A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will [Paperback]

Robert Kane (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 019514970X | ISBN-13: 978-0195149708 | Publication Date: March 24, 2005

Accessible to students with no background in the subject, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will provides an extensive and up-to-date overview of all the latest views on this central problem of philosophy. Opening with a concise introduction to the history of the problem of free will--and its place in the history of philosophy--the book then turns to contemporary debates and theories about free will, determinism, and related subjects like moral responsibility, coercion, compulsion, autonomy, agency, rationality, freedom, and more. Classical compatibilist and new compatibilist theories of free will are considered along with the latest incompatibilist or libertarian theories and the most recent skeptical challenges to free will. Separate chapters are devoted to the relation of free will to moral responsibility and ethics; to modern science; and to religious questions about predestination, divine foreknowledge, and human freedom. Numerous down-to-earth examples and challenging thought experiments enliven the text. The book is an ideal addition to introduction to philosophy, metaphysics, and free will courses.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book, by far, stands alone as the best book to introduce this topic to the introductory philosophy student. It is stellar. . . . Kane is a master at capturing the kernel of even the most challenging and intricate issues in the free will debate, showing their structures and displaying an underlying simplicity."--Michael McKenna, Ithaca College

"With admirable clarity and on the basis of the most comprehensive knowledge of the subject, Professor Kane charts a way through a jungle of arguments, counterarguments, and rebuttals of those arguments. . . . His use of vivid images (such as the images of Incompatibilist Mountain and the garden of the forking paths) contributes to making the book a delightful read."--Ulrike Heuer, University of Pennsylvania

"Any educated person willing to make the effort can now read Kane's inclusive, careful and accessible book and know that he or she is familiar with the free-will problem and with the current state of human understanding of it. . . .A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will will replace all other introductions to the subject." --The Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Robert Kane is at University of Texas, Austin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019514970X
• ISBN-13: 978-0195149708
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Introduction and Research Tool, February 18, 2006

By 

Neal Judisch (University of Texas, Austin) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (Paperback)

Robert Kane's "Contemporary Introduction to Free Will" is hands down the finest text in its class. Professors who wish to include a component on free will in their introductory courses, or who are looking for a scholarly and accessible text for a class on free will and related issues, will find in Kane's text a thoughtful, subtle, and above all lucid and authoritative presentation of the problem of freedom in its many dimensions, as well as a charitable and well-informed assessment of historical and contemporary stances on the problem of free will.

Most introductory textbooks in metaphysics or general philosophy which include a discussion of free will fall short in obvious respects: the author(s) either present a rather outdated picture of the free will debate or, more commonly, for the sake of accessibility "dumb down" the alternative approaches to free will and the central arguments deployed by proponents of those approaches. Kane's volume avoids both those pitfalls: his book is thoroughly contemporary (without ignoring the historical roots of the free will problem or the continuity that exists between historical and up-to-date debates on the topic), and it is simultaneously intelligible to the beginner and philosophically precise, a very difficult balance to strike. In addition, Kane provides a very useful bibliography for those who wish to pursue further research on the various problems of free will -- including the metaphysics of free agency, the compatibility of freedom and determinism, the relation of freedom and determinism to moral responsibility, and the compatibility of creaturely freedom with divine omniscience -- pointing both the student and the professional philosopher to the most significant traditional and recent contributions to those questions. These features make Kane's book the best choice both for beginning classes and for upper-level and even graduate-level courses. Highly recommended.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One look at 'Kane, A Contemp. Intro. to Free Will', March 3, 2008

By 

Wallace Kleck (Tehachapi, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (Paperback)

--my point of view: PhD, geology, retired teacher, 74, minor present study of philosophy; main interest--'what's this Free Will stuff?'--
I would suggest that Kane probably wrote this as a introductry college suplement to a philosophy class; as such it is very good. For the non-student, non-philosophy student it is a bit heavy in the technical terminology of philosophy; however, Kane writes well and provides enough explanation to 'slide around' some of the heavy terminology--it is still not a quick read.
For me, this provided both an introduction to technical philosophy as well as some ideas on how experts in the field approach and think about Free Will. In that sense, the book did exactly what I wanted.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Introduction to the Free Will Debate, December 21, 2007

By 

J. Stewart - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (Paperback)

This book gives a clear and concise description of various philosophical positions on the free will debate. Kane opens the discussion by defining the free will problem; he distinguishes between "surface" freedoms, which allow us to do what we want without constraints from external agents, versus "deeper" freedom, which implies that an individual's decision has alternate possibilities available (i.e., if the clock could somehow be turned back--given the exact same causal events of history, individual experience, etc., leading up to a decision--that an individual could possibly make a different decision). In other words, surface freedom entails that individuals can do what they want while deeper freedom means that they can also will what they will. Kane then proceeds to discuss determinism (the idea that all actions/events are determined by previous actions/events) and the position that a deterministic universe is either compatible or incompatible with the notion of free will (i.e., compatibilism or incompatibilism, respectively). Kane also discusses moral responsibility, along with various arguments concerning its relationship to free will and determinism, and the free will problem as it applies to the traditional religious views of predestination and omniscience.

I thought that Kane did an excellent job of presenting the arguments both for and against the various free will positions. He gave a number of bibliographical references in each chapter where the reader could go for more information on a particular position or argument. Kane seems to hold a libertarian view (i.e., he asserts that free will and determinism are incompatible and that free will exists such that determinism is false) but I thought that he fairly expressed the other viewpoints and honestly noted some difficulties with his own position. Also, his personal position does not come into focus until the last part of the book such that the book as a whole seems to provide a fair description of all sides and a fine introduction to the debate.

In the last part of the book, Kane argues for the deeper sense of free will by postulating what he terms as self-forming actions (actions that, in some sense, allow individuals to shape their own wills) and argues that these actions translate into ultimate responsibility (in the sense that because our wills would be our own creation, individuals are ultimately responsible as opposed to genes, environment, a creator, etc.). I understand the appeal of such an argument but it seemed to me that the rationale was molded into an initial assumption of freedom of the will (in the deeper sense defined above) while the argument for the existence of this deeper freedom seemed lacking to me and remained non-intuitive based on opposing arguments in preceding chapters. Regardless, I liked this book very much and I would recommend it to others who are interested in learning about the various philosophical positions concerning freedom of the will, determinism and their relationship to moral responsibility.