Abstract

This book defends a libertarian theory of freedom of will, requiring the incompatibility of free decisions and neurophysiological determinism. A revised version of a doctoral thesis presented at Oxford in 1976, it is written with uncommon fluency and contains more than a few ingenious arguments advancing the libertarian cause. In the end, the author must rely on a theory of agency, or agent causality, that is a trifle too obscure to convince most compatibilists. But this is a common problem among libertarians and it may be a limitation in the theory they are defending, rather than a limitation in them. In any case, this is a book that anyone interested in the free will issue should read, and will read, with profit.