Table Of ContentLiving Without
Free Will
DERK PEREBOOM
Cambridge University Press
Living Without Free Will
In Living Without Free Will, Derk Pereboom contends that given our best
scientific theories, factors beyond our control ultimately produce all of our
actions, and that we are therefore not morally responsible for them. His
stance is similar to traditional hard determinism, although he maintains that
if our actions exhibit the sort of indeterminacy attributed to quantum
mechanical events, they would still be produced by factors beyond our
control, and we would not be responsible for them.
Pereboom defends the view that morality, meaning, and value remain
intact even if we lack moral responsibility, and moreover, he argues that
adopting his position could even be significantly beneficial for our lives.
Living Without Free Will brings an original perspective to the topic of
free will that compels us to reevaluate many of our most deeply entrenched
ideas about ourselves. It will interest professionals and students in philoso-
phy, psychology, and criminology.
Derk Pereboom is a professor of philosophy at the University of Vermont.
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
General editor (Brown University)
Advisory editors:
(University of Reading)
(University of St. Andrews)
(Princeton University)
(Australian National University)
. (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
(Cornell University)
. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
RECENT TITLES:
Explaining Attitudes
. Cartesian Psychology and Physical Minds
Colours
Coming to Our Senses
The Concept of Moral Obligation
with Valuing Emotions
The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays
Consciousness and the Origins of Thought
and ’ The Grammar of Meaning
. . A World of States of Affairs
What Minds Can Do
The World Without the Mind Within
Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and Desert
In Defense of Pure Reason
Papers in Philosophical Logic
Implicature
Other Times
Papers on Metaphysics and Epistemology
Self-Concern
Seeing Through Self-Deception
Faces of Intention
Fiction and Metaphysics
Papers on Ethics and Social Philosophy
Persons and Bodies
Perception, Knowledge and Belief
Putting Skeptics in Their Place
On Clear and Confused Ideas
For my parents, Jan Dirk and Maria Elisabeth
Living Without Free Will
DERK PEREBOOM
University of Vermont
PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING)
FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
http://www.cambridge.org
© Derk Pereboom 2001
This edition © Derk Pereboom 2003
First published in printed format 2001
A catalogue record for the original printed book is available
from the British Library and from the Library of Congress
Original ISBN 0 521 79198 7 hardback
ISBN 0 511 01250 0 virtual (netLibrary Edition)
Contents
Acknowledgments page xi
Introduction: Hard incompatibilism xiii
1 Alternative possibilities and causal histories 1
Two incompatibilist intuitions 1
Leeway vs. causal-history incompatibilism 2
Flickers and robustness 6
A libertarian objection to Frankfurt-style arguments 8
Problems for recent attempts to answer Widerker 10
Frankfurt-style scenarios without prior signs 14
A new Frankfurt-style scenario 18
A different kind of alternative-possibility condition 23
Ginet’s challenge 28
An objection to causal-history incompatibilism 33
A final word 36
2 Coherence objections to libertarianism 38
Introduction 38
The Humean challenge to event-causal libertarianism 41
Randomizing manipulators 50
Why the Humean challenge fails to undermine
agent-causal libertarianism 55
Objections to the agent-causal theory’s notion of causation 59
A disparity between causation and explanation? 63
Galen Strawson’s argument against the coherence of
libertarianism 65
The prospects for agent-causal libertarianism 68
3 Empirical objections to agent-causal libertarianism 69
Introduction 69
Problems for the ordinary nonreductivist strategy 70
vii
Strong emergentism and microphysical constraints 73
Strong emergentism, non-physicalism, and the prospects for
reconciliation with physics 79
Difficulties for the overriding approach 85
Why invoking ceteris paribus laws fails to advance the
libertarian’s case 86
Libertarianism and common sense 88
4 Problems for compatibilism 89
Challenging compatibilism 89
The first route to compatibilism: Determinism as
irrelevant to responsibility 90
Criticisms of Strawson’s view 94
The second route to compatibilism: Causal integrationist
conditions 100
Why these four compatibilist accounts can be undermined 110
Haji’s response to an earlier version of the four-case
argument 117
Fischer and Ravizza’s proposed sufficient condition 120
Strawson and Wallace on generalization strategies 123
Conclusion 125
5 The contours of hard incompatibilism 127
Hard incompatibilism defined and defended 127
Contrasts with similar views 128
Agency 135
Dispensing with blameworthiness and praiseworthiness 139
Does hard incompatibilism undermine morality? 141
Why hard incompatibilism is not restricted to
consequentialism in ethics 148
Moral worth 152
Wrongdoing 154
6 Hard incompatibilism and criminal behavior 158
Is there an acceptable hard incompatibilist position on
managing criminal behavior? 158
Hard incompatibilism rules out retributivism 159
Hard incompatibilism and the moral education theory 161
Hard incompatibilism and deterrence theories: The
utilitarian version 166
Deterrence justified by the right to self-defense 168
Problems for the self-defense theory 172
Quarantine and criminal detention 174
Rehabilitation 178
Reviewing the conclusions 186
viii
7 Hard incompatibilism and meaning in life 187
Introduction 187
Life projects: Sartre and Honderich 188
Affirmation 191
Can belief in free will be justified pragmatically? 197
Reactive attitudes and interpersonal relationships 199
Guilt and repentance 204
The advantages of hard incompatibilism 207
Bibliography 215
Index 225
ix
