Free Will and Moral Responsibility

The essays in this volume explore various issues pertaining to human agency, such as the relationship between free will and causal determinism, and the nature and conditions of moral responsibility.

• Builds on and extends some of the very best recent work in the field.
• Features lively and vigorous debate.
• Forges connections between abstract philosophical theorizing and applied work in neuroscience and even criminal law.

Peter A. French is the Lincoln Chair in Ethics, Professor of Philosophy, and the Director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University. His Ph.D. is from the University of Miami and he did post-doctoral work at Oxford University. He was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) honorary degree from Gettysburg College in 2006. French is the author of twenty books including War and Moral Dissonance; The Virtues of Vengeance; Cowboy Metaphysics; Ethics and College Sports; Responsibility Matters; Corporate Ethics; and Collective and Corporate Responsibility. He has published dozens of articles in the philosophical and legal journals. Works by him have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, German, Italian, French, Serbian, and Spanish.

Howard K. Wettstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the City University of New York and a B.A. from Yeshiva College. He has authored three books, The Significance of Religious Experience, and Other Essays (forthcoming), The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, and Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake? And Other Essays, and edited others including Themes from Kaplan (co-edited) and Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity. He is currently writing a new book on the philosophy of religion; his work in that area includes such topics as doctrine and the viability of philosophical theology; the Book of Job and the problem of evil; the Akedah (the Binding of Isaac); the character of religious experience and religious life; and the roles of awe, ritual, and intimacy. His has published articles on these topics and well as in the philosophy of language.

John Martin Fischer earned his B.A. and M.A. in philosophy from Stanford University in 1975, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1982. He has written on such topics as free will, causal determinism, theological determinism, moral responsibility, abortion, death, immortality, and the meaning of life. He is the author of The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay of Control (Blackwell, 1994); and (with Mark Ravizza, S.J.) Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (1998). A selection of his papers will be published in My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility (forthcoming 2005).