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Freedom and Responsibility in Context

2021-10-21 Philosophy
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Release : 2021-10-21
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 454/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Freedom and Responsibility in Context by : Ann Whittle

Download or read book Freedom and Responsibility in Context written by Ann Whittle. This book was released on 2021-10-21. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom and Responsibility in Context argues for a contextualist account of freedom and moral responsibility. It aims to challenge the largely unarticulated orthodoxy of invariantism, by arguing that contextualism is crucial to an understanding of both freedom and moral responsibility. The argument for contextualism regarding freedom and moral responsibility focuses upon their respective control conditions. Abilities are argued to be central to an understanding of the control required for freedom and moral responsibility. A unified, ability analysis of control is developed, which supports the thesis that attributions of freedom and moral responsibility are context dependent. The resulting contextualism offers a rapprochement of compatibilism and incompatibilism. By going beyond the false dichotomy of invariant compatibilism and invariant incompatibilism, it is argued that both positions can be given their due, since there is no 'right' answer to the question of whether or not determinism undermines freedom and moral responsibility.

Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought

2020-04-16 Philosophy
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Release : 2020-04-16
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 285/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought by : Ursula Coope

Download or read book Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought written by Ursula Coope. This book was released on 2020-04-16. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Neoplatonists have a perfectionist view of freedom: an entity is free to the extent that it succeeds in making itself good. Free entities are wholly in control of themselves—they are self-determining, self-constituting, and self-knowing. Neoplatonist philosophers argue that such freedom is only possible for non-bodily things. The human soul is free insofar as it rises above bodily things and engages in intellection, but when it turns its desires to bodily things, it is drawn under the sway of fate and becomes enslaved. Ursula Coope discusses this notion of freedom and its relation to questions about responsibility. She explains the important role of notions of self-reflexivity in Neoplatonist accounts of both freedom and responsibility. In Part I, Coope sets out the puzzles Neoplatonist philosophers face about freedom and responsibility and explains how these puzzles arise from earlier discussions. Part II explores the metaphysical underpinnings of the Neoplatonist notion of freedom (concentrating especially on the views of Plotinus and Proclus). In what sense, if any, is the ultimate first principle of everything (the One) free? If everything else is under this ultimate first principle, how can anything other than the One be free? What is the connection between freedom and nonbodiliness? Finally, Coope considers in Part III questions about responsibility, arising from this perfectionist view of freedom. Why are human beings responsible for their behaviour, in a way that other animals are not? If we are enslaved when we act viciously, how can we be to blame for our vicious actions and choices?

Freedom and Responsibility

2022-03-08 Philosophy
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Release : 2022-03-08
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 734/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Freedom and Responsibility by : Hilary Bok

Download or read book Freedom and Responsibility written by Hilary Bok. This book was released on 2022-03-08. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we reconcile the idea that we are free and responsible agents with the idea that what we do is determined according to natural laws? For centuries, philosophers have tried in different ways to show that we can. Hilary Bok takes a fresh approach here, as she seeks to show that the two ideas are compatible by drawing on the distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning. Bok argues that when we engage in practical reasoning--the kind that involves asking "what should I do?" and sifting through alternatives to find the most justifiable course of action--we have reason to hold ourselves responsible for what we do. But when we engage in theoretical reasoning--searching for causal explanations of events--we have no reason to apply concepts like freedom and responsibility. Bok contends that libertarians' arguments against "compatibilist" justifications of moral responsibility fail because they describe human actions only from the standpoint of theoretical reasoning. To establish this claim, she examines which conceptions of freedom of the will and moral responsibility are relevant to practical reasoning and shows that these conceptions are not vulnerable to many objections that libertarians have directed against compatibilists. Bok concludes that the truth or falsity of the claim that we are free and responsible agents in the sense those conceptions spell out is ultimately independent of deterministic accounts of the causes of human actions. Clearly written and powerfully argued, Freedom and Responsibility is a major addition to current debate about some of philosophy's oldest and deepest questions.

Responsibility and Practical Freedom

2012-01-26 Philosophy
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Release : 2012-01-26
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 381/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Responsibility and Practical Freedom by : Moira Roberts

Download or read book Responsibility and Practical Freedom written by Moira Roberts. This book was released on 2012-01-26. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mrs Roberts examines responsibility and freedom in terms of human interests and purposes. She builds up an account of the social context in which we learn to use words like 'responsibility', 'freedom' and 'action'. Ambiguities in the use of 'action' and 'perception' are dealt with at length.

Freedom within Reason

1993-10-21 Philosophy
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Release : 1993-10-21
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 97X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Freedom within Reason by : Susan Wolf

Download or read book Freedom within Reason written by Susan Wolf. This book was released on 1993-10-21. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers typically see the issue of free will and determinism in terms of a debate between two standard positions. Incompatibilism holds that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature. According to compatibilism, people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. In Freedom Within Reason, Susan Wolf charts a path between these traditional positions: We are not free and responsible, she argues, for actions that are governed by desires that we cannot help having. But the wish to form our own desires from nothing is both futile and arbitrary. Some of the forces beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of it: they endow us with faculties of reason, perception, and imagination, and provide us with the data by which we come to see and appreciate the world for what it is. The independence we want, Wolf argues, is not independence from the world, but independence from forces that prevent or preclude us from choosing how to live in light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. The freedom we want is a freedom within reason and the world.

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