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One of the most difficult elements of Wyclif’s thought is resolution of the tension between his deterministic understanding of the nature of the church and his call for ecclesiastical reform. Augustine theology has long been defined by the problem of predestination, and Bradwardine had famously attacked the “Pelagianism” of the Ockhamists in his strongly deterministic De Causa Dei. Wyclif’s thought is an attempt at balancing Bradwardine’s determinism by a carefully articulated modal account of necessity, allowing for a stronger degree of reciprocity between God’s necessary understanding of creation and human free will than Bradwardine had allowed. This opened Wyclif’s conception of the church as the unknowable body of the Elect to the possibility of reform. While his writings are filled with references to Antichrist, Wyclif followed Augustine in rejecting millennialism, arguing that Antichrist’s threat in the form of papalism and friars was ongoing, but ultimately able to be resolved.

This chapter is a critique of views that seek to resolve the problem of moral evil by holding that such evil is owing to exercises of human freedom that escape God's control as creator. It is argued that the three most common treatments of this kind are all unsatisfactory in that none of them provides sufficiently for God's omniscience and sovereignty. Boethian views preserve an omniscient God, but deprive him of any control over what exercises of creaturely freedom will occur. Openness theories deprive God of both omniscience and sovereignty. Finally, Molinist treatments largely fail to provide for either perfection, in that so‐called counterfactuals or subjunctives of freedom often lack grounding, and cannot be known by God prior to creation.

Is the world deterministic and can we ever know whether it is or is not so? This chapter critically evaluates recent results that bear on these issues, and points out the relation to probabilities. While results from classical physics are neither fully relevant nor conclusive, quantum mechanics is often assumed to establish indeterminism beyond doubt. However, whether the quantum world is indeterministic crucially depends on how the measurement problem is solved. There are both deterministic and indeterministic contenders in this field, some of them empirically equivalent to another one. This is shown using the deterministic Bohm theory and Nelsonsion mechanics, which is indeterministic. Two arguments that purport to establish indeterminism and that rely on Gleason's theorem and on Conway and Kochen's recent Free Will Theorem are shown to be wanting.

Nahmias shows how different parts of science raise distinct challenges from determinism, epiphenomenalism, naturalism, and rationality. In the end, he proposes a nuanced limited-free-will view according to which we retain some free will but less than we usually think we have. Nahmias's claim that we retain even limited free will is questioned by Gunnar Björnsson and Derk Pereboom from the viewpoint of philosophy and then by Erman Misirlisoy and Patrick Haggard from the viewpoint of neuroscience. Nahmias replies by arguing that our ordinary understanding of free will does not require as much as his critics claim.

Mele uses survey methods of experimental philosophy to argue that folk notions of freedom and responsibility do not really require any dubious mind–body dualism. In his comment, Nadelhoffer questions Mele's interpretation of the experiments and adds contrary data of his own. Vargas then suggests that Mele overlooks yet another threat to free will—sourcehood. Mele replies by reinterpreting Nadelhoffer's data and rejecting Vargas’ claim that free will requires sourcehood.

Lee and Harris argue that people's overall positions on free will depend less on arguments and more on social rewards, so members of a coherent social group will end up holding similar positions on free will and moral responsibility that conflict with positions held just as strongly by members of other social groups. They apply this point to academic disputes among scholars trained in different disciplines, especially philosophy, law, neuroscience, and psychology. Social psychologists Chapman and Cunningham largely agree and provide further support from accounts of complex decisionmaking, including moral decisionmaking. In contrast, Vargas, a philosopher, doubts that academic debates can be understood completely in terms of social “groupishness.” Lee and Harris reply by suggesting that many of the points made counter to their argument actually support their position.

Baumeister discusses determinism and reductionism with emphases on self-regulation and conscious and meaningful causation of behavior. Baumeister concludes that freedom exists but can only be seen by looking at the proper level of analysis. In their comments, Holton questions some of Baumeister's philosophical moves, and then Payne and Cameron suggest new psychological methods (centrally the process dissociation procedure) to better understand conscious intentions and their causal roles. Baumeister responds appreciatively but defends his claim that “rational choice deserves a role in a psychological theory of free will.”

Roskies discusses an important method in neuroscience that is too often left out of free will debates: single-neuron recordings. Roskies explains classic experiments on perceptual decision making and asks whether brain processes are stochastic, but she ends up siding with compatibilism over libertarianism. In their comments, Kane defends his brand of libertarianism against Roskies's compatibilism, and Shadlen proposes further lessons from his work on perceptual decision making. In her reply, Roskies defends her compatibilism as well as her interpretation of the science.

Early Christian attempts to resolve the problem of evil initially led to a turn away from the ‘soft’ metaphysical dualism of Christianity to the ‘hard’ dualism of Manicheism. This, however, led to a resurgence in Christian attempts to incorporate the problem of evil within a monotheistic framework, the most important of these, both historically and conceptually, was Augustine’s. This chapter focuses on his insistence that ‘evil’ entails a privation of being and is a choice of individual free will. Two problems are, however, identified with this formulation: first, by claiming that ‘evil’ entails a privation, it seems to disavow the reality of evil, and, second, it is not clear that making individuals responsible for ‘evil’ is compatible with the Christian claim that God is omnipotent.

