Morality and Libertarian Free Will

This is just a 'how things fit together' note, but I wanted to get it up here.

Here is one dilemma that faces the partisan of free will:

1. If our will is determined by (reasons, beliefs, desires, etc.), then it is not free, because something prior to it determines it.

2. If our will is undetermined by (reasons, beliefs, desires, etc.), then it is not free, because acting on the basis of anything besides (reasons, beliefs, desires, etc.) is senseless/pointless/irrational, and any freedom of will worth wanting requires rationality.

3. Our will is either determined or undetermined by (reasons, beliefs, desires, etc.).

Conclusion, as usual: There is no free will.

Now, one option is simply to deny (1), and say that if the reasons/beliefs/desires etc. are 'ours' in the appropriate sense, acting on their basis is too free action. This response is most easily articulated within a compatibilist framework; it seems to a first degree of approximation anyway to be Frankfurt's answer.

The denial of (2) is also possible, and I take it that this may be where the Kant/Campbell/Wolf idea that morality is a necessary condition of free action comes in. That is, let's say that we have this completely undetermined ability to choose that the libertarian wants. Aren't its movements effectively arbitrary, by definition?

Certain conceptions of morality, particularly deontological ones, seem to provide a possible 'no' answer to this question. You can assess your situation, determine what morality dictates ought to be done in it, and then will that, entirely indepedently of the actual reasons/beliefs/desires you had going into the situation. You subordinate your will to the moral law and act in accordance with it, and in this you show your freedom.

It is actually rather hard to understand this response. First of all, the person who acts this way is effectively sublimating their beliefs and desires to the moral law - they would seem to have to want to do good in order to act on this basis. So aren't they actually just showing that the moral law is for them the kind of reason/belief/desire etc. that it is not always for everyone else? And isn't their will then in this case also fundamentally un-free because it is being determined by prior reasons, etc.?

I think the idea here has to be that, if we do indeed have an undetermined ability to determine what we do irrespective of our own reasons/beliefs/desires/etc., the only way to avoid arbitrariness is to find a principle for action that would apply to everyone in that situation. (Kant uses this kind of formulation all the time, of course.) We may make our action depend on anything we like and of course we may fill it in directly with our actual current beliefs and desires, irrespective of the moral law. Some people arguably never do anything else. But if there are general moral laws which govern our situation, following them is not arbitrary, just because they are the laws that everyone ought to follow in those situations. Thus in following them, I think the thought must go, our hypothesized libertarian free will can be undetermined without being arbitrary or irrational, because there is a rationality beyond that of satisfying our own reasons/beliefs/desires out there upon which we can act.

It is often said that we need free will for morality to make sense. This line of thinking is interesting because it seems to suggest we need morality in order for free will to make sense.