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Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage

Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage
Author: Nomy Arpaly
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2009-08-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1400824508

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Perhaps everything we think, feel, and do is determined, and humans--like stones or clouds--are slaves to the laws of nature. Would that be a terrible state? Philosophers who take the incompatibilist position think so, arguing that a deterministic world would be one without moral responsibility and perhaps without true love, meaningful art, and real rationality. But compatibilists and semicompatibilists argue that determinism need not worry us. As long as our actions stem, in an appropriate way, from us, or respond in some way to reasons, our actions are meaningful and can be judged on their moral (or other) merit. In this highly original work, Nomy Arpaly argues that a deterministic world does not preclude moral responsibility, rationality, and love--in short, meaningful lives--but that there would still be something lamentable about a deterministic world. A person may respond well to reasons, and her actions may faithfully reflect her true self or values, but she may still feel that she is not free. Arpaly argues that compatibilists and semicompatibilists are wrong to dismiss this feeling--for which there are no philosophical consolations--as philosophically irrelevant. On the way to this bittersweet conclusion, Arpaly sets forth surprising theories about acting for reasons, the widely accepted idea that "ought implies can," moral blame, and more.


Moral Responsibility and Desert of Praise and Blame

Moral Responsibility and Desert of Praise and Blame
Author: Audrey L. Anton
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2015-12-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0739191764

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This book challenges a basic assumption held by many responsibility theorists: that agents must be morally responsible in the retrospective sense for anything in virtue of which they deserve praise or blame (the primacy assumption). Anton sets out to defeat this assumption by showing that accepting it as well as the much more intuitive causality assumption renders us incapable of making sense of cases whereby agents seem to deserve praise and blame. She argues that retrospective moral responsibility is a species of causal responsibility (the causality assumption). Then, she illustrates several examples in which agents are not causally responsible for any morally relevant consequences, but they seem to be deserving of praise or blame nonetheless. Anton concludes that such cases are counterexamples to the primacy assumption, and turns her attention towards discerning what grounds desert of praise and blame if not retrospective moral responsibility. Anton advances the moral attitude account, whereby agents deserve praise and blame in virtue of moral attitudes they have in response to moral reasons. These moral attitudes must be sufficiently sincere, which means they reach a threshold that distinguishes such attitudes as eligible for praise and blame. Anton adds that whether one deserves praise or blame and to what degree is sensitive to the agent’s personal moral progress as well as the status quo of her society. This addition brings with it the welcome consequence that morality may be objective, but we are still justified in judging one another charitably based on personal and societal limitations.


The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility

The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility
Author: Dana Kay Nelkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 783
Release: 2022
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190679301

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The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility is a collection of 33 articles by leading international scholars on the topic of moral responsibility and its main forms, praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. The articles in the volume provide a comprehensive survey on scholarship on this topic since 1960, with a focus on the past three decades. Articles address the nature of moral responsibility - whether it is fundamentally a matter of deserved blame and praise, or whether it is grounded anticipated good consequences, such as moral education and formation, or whether there are different kinds of moral responsibility. They examine responsibility for both actions and omissions, whether responsibility comes in degrees, and whether groups such as corporations can be responsible. The traditional debates about moral responsibility focus on the threats posed from causal determinism, and from the absence of the ability to do otherwise that may result. The articles in this volume build on these arguments and appraise the most recent developments in these debates. Philosophical reflection on the personal relationships and moral responsibility has been especially intense over the past two decades, and several articles reflect this development. Other chapters take up the link between blameworthiness and attitudes such as moral resentment and indignation, while others explore the role that forgiveness and reconciliation play in personal relationships and responsibility. The range of articles in this volume look at moral responsibility from a range of perspectives and disciplines, explaining how physics, neuroscience, and psychological research on topics such as addiction and implicit bias illuminate the ways and degrees to which we might be responsible.


New Waves in Philosophy of Action

New Waves in Philosophy of Action
Author: J. Aguilar
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2010-10-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230304257

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A collection of original, state-of-the-art essays by some of the best young philosophers working on the myriad problems of action and agency. Each one has already made important contributions to the philosophy of action and cognate areas. The chapters reflect their research and make a significant contribution to some debate in the field.


The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers

The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers
Author: Stephen Leach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2018-05-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1315385929

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The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers reveals how great philosophers of the past sought to answer the question of the meaning of life. This edited collection includes thirty-five chapters which each focus on a major philosophical figure, from Confucius to Rorty, and that imaginatively engage with the topic from their perspective. This volume also contains a Postscript on the historical origins and original significance of the phrase ‘the meaning of life’. Written by leading experts in the field, such as A.C. Grayling, Thaddeus Metz and John Cottingham, this unique and engaging book explores the relevance of the history of philosophy to contemporary debates. It will prove essential reading for students and scholars studying the history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, ethics, metaphysics or comparative philosophy.


