Free Will

This page is for the lectures on free will in the Introduction to Philosophy Course given by Richard Holton at Edinburgh University, autumn term 2003.


Handouts

Handout for Lecture One

Handout for Lecture Two

Handout for Lecture Three



Links to Readings

Harry Frankfurt Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility (this is also in Feinberg and Schafer-Landau Reason and Responsibility.)

Harry Frankfurt Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971)

Gary Watson 'Free Action and Free Will', Mind 96 (1987) (This is a survey article, but it also presents many orignal thoughts, and is not easy going.)


Susan Wolf's article 'Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility' is in Feinberg and Schafer-Landau.

Readings on libertarianism (these are difficult)

Robert Kane 'Two Kinds of Incompatibilism' Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (1989)

Randolph Clarke 'Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Account of Free Will' Nous 27 (1993)
For a (rather unsophisticated) defence of the idea that moral responsibility actually requires determinism, see W. Stace 'The Problem of Free Will' in Feinberg and Schafer-Landau.



Question and Answer Session
The last of the four lectures (Wednesday 15th October) will be a question and answer session. This is experimental, in response to student requests for more discussion with the lecturers. It will only work if people have questions to ask. They can either be asked in the lecture, or, better still, emailed to me in advance: richard.holton@ed.ac.uk.