Professor Double, who taught for many years at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where he was emeritus, was best-known for his work on issues related to free will. The family shared this obituary:
Richard Double, emeritus professor and former chair of philosophy at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, died on July 29, 2021.
Double was a tireless teacher and generalist who wrote provocatively across many areas of philosophy, specializing in ethics and free will. Double‘s work is cited in six sections of the 2003 Stanford online Encyclopedia of philosophy: moral responsibility, autonomy in moral and political philosophy, personal autonomy, free will, Chinese room, and impartiality. His unique contribution to the free will problem was meta-level subjectivism, which argued that metaethical subjectivism in ethics showed that none of the familiar lower-level theories of moral responsibility could be true.
His works included four books: The Non-Reality of Free Will (1991), Metaphilosophy and Free Will (1996), Beginning Philosophy (1999) (all published by Oxford University Press), and Metaethical Subjectivism (Routledge, 2006). He also publihsed 58 articles and 23 reviews.
Double’s proudest accomplishment was the fact his three Oxford University Press monographs were reviewed in London's Times Literary Supplement.
Double is survived by his loving wife, Maureen Amar, who tirelessly managed Double’s long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
(Thanks to Gregg Caruso for the information.)