Making sense of freedom and responsibility / Dana Kay Nelkin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nelkin, Dana Kay, 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Free will and determinism.

Responsibility.

Physical Description:

xi, 194 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Summary:

Dana Kay Nelkin presents a simple and natural account of freedom and moral responsibility which responds to the great variety challenges to the idea that are free and responsible, before ultimately reaffirming our conception of ourselves as free end responsible agents Making Sans 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 compatibles that is on in view defended, responsibility is compatible with determinism and one of its striking features is a certain asymmetry it requires the abiliy to do otherwise for responsibility when actions are praise worthy, but not when they ere 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 tits with a metaphysical picture of causat'on agent-causation- often assumed to be available only to incompatibility accounts. Dut receives positive support from the intuitively appealing Ought implies can Principal and establishes a new interrelation of freedom and moral responsibility tat dovetails with a compelling account of our inescapable commitments as national agents. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 A Rational Abilities View of Responsibility 7

2 Deep Assessment and Good Action 31

3 Abilities 64

4 A Compatibilist Account of Agent Causation 80

5 A Rationale tor the Rational Abilities View: Piaise, Blame, and the Ought-Implies-Can Principle 98

6 Deliberation and Alternatives 117

7 The Sense of Freedom, or Acting under the Idea of Freedom 147.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [179]-189) and index.

ISBN:

9780199608560

0199608563

OCLC:

707267263