Libertarian free will
The view that genuine free choice requires real, uncaused alternative possibilities open up to the moment of choosing, not merely acting on one's own unforced desires.
Libertarian free will holds that genuine freedom requires real alternative possibilities that remain open right up to the moment of choice — not merely acting from one's own unforced desires (compatibilism's weaker standard), but a choice that nothing beforehand fully fixed.
Its appeal is that it preserves the strongest, most intuitive sense in which a person could genuinely have done otherwise, and so genuinely deserves praise or blame. Its standing cost is explaining how an uncaused (or self-caused) choice is not simply random — how flipping a coin inside your head, so to speak, is different from and better than an ordinary chain of causes, in a way that actually makes the outcome yours rather than merely unpredictable.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Arguments for Incompatibilism"
- Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (1996)