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Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage: An Essay on Free Will

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This is, in my opinion, a classic. It develops basically a compatibalist account which takes moral responsibility and the freedom necessary for it as compatible with the truth of determinism. It takes off on a strawsonian theme that views our moral "reactive" emotions such as resentment and indignation as justified on the particular "quality of will" of those who's action are under moral evaluation and appraisal.

We judge someone's actions as worthy of resentment or indignation whenever they display certain bad qualities of will such as malice or lack of concern, e.g. We praise someone's actions whenever they display good quality of will such as compassion, kindness, concern, e.g. Traditional incompatibalists (those who see free will, and hence, moral responsibility as incompatible with the existence of determinism) have tried to constrain the locus of blame and praise around the existence of alternative possibilities. One is blame worthy of his action e.g. when he truly could have done otherwise but didn't. But Arpaly shows here that there is some room for a kind of robust meaningfulness, and perhaps, a kind of freedom of action without alternative possibilities one has necessary for moral responsibility, something incompatibalists believe we lack if determinism is true. This kind of compatibalist freedom is a kind of reasons responsiveness or a kind of mental content causation. Here, she draws on the work of many philosophers of mind and action such as Davidson and his critics. Specifically, the content which effectively motivates our actions has to be moral reasons or blameworthy or praiseworthy motives. Once we have this, we display enough of a kind of freedom which renders us morally responsible for our actions even if we could not have done otherwise (no genuine alternative possibilities for us). Certain kinds of mental content colors our life with meaning and our actions with the moral relevance necessary for justified judgments of blame even we we could not have done otherwise in the sense the incompatibalist wish to focuses on.

The major highlight of this book for me is the remarkably beautiful way it is written. It is not just written well in the standard way analytic philosophers come to think of well written philosophy: clear, concise, and well organized. It is all that and it has that quality that most "well written" analytic philosophical works lacks: it is entertaining to read. Arpaly's examples are decidedly entertaining; they are drawn from literature, daily life, and other well known places and they have a palpable quality which are strikingly appropriate to each task she sets out to argue. The book is playful yet passionately argued. The account given so far will not convince the hardcore incompabibalists but Arpaly goes on to argue that the kind of freedom the incompatibalist want (real alternative possibilities) is a kind that is essentially incoherent and conflicts with many of our desires for a meaningful life. I highly recommend this book as it is well argued, insightful and very entertaining.