Libertarian Accounts of Free Will [Hardcover]

This comprehensive study offers a balanced assessment of libertarian accounts of free will. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view from popular objections concerning rationality and diminished control. He subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. Clarke then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates agent causation and nondeterministic event causation. He defends this view from a number of objections but argues that we should find the substance causation required by any agent-causal account to be impossible. Clarke concludes that if a broad thesis of incompatibilism is correct--one on which both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism--then no libertarian account is entirely adequate.

Clarke's book marks a leop forward in our understanding of all the various forms of incompatibilism. --Gideon Yaffe,The Journal of Ethics

This book is an important contribution to the debate on free will. Clarke provides a careful and comprehensive assessment of a variety of libertarian accounts. He displays impressive command of the subject and argues with subtlety and ingenuity. As far as I can tell, he significantly advances the discussion about such central issues as the problem of active control and the possibility of agent causation. --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews