ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Luck Principle (L) and a related principle that are fueled by many of those "intuition pumps," in Daniel Dennett's apt expression, that support common intuitions about freedom and responsibility. L and related principles lie behind the widespread belief that indeterminism would actually undermine free will and responsibility. For, any freedom not compatible with determinism would require indeterminism; and what is undetermined would happen by chance or luck and could not be a free and responsible action. Where events are indeterminate, as are the efforts they were making, there is no such thing as exact sameness or difference of events in different possible worlds. There are numerous examples in the philosophical literature, where indeterminism functions as an obstacle to success without precluding responsibility. When philosophy professors go through the two-stage argument in the modern classroom, they are replicating the standard case against traditional (incompatibilist or libertarian) free will that is one of the defining characteristics of modernity.
