This second edition of Gary Watson's collection of articles on free will contains more work by younger scholars.  Watson writes a very helpful introduction providing a sophisticated overview of the field.  The following 22 articles include pieces by all the authors one would expect: Chisholm, van Inwagen, Peter Strawson, Frankfurt, John Martin Fischer, and Watson himself, as well as provocative pieces by Galen Strawson, Thomas Nagel, Timothy O'Connor, Randolph Clarke, Susan Wolf, and R. Jay Wallace.  It covers most of the standard discussions such as whether free will is compatible with determinism, libertarianism, moral responsibility, and agent-causation.  The inclusion of a few articles that discuss the free will of addicts is particularly welcome.  This would be a good book to use for an upper-level undergraduate course on free will with philosophy majors.  The level of difficult of the papers here is somewhat higher than for collection put together by Robert Kane, published by Blackwell, and the range of topics covered is a little narrower, so it is appropriate for a more specialized course.

Link: Table of Contents

© 2008 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York.

Keywords: philosophy, free will