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

FW/MR Journals

I’ve been doing a bunch of bibliographic work lately, and it seems that a select number of journals publish a significant percentage of the free will/moral responsibility literature.  There are a couple of possible explanations for this fact.  But it also got me thinking about what journals might be the best to aim for when attempting to get work published in this area.  Here are some of the journals that have had articles on free will/moral responsibility in them recently (I’ve no doubt left some out—those that only solicit articles, I’ve left out on purpose):

American Philosophical Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Ethics, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of Ethics, Journal of Philosophical Research, Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Social Philosophy, Mind, Nous, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Review, Philosophical Studies, Philosophical Topics, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Southern Journal of Philosophy

Some of these are obviously better than others.  But I’m curious how others see the breakdown, particularly since as a young scholar I don’t have a particularly strong grasp on these issues.  If you had to rank these publications according to the desirability of getting a FW/MR article published in them, how would you do it?  I’m not interested in cardinal ordering, but say groups in the following categories:  (I) Most Desirable, (II) Highly Desirable, (III)Pretty Desirable, and (IV) Hey, it’s a publication.  Also, feel free to add any journals, particularly to (I) and (II) that you think I may have overlooked.

NOTE:  I’m a little wary of asking people to voice their opinions on this issue publicly, particularly since GFP, as far as I can tell, doesn’t allow anonymous postings (though perhaps Neal or someone else can set the record straight).  Some might have good reason for not wanting their opinions on this subject to be made public.  However, I’m reminded of a much more controversial discussion of journals on The Leiter Reports (found here) where individuals actually named particular journals that they thought were 'irresponsible' and that junior faculty may think twice about submitting to if the tenure clock is ticking (I found this a very interesting thread).  And that discussion dind't allow anonymous postings, so perhaps there is some precident.  If anyone has suggestions on how we might have this discussion without people having to worry about negative ramifications of participating, I would be greatly appreciative.

Who's your daddy?

This is probably old news to most of you, but Josh Dever (Texas) is putting together a "family tree" for the intellectual genealogy of philosophers, as decided by dissertation advisor. You can learn about all sorts of family you didn't realize you had. At this point the genealogy has gotten pretty big, especially in the weeks since Brian Leiter first noted it on his blog, but he seems to be continuously updating it as more information comes in. Updates, etc., can be found on his blog.

According to current stats, the most "procreative" dissertation advisor was a free will guy: Roderick Chisolm, with a whopping 57 students.

Hat tip to Ben Bradley at PEA Soup for the links.

New Issue of Midwest Studies

Bloglines informs me that the latest issue of Midwest Studies is available.  You can find the issue here.  This issue is a feast for anyone who is interested in agency theory or the free will problem.  For those who lean towards free will denial, it includes Derk Pereboom's reply to critics, as well as two articles by Mark Bernstein and Randolph Clarke (I've been anticipating this last article for a while) dealing with the same issue.  There are plenty of other fascinating articles by others too, including one by Laura Ekstrom (at my school William & Mary) and one by the Garden's own Manual Vargas.  Enjoy! 

Robert Kane on the Psychology of Free Will

Robert Kane has been kind enough to allow us to post some remarks he gave on the psychology of free will at the 31st Annual Meeting of The Society of Philosophy and Psychology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, June 9-12, 2005. We don't have copies of the papers he was responding to, but the remarks should still be of interest in any case. Enjoy!

Determinism and Counterfactuals

There are many ways of defining the doctrine of determinism, but here's one that seems fairly straightforward, taken from the beginning of John Earman's book A Primer on Determinism:

World W1 is deterministic just in case for any physically possible world W2, if W2 agrees with W1 at any time as far as relevant physical properties are concerned, then W2 agrees with W1 at all times. [p. 13]

If we understand the notion of a physically possible world to be any world that shares the same laws of nature, then it is a consequence of this definition that if the actual world is deterministic, there is no physically possible world (except the actual world itself, of course) that agrees at any time with the actual world as far as relevant physical properties are concerned.  Or, in other words, if determinism is true, then every physically possible world must have a completely different past, present, and future.

So far so good.  But what I'm wondering about is what effect determinism in this sense might have on the proper analysis of counterfactual conditionals.  According to the (perhaps) most promising approach to counterfactuals, in order to determine whether the conditional, "If A were the case, then B would be the case" is true, one needs to look at those possible worlds which are closest to the actual world where A obtains to see if B also obtains.  If so, then the counterfactual is true.  Of course, figuring out which worlds are closest to the actual world is a vexed question.  But it seems to me that if determinism is true, the question becomes a lot more vexed than usual.

If determinism is true, which worlds are closest to the actual world?  Surely none of the physically possible worlds are that close to the actual world, since as we saw above, all of those worlds have a completely different past, present, and future.  But that means that the worlds closest to the actual world must have different laws of nature than the actual world.  But that would be quite odd, too, because there is a strong intuition to think that worlds which are not physically possible are actually irrelevant to the truth or falsity of a counterfactual conditional.  For instance, if I want to know what would have been the case if I hadn't gone to graduate school, I don't think I would be satisfied with finding out what happens in some world that doesn't share the actual laws of nature.  I want to know what would have happened to me, in this world, if I hadn't gone to graduate school.  But that's not the answer I get.

So I guess the problem might be put in the form of a dilemma.  Assume that the correct analysis of counterfactuals is the one sketched above.  Now, either the worlds closest to the actual world are the physically possible worlds or they're not.  But all the physically possible worlds have a completely different past, present, and future, so those worlds can't be closest to the actual world.  So, the worlds closest to the actual world are not the physically possible worlds.  But the non-physically possible worlds don't seem relevant to the truth or falsity of certain counterfactual statements.  So -- should we reject this analysis of counterfactuals?   What other options sound better?

Alternative Possibilities as 'Sufficient' for Free Will?

I'm puzzled by a claim in Robert Kane's new book, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will.  In chapter 11, where Kane is talking about the importance of ultimate responsibility (UR) for free will, he attempts to show the connection between UR and the alternative possibilities condition for free will (AP).  Here is the passage I have in mind:

"To understand the connection between AP and UR (alternative possibilities and ultiamte responsibility) we have to return to a claim made earlier in this chapter--that having alternative possibilities is not sufficient for free will, even if the alternative possibilities are undetermined.  Some incompatibilists have thought that all one needs for free will is alternative possibilities plus indeterminism: in other words, it is sufficient for free will that we be able to do otherwise in a way that is not determined by our past" (124).

Now, I'll agree that often the almost exclusive focus on AP over UR may have given the impression that AP was more important than UR.  And surely Kane (and others) are to be thanked for showing that something along the lines of UR needs our attention.  But I'm puzzled that anyone would claim that satisfying AP is sufficient for free will.  Does anyone know who Kane might be talking about here?