| Description |
xii, 162 pages ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-157) and index. |
| Contents |
The Dilemma of Autonomy (In Which the Problems of Responsibility and Free Will Are Presented) -- Setting Up the Problem(s): The Dilemma of Autonomy -- Defending the Problem as a Problem: The Metaphysical Stance -- The Real Self View (In Which a Nonautonomous Conception of Free Will and Responsibility is Examined and Criticized) -- Relating the Problems of Free Will and Responsibility to Determinism -- Avoiding Autonomy: Developing the Idea of an Agent's Real Self -- Problems with the Real Self View -- The Autonomy View (In Which an Autonomous Conception of Free Will and Responsibility Is Examined and Criticized) -- The Apparent (but Only Apparent) Autonomy of Valuing Selves -- Autonomy as the Ability to Make Radical Choices -- The (Non) Desirability of Autonomy -- A Last Voice in Favor of Autonomy: The Skeptic's Perspective -- The Reason View (In Which a Nonautonomous Conception of Free Will and Responsibility Is Proposed) -- The Reason View Compared with the Autonomy View -- The Reason View Compared with the Real Self View -- The Reason View as an Intermediary between the Other Views -- The Asymmetry of the Reason View -- The Reason View Applied -- Blameworthiness According to the Reason View -- The Unity and Spirit of the Reason View -- Ability and Possibility (In Which the Implications of Determinism for Responsibility Are Discussed) -- Determinism and the Reason View -- Conditional Analyses of Ability -- An Alternative Characterization of Ability -- The Story -- The Moral of the Story. |
| Summary |
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. |
| Subject |
Free will and determinism.
|
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Ethics.
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Reason.
|
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Ethics. (OCoLC)fst00915833
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Free will and determinism. (OCoLC)fst00933968
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Reason. (OCoLC)fst01091272
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Determinismus (DE-588)4149218-3
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Vernunft (DE-588)4063106-0
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Willensfreiheit (DE-588)4079320-5
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Freiheit (DE-588)4018326-9
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Sozialethik (DE-588)4055765-0
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Vrijheid.
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Verantwoordelijkheid.
|
| Indexed Term |
Determinism |
| ISBN |
0195056167 (alk. paper) |
|
9780195056167 (alk. paper) |
|
0195085655 |
|
9780195085655 |
|
