Freedom Captured: Paradoxes and Contradictions

Abstract

In his book Does Free Will Exist?, László Bernáth uses the method of phenomenological conservatism to arrive at his moderate libertarian position on free will. The disagreement with the progressive scientist metaphysician, who holds the opposite position, is that it remains insoluble with the usual reasoning technique, and therefore we can only get out of the resulting impasse by reflecting on our epistemic norms and situation. In this article I try to show that this is not the only way forward; however, following the path I
have proposed, because of the contradictions and paradoxes that arise along the way, the conservative metaphysician cannot, in my view, maintain his claim that his proposal is a rational solution to the problem of free will.