Video: David Pallmann, “A Case For Free Will”

The video below can also be accessed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/2GSIuYlvaHM?list=PLzjQv4A03oilJJnqIDius9IEA81flpPY5. In this video, I’m going to bring together some of my thoughts on the topic of free will. I’ve been pondering this issue on and off for the past several years and my perspectives are, in many regards, unique. I hold to an indeterministic conception of free will which would probably be considered libertarian by many although I have developed some reservations about using that term. The plan for this video is as follows: First, I will offer a brief overview of the contemporary options in the free will debate and get some working definitions on the table. I will then present what I take to be the most plausible account of free will, namely an agent-causal account. I will present an original, although not decisive, argument for why we should think that this account is true. Finally I shall address the two most common objections to agent-causal indeterminism. I will explore and reject the idea that this account of free will is incoherent and reduces to random chance. Then I shall critique the notion that scientific developments in neuroscience have shown that our decisions are predetermined.