•  32
    On Bilgrami’s Belief and Meaning (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (3): 621-626. 1998.
  •  1
    Living without Free Will
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2): 494-497. 2003.
  •  78
    Kant on God, Evil, and Teleology
    Faith 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
  •  622
    Living Without Free Will
    Cambridge 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
  •  302
    Kant on Transcendental Freedom1
    Philosophy 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
  •  306
    Living without free will: The case for hard incompatibilism
    The Journal of Ethics 6 (3): 477-488. 2002.
  •  137
    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
  •  3
    Kant on Concept and Intuition
    Dissertation, 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
  •  27
    Living Without Free Will by Derk Pereboom (review)
    The Journal of Ethics 6 (3): 305-309. 2002.
  •  166
    Kant’s Amphiboly
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 73 (1): 50-70. 1991.
  •  74
    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
  •  28
    Free will
    In 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
  •  1798
    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
  •  322
    Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life
    Oxford 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
  •  751
    Defending hard incompatibilism
    Midwest 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
  •  190
    Hard incompatibilism and its rivals
    Philosophical 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
  •  20
    Introduction
    Philosophical Explorations 16 (2): 97-100. 2013.
  •  32
    Defending Hard Incompatibilism
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1): 228-247. 2005.
  •  8
    Hard incompatibilism
    In John Martin Fischer (ed.), Four Views on Free Will, Blackwell. 2007.
  •  32
    Free 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
  •  275
    Is Our Conception of Agent-Causation Coherent?
    Philosophical Topics 32 (1/2): 275-286. 2004.
  •  191
    Free Will, Love and Anger
    Ideas 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 ..
  •  130
    Defending hard incompatibilism again
    In Nick Trakakis & Daniel Cohen (eds.), Essays on Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Cambridge Scholars Press. pp. 1--33. 2008.