Time, Action and Necessity: A Proof of Free Will

by Nicholas Denyer

Are human actions ever free? Or is it instead always determined how people will act, long in advance of any decision the may take? Are indeed those two alternatives inconsistent, or may we maintain that human actions are both free and determined? Nicholas Denyer systematically answers these and many connected questions by elaborating from some Aristotelian insights an elegant and plausible theory of time, modality and practical reasoning. His short and tightly argued book offers a novel refutation of determinism and a novel proof that human beings have free will. Other contentious conclusions it reaches are that determinism entrails fatalism, that the idea of timeless truths is a nonsense, and that no fact can possibly be other than it is.

Genres: Philosophy

103 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1981