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Freedom and responsibilityIn John Skorupski (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Routledge. 2010.This entry in THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO ETHICS examines moral responsibility and the freedom required for responsibility. The nature of responsibility, its compatibility with determinism, and whether responsibility is impossible are among the topics examined.
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304Skilled activity and the causal theory of actionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (3): 523-550. 2010.Skilled activity, such as shaving or dancing, differs in important ways from many of the stock examples that are employed by action theorists. Some critics of the causal theory of action contend that such a view founders on the problem of skilled activity. This paper examines how a causal theory can be extended to the case of skilled activity and defends the account from its critics.
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967Causation, norms, and omissions: A study of causal judgmentsPhilosophical Psychology 28 (2): 279-293. 2015.Many philosophical theories of causation are egalitarian, rejecting a distinction between causes and mere causal conditions. We sought to determine the extent to which people's causal judgments discriminate, selecting as causes counternormal events—those that violate norms of some kind—while rejecting non-violators. We found significant selectivity of this sort. Moreover, priming that encouraged more egalitarian judgments had little effect on subjects. We also found that omissions are as likely …Read more
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547Absence of actionPhilosophical Studies 158 (2): 361-376. 2012.Often when one omits to do a certain thing, there's no action that is one's omission; one's omission, it seems, is an absence of any action of some type. This paper advances the view that an absence of an action--and, in general, any absence--is nothing at all: there is nothing that is an absence. Nevertheless, it can result from prior events that one omits to do a certain thing, and there can be results of the fact that one omits to do something. This is so even if absences cannot be causes or …Read more
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104Modest libertarianismNoûs 34 (s14): 21-46. 2000.This paper examines libertarian accounts that appeal to event causation but avoid appeal to agent causation. Such views are modest in their metaphysical commitments and may be modest, as well, in what they promise. It is argued that an action-centered version should be preferred; on such a view, indeterminism is required in the direct production of decision or other action. Although a view of this kind does not improve on compatibilist accounts when it comes to moral responsibility, they may be …Read more
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681Some Theses on DesertPhilosophical Explorations 16 (2): 153-64. 2013.Consider the idea that suffering of some specific kind is deserved by those who are guilty of moral wrongdoing. Feeling guilty is a prime example. It might be said that it is noninstrumentally good that one who is guilty feel guilty (at the right time and to the right degree), or that feeling guilty (at the right time and to the right degree) is apt or fitting for one who is guilty. Each of these claims constitutes an interesting thesis about desert, given certain understandings of what desert i…Read more
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37The Nature of Moral Responsibility: New EssaysOxford University Press. 2015.What is it to be morally responsible for something? Recent philosophical work reveals considerable disagreement on the question. Indeed, some theorists claim to distinguish several varieties of moral responsibility, with different conditions that must be satisfied if one is to bear responsibility of one or another of these kinds. Debate on this point turns partly on disagreement about the kinds of responses made appropriate when one is blameworthy or praiseworthy. It is generally agreed that the…Read more
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545Dispositions, Abilities to Act, and Free Will: The New DispositionalismMind 118 (470): 323-351. 2009.This paper examines recent attempts to revive a classic compatibilist position on free will, according to which having an ability to perform a certain action is having a certain disposition. Since having unmanifested dispositions is compatible with determinism, having unexercised abilities to act, it is held, is likewise compatible. Here it is argued that although there is a kind of capacity to act possession of which is a matter of having a disposition, the new dispositionalism leaves unresolve…Read more
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97Responsibility, Mechanisms, and CapacitiesModern Schoolman 88 (1/2): 161-169. 2011.Frankfurt-style cases are supposed to show that an agent can be responsible for doing something even though the agent wasn’t able to do otherwise. Neil Levy has argued that the cases fail. Agents in such cases, he says, lack a capacity that they’d have to have in order to be responsible for doing what they do. Here it’s argued that Levy is mistaken. Although it may be that agents in Frankfurt-style cases lack some kind of capability, what they lack isn’t required for them to be responsible for d…Read more
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6Are we free to obey the laws?American Philosophical Quarterly 47 (4): 389-401. 2010.It is often said that if free will is incompatible with determinism, then free actions must be anomic, not covered by any law of nature. Here it is argued that there is no need for incompatiblists to hold this view. Even if freedom requires indeterminism, our freedom can be freedom to obey the laws.
