Abstract

Skepticism about moral freedom appears to be on the rise. This essay attempts to blunt the force of the recent growth of free will skepticism by appealing to a form of rational faith in free will. With a compelling account of the nature of faith (borrowed from Lara Buchak), we can see that even someone convinced by Pereboom-style skeptical arguments could nevertheless rationally accept and act on the claim that we enjoy moral freedom. Given an underappreciated aspect of P.F. Strawson’s famous paper “Freedom and Resentment,” this result should be less surprising than we might have thought. Further, this faith in free will should be especially appealing to those who have been moved by the resilience intuition that animates John Martin Fischer’s influential Semincompatibilism.