form no an argument or expressing but a general goal of your essay. Here it is very important since this expository thesis statement provide the reader with a clear and accessible view of your paper and keeps reading curious.

• Compare and contrast thesis statement generator.

This calculator works with comparison two or more things depending on your writing task. Instead of wasting lots of time to find an appropriate one to contrast it is very wise to work out the best statement. And having already all points to work with it would be much easier to finish your work.

• Argumentative thesis statement generator

The problem of this writing helper is to get your opinion and to find out perfect arguments towards it. This one is based on examining your counter position, suggesting different reasons to the subject. Also get your short summarize on exploring issue.

• Cause and effect thesis statement generator

Using this one you will get a variety of reasons that refer to the text main idea, which is always hard to produce much. Moreover, you will receive effects that are related to the just-ready causes. After that, it is no problem to get over with the rest of analytical writing information to have your essay one of the best.

• Expository thesis statement generator

Helping students with explaining the sense of an issue to the audience is how it works. What does it imply? Working out evidence evaluating and investigating the problem of the text you will get the very one you needed. The hardest difficulties of such kind of essay leave for its solving.

Thesis statement vs topic sentence

A thesis statement (sometimes called a topic sentence) is the sentence that’s the jumping-off point for your essay. It’s your topic—the subject you’re going to write about. The first step to writing a great essay is to choose a great topic. Then, once you’ve chosen your topic, you have to express that topic in a thesis statement. The thesis statement is the sentence that is the foundation for your essay. It provides the basis for the rest of the essay. It is the topic of the essay, and the essay is a discussion of that topic. In a more formal essay, the thesis statement is usually found near the end of the introductory paragraph.

A topic sentence is a sentence in a paragraph of an essay that states the essay’s main idea. You may already know that your essay needs to have a topic sentence, but do you know how to write one? A topic sentence or thesis statement must be clear and specific. It must also be debatable. This means that there must be more than one person who could possibly argue against the topic sentence.

The structure of the thesis statement

A thesis statement is a one-sentence that gives the reader an idea of what the author’s article is about. It gives the reader a general idea about what the entire article will be about. A thesis statement is the main point of an essay or article. It is what the author wants to discuss in the article. Thesis statements are extremely important for the organization of your essay or article. It is one of the most important elements in your paper. The main structure of a thesis statement is that first sentence in your essay that connects your paper to a larger issue. This sentence must be clear, specific, and interesting so it catches and holds the reader’s attention. Thesis Statements are intended to capture the attention of readers and to provide a sense of direction for the essay. Thesis statements have both an expository and narrative function. When thinking about the thesis statement, consider: What is the big issue I want to explore in my paper?

Sample thesis statements

• At least 25 percent of the federal budget should be spent on limiting pollution.
• America’s anti-pollution efforts should focus on privately owned cars.
• Illegal drug use is detrimental because it encourages gang violence.
• At least 25 percent of the federal budget should be spent on helping upgrade business to clean technologies, researching renewable energy sources, and planting more trees in order to control or eliminate pollution.
• America’s anti-pollution efforts should focus on privately owned cars because it would allow most citizens to contribute to national efforts and care about the outcome.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A thesis is a short statement that suggests an argument or your perspective on your topic and/or focus. A thesis should be significant, interesting , and be manageable for the assignment or the paper you are writing. Your thesis should also reflect your specific contribution to the understanding of the subject. Finally, it should contain a claim about the topic that you can explain and justify . Think of the thesis as the road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.

Keep in mind that a thesis will have different purposes depending both on the topic and the discipline in which you are writing. A thesis for a literature class will be different from a thesis for a scientific paper. It may be used to categorize or define , persuade or convince , demonstrate cause-effect or correlation , reveal a resemblance or parallel between cases, evaluate or critically examine , propose or create new policies, or address ethical issues.

There are several ways to create a thesis:

• Generate a list of questions about the topic. Pick the question that interests you most and develop an answer for that question.
• Look at any aspects of the topic that you do not fully understand – what causes the difficulty or confusion?
• Free-write. Write down random thoughts on the topic as they come into your head until you come up with an interesting avenue of investigation.
• Try to move from the general to the specific. The more specific you can make your thesis, the better.

Examples of moving from a topic to a thesis: These examples show what the development of a thesis might look like moving from a vague idea to a specific statement that can be explained and justified. Example 1 – Topic : The novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad In this example, the thesis is based on the author’s reading of a literary source. Vague Generalization : Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness describes the beginnings of European commerce in Africa. Question : What does the novel suggest about the relationship between Europe and Africa?

General Concept: The novel represents a symbolic journey that reveals how Europeans imagined themselves to be on a civilizing mission to Africa, but they were actually savagely exploiting the Africans.

Specific Thesis: The narrator’s account of the self-restraint exercised by the cannibals reveals that the most seemingly savage of Africans are more moral than the supposedly civilized Europeans.

Example 2 – Topic: The environment and pollution In this case, the thesis will be developed based on non-fiction, reliable resources instead of one novel or a set of works by an author.

Vague Generalization: The use of gasoline pollutes the air. Question: What alternatives are available to the use of gasoline?

General Concept: The development of solar-powered or electric engines would reduce the use of gasoline and improve air quality.

Specific Thesis: The vast amounts of money used to protect American sources of oil in the Middle East should be used instead to develop the technology necessary to replace gas-powered vehicles.

After you have developed a potential thesis, asking yourself the following questions will help you evaluate the strength of your thesis:

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question.
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• D oes my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to be “So what?” then you need to clarify your position and/or connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

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