This comprehensive reference provides an exhaustive guide to current scholarship on the perennial problem of Free Will--perhaps the most hotly and voluminously debated of all philosophical problems. While reference is made throughout to the contributions of major thinkers of the past, the emphasis is on recent research. The essays, most of which are previously unpublished, combine the work of established scholars with younger thinkers who are beginning to make significant contributions. Taken as a whole, the Handbook provides an engaging and accessible roadmap to the state of the art thinking on this enduring topic.
**
Review
"This is simply a terrific book. Anyone with an interest in what (analytic) philosophy has done with the perennial question of free will during the last forty years will find it invaluable. If the other books in the new Oxford Handbook Series are remotely as good as this one, Oxford has really outdone itself."-- Philosophia Christi
" The Handboook of Free Will is a splendid addition to the recent Oxford Handbook series.... The scope of the project is impressive, and no work of this scope on the free will problem can be found anywhere else. The volume is much welcome."-- International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
About the Author
Robert Kane is at University of Texas, Austin.
This second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Free Wil l is intended to be a sourcebook and guide to current work on free will and related subjects. Its focus is on writings of the past forty years, in which there has been a resurgence of interest in traditional issues about the freedom of the will in the light of new developments in the sciences, philosophy and humanistic studies. Special attention is given to research on free will of the first decade of the twenty-first century since the publication of the first edition of the Handbook. All the essays have been newly written or rewritten for this volume. In addition, there are new essayists and essays surveying topics that have become prominent in debates about free will in the past decade, including new work on the relation of free will to physics, the neurosciences, cognitive science, psychology and empirical philosophy, new versions of traditional views (compatibilist, incompatibilist, libertarian, etc.) and new views (e.g., revisionism) that have emerged. The twenty-eight essays by prominent international scholars and younger scholars cover a host of free will related issues, such as moral agency and responsibility, accountability and blameworthiness in ethics, autonomy, coercion and control in social theory, criminal liability, responsibility and punishment in legal theory, issues about the relation of mind to body, consciousness and the nature of action in philosophy of mind and the cognitive and neurosciences, questions about divine foreknowledge, providence and human freedom in philosophy of religion, and general metaphysical questions about necessity and possibility, determinism, time and chance, quantum reality, causation and explanation.
**
About the Author
Robert Kane is University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy Emeritus and Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He is author of Free Will and Values , Through the Moral Maze , The Significance of Free Will , A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will , and Ethics and the Questfor Wisdom , among other works on mind and action, free will, ethics, and value theory.
This comprehensive reference provides an exhaustive guide to current scholarship on the perennial problem of Free Will--perhaps the most hotly and voluminously debated of all philosophical problems. While reference is made throughout to the contributions of major thinkers of the past, the emphasis is on recent research. The essays, most of which are previously unpublished, combine the work of established scholars with younger thinkers who are beginning to make significant contributions. Taken as a whole, the Handbook provides an engaging and accessible roadmap to the state of the art thinking on this enduring topic.
**
Review
"This is simply a terrific book. Anyone with an interest in what (analytic) philosophy has done with the perennial question of free will during the last forty years will find it invaluable. If the other books in the new Oxford Handbook Series are remotely as good as this one, Oxford has really outdone itself."-- Philosophia Christi
" The Handboook of Free Will is a splendid addition to the recent Oxford Handbook series.... The scope of the project is impressive, and no work of this scope on the free will problem can be found anywhere else. The volume is much welcome."-- International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
About the Author
Robert Kane is at University of Texas, Austin.
This second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Free Wil l is intended to be a sourcebook and guide to current work on free will and related subjects. Its focus is on writings of the past forty years, in which there has been a resurgence of interest in traditional issues about the freedom of the will in the light of new developments in the sciences, philosophy and humanistic studies. Special attention is given to research on free will of the first decade of the twenty-first century since the publication of the first edition of the Handbook. All the essays have been newly written or rewritten for this volume. In addition, there are new essayists and essays surveying topics that have become prominent in debates about free will in the past decade, including new work on the relation of free will to physics, the neurosciences, cognitive science, psychology and empirical philosophy, new versions of traditional views (compatibilist, incompatibilist, libertarian, etc.) and new views (e.g., revisionism) that have emerged. The twenty-eight essays by prominent international scholars and younger scholars cover a host of free will related issues, such as moral agency and responsibility, accountability and blameworthiness in ethics, autonomy, coercion and control in social theory, criminal liability, responsibility and punishment in legal theory, issues about the relation of mind to body, consciousness and the nature of action in philosophy of mind and the cognitive and neurosciences, questions about divine foreknowledge, providence and human freedom in philosophy of religion, and general metaphysical questions about necessity and possibility, determinism, time and chance, quantum reality, causation and explanation.
**
About the Author
Robert Kane is University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy Emeritus and Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He is author of Free Will and Values , Through the Moral Maze , The Significance of Free Will , A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will , and Ethics and the Quest for Wisdom , among other works on mind and action, free will, ethics, and value theory.