Uncertainty and Free Choice

Extract

Bernard Wand presented in this journal an article on the intelligibility of free choice or action. Sections I and II of his paper are devoted to showing that “the libertarian's position is one which makes free choice unintelligible, no matter what the principle of its explanation may be.” Basically his argument appears to be that any libertarian's explanation of free choice will contradict the libertarian thesis simply by being an explanation. Explanations function by the statement of antecedents (reasons or causes) for a fact; but if the fact is a specific 'free choice' in the libertarian sense, then it cannot be explained because, by definition, it has no antededents. If it cannot be explained then it is unintelligible. By this argument Mr. Wand claims to have shown that “the libertarian is forced by the logic of his own position to acknowledge the unintelligibility of free choice. …”