260 Contemporary Incompatibilism: Libertarianism
from believing. For example, our belief that life is worth living may not be ade-
quately supported by the evidence, but we should nevertheless maintain it partly
on axiological, in this case moral, grounds. Speak contends that if human agents
had libertarian free will, they would possess a kind of dignity that they would
lack if they were not free in this sense. Abandoning a belief in libertarianism
thus arguably has a serious moral cost, which should be included in determining
whether we should believe that we are free in this sense. Libertarians tend to be
strongly committed to incompatibilism, and so the force of this pragmatic
argument for accepting libertarianism would depend on the practical palatability
of the incompatibilist alternative, free will skepticism. To this position we
now turn.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Libertarian theories of free will have occupied a prominent place in the history
of philosophy. For three especially notable defenses, see:
Bergson, Henri. 1889/1910. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, Paris: F.
Alcan, 1989; translated as Time and Free Will, tr. F.L. Pogson. London: Allen and
Unwin, 1910.
Kant, Immanuel. 1781/1787/1987. Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Paul Guyer and Allen
Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Reid, Thomas. 1788. “Essays on the Active Powers of Man.” In Sir William Hamilton,
ed., The Works of Thomas Reid. Hildesheim: G. Olms Verslagsbuchhandlung, 1983.
Here we offer a small sampling of the most prominent work on each of three
main kinds of libertarian views:
Event- Causal
Balaguer, Mark. 2010. Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Ekstrom, Laura. 2000. Free Will: A Philosophical Study. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Kane, Robert. 1996. The Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Agent- Causal
Chisholm, Roderick. 1964. “Human Freedom and the Self.” The Lindley Lectures. Copy-
right by the Department of Philosophy, University of Kansas. Reprinted in Watson,
Gary, ed., 1982. Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Clarke, Randolph. 2003. Libertarian Accounts of Free Will. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
O’Connor, Timothy. 2000. Persons and Causes. New York: Oxford University Press.
Steward, Helen. 2012. A Metaphysics for Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Taylor, Richard. 1974. Metaphysics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.