Description
Regardless of whether you are a compatibilist or libertarian, and regardless of whether you are aware of it, any proper account of free will is ultimately founded upon some sort of ownership principle. By this I am suggesting that any coherent view of free will will ultimately have to accept ownership of the agent's decision-making power (strongest desires, simple mental events, agent-causal powers, etc.) as something the agent could not have determined himself, but is nonetheless responsible for. This is easily illustrated in basic compatibilist views which accept that one's nature is predetermined by God or past events in conjunction with the laws of nature. Such compatibilists would claim that it is impossible for agents to create themselves for one would have to already exist in order to create one's self. It would therefore seem silly to demand such an ability of free will, and thus, free will must be compatible with how things really are. Such compatibilists then attempt to appeal to some sort of natural desires and reasoning skills acceptable for individuals to take ownership of as truly their own and for which they may truly be held responsible for. Most libertarians, of course, are not so eager to follow the compatibilist down the road of ownership and thus seek ways to give man the ability to create himself as it were. The focus of my thesis will be to delve into some of the best attempts at this by libertarians and ultimately to demonstrate how these different views must ultimately accept ownership (like the compatibilists do) of something that is out of their ultimate control and responsibility as they define it, or endorse a truly incoherent view of libertarianism. Finally, I will suggest that those libertarian views that do accept ownership for something out of their ultimate control, are not taking us any further into the depths of freedom than their compatibilist counterparts, and in fact often fall short of them. Given this, I believe that our focus in the free will debates from now on should be in exploring and developing solid compatibilist views of freedom.
