Robert Kane (philosopher)

Robert Hilary Kane (born 1938, Boston) is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently on phased retirement.

He is the author of Free Will and Values (1985), Through the Moral Maze (1994), and The Significance of Free Will (1996: awarded the 1996 Robert W. Hamilton Faculty Book Award). He also edited the Oxford Handbook of Free Will (2004) and has published many articles in the philosophy of mind and action, ethics, the theory of values and philosophy of religion.

Kane studied philosophy from 1956 to 1960 at Holy Cross College (B.A. 1960), from 1958 to 1959 at the University of Vienna, and from 1960 to 1964 at Yale University (M.A. 1962, Ph.D. 1964).

Kane is one of the leading contemporary philosophers on free will. Advocating what is termed within philosophical circles "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)". It is important to note that the crux of Kane's position is grounded not in a defense of alternative possibilities (AP) but in the notion of what Kane refers to as ultimate responsibility (UR). Thus, AP is a necessary but insufficient criterion for free will. It is necessary that there be (metaphysically) real alternatives for our actions, but that is not enough; our actions could be random without being in our control. The control is found in "ultimate responsibility".

Ultimate responsibility entails that agents must be the ultimate creators (or originators) and sustainers of their own ends and purposes. There must be more than one way for a person's life to turn out (AP). More importantly, whichever way it turns out must be based in the person's willing actions. As Kane defines it,

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