Why Free Will Is Real
Why Free Will Is Real

Author: Christian List

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-05-06

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0674239814

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A crystal-clear, scientifically rigorous argument for the existence of free will, challenging what many scientists and scientifically minded philosophers believe. Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy and presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world.

Free Will
Free Will

Author: Derk Pereboom

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 2009-11-13

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 160384886X

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A unique anthology featuring contributions to the dispute over free will from Aristotle to the twenty-first century, Derk Pereboom's volume presents the most thoughtful positions taken in this crucial debate and discusses their consequences for free will's traditional corollary, moral responsibility. The Second Edition retains the organizational structure that made its predecessor the leading anthology of its kind, while adding major new selections by such philosophers as Spinoza, Reid, John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Galen Strawson, and Timothy O'Connor. Hackett Readings in Philosophy is a versatile series of compact anthologies, each devoted to a topic of traditional interest. Selections include classical, modern, and contemporary writings chosen for their elegance of exposition and success at stimulating thought and discussion.

Free Will
Free Will

Author: Sam Harris

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-03-06

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 1451683405

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From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, "brilliant and witty" (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion. A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.

I and Thou
I and Thou

Author: Martin Buber

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2004-12-09

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 9780826476937

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'The publication of Martin Buber's I and Thou was a great event in the religious life of the West.' Reinhold Niebuhr Martin Buber (1897-19) was a prolific and influential teacher and writer, who taught philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 1939 to 1951. Having studied philosophy and art at the universities of Vienna, Zurich and Berlin, he became an active Zionist and was closely involved in the revival of Hasidism. Recognised as a landmark of twentieth century intellectual history, I and Thou is Buber's masterpiece. In this book, his enormous learning and wisdom are distilled into a simple, but compelling vision. It proposes nothing less than a new form of the Deity for today, a new form of human being and of a good life. In so doing, it addresses all religious and social dimensions of the human personality. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith>

Nature's Challenge to Free Will
Nature's Challenge to Free Will

Author: Bernard Berofsky

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-01-05

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0199640017

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This book offers a defense of humean compatibilism, which bases the belief in the compatibility of free will and determinism on David Hume's idea that laws do not uphold the existence of necessary connections in nature.

Libertarian Accounts of Free Will
Libertarian Accounts of Free Will

Author: Randolph Clarke

Publisher:

Published: 2005-12-08

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780195306422

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This comprehensive study offers a balanced assessment of libertarian accounts of free will. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view from popular objections concerning rationality and diminished control. He subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. Clarke then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates agent causation and nondeterministic event causation. He defends this view from a number of objections but argues that we should find the substance causation required by any agent-causal account to be impossible. Clarke concludes that if a broad thesis of incompatibilism is correct - one on which both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism - then no libertarian account is entirely adequate.

Free Will
Free Will

Author: Kevin Timpe

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2008-07-23

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1441115048

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Much contemporary scholarship on free will focuses on whether it is compatible with causal determinism. According to compatibilists, it is possible for an agent to be determined in all her choices and actions and still be free. Incompatibilists, on the other hand, think that the existence of free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism. There are two dominant general conceptions of the nature of free will. According to the first of these, free will is primarily a function of being able to do otherwise than one in fact does. On this view, free will centrally depends upon alternative possibilities. The second approach focuses instead on issues of sourcehood, holding that free will is primarily a function of an agent being the source of her actions in a particular way. This book demarcates these two different conceptions free will, explores the relationship between them, and examines how they relate to the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists. It ultimately argues for a version of Source Incompatibilism.

Free Will: A Very Short Introduction
Free Will: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Thomas Pink

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2004-06-24

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 0192853589

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Every day we seem to make and act upon all kinds of free choices - but are these choices really free? Or are we compelled to act the way we do by factors beyond our control? This book looks at free will.

The Illusion of Conscious Will
The Illusion of Conscious Will

Author: Daniel M. Wegner

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2003-08-11

Total Pages: 743

ISBN-13: 0262290553

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A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

Free Will and Action Explanation
Free Will and Action Explanation

Author: Scott Sehon

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0191076163

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Do we have free will and moral responsibility? Is free will compatible with determinism? Scott Sehon argues that we can make progress on these questions by focusing on an underlying issue: the nature of action explanation. When a person acts, or does something on purpose, we explain the behavior by citing the agent's reasons. The dominant view in philosophy of mind has been to construe such explanations as a species of causal explanation. Part I of the book proposes and defends a non-causal account of action and agency, according to which reason explanation of human behavior is irreducibly teleological rather than causal. Part II applies the teleological account of action to free will and responsibility, arguing that the free actions—the ones for which we are directly responsible—are the goal-directed actions, the actions that are teleologically explicable in terms of our reasons. It is then argued that this non-causal account of action undermines the appeal of incompatibilist arguments, arguments attempting to show that free will is not compatible with determinism. Beyond this, Sehon argues that the non-causal compatibilist account works well in practice: it is in accord with our clear intuitions about cases, and it both explains and provides guidance in the cases where our intuitions are murkier.