Richard Double pans libertarian free will

Philosopher Richard Double has some unkind words for libertarian free will:

(W)hy bother to deliberate if you are just as likely to opt for either of two contradictory alternatives?

One wonders how Double determined that either of two contradictory alternatives were just as likely. But I will offer an answer anyway. So that whichever one you pick, it will be a reasonable and considered decision.

For the libertarian, free agents not only have the ability to choose in two directions, but they must be in control of either choice. This consequence could be deduced from the demands of moral responsibility. If an agent is to be truly responsible for either choice, A or not A, then both outcomes are under the agent's control. The case is likewise with rationality, although a predictable amount of strain is likely to arise. Libertarians, at the very least, need to show how indeterministic choices can be rational whichever way they turn out. Ideally, libertarians will show us how such a dual ability might be, contrary to appearances, a desirable or even necessary element of rational choices.

I frankly don't understand what is so tough about it. Any number of examples might do, but I can stick with the one I fashioned for my series on free will skeptic Saul Smilansky: Mr. Brown can either trample his neighbor's petunias out of dislike for his neighbor, or refrain from doing so out of the belief that doing so would be morally wrong.

It seems to me that objections like Double's must spring from the notion that the deliberative process is the same while the eventual decision varies. People tend not to deliberate so much where the choice is clear.

Bob Doyle, the writer at "the Information Philosopher" answered in much the same way:

The simple answer to Kane's point and Double's is that we are not "just as likely" to opt for something different from "rational self control", but as human beings we can and do choose occasionally to be irrational.