Helen Steward, “A Metaphysics for Freedom” (Oxford UP, 2012)
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What is the basic free‑will problem that frames the discussion?
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor of the University of Iowa, and I'm co host of the channel along with Robert Talise. In our bimonthly podcasts, we interview philosophers about their ideas as expressed in their newly published books. Today's interview is with Helen Stewart. Senior lecturer philosophy at the University of Leeds. Her new book, A Metaphysics for Freedom, is just out from Oxford University Press. The basic problem of free will is quite simple to pose Do we ever act freely? One of the traditional no answers comes from the idea that we live in a deterministic universe, such that everything that happens had to happen.
Given the initial conditions of the universe and the laws governing its unfolding since then. A contemporary variant goes something like this. We're predetermined to do what we do because our minds arise from brain activity. And brain activity is just a special kind of physical activity. Stewart attempts to undermine the fundamentals of this mechanistic view with an alternative that she calls agency incompatibilism. On Steward's view, the concept of agency is very close to that of animacy in And it includes the concept of being able to settle what happens when and how with one's body. Since settling matters implies that they are not determined Agency is incompatible with determinism, and since there are agents, determinism must be false.
That is, according to Stewart, it is not up to physics to tell us whether determinism is true. Moreover, she denies that the causal efficacy of agency should be explicated in terms of events going on inside agents. With this subtlety argued book Stewart assumes a leading role in a new non mechanistic movement in the metaphysics of mind and mental causation. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Helen. Hi Carrie. Hi, welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Thanks very much. Thank you. Um, I'm really excited about this book. It's it's a uh important new contribution, I think, to the um to the literature on free will. Well, thank you. Um and just to sort of give an overview of the book, you you argue for what you call agency incompatibilism, um, which you distinguish from agent causation.
although you um you do say it's sort of within the same ballpark. Yes. Um and you uh y you connect the idea of agency more closely to the idea of animacy. Um you argue that uh determinism is false uh on the basis of this you know conceptual you know incompatibility with a ch with um Agency and the existence of agency. Um and you also give very interesting new answers to uh the pr the what's of what's what you call the the problem, the challenge from chance, the idea that um uh that that has been raised against incompatible dispositions that if um
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the basic free‑will problem that frames the discussion?
0:00–4:57
2
How does Helen Stewart define “agency incompatibilism” and why does she reject determinism?
4:57–12:18
3
What is the connection between agency and animacy in Stewart’s theory?
12:18–22:30
4
How does Stewart argue that the ability to “settle” actions contradicts a deterministic universe?
22:30–30:45
5
What is the “challenge from chance” objection and how does Stewart respond to it?
30:45–40:24
6
How does the example of rescuing children illustrate volitional necessity and agency?
40:24–49:24
7
Why does Stewart propose a top‑down, process‑based account of causation for agents?
49:24–57:30
8
What future projects does Stewart envision for her work on process and agency?
57:30–1:08:24
Speakers
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