Freedom of the will and Platonism of reasons: Defending a noncausal account of rational structures

Abstract

A prominent strand in contemporary debates on free will and moral responsibility bases these concepts on the idea that decisions and actions can be guided not only by causes, but also by reasons. Such a view needs to clarify the precise ontological standing of reasons, and particularly their suggested difference from causes, in order to demonstrate how exactly they are meant to solve the metaphysical problem of human freedom, against the background of a causal world. In the following, I argue for a Platonist understanding of reasons, identifying them with rational inferences from given facts, rather than with the facts themselves, and exemplify this conception for various fields of rationality, including ethics, mathematics, prudence and logic. This approach promises to give a more distinct account of the role of reasons in human decisions and actions, and to highlight their significance for formulating a robust compatibilist notion of freedom and responsibility under conditions of gapless causation.