Preface and acknowledgements

Summary

While an undergraduate, I became aware of both the interest and the intractability of the problem of free will: a small prize was offered in the philosophy department for any undergraduate who presented a solution to that problem that would satisfy any two members of the department; at least, we undergraduates believed in such a prize. (Two members were required, obviously, to stop the candidates simply replaying his or her own preferred solution back to a particular staff member, as though that might have been convincing even for one!) This prize was not won during my tenure as undergraduate and research student.

Part of the attractiveness of the topic, though, was its ability to grab the attention of beginners – to show them what philosophical issues were and why they were quite generally important. Therefore this was a suitable topic for use (as here) to introduce relative beginners to philosophical issues and methods. Moreover, one's point of final arrival could be a long way into philosophy. Thus here, although issues broached and methods offered derive from Anglo-American analytical philosophy, the conclusions reached, and the conception of the philosophical enterprise subtended, are not: at least, not ones dominant in the current incarnation of that tradition (see Chapter 9).

Such a way of writing, displaying (and commenting on) both arguments and argumentative strategies, could seem like giving students “target practice” on philosophical views.