Understanding the Free-Will Controversy

What is free will and do humans possess it? While these questions appear simple they have tied some of our greatest minds in knots over the millennia. This little book seeks to clarify for an audience of educated non-specialists some of the issues that often arise in philosophical disputes over the existence and the nature of human free will. Beyond that, it proposes a particular solution to the puzzles. Many philosophers have argued that free will is incompatible with determinism, and many have also argued that it is incompatible with indeterminism. So, is free will simply an incoherent concept? Talbott argues that the best way out of this quagmire requires that we come to appreciate why certain conditions essential to our emergence as free moral agents--conditions such as indeterminism, ignorance, and a context of ambiguity and misperception--are themselves obstacles to a fully realized freedom. For a fully realized freedom requires that, as minimally rational individuals, we have learned some important lessons for ourselves; and once these lessons have been learned, some of our freest choices may be such that we could not have chosen otherwise because so choosing would then seem to us utterly unthinkable and irrational.

Author: Thomas Talbott
Publisher: Cascade Books
Published: 08/16/2022
Pages: 140
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.33d
ISBN13: 9781725268364
ISBN10: 1725268361
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Essays
- Philosophy | Religious
- Religion | Philosophy

About the Author
Thomas Talbott is professor emeritus of philosophy at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, and the author of The Inescapable Love of God.