Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy

This book argues that significant progress toward a plausible solution of the ancient philosophical problem of free will has been made over the past 125 years by a line of thinkers starting with William James. The latest work integrates Jamesian two-stage models of free will with the self-forming actions of Robert Kane, a leading libertarian and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Free Will. It also includes Daniel Dennett's Valerian Model and Alfred Mele's Modest Libertarianism. In this illustrated college-level sourcebook/textbook, Bob Doyle provides a history of the free will problem, a taxonomy of current free will positions, the standard argument against free will, the physics, biology, and neuroscience of free will, and extensive reviews of the work of Kane, Dennett, Mele, and the leading determinist philosopher, Ted Honderich. John Searle called it a scandal that after all the centuries of writing about free will, we have not agreed on much progress. According to Doyle, a more serious scandal today is that academic philosophers are convincing many young students that they are deterministic biological machines with only a "compatibilist free will," when genuine "libertarian" free will is available to us. Doyle recounts the many different forms of determinism that have been used over the centuries to deny human freedom and responsibility. To end the scandal, philosophers need to teach a two-stage model of free will and creativity that reconciles free will with indeterminism, just as David Hume reconciled freedom of action with determinism. The free-will model is actually triply compatible; compatible with an adequate determinism, compatible with indeterminism (since William James), and compatible with biological evolution. 'Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy' Bob Doyle Hardcover 9780983580270 480 pages, b&w, 40 figures, 15 sidebars, glossary, bibliography, index. $49.95USD Also available in paperback ($29.95) and various eBook editions.