Derk Pereboom

My research areas are in free will and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, history of modern philosophy, and philosophy of religion, and I have published articles in each of these areas. In my book on free will and moral responsibility, Living Without Free Will, I argue that we human beings do not have the sort of free will required for praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, but conceiving ourselves as lacking this sort of free will this does not undermine what is important for morality and meaning in life.

I teach courses in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, history of modern philosophy, and philosophy of religion.

Office telephone: (607)255-6825

E-mail address:

Address: 323 Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-3201

Curriculum Vitae: pdf

Books:

• Living Without Free Will, Cambridge University Press, 2001.  Cambridge University Press information
• Four Views on Free Will (co-authored with John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, and Manuel Vargas) Blackwell Publishers, 2007. Blackwell Press Information

Articles:

• "Kant on Intentionality," Synthese 77 (1988), pp. 321-52.  pdf
• "Kant on Justification in Transcendental Philosophy," Synthese 85 (1990), pp. 25-54.  pdf
• "Kant's Amphiboly," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 73 (1991), pp. 50-70.  pdf
• with Hilary Kornblith, "The Metaphysics of Irreducibility," Philosophical Studies 63 (1991), pp. 125-45.  pdf
• "Why a Scientific Realist Cannot Be a Functionalist," Synthese 88 (1991), pp. 341-58.  pdf
• "Is Kant's Transcendental Philosophy Inconsistent?" History of Philosophy Quarterly 8 (1991), pp. 357-72.  pdf
• "Mathematical Expressibility, Perceptual Relativity, and Secondary Qualities," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 22, (1991), pp. 63-88.  pdf
• "Bats, Brain Scientists, and the Limitations of Introspection," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994), pp. 315-29  pdf
• "Stoic Psychotherapy in Descartes and Spinoza," Faith and Philosophy 11 (1994), pp. 592-625.  pdf
• "Determinism Al Dente," Noûs 29 (1995), pp. 21-45.  pdf
• "Self-Understanding in Kant's Transcendental Deduction," Synthese 103 (1995), pp. 1-42.  pdf
• "Conceptual Structure and the Individuation of Content," Philosophical Perspectives 9 (1995), pp. 401-26.  pdf
• "Kant on God, Evil, and Teleology," Faith and Philosophy 13 (1996), pp. 508-33.  pdf
• "On Bilgrami's Belief and Meaning," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1998), pp. 621-26.  pdf
• "Alternative Possibilities and Causal Histories," Philosophical Perspectives 14 (2000), pp. 119-37.  pdf
• "Assessing Kant's Master Argument," a review essay on Robert Howell's Kant's Transcendental Deduction, Kantian Review 5 (2001), pp. 90-102.
• "On Baker's Persons and Bodies," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (2002), pp. 615-22.
• "Robust Nonreductive Materialism," Journal of Philosophy 99 (2002), pp. 499-531.  pdf
• "Living Without Free Will: The Case for Hard Incompatibilism," in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, Robert Kane, ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 477-88.  pdf
• "Source Incompatibilism and Alternative Possibilities," Michael McKenna and David Widerker, eds., Freedom, Responsibility, and Agency: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities, Ashgate, 2003, pp. 185-99.  pdf
• “Meaning in Life Without Free Will,” Philosophic Exchange 33 (2002-3), pp. 19-34.  pdf
• "Is Our Conception of Agent-Causation Coherent?" Philosophical Topics 32 (2004), pp. 275-86.  pdf
•  "The Problem of Evil," The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Religion, William E. Mann, ed., Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2004, pp. 148-70.  pdf
• "Defending Hard Incompatibilism," Midwest Studies 29 (2005), pp. 228-47.  pdf
• "Free Will, Evil, and Divine Providence," in God and the Ethics of Belief: New Essays in Philosophy of Religion, Andrew Chignell and Andrew Dole, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 77-98. pdf
• "Reasons Responsiveness, Alternative Possibilities, and Manipulation Arguments Against Compatibilism; Reflections on John Martin Fischer's My Way," Philosophical Books 47 (2006), pp. 198-212. pdf
• "The Metaphysical and Transcendental Deductions," in A Companion to to Kant, Graham Bird, ed., Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2006, pp. 154-68. pdf
• "Kant on Transcendental Freedom," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2006), 537-67. pdf
• "On Alfred Mele's Free Will and Luck," Philosophical Explorations 10 (2007), pp. 163-72. pdf
• "Consciousness and Introspective Inaccuracy," forthcoming in Appearance, Reality, and the Good: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Merrihew Adams, L. M. Jorgensen and Samuel Newlands, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press.  pdf
• "A Compatibilist Account of the Epistemic Conditions on Rational Deliberation," forthcoming in The Journal of Ethics.  pdf
• "Defending Hard Incompatibilism Again," forthcoming in Essays on Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Nick Trakakis and Daniel Cohen, eds., Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.  pdf

Reviews:

• of Robert Kane, "The Significance of Free Will," Ethics 111 (2000), p. 426.  pdf
• of Randolph Clarke, "Libertarian Accounts of Free Will," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2007), pp. 269-72.  pdf
• of John Martin Fischer, "My Way," Ethics 117 (2007) , pp. 754-7.  pdf