ABSTRACT
This chapter clarifies what the author believes to be the crucial issue between libertarian and a determinist debate about man's freedom. It then elucidates the relevant aspects of the concept of freedom, and indicates how it is related to the dispute. The libertarian wishes to assert, roughly, that in just the same situation the same agent might have chosen differently. A determinist may start from the fact that we know a good deal about human behaviour, and that no man decides in a mental vacuum. The discussion of freewill has in the past been involved with that of causation. An important part of the debate is about when an explanation of this sort is to be permitted or demanded. The chapter highlights that even in most descriptive contexts, 'free' will normally carry a minor evaluative implication of approval. Debates about values need not employ the primarily evaluative sense of freedom, but may use the word in a more descriptive sense.
