49 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not terribly helpful, November 14, 2004
This review is from: Free Will: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)
I read this book because I wanted a concise and thorough refresher on the problem of free will and because I thought it might shed some helpful new light on the subject. The book was disappointing in both regards, unfortunately, and thus I cannot recommend it, either to the beginning or the advanced student.
Let me mention that my disappointment is not due to any lack of sympathy for the author's project. Like Dr. Pink, I affirm libertarian freedom and I reject attempts to naturalize human agency. I am glad that the author wishes to defend a traditional, robust conception of free will, but I found his exposition repetitive and confusing and his arguments almost wholly unpersuasive.
It should also be said that the book is not without insights. For example, it succeeds in showing how, thanks to the naturalist program of Thomas Hobbes, the modern problem of free will differs importantly from the problem as treated in the medieval period. The book frames the free will problem in terms of action theory, a somewhat interesting approach, and it contains a pretty good critique of agent causation.
Nevertheless, in my judgment, the book's negative qualities outweigh the positive. A constant source of irritation is Pink's appeals to "what we ordinarily believe" to answer determinist and compatibilist objections. It is as if he thinks that folk ontology includes a worked-out libertarian theory of agency, and that compatibilism and determinism enjoy absolutely no support from our everyday intuitions.
A more serious problem is the author's failure to define his terms clearly or to give a precise map of the terrain he is covering. For example, he never clearly distinguishes, and in some places seems to conflate, freedom as ultimate responsibility and freedom as alternative possibilities (cf. Robet Kane, The Significance of Free Will). And he makes no mention of, among other things, the consequence argument, the distinction between agent causation and event causation, reactive attitudes, or Frankfurt examples. Such omissions are surprising in a book purporting to introduce the subject of free will.
Worse yet, while the author discusses compatibilism at some length, if only as a foil for his own view, he does not consider incompatibilist determinism in any detail and he does not mention semi-compatibilism at all. This book is really an introduction to libertarianism, not free will, and an unclear one at that. There is nothing wrong with defending one's point of view, of course, but the reader does not come away with a clear understanding of alternative theories, let alone the arguments for them.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the book is its obscurity. Not only is the author's writing muddled, as already mentioned, but I find his theory, well, bizarre. Pink's thesis is something like the following: Freedom is a sui generis non-causal power to form goals exercised through the medium of action. Perhaps this speaks to my shortcomings more than the author's, but I am still puzzling over what this amounts to. I think Pink would need to develop his view in much more detail, including a careful excursus on causation, before it became clear. In the present book, his attempt to lay out his view competes with his aim of providing a "very short introduction" to free will, and consequently he succeeds in neither.
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19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Biased, October 20, 2004
This review is from: Free Will: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)
I don't know whether this book is biased or I am (or both), but I think it's the first. Pink exhorts notions of freedom and action while constantly mentioning the awful THREAT to his cherished libertarian freedom that the Hobbesian style determinism poses. I admit with shame (which isn't necessary because I don't have free will) to not having read the entire leaflet. That's why I will give it 3 stars and not just two. I don't want to be unfair to the author. But why did I not read the entire book? I'll tell you why. I had enough by the time that Pink says (paraphrased) "there had better be a solution to this threat to libertarian freedom because it is our everyday feeling that we have this kind of freedom", then proceeding to say something that IMO amounts to claiming decisions spring into existence by themselves!
The book is nevertheless quite a good (and handy sized) introduction to the topic in terms of providing a general overview and introduction to the topic, as far as I as a layman can judge. I think he fights for his libertarianism as if his very life was at stake. In a sense that's probably how he sees it, as the free will debate is also related to concepts of the self. I'd say this book is definitely fine for everybody who clings as fiercely to the notion of free agency as Pink does. Everybody else should, like I will, look elsewhere for a good book on free will/determinism.
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very short intro + Embarrassing attempt at philosophy, July 4, 2006
This review is from: Free Will: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback)
First let me say that the book lives up to its name. It gives an introduction that is very short. Unfortunately, the introduction is made even shorter by Pink's "original contribution to the field of philosophy", which barges it's way into the final two chapters, chortling at the plausibility of a deterministic existence.
One expects to find this sort of chauvinistic approach in a work by a religious or political proponent, but to see it in what is supposed to be a philosophical tract is shameful. The author clearly finds the prospect of a deterministic existence unbearable, constantly referring to the `threat' to our freedom, and at one point derisively describing Hobbes' compatibilist desire-based take on the subject as leading us "marionette-like, successfully to do only what [it] motivates us to do". In fact the author's refutation of Hobbes' compatibilism is horribly flawed. His argument is summed up on page 111: "Freedom, our power over our own action, cannot plausibly be identified as a causal power of prior desires or other passive motivations to determine how we act. And that is because we can deliberately use our own action, the very action through which we exercise our freedom, to frustrate our desires." Or could it be that one desire (perhaps oriented toward a larger goal) is overpowering a weaker one? Whoops!
Then there is deterministic incompatibilism, which Pink glosses over or outright dismisses, but perhaps we can forgive him for this, since the book purports to be an introduction to free will and not determinism. All the same I found its superficial treatment a bit disappointing.
A few sentences in the book caused me to laugh out loud, such as: "Goal-directed action can perfectly well take a form that need not be caused by desires or indeed by any other prior motivation." OK then...sure. Although the size of the book may have impeded Pink's ability to exonerate this seemingly insane statement (or perhaps the breadth of the English lexicon, as evidenced by his use of `words' like `up-to-us-ness'), as I read on I became increasingly certain it had more to do with deficiencies in the author's logistics. In the end his argument basically amounts to "although other physical events can be completely attributed to prior and/or currents causes, human actions cannot." Has anyone heard of a physical event occurring without a cause? No? Neither have I. I suppose if the causes leading to an action do not contribute 100% to that action happening, you could make up an imaginary force that contributes the rest, call it freedom, then say "Ha! We DO have free will." Just don't do that and pretend you're making an original contribution to philosophy.
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