Chapter 15 Further Reading: Freedom and Determinism

Primary Sources

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section VIII: "Of Liberty and Necessity" (1748) Hume's founding statement of compatibilism, written with his characteristic clarity. He argues that the apparent conflict between liberty and necessity dissolves once we understand what both terms actually mean. Available free online. Start here if you want to read a primary source.

Harry Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" (1971) Published in The Journal of Philosophy, this is the paper that introduced the first-order/second-order distinction and redefined the free will debate for analytic philosophy. Dense but rewarding. Available through most academic libraries and in Frankfurt's essay collection The Importance of What We Care About.

P.F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment" (1962) Originally published in Proceedings of the British Academy. One of the most influential papers in twentieth-century philosophy. Readable and less technical than much analytic philosophy. Available in the anthology Free Will edited by Gary Watson (Oxford University Press).

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Section III (1785) Kant's attempt to reconcile determinism in the phenomenal realm with freedom in the noumenal realm. Difficult reading, but his solution to the free will problem is uniquely influential. Start with a secondary source (see below) before tackling this directly.

Contemporary Philosophy

Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will (Cambridge University Press, 2001) The best defense of hard incompatibilism as a livable position. Pereboom argues carefully that we can acknowledge the truth of determinism (or something close to it) without abandoning ethics, moral emotions, or the project of self-improvement. More readable than the title suggests.

Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves (Viking, 2003) Dennett is the most accessible defender of a naturalistic compatibilism. He argues that the kind of free will worth wanting is exactly the kind that evolution produced, and that worrying about "could I have done otherwise" misunderstands what freedom requires. Engaging and clear.

Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (Oxford University Press, 1996) The most sophisticated contemporary defense of libertarian free will. Kane draws on chaos theory and quantum indeterminacy to argue that genuine openness exists in human decision-making at moments of hard choice. Requires some patience but is philosophically serious.

John Martin Fischer, The Metaphysics of Free Will (Blackwell, 1994) Fischer develops a version of compatibilism he calls "semi-compatibilism," which tries to preserve moral responsibility even if determinism is true while acknowledging the force of the incompatibilist objection. More technical than Pereboom or Dennett.

Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2003 — 2nd edition) The best single anthology on the topic. Includes Strawson, Frankfurt, Hume, Kant, Kane, Fischer, and others. If you want to read widely in the primary literature, start here.

Neuroscience and Free Will

Benjamin Libet, "Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action" (1985) The original paper reporting the readiness potential findings. Published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Technical but the key sections are readable.

John-Dylan Haynes et al., "Reading Hidden Intentions in the Human Brain" (2007) The fMRI study that predicted binary choices up to 10 seconds in advance. Published in Current Biology. Available free online. The paper itself includes important qualifications that the popular press reports typically omit.

Alfred Mele, Free: Why Science Hasn't Disproved Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2014) Mele — a philosopher who led a major research project on free will and neuroscience — argues carefully that the popular interpretations of Libet and subsequent experiments massively overstate what the neuroscience actually shows. Readable and important corrective.

Walter Glannon, Brain, Body, and Mind: Neuroethics with a Human Face (Oxford University Press, 2011) Accessible exploration of what neuroscience does and doesn't tell us about moral responsibility, autonomy, and mental illness. Relevant to both the free will debate and the criminal justice implications.

Buddhist Perspectives

Bhikkhu Bodhi (trans.), The Connected Discourses of the Buddha (Samyutta Nikaya) The primary Buddhist source on dependent origination (paticca-samuppada) — the doctrine that all phenomena arise in dependence on conditions. This is the Buddhist framework's answer to the determinism question.

Jay Garfield, Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford University Press, 2021) Garfield is a Western philosopher who has spent decades with Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. This book treats Buddhist ethics — including its account of agency, karma, and responsibility — as serious philosophy, not just religious doctrine.

Mark Siderits, Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons (Ashgate, 2003) Careful philosophical analysis of the Buddhist view of non-self and its implications for personal identity and moral responsibility. Engages directly with Western analytic philosophy. More technical but very rewarding.

Criminal Justice and Free Will

Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (Seven Stories Press, 2003) Davis argues that mass incarceration is not a rational response to crime but a social institution with deep structural roots. Her analysis draws on critical race theory rather than philosophy of free will per se, but it connects to the practical implications of taking causal conditions seriously.

David Eagleman, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (Pantheon, 2011) Eagleman is a neuroscientist who argues for a neurobiological approach to criminal justice — not replacing moral responsibility but contextualizing it. Very readable and directly relevant to the question of how free will philosophy bears on criminal justice practice.

Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, "For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything" (2004) Published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Argues that neuroscience won't change legal standards for responsibility (which are already compatibilist) but will eventually change our moral intuitions about deserved punishment. Excellent, provocative paper.

Accessible Introductions

Ted Honderich, How Free Are You? (Oxford University Press, 2002) Short, clear overview of the debate from a hard determinist perspective.

Robert Kane, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2005) The best short introduction to the whole debate, written by a leading libertarian free will defender who presents all positions fairly.

Galen Strawson, "The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility" (1994) A famous short argument that no account of free will — compatibilist, libertarian, or otherwise — can ultimately ground moral responsibility. Challenging to the comfortable position. Published in Philosophical Studies.

On Self-Change and Habit

William James, "Habit" (1890) From The Principles of Psychology. James argued that character is essentially habit, and that changing character requires new habitual action. Available free online. Brief, vivid, practical — and compatible with a compatibilist picture of self-governance.

Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit (Random House, 2012) Popular science treatment of the neuroscience of habit formation and change. Not philosophy, but directly relevant to the compatibilist point that self-improvement works by changing the causal mechanisms of behavior.