A Justification For Validity Of The Consequence Argument

In the contemporary discussion on the Free Will problem,the Consequence Argu-ment is considered to be an important Argument in support of incompatibilism.The present dissertation discusses the validity of the Consequence Argument.Specifically,this dissertation attempts to respond to Marco Hausmann for questioning the validity of the Consequence Argument.The introduction of the dissertation summarizes the development of the philosoph-ical topic 'free will'and the writing idea of this dissertation.Chapter ? introduces the dilemma of free will and the significance of the Conse-quence Argument.Section 1 provides a brief introduction to the idea of freedom(Lee-way Freedom)that presupposed by the Consequence Argument and the 'upper level'argument that the Consequence Argument serves.Section 2 introduces the modal ver-sion of the Consequence Argument that demonstrated by van Inwagen.Chapter ? introduces a revised version of the Consequence Argument and Haus-mann's response to it.In section 1,a modal operator 'R' is introduced as an analytical tool.Section 2 introduces a refutation that McKay&Johnson offered to the original version of the Consequence Argument.Section 3 introduces the revision made by van Inwagen and the method of logical diagram that he used in making this revision.Section 4 introduces Hausmann's refutation to the revised version of the Consequence Argu-ment.With Chapters ? and ? in place,I turn to respond Hausmann's argument in Chapter?.This response focus on the interpretation of the concept 'agential ability'(i.e.'be able to render...false')and 'unavoidability'.The 1st section introduces two important interpretations of the phrase 'be able to render...false':the conditionals interpretation and the explanatory-notion interpretation.Section 2 argues that the method of logic dia-gram is incompatible with the(proved false)conditionals interpretation,which might constitute an objection to the first part of Hausmann's argument.Sections 3 and 4 sug-gest that Hausmann misused the explanatory-notion interpretation of the 'be able to render...false'.The core of the mistake is that Hausmann reused the modal operator'might'(that has been proved to be a failure)into the explanatory-notion interpretation,and thus caused confusion.After clearing up this confusion,it would be found that this explanation is not a correct understanding of the concept of the agential ability required by the Consequence Argument.That would frustrate the second part of Hausmann's ar-gument.This dissertation concludes that Hausmann's refutation on the validity of the Con-sequence Argument is unsuccessful.Therefore,we may not argue hastily that the Con-sequence Argument is invalid before find out the correct understanding of the concept'agential ability' as well as 'unavoidability'.As an alternative,this dissertation attempts to give an understanding of the ability of agent on account of probability.