Carl Ginet

Alfred Mele and David Robb (1998, 2003) offer what they claim is a counter-example to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), the principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. In their example, a person makes a decision by his own indeterministic causal process though antecedent circumstances ensure he could not have done otherwise. Specifically, a simultaneously occurring process in him would deterministically cause the decision at the precise time it actually occurs if he were not to make it 'on his own' i.e. without being deterministically caused.Their case is designed to avoid a well-known dilemma that has plagued earlier apparent counterexamples of this sort. We argue, however, that Mele andRobb's example does not have all the features necessary in order for it to undermine PAP. It still fails to avoid the original dilemma

This chapter argues for a noncausal libertarian account of free will. According to this account, a person’s free actions cannot be caused at all. The chapter compares its libertarian view to Kane’s event-causal libertarian view. It critiques Kane’s proposals concerning self-forming actions and indeterministic causation. The chapter explains why it thinks that its non-causal view is to be preferred over Kane’s event-causal view. The chapter also discusses the luck objection to libertarianism. The chapter isolates what he believes is the intuition that the luck argument gives rise to. Finally, the chapter considers the strength of our reasons for believing that uncaused actions might be found in the natural order.

If among the spate of books on free will in recent years there are any that a philosopher concerned with that topic should have handy, this is one of them. Its coverage of the free-will issues debated in the philosophical literature of the last twenty years or so is penetrating, instructive, and by far the most thorough I’ve seen. Kane defends his own positions, but he is unusually fair, even generous, in expounding opposing views. And, while the book is not a popular treatment, it is written in an accessible and engaging style. It could have been shorter, by being less repetitious and in places more succinctly written, without loss of content or accessibility—indeed with some gain in accessibility for those who are not engaged in reading it through but just wish to consult it for what it has to say on particular issues. There is a fairly extensive and helpful index. It is altogether a very appealing and useful book.

Este estudo desenvolve uma abordagem do que significa para uma proposição ser autoevidente para alguém, baseado na ideia de que certas proposições são tais que plenamente entendê-las significa crer nelas. Argumenta-se que, quando uma proposição p é autoevidente para alguém, tem-se justificação a priori não-inferencial para crer que p e, eis um traço bem-vindo, uma justificação que não envolve exercer qualquer tipo especial de faculdade intuitiva; se, em adição, é verdade que p e não existe nenhuma razão para crer que p é incoerente, então sabe-se a priori que p. O estudo argumenta que certas proposições profundamente contingentes, por exemplo, a verdade que eu agora expressaria ao dizer “Eu existo”, podem também ser auto-evidentes para e, portanto, conhecidas a priori pela pessoa sobre a qual elas são, no momento sobre o qual elas são; mas, uma vez que elas não podem ser conhecidas a priori, ou mesmo expressas, por qualquer outro ou em qualquer outro momento, elas não deveriam contar como verdades a priori.

The reliability of a belief-producing process is a matter of how likely it is that the process will produce beliefs that are true. The term reliabilism may be used to refer to any position that makes this idea of reliability central to the explication of some important epistemic concept. I know of three such positions that appeal to some epistemologists: a reliabilist account of what makes a belief justified, a reliabilist account of what makes a true belief knowledge, and a reliabilist answer to the question of the fourth condition, the question of what must be added to justified true belief to make knowledge. Obviously these are alternative positions rather than parts of a single coherent whole. I think of the first as reliabilism’s boldest stand, the second as the position to which it may retreat when the first is found untenable, and the third as its last refuge. I will criticize only the first two positions.