In 1965 Nelson Pike published his paper "Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action," in which he attempted to show that these two things were ultimately incompatible: if God has complete foreknowledge of everything we will do, our actions aren't really "voluntary" since we weren't free to do otherwise.

That set off some dialogue that took place in scattered journals over the next twenty-five years. John Martin Fischer has here collected the major rounds of this dialogue into a single volume and added a helpful introduction.

The contents include Fischer's introduction and Pike's 1965 paper, together with the following:

Marilyn McCord Adams, "Is the Existence of God a 'Hard' Fact?"

John Martin Fischer, "Freedom and Foreknowledge"

David Widerker, "Two Forms of Fatalism"

Eddy Zemach and David Widerker, "Facts, Freedom, and Foreknowledge"

Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz, "Hard and Soft Facts"

Alfred J. Freddoso, "Accidental Necessity and Logical Determinism"

William Hasker, "Hard Facts and Theological Fatalism"

Alvin Plantinga, "On Ockham's Way Out"

William Hasker, "Foreknowledge and Necessity"

William P. Alston, "Divine Foreknowledge and Alternative Conceptions of Human Freedom"

Martin Davies, "Boethius and Others on Divine Foreknowledge"

I shall not try to summarize the arguments of these various papers. The reader should be aware, however, that the papers collected in this volume address Pike's claim, and argument, that God's _foreknowledge_ is not compatible with human freedom. The scope of this work does not extend to the question whether God's _causation_ of all events is thus compatible.

If you buy this book, be prepared for a lot of technical argumentation and modal analysis and that sort of thing. These essays are highly readable -- their authors are all able writers -- but they will probably not be terribly accessible to a reader with no background in philosophy.

Fischer and Ravizza's (F&R) book, Responsibility and Control, provides the most recent defense of compatibilism (according to the timing of this review). They are not presenting any "knock-down arguments" for their view. Rather, they are offering philosophical explanation (in Nozick's sense) as to how to provide a working theory of moral responsibility with the truth of causal determinism. They do not contend the truth or falsity of causal determinism; they simply believe that whatever is the truth of the matter, it is irrelevant given their account of moral responsibility.

F&R provide a well defended account of what they call "guidance control." It is strongly built off of the earlier work of Harry Frankfurt's article, "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility." Using this, they attempt to build an account that solves clear cases about actions, consequences, and omissions in a clear symmetical way. In doing so, they believe the indirect and direct challenges to the compatibility thesis should be rejected.

After doing so, they attempt to look at "mesh theories" (e.g. Frankfurt and Watson) which look at the time-splice properties of an agent, and F&R argue for a contrasting (geniune) historical approach. In doing so, they use Galen Strawson's work to help answer particular problems. Following in their last chapter, they summarize all of their main points again, and look at Robert Adam's argument (in the appendix) concerning emotions and moral responsibility.

The extremely nice features of this book are that they argue for their position very clearly. One should have little trouble following their arguments, examples, and what they intend on doing. They tell you what they plan on doing, how they will do it, and then go right into it. Following, they summarize it again to make everything from that chapter and the preceeding chapters come together.

Another nice feature of this book is that it is exceptionally well argued. Though I found some disagreements along the way, naturally expected of anyone, I thought they provided a robust account that at least does what they intended: the provide an account of freedom that gives us a working theory which can be reworked, but meets the incompatibilist challenges, though honestly not enough perhaps to move everyone toward compatibilism (i.e. this is a philosophical explanation, not knock-down argument).

Because of these nice features and the good content, I highly recommend this book.

This is a great book- one which challenges areas of metaphysics which all too often get ignored in the rush to analyse the ethical issues surrounding death. Most of the articles are fairly easy reads and they develop their theses coherently; the layout of the book allows you to put them in their broader contexts, to compare argument and counter-argument. A fine work of (broadly analytic) Philosophy which makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Death. Also mercifully unmorbid!