Robert Kane (philosopher)
Robert Kane (born 1938) is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Free Will and Values (1985), Through the Moral Maze (1994), The Significance of Free Will (1996; awarded the 1996 Robert W. Hamilton Faculty Book Award), edited the Oxford Handbook of Free Will (2004) and is widely published in the philosophy of mind and action, ethics, the theory of values and philosophy of religion.
Kane is one of the leading contemporary philosophers on free will. Advocating what is termed within philosophy "libertarian freedom", Kane argues that "(1) the existence of alternative possibilities (or the agent's power to do otherwise) is a necessary condition for acting freely, and (2) determinism is not compatible with alternative possibilities (it precludes the power to do otherwise)" (Oxford Handbook of Free Will, page 11). In defending libertarian freedom, Kane opposes the majority of the philosophical tradition. The majority of contemporary philosophers believes, like Daniel Dennett, that either (1) or (2) or both outlined above are not true, and thus free will is compatible with determinism.