The Non-reality of Free Will

"Both engaging and provocative....Is sure to provide even its critics with challenging insights and arguments."--Philosophical Review "Double has given us an informed, insightful, and clearly written book....Uniformly instructive....He writes clearly and honestly, exhibits a solid command of contemporary treatments of free will, and has an admirable ability to get to the heart of the difficulties affecting the proposals under scrutiny."--Noûs "A lively, thoughtful, well-informed book. The reader will find many insights along the way."--Philosophy and Phenomenological Research "A comprehensive and carefull discussion of the standard varieties of free will positions, both historical and recent....Rich and provocative....Double has skillfully navigated waters...and has reached an original,hitherto unexplored position. It is well worth the time of any philosophical voyager to read his account of the journey."--Teaching Philosophy "Well worth reading....Double draws intelligently upon cognate literature in the philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, and metaethics to construct a wide variety of competent and provocative arguments."--Mind "Both engaging and provocative....Is sure to provide even its critics with challenging insights and arguments."--Philosophical Review "Double has given us an informed, insightful, and clearly written book....Uniformly instructive....He writes clearly and honestly, exhibits a solid command of contemporary treatments of free will, and has an admirable ability to get to the heart of the difficulties affecting the proposals under scrutiny."--Noûs "A lively, thoughtful, well-informed book. The reader will find many insights along the way."--Philosophy and Phenomenological Research "A comprehensive and carefull discussion of the standard varieties of free will positions, both historical and recent....Rich and provocative....Double has skillfully navigated waters...and has reached an original,hitherto unexplored position. It is well worth the time of any philosophical voyager to read his account of the journey."--Teaching Philosophy "Well worth reading....Double draws intelligently upon cognate literature in the philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, and metaethics to construct a wide variety of competent and provocative arguments."--Mind "Original and enlightening....A very impressive book....The result is many fascinating connections and illustrations and insights that make the book a constant source of provocative new ideas."--Behavior and Philosophy "An important addition to recent literature on free will and determinism....Double thoroughly covers the recent literature in the free will/determinism controversy, gives lucid and detailed accounts of 'compatibilist' and 'incompatibilist' positions, and offers clear and challenging arguments for his conclusions. Strongly recommended for all college libraries."--Choice "Not since Daniel Dennetts's Elbow Room has such analytical skill been concentrated on what surely is one of our culture's most entrenched assumptions regarding human nature....Lucidly written."--Free Inquiry "A lucid and penetrating survey of recent philosophical writing on free will and ought to be widely read by students and others wishing to familiarize themselves with recent debates....He skewers every current theory (including libertarian theories) with provocative, and often novel, arguments."--Times Literary Supplement "In this excellent work, Richard Double has accomplished at least two very important things: (1)He's shown that we just can't have the whole ball of wax regarding freely chosen behavior, which, despite inchoate suspicions to the contrary, so many of us have always wanted. (2)Regarding ordinary ascriptions of free choice and moral responsibility, he's forced the discussion onto a much higher plane than it has previously enjoyed."--Peter Unger, New York University "An original contribution to debates about free will and responsibility, which discusses many recent developments in the field in a clear and engaging fashion and challenges every familiar position, often with novel arguments. It should provoke reactions from all sides of the debate and deserves to be widely read and discussed."--Robert H. Kane, University of Texas at Austin