Professor Silverman is right about the PSR and how it relates to your question (though I'm not sure I agree that "it certainly seems that everything we observe does have a sufficient reason"). But perhaps you were also wondering if your action (or inaction) happened for no reason in this sense: it was caused by factors that you were unaware of and you would not think of as reasons at all (much less good reasons). Maybe it was caused by some random thing a co-worker said to you or by some unnoticed aroma or by some neural glitch. In these cases, it might be right to say you sat down "for no reason at all" (even if something causally explains the event). Another possibility is that nothing causally explains the event. Quantum mechanics gives us a model for probabilistic causation, such that given exact conditions X (e.g., electron being shot at barrier), there is some objective chance A will follow (e.g., electron being deflected) and some objective chance B will follow (e.g., electron...

This is an interesting question, and one that has been discussed quite a bit by philosophers and by scientists, some of whom suggest that there is evidence for the sort of picture you describe--i.e., first the brain initiates a decision and only then do we become aware of having made a decision. I think it is possible that our non-conscious brain processes do all the interesting deliberative work and form decisions and then our conscious brain processes simply become aware of the final product and perhaps make up some stories (rationalizations) for why we made the decisions we did. But I don't think the evidence has shown that this account is actual . First, we need to avoid a common mistake, which is to think that if our brain does it, we don't. It seems very likely that in some sense, we are our brains (our mental processes are very complicated neural processes), and we do not have non-physical minds that make decisions and then "send them" to the brain. Once we understand the mind...

This is an interesting question, in fact, so interesting that I am writing a whole book about it ( Rediscovering Free Will ). As Miriam says, much depends on how you define free will. Let's not begin with the problematic assumption that free will requires a non-natural power to transcend the causal interactions in the natural world, though I think we can begin with the idea that free will involves our powers to control our actions in light of our deliberations about what to do, such that we can be properly held responsible for our actions. In that case, we should not begin with the assumption made by some scientists writing about free will: that increasingly complete scientific (naturalistic) explanations of human decision-making thereby rule out any role for free will. Rather, it may be that neuroscientific and psychological explanations of human decision-making can help to explain --rather than explain away --our capacities to deliberate about our reasons and to control our...

You likely have in mind something we might call "covert coercion." I might hypnotize you to vote for McCain-Palin but do it in such a way that you feel like you really want to vote for them (and if I ask you why, you'll come up with lots of reasons--they're "mavericky!" Assume you would otherwise have voted for Obama). Or maybe Professor Black gives you a sleeping pill and while you're down he does futuristic brain surgery on you to make you feel like you really want to divorce your spouse (whom Black wants to seduce) and you do it. It's very scary to think that you could be manipulated not only to leave your lover but to feel like doing so (to fall out of love), and some might argue that this is simply impossible. But we know that people change their minds (and change how they feel), so these processes just seem to be doing it faster and in a different way. The difficulty then is figuring out how these types of manipulation, which seem like they make you unfree (and not responsible for what...

I think this is a very interesting question, one that has inspired some of my recent research. It has been said that it is just obvious that determinism rules out free will. Here is Robert Kane: In my experience, most ordinary persons start out as natural incompatibilists. They believe there is some kind of conflict between freedom and determinism; and the idea that freedom and responsibility might be compatible with determinism looks to them at first like a ‘quagmire of evasion’ (William James) or ‘a wretched subterfuge’ (Immanuel Kant). Ordinary persons have to be talked out of this natural incompatibilism by the clever arguments of philosophers. (1999: 217) Like you, I have been curious why philosophers have taken incompatibilism to be the commonsense view. So, the first thing I did, along with my co-authors, was to test whether non-philosophers actually take determinism to rule out free will and moral responsibility. Our studies suggested that most people (between 2/3 and 3/4) do...

My own brief answer is that we cannot choose to fall in love or to re-ignite love, but we can make choices that will make it more (or less) likely that we come to love someone or something. For instance, at a bare minimum, if you believe that it would be good for you to come to love someone, you need to choose to be around that person and engage with him/her; if you believe that it would be good for you to come to love watching soccer (perhaps because someone you love wants you to love watching soccer with him/her), then you need to choose to watch soccer, perhaps with that person trying to convince you what is so wonderful about it (trust me, you will come to love it!). But once you actively engage with the person or activity, it seems to me that you cannot control whether you come to have the feelings of love towards them--figuring out what those feelings are is another philosophical/psychological issue. But I think you will find better answers than mine if you look at Eric Schwitzgebel's...

Your question taps into a big discussion in the current free will debates. First, your thought experiment can be used as a response to a very straightforward definition of free will that says: a person acts freely just so long as she acts on her desires. But your case suggests this definition is too simple (other problem cases include acting on desires that one acquired through hypnosis or brainwashing or desires one doesn't really want to have, such as addictions or compulsions). In the face of these problems, philosophers have developed more sophisticated accounts of free will. For instance, we might say that a person acts freely just in case she acts on desires that she accepts, or would accept, having. Some people presumably do not accept their addictive or compulsive desires, so on this account they would not be free when those desires drive them to act (against their will, we might say). And the "would accept" part of the definition might allow us to avoid the other problem cases. Were...