Libertarian Accounts of Free Will

Description

"In this comprehensive study, Randolph Clarke examines libertarian accounts. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, he defends a type of event-causal view - one on which a free action must be non-deterministically caused by its immediate causal antecedents - from the charges concerning rationality and diminished control.

Clarke subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. He then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates agent causation and non-deterministic event causation."

"Clarke defends this view from a number of objections but argues that we should find the substance causation required by any agent-causal account to be impossible. He concludes that if a broad thesis of compatibilism is correct - one on which both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism - then no libertarian account is entirely adequate."--Jacket.