According to Peter Van Inwagen, the idea of free will should be acknowledged in terms of the power or ability of agents to perform an action contrary to what they in fact execute. The reason for this is that denying that men have free will is to affirm that what a man actually does and what he can do concur. However, Van Inwagen claims that there is substantially less concordance as to how "can" should be examined. Thus, this means that Van Inwagen notion of free will agrees with the general concept of free will, but he adds that this concept depends on the meaning given to the word "can." (Page
