Libertarian Accounts of Free Will

This comprehensive study offers a balanced assessment of libertarian accounts of free will. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view from popular objections concerning rationality and diminished control. He subtly

explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. Clarke then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates agent causation and nondeterministic event causation. He

defends this view from a number of objections but argues that we should find the substance causation required by any agent-causal account to be impossible. Clarke concludes that if a broad thesis of incompatibilism is correct--one on which both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible

with determinism--then no libertarian account is entirely adequate.

"I think this is one of the best books on free will to be published in the past fifteen years, a period during which many excellent works have appeared on the subject. Clarke's critical survey of libertarian theories is an invaluable resource for philosophers interested in free will and his discussions are invariably enlightening."--Mind

"Libertarian Accounts of Free Will offers a careful, often insightful examination of the prospects for an adequate naturalist libertarian incompatibilism; the book examines, that is, theories of freedom under which free action is possible should determinism be false and should the world be as the natural sciences tell us it is. It is an excellent book that anyone interested in this topic should read."--Gideon Yaffe, The Journal of Ethics

"Clarke's book marks a leop forward in our understanding of all the various forms of incompatibilism."--Gideon Yaffe, The Journal of Ethics

"This book is an important contribution to the debate on free will. Clarke provides a careful and comprehensive assessment of a variety of libertarian accounts. He displays impressive command of the subject and argues with subtlety and ingenuity. As far as I can tell, he significantly advances the discussion about such central issues as the problem of active control and the possibility of agent causation."--Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Description Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view--one on which a free action must be non-deterministically caused by its immediate causal antecedents--from the charges concerning rationality and diminished control. Clarke subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. He then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates agent causation and non-deterministic event causation.

This comprehensive study offers a balanced assessment of libertarian accounts of free will. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view from popular objections concerning rationality and diminished control. He subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. Clarke then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates agent causation and nondeterministic event causation. He defends this view from a number of objections but argues that we should find the substance causation required by any agent-causal account to be impossible. Clarke concludes that if a broad thesis of incompatibilism is correct--one on which both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism--then no libertarian account is entirely adequate.

Introduction

1. Incompatibilism.

2. Active Control and Causation.

3. Event-Causal Accounts and the Problem of Explanation.

4. Deliberative Libertarian Accounts.

5. The Problem of Diminished Control.

6. The Problem of Value.

7. The Freedom of Decisions and Other Actions.

8. An Integrated Agent-Causal Account.

9. Agent Causation and Control.

10. Substance and Cause.

Conclusion

References

Index