Strawsonian Optimism for Libertarians

I argue that libertarians may be “Strawsonian Optimists”—that is, they may consistently hold that even if determinism is true, there need be no threat to moral responsibility and personhood. This defence takes place in the context of John Fischer’s endorsement of what I call the “Invulnerability Intuition,” the intuition that it is not the case that we must give up our commitments to moral responsibility and personhood if we are told unequivocally one day by theoretical physicists that the universe is deterministic. Fischer insists that the libertarian cannot accept the Invulnerability Intuition and criticizes van Inwagen’s attempt to claim otherwise, characterizing his strategy as unacceptable “metaphysical flipflopping.” I aim to show that “flipflopping” is easier for an Agency Incompatibilist than for a more standard kind of libertarian to defend; and (ii) that flipflopping is a preferable strategy for saving the Invulnerability Intuition than Fischer’s own metaphysics of semicompatibilism.