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23Much more than just an anthology, this survey of humanity's search for the meaning of life includes the latest contributions to the debate, a judicious selection of key canonical essays, and insightful commentary by internationally respected philosophers.
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Four Views on Free Will, Second Edition (2nd ed.)John Wiley & Sons. 2024.Four Views on Free Will is a robust and careful debate about free will, how it interacts with determinism and indeterminism, and whether we have it or not. Providing the most up-to-date account of four major positions in the free will debate, the second edition of this classic text presents the opposing perspectives of renowned philosophers John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas. Substantially revised throughout, this new volume contains eight in-depth chapters, almos…Read more
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34Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings (edited book, 9th ed.)Oxford University Press. 2021.Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings is the most comprehensive topically organized collection of classical and contemporary philosophy available. Ideal for introductory philosophy courses, the text offers a broad range of readings and depth. The text includes sections on God and Evil, Knowledge and Reality, the Philosophy of Science, the Mind/Body problem, Freedom of Will, Consciousness, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Existential Issues, and philosophical Puzzles and Pa…Read more
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58Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings, International Edition, is the most comprehensive topically organized collection of classical and contemporary philosophy available. The text includes sections on God and evil, knowledge and reality, the philosophy of science, the mind/body problem, freedom of will, consciousness, ethics, political philosophy, existential issues, and philosophical puzzles and paradoxes
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200Introduction to philosophy: classical and contemporary readings (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1986.Introduction to Philosophy, Fourth Edition, is the most comprehensive topically organized collection of classical and contemporary philosophy available. Building on the exceptionally successful tradition of previous editions, this edition for the first time incorporates the insights of a new coeditor, John Martin Fischer, and has been updated and revised to make it more accessible. Ideal for introductory philosophy courses, the text includes sections on the meaning of life, God and evil, knowled…Read more
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1The resilience of moral responsibilityIn Taylor W. Cyr, Andrew Law & Neal A. Tognazzini (eds.), Freedom, Responsibility, and Value: Essays in Honor of John Martin Fischer, Routledge. 2023.
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49Why Immortality Could Be GoodInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 32 (1): 78-100. 2023.I revisit my article, “Why Immortality Is Not So Bad,” in which I argued that Bernard Williams’s thesis that immortality would necessarily be boring for any human being is false. Here I point out various ways in which Williams’s treatment of the issues has tilted and distorted the subsequent debates.
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14Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free WillOxford University Press USA. 2009.In this collection of essays on the metaphysical issues pertaining to death, the meaning of life, and freedom of the will, John Martin Fischer argues that death can be a bad thing for the individual who dies. He defends the claim that something can be a bad thing--a misfortune--for an individual, even if he never experiences it as bad. Fischer also defends the commonsense asymmetry in our attitudes toward death and prenatal nonexistence: we are indifferent to the time before we are born, but we …Read more
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37Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.
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When the will is freeIn Timothy O'Connor (ed.), Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will, Oxford University Press. 1995.
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40Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big QuestionsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better if we were immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Life, Death, and Meaning brings together key readings, primarily by English-speaking philosophers, on such 'big questions.'.
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85Moral Responsibility Skepticism and SemiretributivismThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 30 37-62. 2023.Moral responsibility skepticism has traditionally been dismissed as a nonstarter, but because of the important work of Derk Pereboom, Gregg Caruso, and others, it has become increasingly influential. I lay out this doctrine, and I subject it to critical scrutiny. I argue that the metaphysical arguments about free will do not yield the result that we do not deserve (in a “basic” sense) the attitudes and actions definitive of moral responsibility. Further, I argue that skepticism leaves out crucia…Read more
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228Four Views on Free WillWiley-Blackwell. 2007.Focusing on the concepts and interactions of free will, moral responsibility, and determinism, this text represents the most up-to-date account of the four major positions in the free will debate. Four serious and well-known philosophers explore the opposing viewpoints of libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism, and revisionism The first half of the book contains each philosopher’s explanation of his particular view; the second half allows them to directly respond to each other’s arg…Read more
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7Responsibility and AutonomyIn Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: The Concept of Responsibility Responsibility and Autonomy References Further reading.
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912. Why Is Death Bad?In John Martin Fischer (ed.), The Metaphysics of death, Stanford University Press. pp. 219-230. 1993.
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51. Introduction: Death, Metaphysics, and MoralityIn The Metaphysics of death, Stanford University Press. pp. 1-30. 1993.
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50University Professor Lecture: Near-Death Experiences: The Stories They TellThe Journal of Ethics 22 (2): 97-112. 2018.I argue that we can interpret the stories told by near-death experiences in a naturalistic way. Thus, the profound significance of NDEs need not come from a supernaturalistic conception of them, according to which in an NDE the individual is in touch with a heavenly realm. We can respect the sincerity of NDE reports, but we can capture their meaning in a naturalistic framework.
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The freedom required for moral responsibilityIn David Owen Brink, Susan Sauvé Meyer & Christopher John Shields (eds.), Virtue, happiness, knowledge: themes from the work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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16What's with free will?: ethics and religion after neuroscience (edited book)Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. 2020.Are humans free, or are we determined by our genes and the world around us? The question of freedom is not only one of philosophy’s greatest conundrums, but also one of the most fundamental questions of human existence. It’s particularly pressing in societies like ours, where our core institutions of law, ethics, and religion are built around the belief in individual freedom. Can one still affirm human freedom in an age of science? And if free will doesn’t exist, does it make sense to act as tho…Read more
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43The Frankfurt-style cases: extinguishing the flickers of freedomInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (9): 1185-1209. 2022.ABSTRACT The Frankfurt-style Counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities have been controversial. I sketch some of the major moves in the debates surrounding the FSCs, and I seek to provide an answer to a big challenge: the indeterministic horn of the ‘dilemma defense’. Given indeterminism, it is unclear how Black can know with certainty what Jones will choose and do in the future; this leaves at least some open alternatives for Jones. I adopt the strategy of positing God in Bl…Read more
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34An Actual-Sequence TheologyRoczniki Filozoficzne 70 (1): 49-78. 2022.In this paper I develop a sketch of an overall theology that dispenses with “alternative-possibilities” freedom in favor of “actual-sequence” freedom. I hold that acting freely does not require freedom to do otherwise, and that acting freely is the freedom component of moral responsibility. Employing this analytical apparatus, I show how we can offer various important elements of a theology that employs only the notion of acting freely. I distinguish my approach from the important development of…Read more
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27Local-Miracle Compatibilism: A CritiqueIn Marco Hausmann & Jörg Noller (eds.), Free Will: Historical and Analytic Perspectives, Springer Verlag. pp. 111-138. 2021.The Consequence Argument is one of the leading arguments for the incompatibility of causal determinism and free will in the sense of freedom to do otherwise. Thus, it challenges “classical compatibilism” of the sort defended by many philosophers, such as Hume, Schlick, Ayer, Lehrer, Perry, Lewis, Vihvelin, et, al. David Lewis has offered what has become the most influential response: local-miracle compatibilism. I present a critique of this kind of response to the Consequence Argument. My critiq…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |