On the Powers of Predetermined Free Agents

Coffman, Eldon J.

doi:10.5840/tht202561048

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

ONLINE FIRST

published on June 14, 2025

E. J. Coffman

https://doi.org/10.5840/tht202561048

On the Powers of Predetermined Free Agents

Must a predetermined free agent have it within their power to break a law of nature? Brian Looper (2021) argues for an affirmative answer in the course of defending an influential version of the Consequence Argument against a famous objection due to David Lewis (1981). I argue that Looper’s defense of Lewis’s focal version of the Consequence Argument fails. After reconstructing the relevant version of the Consequence Argument along with Lewis’s famous objection to it, I explain Looper’s defense of the Consequence Argument against Lewis’s objection. I then argue that Looper’s defense of the Consequence Argument depends on an as yet inadequately motivated claim about agents’ abilities.

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