Six C-inductive arguments for and against the existence of God are critically discussed in this chapter: the Argument from Consciousness, the Argument from Moral Truth, the Argument from Moral Awareness, the Argument from Providence, the Argument from Evil, and the Argument from Hiddenness. The first four are either not correct C-inductive arguments for the existence of God because the relevance condition is not satisfied, or not good C-inductive arguments for the existence of God because the evidence has not been established. However, both the many prima facie pointless evils in the world, and the fact of God’s hiddenness, provide strong C-inductive arguments against God’s existence, in spite of the various defences put forward by Richard Swinburne.

Chapter 1 introduces Augustine’s earliest conception of will, synthesizing his comments in a number of his key anti-Manichean works as well as in two of his early classics, Soliloquies and On Free Will. Augustine’s conception of will in these texts is already both theological and biblically informed, though not in quite the same way as it will be in more mature periods. Augustine elaborates his understanding of will in these early works in light of, and in support of, general principles emerging from scripture as a whole—creation, God’s justice, the analogy between divine and creaturely being as expressed, for example, in the doctrine of the imago dei—whereas later he will rely to a greater extent on specific biblical pericopes. The resulting portrait of will accords it enormous importance, power, and potential for goodness. To speak in Augustine’s own terms, the will is a hinge (cardo) upon which the moral status of each act and the possibility of attaining fellowship with God depend.

This chapter addresses the worry that the existence of causal antecedents to your choices means that you are causally compelled to act as you do. It begins with the folk notion of cause, leads the reader through recent developments in the scientific understanding of causal concepts, and argues that those developments undermine the threat from causal antecedents. The discussion is then used as a model for a kind of naturalistic metaphysics that takes its lead from science, letting everyday concepts be shaped and transformed by scientific developments.

This chapter addresses the widespread misconception that psychoanalytic ideas about the unconscious are incompatible with the law’s presumption of free will. Free will is a foundational concept in the law. We take it as a necessary postulate of our legal system that most individuals make conscious decisions about how to behave and, consequently, can and should be held accountable for their actions. Yet psychoanalytic ideas about the influence of the unconscious on waking life would seem to render successful collaboration between law and psychoanalysis impossible, for how can a person exercise free will while subject to the unavoidable and unrelenting control of the unconscious? But as this chapter shows, this conclusion is simply wrong. Using a case involving a woman prosecuted for drug trafficking despite having been ignorant of the drugs in her car, this chapter explains why the conflict thesis does not accurately reflect psychoanalytic ideas about the unconscious. The thesis rests upon three misguided assumptions: that the psychoanalytic unconscious is deterministic, irrational, and opaque to understanding. Properly understood, a psychoanalytic perspective on the unconscious leads us toward a more realistic, less harshly punitive, and more just criminal jurisprudence.

This Chapter continues the consideration of law and science fiction by analysing the central theme of George Nolfi’s 2011 film The Adjustment Bureau (based on Philip K Dick’s short story): a theological consideration of freedom and free will. In contrast to the modern dismissal of religion, the film is overtly theological in nature with the God-figure (‘the Chairman’) intervening in the world through his angels (bureaucrats) so as to ensure adherence to his providential order (‘the plan’). The Chapter traces the theological and jurisprudential roots of ‘the Chairman’, following John Milbank, to shifts in medieval theology from a participatory to nominalist and voluntarist ontology that became influential on the later jurisprudence and political theology of Thomas Hobbes. However, The Adjustment Bureau critiques the modern theology of will which undergirds both modern secular sovereignty and the liberal legal subject, by introducing the theme of ‘true love conquers all’, opening up a different consideration of law and sovereignty based on love and relationality, as opposed to legal individualism. The Chapter therefore extends the book’s consideration of a love beyond the law, by presenting a theological jurisprudence that opens the possibility of a relation to law based on love rather than will.

Haynes summarizes his scientific research on the neural basis for intentions (including predictions of intentions) and suggests implications for epiphenomenalism, which implies that our mental intentions, choices, and will cannot really cause our bodily movements. In their comments, Bayne and Schroeder express doubts about whether Haynes's experiments really show as much as Haynes claims. Haynes replies by admitting some limitations but arguing further that the ability of neuroscientists to decode intentions and predict actions raises serious problems for traditional views of free will and moral responsibility.

This paper argues that there is no Free-Will Defense for the degree and amount of moral evil in our world. It denies that God’s creating our world with the degree and amount of moral evil that exists, or has existed, in it could be defended in terms of the freedom that it provides, or has provided, to its members. It takes no stand on whether the problem could be solved by arguing that the securing of some other good, or goods in an afterlife is the justification for the degree and amount of moral evil in our world. This paper simply attempts to demonstrate the need for just such further work by showing that the freedom that exists, or has existed, in our world could not constitute a justification for the moral evil that exists, or has existed, in it.