Free Will

Hi Friends,

Sorry for what might seem like shameless self-promotion, but I figure, why change now?? Routledge has just published a four-volume reference work in their "Critical Concepts in Philosophy" Series, FREE WILL, which I edited (with a new introduction and also short introductions to each volume). It also has a nifty "chronology", which might be of some interest.

Unfortunately, as this is designed as a reference book for libraries, it is not published in paperback and is exorbitantly expensive. I wish that were otherwise, but perhaps in the future a truncated version can be published in paperback.

I would ask you to consider recommending to your home-institution libraries that they acquire this set of volumes. If libraries do not purchase it, I fear no one will see or have access to it, as it is too expensive even for my mother and father to buy it!

If you would like a brochure describing the volumes, let me know.

Have a great summer!

PS I believe the ISBN number, or some sort of identifying number, is:

Set: 0-415-32726-1

Comments

[Eddy Nahmias]

John, Can you (or someone) make a table of contents for the volumes available here (or somewhere on web)? I'd be very interested to see it. I'll make sure to recommend the volumes to GSU.

[Kip Werking]

Using the number John provided, I found the Amazon listing (I hope the link isn't truncated, if so, just search amazon for 0-415-32726-1):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415327261/qid%3D1122660694/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/102-0883780-6149709

This is one of the books Amazon has processed, so that you can see things like excerpts, Books on Related Topics, Text Stats, Concordance, Statistically Improbably Phrases ("superhuman calculator"), and Capitalized Phrases...

John was right about the price: $865.00! I want to become a completist about books on free will, but this is pushing it! I'll have to encourage (maybe Laura Ekstrom can help) SWEM library at W+M to buy a copy.

[Fritz]

This might work....

**********
Free Will
Edited by: John Martin Fischer

Publisher:
Routledge

ISBN:
0415327261

Pub Date:
19 AUG 2005

Type:
Hardback Book

Price:
$865.00

Over the last three decades there has been a tremendous amount of philosophical work in the Anglo-American tradition on the cluster of topics pertaining to Free Will. Of course, this work has in many instances built on and extended the historical treatments of this great area of philosophical interest. The issues range from fairly abstract philosophical questions about the logic of arguments about human freedom (and its relationship to prior predictability of our choices and actions, or God's foreknowledge, or causal determinism and scientific explanation) to more concrete practical questions about legal and criminal accountability.

The contemporary work has in some instances been in the form of lively debates between proponents of different viewpoints, and the literature is characterized by a genuine vitality. Work has appeared in a wide variety of different places: academic and (and even trade) monographs, anthologies, philosophical and legal academic journals, and conference proceedings. This collection selects the very best of this material and presents it in a single, accessible set of volumes.

Contents:

Free Will: Critical Concepts in Philosophy - Contents

Volume I

FREE WILL: CONCEPTS AND CHALLENGES

Part I. The Concepts of Freedom and Moral Responsibility

1. Timothy O'Connor, `Entry on Free Will¿, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online), (The Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University), http://plato.stanford.edu

2, Peter van Inwagen, `The Problems and How We Shall Approach Them¿ in An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 1-13.

3. Michael J. Zimmerman, `Appraisability¿, Excerpt from An Essay on Moral Responsibility (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), pp. 38-9.

4, Peter Strawson, `Freedom and Resentment¿, Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962), pp. 1-25.

5. Galen Strawson, `On 'Freedom and Resentment¿ Excerpts from Freedom and Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press), as presented in John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, eds., Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 67-100.

6. Paul Russell, `Strawson's Way of Naturalizing Epistemology¿, Ethics, 102 (1992), pp. 287-302.

7. Gary Watson, `Responsibility and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme¿, in F.D. Schoeman, ed., Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 256-86.

8. R. Jay Wallace, `Emotions and Expectations¿ in Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 18-50.

9. R. Jay Wallace, `Responsibility¿ in Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 51-83.

10. Marina A. L. Oshana, `Ascriptions of Responsibility¿, American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997), pp. 71-83.

Part II. Skeptical Worries: The Worry that We Might Not Be Free and Morally Responsible

A. Fatalism

Richard Taylor, `Fate¿, in Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 54-69.

Peter van Inwagen, `Fatalism¿, in An Essay on Free Will, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) pp. 23-54.

B. Divine Omniscience

Nelson Pike, `Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action¿ Philosophical Review 74 (1965), pp. 27-46.

Marilyn McCord Adams, `Is the Existence of God a 'Hard' Fact?¿, Philosophical Review 76 (1967), pp. 74-85.

John Martin Fischer, `Freedom and Foreknowledge¿ Philosophical Review 92 (1983), pp. 86-96.

Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz, `Hard and Soft Facts¿ Philosophical Review 93 (1984), pp. 419-34,

Alfred J. Freddoso, `Accidental Necessity and Logical Determinism¿, Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983), pp. 257-78.

William Hasker, `Hard Facts and Theological Fatalism¿, Nous 22 (1988), pp. 419-36.

