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128On Alfred Mele's free will and luckPhilosophical Explorations 10 (2). 2007.I argue that agent-causal libertarianism has a strong initial rejoinder to Mele's luck argument against it, but that his claim that it has yet to be explained how agent-causation yields responsibility-conferring control has significant force. I suggest an avenue of response. Subsequently, I raise objections to Mele's criticisms of my four-case manipulation argument against compatibilism
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37Powers, laws and freedom of the will: Steven Horst: Laws, mind, and free will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011, 277pp, $36.00 HBMetascience 23 (3): 491-495. 2014.Laws, Mind, and Free Will is a highly valuable book for anyone interested in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, or in the problem of free will and moral responsibility. The book has three distinct but related parts. The first presents an anti-empiricist position on the laws of nature, according to which the point of the laws is not primarily to predict kinematic outcomes, but rather to characterize dynamics. One upshot of the account is that the laws have an attenuated role in determinin…Read more
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323Living without free will: The case for hard incompatibilismThe Journal of Ethics 6 (3): 477-488. 2002.
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141Kant on justification in transcendental philosophySynthese 85 (1). 1990.Kant''s claim that the justification of transcendental philosophy is a priori is puzzling because it should be consistent with (1) his general restriction on the justification of knowledge, that intuitions must play a role in the justification of all nondegenerate knowledge, with (2) the implausibility of a priori intuitions being the only ones on which transcendental philosophy is founded, and with (3) his professed view that transcendental philosophy is not analytic. I argue that this puzzle c…Read more
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3Kant on Concept and IntuitionDissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. 1985.This dissertation is an interpretation of Kant's theory of mental representation, and an attempt to elucidate this theory by viewing it from both historical and contemporary perspectives. After an exposition of Kant's notions of intuition, sensation, and concept, I argue that the theory as a whole can be seen as an Aristotelian reaction against Leibnizian rationalism and Humean empiricism and naturalism. As in Aristotelian theories, Kant argues that there are two distinct types of mental represe…Read more
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80Kant's Transcendental ArgumentsIn Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Metaphysics Research Lab. 2014.Among Immanuel Kant's most influential contributionsto philosophy is his development of the transcendental argument. InKant's conception, an argument of this kind begins with a compellingpremise about our thought, experience, or knowledge, and then reasonsto a conclusion that is a substantive and unobvious presupposition andnecessary condition of this premise. The crucial steps in thisreasoning are claims to the effect that a subconclusion or conclusionis a presupposition and necessary condition…Read more
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79Kant on God, Evil, and TeleologyFaith and Philosophy 13 (4): 508-533. 1996.In his mature period Kant maintained that human beings have never devised a theory that shows how the existence of God is compatible with the evil that actually exists. But he also held that an argument could be developed that we human beings might well not have the cognitive capacity to understand the relation between God and the world, and that therefore the existence of God might nevertheless be compatible with the evil that exists. At the core of Kant’s position lies the claim that God’s rel…Read more
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653Living Without Free WillCambridge University Press. 2001.Most people assume that, even though some degenerative or criminal behavior may be caused by influences beyond our control, ordinary human actions are not similarly generated, but rather are freely chosen, and we can be praiseworthy or blameworthy for them. A less popular and more radical claim is that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform. It is this hard determinist stance that Derk Pereboom articulates in Living Without Free Will. Pereboom argues that our best scien…Read more
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66Mathematical expressibility, perceptual relativity, and secondary qualitiesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 22 (1): 63-88. 1991.
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326Kant on Transcendental Freedom1Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (3): 537-567. 2007.Transcendental freedom consists in the power of agents to produce actions without being causally determined by antecedent conditions, nor by their natures, in exercising this power. Kant contends that we cannot establish whether we are actually or even possibly free in this sense. He claims only that our conception of being transcendentally free involves no inconsistency, but that as a result the belief that we have this freedom meets a pertinent standard of minimal credibility. For the rest, it…Read more
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5Free will, evil, and divine providenceIn Andrew Dole & Andrew Chignell (eds.), God and the Ethics of Belief: New Essays in Philosophy of Religion, Cambridge University Press. 2005.
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36Free Will (edited book)Hackett Publishing Company. 2009.A unique anthology featuring contributions to the dispute over free will from Aristotle to the twenty-first century, Derk Pereboom's volume presents the most thoughtful positions taken in this crucial debate and discusses their consequences for free will's traditional corollary, moral responsibility. The Second Edition retains the organizational structure that made its predecessor the leading anthology of its kind, while adding major new selections by such philosophers as Spinoza, Reid, John Mar…Read more
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201Free Will, Love and AngerIdeas Y Valores 58 (141): 169-189. 2009.I have argued we are not free in the sense required for moral responsibility, while at the same time a conception of life without this type of free will would not be devastating to morality or to our sense of meaning in life, and in certain respects it may even be beneficial (cf. Pereboom 2001). In ..
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130Defending hard incompatibilism againIn Nick Trakakis & Daniel Cohen (eds.), Essays on free will and moral responsibility, Cambridge Scholars Press. pp. 1--33. 2008.
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140Free Will Skepticism and Meaning in LifeIn Robert Kane (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, Oxford University Press. 2001.
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153Further thoughts about a Frankfurt-style argumentPhilosophical Explorations 12 (2). 2009.I have presented a Frankfurt-style argument (Pereboom 2000, 2001, 2003) against the requirement of robust alternative possibilities for moral responsibility that features an example, Tax Evasion , in which an agent is intuitively morally responsible for a decision, has no robust alternative possibilities, and is clearly not causally determined to make the decision. Here I revise the criterion for robustness in response to suggestions by Dana Nelkin, Jonathan Vance, and Kevin Timpe, and I respond…Read more
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128Free Will Skepticism and Criminal PunishmentIn Thomas A. Nadelhoffer (ed.), The Future of Punishment, Oup Usa. pp. 49. 2013.
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34Free willIn Roger Crisp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2013.This chapter analyses the problem of free will and moral responsibility, to which the history of philosophy records three standard reactions. Compatibilists maintain that it is possible for us to have the free will required for moral responsibility if determinism is true. Others contend that determinism is not compossible with our having the free will required for moral responsibility – they are incompatibilists – but they resist the reasons for determinism and claim that we do possess free will…Read more
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1882Hard-Incompatibilist Existentialism: Neuroscience, Punishment, and Meaning in LifeIn Gregg D. Caruso & Owen J. Flanagan (eds.), Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience, Oxford University Press. 2018.As philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism continue to gain traction, we are likely to see a fundamental shift in the way people think about free will and moral responsibility. Such shifts raise important practical and existential concerns: What if we came to disbelieve in free will? What would this mean for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and the law? What would it do to our standing as human beings? Would it cause nihilism and despair as som…Read more
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336Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in LifeOxford University Press. 2014.Derk Pereboom articulates and defends an original, forward-looking conception of moral responsibility. He argues that although we may not possess the kind of free will that is normally considered necessary for moral responsibility, this does not jeopardize our sense of ourselves as agents, or a robust sense of achievement and meaning in life
Ithaca, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |