ABSTRACT
In popular consciousness the problem of free will stands as a perennial road-block to the relation of science and ethics. Science is tied to determinism, ethics demands responsibility, responsibility requires free will, and free will is antithetical to determinism. There is indeed a decisional element implicit in all deliberative use of standards, even in what seems to be automatic subsumption of a situation under a rule, for there is a jurisdictional assumption in turning it over to this rule. The essence of the opposite view is that the phenomenological feature of lack of structure in decision situations is central because it provides points at which we can break through the local blinders of ordinary situations. Some stress the phenomenological datum of the sense of freedom in the first-person act of decision, as wholly removed from scientific scrutiny and explanation. This can, however, be seen as a problem in the psychological theory of the self.
