Common threads · 6 books
Read competing accounts of freedom and responsibility. Keep choice, control, blame, and punishment separate long enough to see how they connect.
Books, curator notes, and what to read next.
David Hume
Read Section VIII on liberty and necessity. Compare Hume's account of voluntary action with the stronger control required by later authors.
Next: Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays
P. F. Strawson
Begin with the title essay and its reactive attitudes. Ask how blame and gratitude depend on our relationships with others.
Next: Elbow Room
Daniel C. Dennett
Dennett asks which kinds of freedom are worth wanting. Distinguish being caused from being coerced or unable to learn.
Next: Freedom Within Reason
Susan Wolf
Wolf ties responsibility to the ability to respond to reasons. Compare that requirement with freedom from causal determination.
Next: The Significance of Free Will
Robert Kane
Kane defends a stronger role for undetermined choice. Ask how uncertainty could help control rather than simply replace it.
Next: Living Without Free Will
Derk Pereboom
Pereboom challenges responsibility based on ultimate control. Follow the consequences for punishment and interpersonal life.
Also includes An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Move from doubt and experience to the harder question of what separates knowing from being right by accident.
Also includes An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Trace disputes about knowledge and reality across rationalist, empiricist, and critical philosophy. Read each system as a response to a problem rather than a label.
More paths featuring Daniel C. Dennett
How does three pounds of meat produce a self? Neuroscience and philosophy's hardest problem, from Sacks to Seth.
