Akratic Compatibilism and All Too Human Psychology

Do we have free will? How could we have the psychological leeway to choose and act otherwise than we do? The sum of history and the laws of science, including psychology, deterministically imply all events, including each of our actions. Is natures iron determination of deliberation compatible with the wills freedom? The philosophers who answer affirmatively, both classical and current, assume that either the ultimate scientific laws or the grand historical recordor bothare merely contingent. By proceeding to infer the contingency of lawfully determined actions, these compatibilists would secure the leeway presumably requisite for the wills liberty. Akratic Compatibilism and All Too Human Psychology: Almost Enough Is Free Will Enough argues, however, that they may be dead wrong about the modality of natures laws and historys plasticity. Might the laws be necessary, and history absolutely fixed? Nevertheless, J. Christopher Maloney posits, we would yet be free. For psychology ordains volitional conflict: sometimes we akratically will to be able to act otherwise than we irresistibly do. Being akratic by nature, we asymptotically resist even a necessitating psychologys governance. That Sisyphean resistance against the laws of cognition almost achieves the wills liberating leeway. Nevertheless, almost free is free enough for deliberators as weak-willed as we.