Free Will is a collection of
philosophical articles on the question whether humans have free will.  One of
the series of Blackwell Readings in Philosophy, it is aimed at advanced
undergraduate courses.  Robert Kane, the editor, provides a helpful
introduction to the subject at the start of the book, and each article has a
short paragraph about the author and the main themes of the article.  Each
article is also followed by a lists of suggested reading.  It is an excellent
resource for a specialized course, and could also be used by graduate students
and people with training in academic philosophy who want to pursue their
interests on their own.

The book is divided into five
sections.  The first is on the standard problem of freedom and determinism. 
The central problem is that if a person is free to choose what to do, then it
seems that the future should be genuinely open.  But there are strong reasons
for thinking that the future is predictable and largely determined, and if it
is, then it is harder to see how our actions can be free.  Freedom and
determinism seem to be incompatible with each other.  This section has articles
by B.F. Skinner, Kai Nielsen, Roderick Chisholm and Paul Edwards, spelling out
the main ideas in the debate.

The second part examines more
closely whether freedom and determinism are incompatible, and links this to
moral responsibility.  The articles are by Peter van Inwagen, Daniel Dennett,
John Martin Fischer, and Derk Pereboom.  They are more sophisticated, and
engage in the intricacies of modern philosophical debate.  The third part has
just three classic papers, by Harry Frankfurt, Susan Wolf and Gary Watson,
which engage with Frankfurt’s exploration of second-order desires and the
possibility of examining one’s wishes.  Central here is the question of how
responsible people are for desires they do not wish to have, and this is
especially important in thinking about the responsibility of people with mental
illnesses for their actions.  Unfortunately the articles collected here hardly
engage in any sustained way with real cases of mental illness, but they at
least provide some ways to approach the question.

Since Kane himself is what is known
as a libertarian, is it not surprising that he devotes the whole forth part to
this position, and furthermore, makes it the largest section  It includes
articles by himself, Peter van Inwagen, Timothy O’Connor, Carl Ginet and David
Hodgson.  The libertarian position on freewill accepts that freedom is
incompatible with determinism, but insists that we are free.  One of the first
questions is whether this is even an intelligible position, and its defenders
argue powerfully that it is.  Further, they argue that it provides a much
stronger conception of freedom than the traditional compatibilist position.

The book ends with a short fifth
part on religious issues, with a short extract from St. Augustine and a longer
article by William Hasker.  This reflects the reality that the theological
debate has been relatively uninteresting to contemporary philosophers.  This
collection is firmly rooted in the tradition of analytic philosophy.  Thus it
does not address attacks on freewill from psychoanalysis, structuralism,
post-structuralism, or other movements more closely associated with continental
philosophy.  It neither attempts to address issues about political freedom,
such as might be relevant to liberation movements for minorities and women. 
The furthest that the book moves away from the central metaphysical question is
in considering when people are morally responsible for their actions, and
whether freedom is a requisite for responsibility, and even here, the coverage
is light. 

In sum, Free Will approaches
its topic quite narrowly, but thus is able to go into some depth.  If I were to
use it as a textbook for an advanced undergraduate course, I would want to add
other books as well to make the course broader in scope.  Students will need to
have a strong background in philosophy to really understand the articles
included here, but if they grapple with most of the articles here, they will
learn a great deal.

© 2005 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved. 

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also
editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Philosophical