Kevin Timpe, Free Will: Sourcehood and Its Alternatives (New York: Continuum, 2008), x + 155 Pps., $130.00 and John Baer, James Kaufman, and Roy Baumeister, Are We Free? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), xi + 356 Pps., $39.95.
What does it mean to do something freely? Do humans have the capacity to will their own actions? If so, to what degree? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? If humans have free will, is it compatible with causal determinism? These are widely debated questions in modern literature, with books being published every day regarding various perspectives on these questions. In what follows, two particular, relatively new, books shall be reviewed.
Our first title is authored by Kevin Timpe, who is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego, USA, and Philosophy of Religion Editor for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Timpe’s recent title focuses almost exclusively on the debate regarding free will in the latter half of the twentieth century. In this book, he is intent on exploring the implications to free will if determinism were true. In other words, he is concerned to answer the question if humans could be free, even if scientists were to discover that causal determinism were true.Timpe contends that two different kinds of requirements must be met in order for someone to be held responsible for an action: an epistemic conditions in which one has knowledge of the results of one’s actions , and an control condition in which an agent has control of his or her actions in the way needed for them to receive either praise or rebuke for that particular action (9–10).
He notes that there are two general conceptions of the nature of free will: in the first, which receives most of the attention, free will is the ability to do otherwise for any given situation (alternative possibilities condition); in the second, free will is a function of the person being the ultimate source of their actions (sourcehood condition). Timpe is resistant to the equation of free will with the ability to do otherwise in any given soitation. The compatability question is also a way to differentate between the two positions of free will mentioned above. According to compatibilists, an agent can be determined in all their choices and actions, yet still be free. In contrast, incompatibilists contend that the existence of free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism. This book demarcates these two different conceptions free will, explores the relationship between them, and examines how they relate to the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists. Chapters two through four explores the alternative possibilities condition, whereas chapters five through seven examines the sourcehood condition; the title ultimately argues for a version of source incompatibilism, with Timpe noting that it is more fundamental than the alternative possibilities condition. He also asserts that the sourcehood condition can only be met if determinism is false, which by extension means that free will exists only insomcuh as determinism is false.
The second title is edited by John Baer (Professor of Educational Psychology at Rider University), James Kaufman (Assistant Professor of Psychology at California State University), and Roy Baumeister (Eppes Eminent Professor of Psychology at Florida State University).The title brings together fifteen chapters written by psychologists with two chapters by philosophers, whose corporate goal was to look at recent experimental and theoretic work on free will. The editors intentionally chose essays that express different ways of approaching the problem of free will from various branches of psychology. More pointedly, the essays deal with philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will and the importance of consciousness in free will.
I found the essays by the philosophers on what psychologists can contribute to long-running philosophical struggles regarding the human belief in free will to be especially interesting. Shaun Nichols, for example, outlines three dimensions of free will about which psychology could make significant contributions: a descriptive dimension that attempts to depict lay views on free will, a substantive dimension that evaluates lay views on free will by known psychological theory, and a prescriptive dimension that suggests how we should act in response to what we find out out from what we find out about free will. The other philosopher, Alford Meles, offers a summary of the book’s contents and its importance, noting that the different views on the role of determinism in both psychology and free will may be rooted in differing definitions. In between are the fifteen contributions of the psychologists, only some of which shall be noted herein.
For example, David Myers begins the psychological material in chapter three, and somewhat sets the terms of what follows by framing the key philosophical issues at stake in the debate. He makes some rather interestingly claims; for instance, he contends that ‘determinism encourages us to action, not to resignation’ (33). He then inquires whether determinism belies people of accountability for their actions, and answers in the negative. Roy Baumeister suggests that the debate regarding free will is currently in error, for we should not be questioning the existence of free will as per se, but rather ought to explain the common belief in free will and the phenomena to which that belief refers (66). He proposes a way in which evolution may have selected for a conscious dispute-settling mechanism that could adjudicate between alternative choices, that is, what we commonly refer to as free will. John Bargh concludes that there is no reason to assert the existence of free will in order to explain behavioral impulses (148). Daniel Wegner contends that the pereption of free will is illusory. Daniel Dennet, in his characteristically vivid writing, argues that people who believe in free will are still errantly tied to a form of Cartesian dualism (254–255), and that a throughouly materialistic view of ‘free will’ can produce all the will that modern humans need. In the final two chapters by psychologists, John Baer and Steven Pinker examine the connection between deteminism and free will. Baer argues that free will actually requires determinism (306), and Pinker confronts many fears that determinism engenders, implying that those fears are unwarranted (322).
In sum, these two books highlight the fact that free will is heavily debated in today’s literature, and the views upon it are diverse and at times conflicting. While there may be no definitive resolution of the ‘problem’ of free will offered by either of these titles, these two books should be of interest not only to social scientists, but to thoughtful readers in every discipline.
Bradford McCall, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA..