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John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas, Four Views on Free Will.

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John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas, Four Views on Free Will (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), vii + 232 pp.

Four Views on Free Will is an excellent addition to Blackwell's Great Debates in Philosophy series. According to the publisher, the volumes in this series attempt to "capture the flavour of philosophical argument and to convey the excitement generated by the exchange of ideas. Each author contributes a major, original essay stating his or her own position. When these essays have been answered, the authors are each given the opportunity to respond to the opposing view." Because of this format, the volume is composed of eight chapters. In the first four chapters, each author elaborates and defends a central and influential position in the contemporary debates about free will and moral responsibility: Kane on libertarianism, Fischer on compatibilism (or, more accurately, semicompatibilism), Pereboom on hard incompatibilism, and Vargas on revisionism. The last four chapters, which are the authors' responses to the other three's initial essays, help clarify and expand their initial presentations. The first three of the four positions are defended in greater detail elsewhere, as each of their proponents have monographs devoted to more complete expositions of their views; (1) the present volume could also be used as a jumping-off point for these more thorough (though earlier) treatments. While revisionism is not as prominent a position as ate the other three, its inclusion is beneficial in that Vargas's contributions not only help sharpen the disagreements between the other three positions but also offer much in their own right. Many of the arguments and maneuvers will be familiar to those already versed in the existing literature. But the present volume does more than merely represent earlier work, as all of the authors also venture into new territory (though some more than others) and respond to recent objections.

Elsewhere, Kane distinguishes four questions that are at the center of the debates about free will:

The Compatibility Question: Is free will compatible with determinism?

The Significance Question: Why do we, or should we, want to possess a free will that is incompatible with determinism? ...

The Intelligibility Question: Can we make sense of a freedom or free will that is incompatible with determinism? Is such a freedom coherent or intelligible? ...

The Existence Question: Does such a freedom actually exist in the natural order, and if so, where? (2)

In the opening chapter of the present volume, Kane primarily focuses on the Compatibility and Intelligibility questions, though he also addresses the other two in the course of his essay. He begins by noting that the exercise of free will requires an individual to believe that multiple options are open to her--that is, to believe that the future is a garden of forking paths. He then presents a version of the Consequence Argument, which holds that if determinism is true, then there are not multiple options open to us and we cannot do otherwise than we actually do. In other words, there is nothing we can now do to change the fact...