Free Will’s Limits

Abstract John Lemos argues persuasively that libertarian free will is required for moral desert, that we may have free will, and that even if we have doubts, we should retain the assumption of desert, given its importance to essential values, such as justice, dignity, love, and pride. While sharing his optimism about the possibility of free will, I challenge two claims: The claim that we can confidently attribute responsibility for actions to agents across the board on the basis that each agent has some opportunity to shape their own characters, and the claim that if we cannot appeal to desert, we would have reason to lower evidentiary standards, as a way of keeping the most vulnerable safe from crime.