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Robert Kane
Free Will: New Directions for an Ancient Problem


Abstract

Over the past four decades, I have been developing a distinctive view of free will accor­ding to which it requires that agents be ultimately responsible for the creation or forma­tion of their own wills (characters and purposes). Such a view of free will is, I believe, an important part of what it means to be a self or person and to live a human life. My goal in this paper, as in past writings, is to explain how a free will of this traditional kind—which I argue is incompati­ble with determinism—can be reconciled with modern developments in the sciences and philo­sophy. A free will of the ultimate kind I defend (often called “in­compatibilist” or “libertarian”) has been under attack in the modern era since the seven­teenth century by philosophers and scientists alike as obscure and unintelligible and has been dismissed by many twentieth century thinkers for its supposed lack of fit with mo­dern images of humans in the natural and human sciences. Against these charges, I argue that an incompatibilist or non-determinist conception of free will can be defended without the usual appeals to obscure or myste­rious forms of agency (Cartesian egos, nou­me­nal selves, non-event agent causes, etc.) and can be reconciled with recent develop­ments in the sciences—physical, biological, neurological, cognitive and behavioral. Indeed, I sug­gest that some modern developments in the sciences can help to unlock certain puzzles tradi­tionally associated with free will. In the paper, I address criticisms that a nondetermi­nist free will does not allow sufficient agent control, reduces to mere chance or luck or ran­dom­ness, fails to account of moral responsibility, and the like; and I relate such a free will to the nature of the self or person and to ideas of value, rationality and autonomy.



Biography
Robert Kane (PhD Yale University) is University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin.  He is also the author of seven books and sixty articles on the philosophy of mind and action, ethical theory and social ethics, the theory of value and philosophy of religion, inclu­ding Free Will and Values (1985), Through the Moral Maze: Searching for Absolute Values in a Pluralistic World (1994), The Significance of Free Will (1996) and A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (2005).  He is the Editor of The Ox­ford Handbook of Free Will (2002) among other anthologies and a multiple contri­bu­tor to the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy.  His lecture series, The Quest for Mea­ning: Va­lues, Ethics and the Modern Experience, appears in The Great Courses on Tape Series (The Teaching Company).  The Significance of Free Will was the first annual winner of the Robert W. Hamilton Faculty Book Award.  The recipient of fifteen major teaching awards, Professor Kane was named in 1995 an inaugural member of the Univer­si­ty of Texas' Aca­demy of Distinguished Teachers.  His latest work is a recently comple­ted manuscript on wisdom, values and ethics entitled Ethics and the Quest for Wisdom.  Listings: Marquis' Who's Who in the World (Millennial Edition).

 

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