Do we really have freedom to act, or are we slaves to our genes, environment or culture? Regular TPM columnist Mathew Iredale gets to grips with one of the most intractable issues in philosophy: the problem of free will. Iredale explores what it is about the free will problem that makes it so hard to resolve and argues that the only acceptable solution to the free will problem must be one that is consistent with what science tells us about the world. It is here, maintains Iredale, that too many works on free will, introductory or otherwise, fall down, by focusing only on how free will relates to determinism. Iredale shows that there are clear areas of scientific research which are directly and significantly relevant to free will in a way that does not involve determinism. Although these areas of scientific research do not allow us to solve the problem, they do allow us to separate the more plausible ideas concerning free will from the less plausible.

The problem of free will is one of the oldest and most central philosophical conundrums. The contemporary debate around it has produced a range of sophisticated proposals, but shows no sign of leading to convergence. Christian Onof reviews these contemporary approaches and argues that their main shortcomings are ultimately due to paradoxical requirements on free will imposed by the naturalistic framework. Onof singles out Kant's critical solution as one that stands out among historical approaches insofar as it is based upon a rejection of this framework. By using the same methodological tool that he applies to contemporary proposals, namely a distinction between a volitional account of how we control our actions, a psychological account of the reasons for it and a metaphysical account of our status as agent, Onof shows that Kant's solution constitutes a coherent picture of free will. By exhibiting the structure running through several key publications of Kant's critical period and drawing upon unpublished notes, Onof addresses several debates which loom large in contemporary Kant literature. His exegetical work puts Kant's theory into conversation with contemporary analytic theories of free will and leads to defining a Kantian position that overcomes the issues plaguing existing approaches to the problem of free will.

This book argues that David Foster Wallace failed to provide a response to the existential predicament of our time. Wallace wanted to confront despair through art, but he remained trapped, and his entrapment originates in the "existentialist contradiction": the impossibility of affirming the meaningfulness of life and an ethics of compassion while believing in free will. To substantiate this thesis, the analysis reads Wallace in conversation with the existentialist philosophers and writers who influenced him: Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It compares his non-fiction with the sociologies of Christopher Lasch, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, and Anthony Giddens. And it finds inspiration in Giacomo Leopardi, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Emanuele Severino to conclude that the philosophy which pervades Wallace’s works entails despair and represents the essence of our civilization’s interpretation of the world.

An argument that the problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, he argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy—in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question.

The philosophical debate about free will and responsibility has been of great importance throughout the history of philosophy. In modern times this debate has received an enormous resurgence of interest and the contribution in 1962 by P.F. Strawson with the publication of his essay "Freedom and Resentment" has generated a wide range of discussion and criticism in the philosophical community and beyond. The debate is of central importance to recent developments in the free will literature and has shaped the way contemporary philosophers now approach the problem. This volume brings together a focused selection of the major contributions and reactions to the free will and responsibility debate inspired by Strawson's contribution. McKenna and Russell also provide a comprehensive overview of the debate. This book will be of great value to scholars of Strawson and those interested in the free will debate more generally.

Offers a detailed and original analysis of the concept of free will in the Continental philosophical tradition.

Why is debate over the free will problem so intractable? In this broad and stimulating look at the philosophical enterprise, Richard Double uses the free will controversy to build on the subjectivist conclusion he developed in The Non-Reality of Free Will (OUP 1991). Double argues that various views about free will--e.g., compatibilism, incompatibilism, and even subjectivism--are compelling if, and only if, we adopt supporting metaphilosophical views. Because metaphilosophical considerations are not provable, we cannot show any free will theory to be most reasonable. Metaphilosophy and Free Will deconstructs the free will problem and, by example, challenges philosophers in other areas to show how their philosophical argumentation can succeed.

Free Will in Philosophical Theology takes the most recent philosophical work on free will and uses it to elucidate and explore theological doctrines involving free will. Rather than being a work of natural theology, it is a work in what has been called clarification-using philosophy to understand, develop, systematize, and explain theological claims without first raising the justification for holding the theological claims that one is working with. Timpe's aim is to show how a particular philosophical account of the nature of free will-an account known as source incompatibilism-can help us understand a range of theological doctrines.