When the Defence Demands Too Much

This paper argues that libertarian free will preserves the right instinct but defends it in the wrong way. Libertarianism rightly sees that authorship cannot be reduced to mechanism, causal buildup, or procedural competence. Its error is to conclude that free will must therefore require metaphysical surplus, such as branching futures, ultimate sourcehood, agent causal exception, or freedom from the determinate order of the world. That demand prices freedom beyond what finite agents can possess and strengthens the sceptic it was meant to defeat. Resolution Theory rejects that inflation. Free will does not need to stand above time, causation, or determinism in order to be real. It is found in authored resolution: the closure of a live evaluative field into commitment through a continuing subject under exposure. Causes load the field, but resolution closes it. Determinism does not erase free will. It gives authored closure the ordered world in which action lands, matters, and returns. The paper therefore defends free will by rejecting the libertarian defence that demands too much.