ABSTRACT
Naturalism has both a negative and a positive thrust. One thing that impedes its success is the free will problem, which has always resisted solution in terms congenial to naturalism, and continues to do so. The reason is essentially twofold: friends of naturalism have never succeeded in providing a deterministic solution to the problem, and an indeterministic or libertarian solution violates the tenets of naturalism. Quantum theory is solidly entrenched, and if it is true there is reason for thinking that, at least as far as indeterminacy goes, libertarian free will can in principle be brought into line with naturalism. A good explanation would proceed not in terms of supposed purposes for which things existed, of ends they naturally sought, or of goods their behavior achieved, but in terms of diachronic relations of cause and effect.
