Abstract

KANE, ROBERT. Free Will And The Dialectic Of Selfhood: Can One Make Sense Of A Traditional Free Will Requiring Ultimate Responsibility? . Ideas y Valores [online]. 2009, vol.58, n.141, pp.25-43. ISSN 0120-0062.

For four decades, I have been developing a distinctive view of free will according to which agents are required to be ultimately responsible for the creation or formation of their own wills (characters and purposes). The aim of this paper is to explain how a free will of this traditional kind -which I argue is incompatible with determinism- can be reconciled with modern developments in the sciences and philosophy. I address criticisms that a nondeterminist free will of this kind does not allow sufficient agent control, reduces to mere chance or randomness, fails to account of moral responsibility, and cannot be reconciled with modern science; and I relate such a free will to the nature of the self or person by developing what I call a "dialectic of selfhood."

Keywords : Free will; dialectic of selfhood; ultimate responsibility; determinism; luck.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in English     · English ( pdf )