Free Will, Determinism, and Responsibility in the Philosophy of Reality

This paper reconstructs the problem of free will, determinism, and responsibility from the standpoint of the Philosophy of Reality and Alexander Zhalnin's Basic Method of Philosophy. The central thesis is that the classical opposition between free will and determinism arises from an insufficient distinction between the objective and subjective sides of will and from an incomplete ontology of consciousness. In the Philosophy of Reality, will is not a passage from a brain process to a separate subjective preference. From the objective side, will is the energy of the brain directed toward the suppression of one physiological, natural brain process by an opposing physiological brain process constituted by the system of physical analogues of concepts. From the subjective side, will is the conscious choice among possible actions according to the priority of causal relations or personal mental acceptability. The analysis incorporates the Philosophy of Reality's treatment of the hard problem of consciousness: concepts are physical analogues in the brain, every transformation of a concept is also a physical transformation, and experience is the immediate subjective givenness of this transformation. On this basis, the paper analyzes the major theories of free will and responsibility as partial accounts of one phenomenon.