Philosophy Now Forum

Michael Norwitz examines the current state of play in this long-running debate, by comparing the views of Dennett and van Inwagen.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/1/Free_ ... eterminism

Norwitz states "I see no reason to be convinced by van Inwagen’s arguments unless he is able to give some vague picture of how he thinks agent causation might physically work." There are two points about this:
1) it's not clear why the answering, or not, of the how-question could impact on the success of van Inwagen's argument.
2) it seems to me that how-questions are answered by algorithms which appeal to either deterministic or probabilistic models, and as an incompatibilist, van Inwagen supports a notion of free will with defining features incompatible with such models. So, in order to establish that his demand is reasonable, Norwitz will need to provide an example of the kind of set of statements that he's looking for, as an answer to the how-question.