There is no libertarian free will: people can have limited forms of local control over their actions, but not the deep form of libertarian free will. Whether determinism is completely true or not, we cannot make sense of the sort of constitutive self-transcendence which would provide grounding for the deep sense of moral responsibility that libertarian free will was thought to supply. Our common libertarian assumptions cannot be sustained. All our actions, however an internalized and complex a form they my take, are the result of what we are, ultimately beyond our control.

The implications of the absence of libertarian free will are complex, and the standard assumption of the debate, the Assumption of Monism according to which we must be either compatibilists or hard determinists, is false. We saw why ‘forms of life’ based on the compatibilist distinctions about control are possible and morally required, but are also superficial and deeply problematic in ethical and personal terms. I claimed that the most plausible approach to the Compatibility Question is a complex compromise, which I called Fundamental Dualism. The idea that either compatibilism or hard determinism can be adequate on its own is untenable.

There is then partial non-illusory grounding for many of our central free will-related beliefs, reactions, and practices, even in a world without libertarian free will. But in various complex ways, we require illusion in order to bring forth and maintain them. Illusion is seen to flow from the basic structure of the free will issue, the absence of libertarian free will and the Fundamental Dualism concerning the implications. Revealing the large and mostly positive role of illusion concerning free will not only teaches us a great deal about the free will issue itself, but also posits illusion as a pivotal factor in human life.