Free Will: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Used this to get up to speed on free will. It is a very good summary of the argument in a nice and accessible style.

Incoherent.- A narrow view focussing on the libertarian perspective almost exclusively. The Compatibilist viewpoint is barely mentioned except as a straw man to dismiss.

Good

great book my son said - his is the philosophy major!

I think this is a good introduction, but not necessarily in the way the author intended it. Thomas Pink suggests there is a 'free will problem' within English language philosophy. It seems to me that he demonstrates in this slender book that there is a problem with English language philosophy - it cannot explain the existence of free will. In other words, I belive the epistemological framework in which he discusses the subject is flawed. I suggest this for many reasons, one of which is his use of words that hitherto I have never come across in the English language. One of these appears on the first page: 'up-to-up-ness'. I contend that until a philosopher can explain his or her ideas using only commonplace words then he or she should accept that they are only at a staging post on their way to understanding free will - after all, if we all experience free will the same way, then surely we would have already invented enough words to describe its many dimensions?

Sorry, I will not be so detailed and elaborate as other reviewers before me. English is my second language and even in this case I was shocked how badly written this book was, especially from a university teacher at King's College London.I was very interested in the subject and I have read a few other Oxford Short Introduction books before. I realised after a while that the author is not expanding the view and circles around one or two basic points and even worse, in the second half of the book he began to confuse everything. I rarely do not finish a book because I do believe I can find something useful even on the last page, but sorry, in this case, I did not have the feeling I would find anything valuable and I have just had to put it down at around 20 pages left to the end.How could this be published by Oxford University Press?

Earlier reviewers here have made all the substantial points. This book doesn't really function as an introductory text. It is dryly written and extremely repetitive, which makes it unnecessarily difficult to read, given the relatively straightforward nature of the arguments advanced. If anything, the author's style, if taken by the reader to be typical of philosophical prose, is likely to put the reader off investigating these matters further.The 'Short Introduction' books are generally excellent, but this is one to avoid.

Don't bother reading.Pink approaches the topic of free will with about as much knowledge as anyone picking up this book would have on the subject. Incredibly repetitive and mainly just a game of playing with (ill-defined) semantics to make his own biased point.If you want to read about any of the real philosophy done on the topic that might actually be of use to you - such as the philosophers Frankfurt, Strawson, Fischer, van Inwagen, Wolf, Dennett etc., or any information regarding quantum physics, evolutionary psychology or neuroscience - there is no point looking here. Pink doesn't get much further than Hobbes and sharks (which he sadly thinks don't make what he calls decisions, whereas we do - thus problem solved)Kane's book is a much better alternative, as is the SEP.

Free will is based on rationality. "To be a free agent is to be a rational agent" (p. 46). From the Enlightenment era when rationality was the consensus political view to 19th century materialism which held that physical processes in individuals and historical processes in the world forced certain results, free will has become a controversial or highly contested topic. Free will is part of numerous philosophies and political ideologies. Formulations of free will, in the present time, can be applied to election reforms, Constitutional Amendments, climate, human rights, and human health. If the materialistic school prevails, it is believed that centers of power, and centers of wealth, guide most decisions in society. Normally, political activists, according to the nature of activism, are opposed to the prevailing order in society. When the wealthy and powerful families, individuals, corporations, foundations, and universities eventually agree with activism there is sometimes positive change. A faster approach may involve AI. When AI or advanced AI proposed a new course of action for society the wealthy may agree more completely, Parliaments and Congresses may vote, and this will occur partly because AI may think or process information more objectively and benefit all of society, the poor and the wealthy alike.

qu'est ce que le libre arbitre? Dans un monde technique où beaucoup par le d'IA sans jamais avoir codé une ligne en informatique, où les usines sont robotisées, cela mérite réflexion , non?

Great book on free will

When I bought this Very Short Introduction, I was expecting an easily readable, neutral summary of the free will problem, its history, and traditional as well as modern proposed solutions. If you, too, are looking for such a treatment, then this book may disappoint you as much as it disappointed me.Pink indeed discusses several possible positions, including the medieval free will problem, deterministic incompatibilism, libertarianism, Hobbesian compatibilism, etc., but does so without appreciation. He does not neutrally list the pros and cons of every viewpoint, but rather tries to make every viewpoint sound ridiculous that is not his own. That would be acceptable were his arguments strong enough, but they are not. Basically, he argues for libertarian freedom mostly because we have a "widely shared idea of freedom", that is as vivid as our perception of, say, an external objective world. So "why be selectively sceptical of one [...] and not the other?" He also argues that "freedom seems to be limited to humans", or at most including higher animals - a very strong, unconvincing claim. Finally, he does not take into account what neuroscience has to say to this problem, even though first results about the readiness potential have been already presented 20 years before the publication of this book. That being bad enough, his writing is quite "philosophical", and thus not very accessible to a layman. Here's a specimen:"[A] decision is an action with a goal. A decision is an exercise of rationality that is directed at its object, the voluntary action decided upon, as a goal - a goal which that exercise of rationality is to attain or effect - and that makes a decision an intentional goal-directed action, an action whose rationality depends on the likelihood of its effecting that attainment. [...] A decision is a motivation with an object. A decision is a decision to do something. But a decision is not an ordinary motivation. It is quite different from an ordinary desire. And that is because a decision's relation to its object is that of an action to its object. The decision is related to its object - to what the decision is a decision to do - as to a goal that the decision is supposed to attain."

The 3 stars are not a real evaluation just the middle between a maximum and a minimum. For maximum, a very clear explanation of what freewill is, a very limpid language, accessible to everybody. The minimum is, in opinion of an uneducated non-philosopher that nitpicking is not a way to settle a problem or a discussion, or present a theory. Also the fact that the presented theory seems to explain the attitude of perfect humans, without any attention (except one sentence at location 1765) to human limitations and weaknesses (the famous nature and nurture).