Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.52685/cjp.26.76.5
Deliberation, Action and Freedom
Davor Pećnjak
; Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In this article, I try to present a cumulative argument for libertarian- ism concerning free will and mainly from a theistic perspective. First, I present and develop further an argument from Pećnjak (2018) that if we have “actish phenomenal feeling” (Ginet 1990) that in a certain situation we can genuinely decide between action A and action B, and that God is not a deceiver, then we have a good reason to believe in libertarianism. I connect this line of reasoning with St Anselm’s view on freedom of the will, namely that we have genuinely open possibilities and that we can persevere in what is good, on our own, and that this perseverance is a choice we make from ourselves. In the last part, I present certain experi- mental evidence (Schulze-Craft et al. 2016) that agents can voluntarily stop an action which started as an unconscious brain process. A certain congeniality of these three ways gives us firm ground to believe in libertarianism.
Keywords
God; freedom of the will; deliberation; libertarianism; determinism; St Anselm of Canterbury.
Hrčak ID:
345572
URI
Publication date:
19.3.2026.
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