A Plain Person's Free Will

Published as volume 12, No. 1 of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, this target article with responses enables readers to engage with the essential questions arising around the issue of free will. The author, both a judge and a philosopher, set out his case in terms of three areas of difficulty and nine propositions. He identifies the difficulties as the randomness problem, the moral luck problem and the supernatural problem. The propositions address the difficulties in a rigorous manner. Hodgson concludes that the reductionist science has had very little success in explaining consciousness and its role in the world, arguing that it does have an irreducible causal role and that some version of free will is required to account of this role. Needless to say, the nine commentators take issue with various aspects of Hodgson's presentation, but he remains unpersuaded by their objections. Whatever the reader's views, they will be considerably better informed at the end of the discussion than at the beginning. It is also significant that a defence of free will is concomitant with the defence of personal responsibility of conduct in both a legal and a moral sense.