ABSTRACT. One of the main difficulties of the free will issue is to understand what contributions are supposed to come, respectively, from philosophy intended as a practice that essentially involves conceptual analysis) and from empirical investigation. In principle, three options are open when one reflects on what roles these two fields can play in the free will discussion: scientific isolationist view, interactionist view, and philosophical isolationist view. In this paper it will be argued that the second view is correct, while the first is obviously wrong and the third is more subtly wrong.