ABSTRACT
Under normal circumstances, we experience a freedom to engage in or refrain from specific actions: we feel free to do or do not as we like. This chapter suggests to see free will as a hypothetical construct: a hypothesized capacity that we need to further investigate to establish whether it is meaningful, existing, and if so, what its properties are. Free will, insofar as it may turn out to be applicable, could turn out to do so only to a certain and perhaps even variable extent. The chapter suggests that we should take the research of cognitive neuroscience on intentions and free will as providing opportunities for better informed self-reflection and investigations of how we could revise that notion to expand our self-understanding. It briefly considers what implications revisions in the notion of free will might have for current or potentially future societal practices related to the attribution of responsibility.
