You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book provides a comprehensive, systematic theory of moral responsibility. The authors explore the conditions under which individuals are morally responsible for actions, omissions, consequences, and emotions. The leading idea in the book is that moral responsibility is based on 'guidance control'. This control has two components: the mechanism that issues in the relevant behavior must be the agent's own mechanism, and it must be appropriately responsive to reasons. The book develops an account of both components. The authors go on to offer a sustained defense of the thesis that moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism.
Explores aspects of responsibility, including moral accountability; hierarchy, rationality, and the real self; and ethical responsibility and alternative possibilities.
This unique text focuses on ethical puzzles and hypothetical problems to help students at all levels understand and refine their moral principles and see how they apply to various situations. An extensive, thoughtfully written introduction provides the theoretical background and lays out numerous moral puzzle cases that are analyzed and discussed throughout the text. Challenging follow-up articles argue a variety of stances on the ethical puzzles set forth in the introduction.
The Metaphysics of Free Will provides a through statement of the major grounds for skepticism about the reality of free will and moral responsibility. The author identifies and explains the sort of control that is associated with personhood and accountability, and shows how it is consistent with causal determinism. In so doing, out view of ourselves as morally responsible agents is protected against the disturbing changes posed by science and religion.
This volume contains a selection of papers concerning free will and moral responsibility. Among the topics covered, as they relate to these problems, are the challenge of skepticism; moral sentiment and moral capacity; necessity and the metaphysics of causation; practical reason; free will and art; fatalism and the limits of agency; and our metaphysical attitudes of optimism and pessimism.
It is well over a decade since John Fischer and Mark Ravizza – and before them, Jay Wallace and Daniel Dennett – defended responsibility from the threat of determinism. But defending responsibility from determinism is a potentially endless and largely negative enterprise; it can go on for as long as dissenting voices remain, and although such work strengthens the theoretical foundations of these theories, it won’t necessarily build anything on top of those foundations, nor will it move these theories into new territory or explain how to apply them to practical contexts. To this end, the papers in this volume address these more positive challenges by exploring how compatibilist responsi...
Philosophical theories of agency and responsibility have focused primarily on actions and activities. But, besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. Omitting or refraining, like acting, can have consequences, good and bad. And we can be praiseworthy or blameworthy for omitting or refraining. However, omitting and refraining are not simply special cases of action; they require their own distinctive treatment. In Omissions, Randolph Clarke offers the first comprehensive account of these phenomena, addressing three main questions: What is an omission? What is it to intentionally not do a certain thing? And what does it take to be morally responsible for omitting or refraining? Clarke examines the connection between negligence and omission, the distinction between doing and allowing, and the distinction in law between act and omission. With its attention to a previously neglected topic, Omissions broadens our understanding of human agency.
A collection of John Martin Fischer's essays on free will and moral responsibility. Fischer's overall framework contains an argument for the contention that moral responsibility does not require free will in the sense that implies alternative possibilities and a sketch of a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility.
In this extensive and deeply researched study, Eleonore Stump examines Aquinas' major works, and clearly assesses the vast range of Aquinas' thought. This will be an unrivalled study and an indispensable resource for studying Aquinas.