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61Omissions: Agency, Metaphysics, and ResponsibilityOxford University Press. 2014.Philosophical theories of agency have focused primarily on actions and activities. But, besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. How is this aspect of our agency to be conceived? This book offers a comprehensive account of omitting and refraining, addressing issues ranging from the nature of agency and moral responsibility to the metaphysics of absences and causation. Topics addressed include the role of intention in intentional omission, the connection between n…Read more
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86Ability and responsibility for omissionsPhilosophical Studies 73 (2-3). 1994.Most philosophers now accept that an agent may be responsible for an action even though she could not have acted otherwise. However, many who accept such a view about responsibility for actions nevertheless maintain that, when it comes to omissions, an agent is responsible only if she could have done what she omitted to do. If this Principle of Possible Action (PPA), as it is sometimes called, is correct, then there is an important asymmetry between what is required for responsibility for action…Read more
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391Libertarian Accounts of Free WillOxford University Press USA. 2003.This comprehensive study offers a balanced assessment of libertarian accounts of free will. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view from popular objections concerning rationality and diminished control. He subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. Clarke then sets out a highly original agent-causal …Read more
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108Free choice, effort, and wanting morePhilosophical Explorations 2 (1): 20-41. 1999.This paper examines the libertarian account of free choice advanced by Robert Kane in his recent book, The Significance of Free Will. First a rather simple libertarian view is considered, and an objection is raised against it the view fails to provide for any greater degree of agent-control than what could be available in a deterministic world. The basic differences between this simple view and Kane's account are the requirements, on the latter, of efforts of will and of an agent's wanting more …Read more
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77The appearance of freedomPhilosophical Explorations 10 (1). 2007.This paper develops three points in response to Habermas's ?The Language Game of Responsible Agency and the Problem of Free Will.? First, while Habermas nicely characterizes the appearance of freedom, he misconstrues its connections to deliberate agency, responsibility, and our justificatory practice. Second, Habermas's discussion largely overlooks grave conceptual challenges to our idea of freedom, challenges more fundamental than those posed by naturalism. Finally, a physicalist view of oursel…Read more
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265Contrastive rational explanation of free choicePhilosophical Quarterly 46 (183): 185-201. 1996.A contrastive rational explanation of a choice cites a reason why the agent made that choice rather than, say, making a different choice, or rather than making no choice at all. It is often said that if, as libertarians maintain, free choices are undetermined by prior events, then it is not possible to provide contrastive rational explanations of them. Alternatively, it is sometimes said that while non-causal contrastive rational explanation of such a choice might be possible, causal contrastive…Read more
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167Personal Agency: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action, by E. J. Lowe (review)Mind 119 (475): 820-823. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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76A Principle of Rational Explanation?Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (3): 1-12. 1992.This paper addresses an argument from Richard Double to the effect that any libertarian account of free will must attribute to human action a kind of rationality that is impossible. Double's argument relies on an alleged principle of rational explanation. Here it is argued that the proposed principle is false, and hence that Double has failed to show that libertarianism has any problem with rationality. The paper concludes with a suggestion as to how the sort of rationality in question is made p…Read more
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167Moral Responsibility, Guilt, and RetributivismThe Journal of Ethics 20 (1-3): 121-137. 2016.This paper defends a minimal desert thesis, according to which someone who is blameworthy for something deserves to feel guilty, to the right extent, at the right time, because of her culpability. The sentiment or emotion of guilt includes a thought that one is blameworthy for something as well as an unpleasant affect. Feeling guilty is not a matter of inflicting suffering on oneself, and it need not involve any thought that one deserves to suffer. The desert of a feeling of guilt is a kind of m…Read more
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114Abilities (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (2): 451-458. 2013.The paper is a contribution to a symposium on Dana Nelkin's MAKING SENSE OF FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY. Nelkin advances accounts of moral freedom--the freedom required for moral responsibility--and deliberative freedom--the freedom that any rational deliberator must believe in. She argues that the two come to fundamentally the same thing. I raise doubt about this claim, and also about whether the kind of ability that Nelkin characterizes suffices for responsibility in all cases.
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150Intrinsic finksPhilosophical Quarterly 58 (232). 2008.Dispositions can be finkish, prone to disappear in circumstances that would commonly trigger their characteristic manifestations. Can a disposition be finkish because of something intrinsic to the object possessing that disposition? Sungho Choi has argued that this is not possible, and many agree. Here it is argued that no good case has been made for ruling out the possibility of intrinsic finks; on the contrary, there is good reason to accept it.
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Philosophy of Action |
Free Will |
Moral Responsibility |
Dispositions and Powers |
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Normative Ethics |