![]() The authors define various conceptions of freedom, offer five central questions in the debate, and introduce van Inwagen's Consequence argument (and its unavoidability operator Beta ) and Frankfurt cases. This chapter does an excellent job of describing the central debates and positions in the literature and then providing useful summaries of the fourteen chapters that follow. Introduction, "Freedom and Determinism: A Framework," by Campbell, O'Rourke, and Shier: I hope this exercise will help this review serve what I take to be one of its intended purposes - to inform potential readers whether they will want to get the book, and if so, which parts of it to spend their valuable time reading. MS = must-read for student (or other non-specialist) #John earman wiki free#ME = must-read for expert in free will debate R = primarily review of author's previous work After I summarize and occasionally critique the essays below, I label them according to these categories: essays presenting new arguments, and (more reviewer-relative) "must-read" essays vs. The volume's essays can be categorized in two ways: review essays vs. Having said this, there is still much to offer both of these audiences, and several essays are indispensable for philosophers engaged in the free will debate, including a few that discuss tangential issues that should be more central to the traditional debates. And for more advanced audiences, most of its review pieces cover familiar ground, limiting the book's primary appeal to the new work, some of which is tangential to the more central debates. Many of its selections are too narrow and technical for non-specialists (including most students) who want an introduction to the contemporary debates. Unfortunately, however, the book is not ideal for either of its two potential markets. There is not too much overlap in content with the other recent collections on free will, and many of the important positions and arguments in the current debates are covered, with the notable exceptions of agent-causation theories and recent skeptical positions about the existence of free will and moral responsibility. This volume offers five essays in which well-known philosophers in the field offer reviews of their positions, along with nine essays that offer interesting new arguments (see below). The latest is Freedom and Determinism, edited by Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, and David Shier, and drawn from papers presented at the 2001 meeting of the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference. In the last few years this work has been collected into numerous volumes. The free will debate has taken off in recent decades, driven largely by Peter van Inwagen's revitalization of incompatibilism, Harry Frankfurt's ammunition for compatibilism, interesting libertarian theories, and well-developed compatibilist theories. ![]()
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