The Significance of Free Will

A magisterial work (that) culminates twenty-five years of thinking about the problems of free will. For those who believe both that robust free will cannot survive in a deterministic climate and that a viable free will need be scientifically respectable Kane's work may prove salvific. -- Mark Bernstein University of Texas at San Antonio. In the past quarter-century there has been a resurgence of interest in philosophical questions about free will. After a clear and broad-reaching survey of these recent debates Robert Kane presents his own controversial view. Arguing persuasively for a traditional incompatibilist or libertarian conception of free will Kane demonstrates that such a conception can be made intelligible without appeals to obscure or mysterious forms of agency and thus can be reconciled with a contemporary scientific picture of the world.