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34On Bilgrami’s Belief and Meaning (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (3): 621-626. 1998.
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183Optimistic skepticism about free willIn Paul Russell & Oisin Deery (eds.), The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings From the Contemporary Debates, Oup Usa. pp. 421. 2013.
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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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642Living 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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63Mathematical expressibility, perceptual relativity, and secondary qualitiesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 22 (1): 63-88. 1991.
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323Kant 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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318Living without free will: The case for hard incompatibilismThe Journal of Ethics 6 (3): 477-488. 2002.
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139Kant 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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79Kant'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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32Free 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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1846Hard-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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331Free 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
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762Defending hard incompatibilismMidwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1): 228-247. 2005.In _Living Without Free Will_, I develop and argue for a view according to which our being morally responsible would be ruled out if determinism were true, and also if indeterminism were true and the causes of our actions were exclusively events.1 Absent agent causation, indeterministic causal histories are as threatening to moral responsibility as deterministic histories are, and a generalization argument from manipulation cases shows that deterministic histories indeed undermine moral responsi…Read more
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193Hard incompatibilism and its rivalsPhilosophical Studies 144 (1). 2009.In this article I develop several responses to my co-authors of Four Views on Free Will. In reply to Manuel Vargas, I suggest a way to clarify his claim that our concepts of free will and moral responsibility should be revised, and I question whether he really proposes to revise the notion of basic desert at stake in the debate. In response to Robert Kane, I examine the role the rejection of Frankfurt-style arguments has in his position, and whether his criticism of my version of this argument i…Read more
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117Frankfurt examples, derivative responsibility, and the timing objection1Philosophical Issues 22 (1): 298-315. 2012.
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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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35Free 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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200Free 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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139Free Will Skepticism and Meaning in LifeIn Robert Kane (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, Oxford University Press. 2001.
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Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |