Kristin M. Mickelson

A paradigm shift has taken place in the free-will debate. The "classical" paradigm that was popular from the 1960s to 1980s began to collapse with Frankfurt's attack on PAP (helped along by work by other non-classical theorists like Fischer and Pereboom). As the classical paradigm collapsed, philosophers seized on the opportunity to define popular classical jargon (e.g. Lehrer's terms 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism') in new ways in an effort to make these terms track the positions that they found most interesting. When we look behind these jargon wars, we can see that considerable progress has been made in the free-will debate in recent years and that a paradigm shift is imminent. Unfortunately, so long as philosophers insist on using and equivocating on ambiguous jargon rather than tracking the territories that philosophers currently occupy, the myth that the free-will debate has bogged down in irresolvable stalemates will persist.

Beyond PhilPapers: Public Posts & Presentations

Here is one my first public discussions about these issues:

https://philosophyonline.typepad.com/flickers_of_freedom/featured-author-mickelson/

You can also check out my recent discussions of the problem of free will and determinism on YouTube:

1. The Free Will Show podcast (Taylor Cyr and Matt Flummer): https://youtu.be/VMj4GZLnNrE

2. AARG Talk on rival paradigm approaches to the problem of determinism: https://youtu.be/2uTlqySuxV4