David Widerker, `Troubles With Ockhamism¿, Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990), pp. 462-80.

John Martin Fischer, `The Facts¿, The Metaphysics of Free Will (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), pp. 111-130.

Volume II

FREE WILL: DETERMINISM

Part 1: Causal Determinism

A. Causal Determinism and Alternative Possibilities

Carl Ginet, `Might We Have No Choice?¿, in Keith Lehrer, ed., Freedom and Determinism (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 87-104.

Peter Van Inwagen, `Three Arguments for Incompatibilism¿ in An Essay on Free Will, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) pp. 55-105.

John Turk Saunders, `The Temptations of Powerlessness¿, American Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1968), pp. 219-25.

Richard Foley, `Compatibilism and Control Over the Past¿, Analysis 39 (1979), pp. 70-4.

David Lewis, `Are We Free to Break the Laws?¿, Theoria 47 (1981), pp. 112-21.

Helen Beebee and Alfred Mele, `Humean Compatibilism¿, Mind 111 (2002), pp. 201-23.

Michael Slote, `Selective Necessity and the Free-Will Problem¿, Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982), pp. 5-24.

Timothy O'Connor, excerpt from `Freedom and Determinism¿, in Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 3-18.

B. Causal Determinism and Sourcehood

Robert Kane, excerpt from `Responsibility¿, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 32-37,

Derk Pereboom, `Source Incompatibilism¿ adapted from David Widerker and Michael McKenna, eds., Freedom, Responsibility, and Agency: Essays on the importance of alternative possibilities, (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2002) pp. 185-99; and Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) pp. 111-116

Part 2. Compatibilist Accounts of Free Will

Keith Lehrer, `Preferences, Conditionals, and Freedom¿, in Peter van Inwagen, ed., Time and Cause (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), pp. 76-96.

Hilary Bok, `Freedom and Practical Reason¿, in Freedom and Responsibility, (Chichester: Princeston University Press, 1998)

Keith Lehrer, `Can in Theory and Practice: A Possible Worlds Analysis¿, in M. Brand and D. Walton, eds., Action Theory: Proceedings of the Winnipeg Conference on Human Action, (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976), pp. 241-70.

Terence Horgan, `Could, Possible Worlds, and Moral Responsibility¿, Southern Journal of Philosophy 17 (1979), 345-58.

Peter van Inwagen, excerpt from `Three Arguments for Compatibilism¿, in An Essay on Free Will, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) pp. 114-126.

Volume III

FREE WILL:LIBERTARIANISM, ALTERNATIVE POSSIBILITIES, AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

Part 1. Incompatibilist Accounts of Free Will

A. Event-Causal Approaches

Robert Kane, `Free Will: New Directions for an Ancient Problem¿, in R. Kane, ed., Free Will (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), pp. 223-46.

Daniel Dennett, excerpt from `A Hearing for Libertarianism: Kane's Model of Indeterministic Decision-making¿, in Freedom Evolves (New York: Viking Press, 2003), pp. 109-37.

Laura Ekstrom, excerpt from `Varieties of Libertarianism¿, in Free Will: A Philosophical Study (Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 2000), pp. 99-129, and 133-38.

Timothy O'Connor, `Freedom and Indeterminism: Some Unsatisfactory Proposals¿, Persons and Causes: The metaphysics of Free Will, (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 23-42.

Randolph Clarke, `Event-Causal Accounts and the Problem of Explanation¿, in Libertarian Accounts of Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 29-55.

Robert Kane, `Responsibility, Luck, and Chance: Reflections of Free Will and Indeterminism¿, Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999), pp. 217-40.

B. Agent-Causal Approaches

Randolph Clarke, `Agent Causation and Event Causation in the Production of Free Action¿, Philosophical Topics 24 (1996), pp. 19-48.

Timothy O'Connor, Excerpt from `The Metaphysics of Free Will¿, Persons and Causes, (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 67-80.

Laura Ekstrom, excerpt from `Varieties of Libertarianism¿ in Free Will: A Philosophical Study,(Boulder,

[Fritz]

And for those who need more to read, I think that this link will take you to the Midwest Studies table of contents:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/misp/29/1;jsessionid=hjRybaX2EDb7

[John Fischer]

Thanks, Fritz. But somehow the Table of Contents as posted got cut off. I want to make sure that people know there is more to this--after all, for 865 dollars, one wants one's money's worth...

Anyway, I am sorry about that price--it of course would not be my preference. Routledge has a series of reference books for libraries, and the FREE WILL volumes are for this purpose. I also wish to apologize to many younger people whose outstanding work I simply could not include; it is perhaps a good thing however that, even with four volumes, I ran out of space!!

Thanks, also, to Fritz for posting the announcement about the forthcoming Midwest Studies volume, which will be on these topics.

It is exciting that there is so much work in these areas. Now all we need is to get some good departments to recognize Agency Theory as a legitimate subfield for the purposes of hiring... I will continue my crusade on that score, and any comments which could help deserving people in this field would be appreicated!!