Is a 'Free Act' a Natural Kind Term?

The article is an attempt to answer the question of whether a 'free act' is a natural kind term. The answer to this question is of theoretical interest. An affirmative answer to the question leads to the conclusion: a free act can be investigated only empirically. The first part of the article reviews various approaches to the understanding of the concepts of natural kind terms, namely: essentialism, unifica-tionism and promiscuous realism. The second part presents the main views on what a 'free act' is according to different positions in the contemporary analytic philosophy of mind: compatibilism (free will is compatible with determinism), libertarianism (there is free will and the world is not determined) and hard incompatibilism (free will is compatible with neither determinism nor indeterminism). It turns out that in hard incompatibilism, free acts could not form a natural kind. However, there is such an opportunity in compatibilism and libertarianism. For example, we can use the arguments by Antony Flew and by Michal Heller. Both arguments are applicable to compatibilism and libertarianism. In the final part of the article, objections from Peter van Invagen and the argument by Russell Daw and Torin Alter are considered. Van Inwagen argues that Flew's position leads to absurd. There is a possible world in which Martians put a tiny device in people's brains and control all their actions. But this world is identical to the real one if we agree with Flew. Daw and Alter provide a strong objection to Heller. If we find out that 'free acts' are defined by some essence or cluster of properties, then there possibly are organisms that lack this essence or these properties but act freely. Therefore, essentialism and unificationism could not define a 'free act' as a natural kind term. The last approach of promiscuous realism has the problem of finding the difference between natural and non-natural kinds. So, it is not the best way to argue that a 'free act' is a natural kind term. Thus, the conclusion of the article that a 'free act' is not a natural kind term.

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