Free Will without Self-Creation: Participatory Sourcehood and the Causal Necessity of Choice

This paper challenges the hard-determinist inference from causal determinism to the nonexistence of meaningful free will and moral responsibility. It argues that any successful refutation of free will must first provide a coherent positive account of what free will would have to be if it existed. It further clarifies that causation itself cannot originate from absolute nothing, since causal transition presupposes distinction, identity, and admissible structure. The paper introduces the Refutation Adequacy Principle, the Causal Necessity Theorem, the Ultimate-Sourcehood Bridge Principle, the No Non-Causal Alternative Principle, and the distinction between absolute and participatory sourcehood. It argues that free will cannot coherently mean causeless choice, since a causeless choice would not arise from reasons, values, conscience, memory, identity, or moral recognition, nor would it be meaningfully attributable to the agent. Free will must therefore be understood as causally operative: the agent becomes a real cause through non-bypassed, reason-responsive participation in action. Hard determinism succeeds only if one accepts an ultimate-sourcehood standard according to which moral responsibility requires self-creation. Since no finite agent can choose the preconditions of its own agency, that standard is inappropriate for creaturely freedom. Human freedom is not divine self-origination but participatory sourcehood within a received causal architecture.