Free Will and Action Explanation

Free Will and Action Explanation
Author: Scott Sehon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2016-04-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191076171

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Do we have free will and moral responsibility? Is free will compatible with determinism? Scott Sehon argues that we can make progress on these questions by focusing on an underlying issue: the nature of action explanation. When a person acts, or does something on purpose, we explain the behavior by citing the agent's reasons. The dominant view in philosophy of mind has been to construe such explanations as a species of causal explanation. Part I of the book proposes and defends a non-causal account of action and agency, according to which reason explanation of human behavior is irreducibly teleological rather than causal. Part II applies the teleological account of action to free will and responsibility, arguing that the free actions--the ones for which we are directly responsible--are the goal-directed actions, the actions that are teleologically explicable in terms of our reasons. It is then argued that this non-causal account of action undermines the appeal of incompatibilist arguments, arguments attempting to show that free will is not compatible with determinism. Beyond this, Sehon argues that the non-causal compatibilist account works well in practice: it is in accord with our clear intuitions about cases, and it both explains and provides guidance in the cases where our intuitions are murkier.


The Nature of Moral Responsibility

The Nature of Moral Responsibility
Author: Randolph K. Clarke
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2015
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199998078

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Recent philosophical work reveals considerable disagreement about what it is to be morally responsible for something. 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. This volume presents twelve original essays from participants in these debates. The contributors include prominent established figures as well as influential younger philosophers.


Conversation and Responsibility

Conversation and Responsibility
Author: Michael McKenna
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2012-03-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190453850

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In this book Michael McKenna advances a new theory of moral responsibility, one that builds upon the work of P. F. Strawson. As McKenna demonstrates, moral responsibility can be explained on analogy with a conversation. The relation between a morally responsible agent and those who hold her morally responsible is similar to the relation between a speaker and her audience. A responsible agent's actions are bearers of meaning--agent meaning--just as a speaker's utterances are bearers of speaker meaning. Agent meaning is a function of the moral quality of the will with which the agent acts. Those who hold an agent morally responsible for what she does do so by responding to her as if in a conversation. By responding with certain morally reactive attitudes, such as resentment or indignation, they thereby communicate their regard for the meaning taken to be revealed in that agent's actions. It is then open for the agent held responsible to respond to those holding her responsible by offering an apology, a justification, an excuse, or some other response, thereby extending the evolving conversational exchange. The conversational theory of moral responsibility that McKenna develops here accepts two features of Strawson's theory: that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal--so that being responsible must be understood by reference to the nature of holding responsible--and that the moral emotions are central to holding responsible. While upholding these two aspects of Strawson's theory, McKenna's theory rejects a further Strawsonian thesis, which is that holding morally responsible is more fundamental or basic than being morally responsible. On the conversational theory, the conditions for holding responsible are dependent on the nature of the agent who is responsible. So holding responsible cannot be more basic than being responsible. Nevertheless, the nature of the agent who is morally responsible is to be understood in terms of sensitivity to those who would make moral demands of her, thereby holding her responsible. Being responsible is therefore also dependent on holding responsible. Thus, neither being nor holding morally responsible is more basic than the other. They are mutually dependent.


Free Will & Action

Free Will & Action
Author: Filip Grgić
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2018-11-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319992953

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This book consists of eleven new essays that provide new insights into classical and contemporary issues surrounding free will and human agency. They investigate topics such as the nature of practical knowledge and its role in intentional action; mental content and explanations of action; recent arguments for libertarianism; the situationist challenge to free will; freedom and a theory of narrative configuration; the moral responsibility of the psychopath; and free will and the indeterminism of quantum mechanics. Also tackling some historical precursors of contemporary debates, taken together these essays demonstrate the need for an approach that recognizes the multifaceted nature of free will. This book provides essential reading for anyone interested in the current scholarship on free will.


The Self Beyond Itself

The Self Beyond Itself
Author: Heidi M. Ravven
Publisher: New Press, The
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2014-09-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1595588000

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“Intertwines history, philosophy, and science . . . A powerful challenge to conventional notions of individual responsibility” (Publishers Weekly). Few concepts are more unshakable in our culture than free will, the idea that individuals are fundamentally in control of the decisions they make, good or bad. And yet the latest research about how the brain functions seems to point in the opposite direction . . . In a work of breathtaking intellectual sweep and erudition, Heidi M. Ravven offers a riveting and accessible review of cutting-edge neuroscientific research into the brain’s capacity for decision-making—from “mirror” neurons and “self-mapping” to surprising new understandings of group psychology. The Self Beyond Itself also introduces readers to a rich, alternative philosophical tradition of ethics, rooted in the writing of Baruch Spinoza, that finds uncanny confirmation in modern science. Illustrating the results of today’s research with real-life examples, taking readers from elementary school classrooms to Nazi concentration camps, Ravven demonstrates that it is possible to build a theory of ethics that doesn’t rely on free will yet still holds both individuals and groups responsible for the decisions that help create a good society. The Self Beyond Itself is that rare book that injects new ideas into an old debate—and “an important contribution to the development of our thinking about morality” (Washington Independent Review of Books). “An intellectual hand-grenade . . . A magisterial survey of how contemporary neuroscience supports a vision of human morality which puts it squarely on the same plane as other natural phenomena.” —William D. Casebeer, author of Natural Ethical Facts