Making sense of freedom and responsibility
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Bibliographic Information
Making sense of freedom and responsibility
Oxford University Press, 2013, c2011
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"This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability"--T.p. verso
"Reprinted 2013"--T.p. verso
Includes bibliographical references (p. [179]-189) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Dana Kay Nelkin presents a simple and natural account of freedom and moral responsibility which responds to the great variety of challenges to the idea that we are free and responsible, before ultimately reaffirming our conception of ourselves as agents. Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility begins with a defense of the rational abilities view, according to which one is responsible for an action if and only if one acts with the ability to recognize and
act for good reasons. The view is compatibilist - that is, on the view defended, responsibility is compatible with determinism - and one of its striking features is a certain asymmetry: it requires the ability to do otherwise for responsibility when actions are praiseworthy, but not when they are
blameworthy. In defending and elaborating the view, Nelkin questions long-held assumptions such as those concerning the relation between fairness and blame and the nature of so-called reactive attitudes such as resentment and forgiveness. Her argument not only fits with a metaphysical picture of causation - agent-causation - often assumed to be available only to incompatibilist accounts, but receives positive support from the intuitively appealing Ought Implies Can Principle, and establishes
a new interpretation of freedom and moral responsibility that dovetails with a compelling account of our inescapable commitments as rational agents.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. A Rational Abilities View of Responsibility
- 2. Deep Assessment and Good Action
- 3. Abilities
- 4. A Compatibilist Account of Agent Causation
- 5. A Rationale for the Rational Abilities View: Praise, Blame, and the Ought Implies Can Principle
- 6. Deliberation and Alternatives
- 7. The Sense of Freedom, or Acting under the Idea of Freedom
- Concluding Thoughts
- Bibliography
- Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
