Aspects of agency : decisions, abilities, explanations, and free will / Alfred R. Mele.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mele, Alfred R., 1951- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Agent (Philosophy).

Act (Philosophy).

Free will and determinism.

Ethics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 251 pages)

Other Title:

Decisions, abilities, explanations, and free will

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Libertarianism about free will is the conjunction of a negative thesis and a positive thesis. The negative thesis is that free will is incompatible with determinism. The positive thesis is that there are actions that are or involve exercises of free will - free actions, for short. While remaining neutral of the negative thesis, this work develops a detailed version of the positive thesis that represents paradigmatically free actions as indeterministically caused by their proximal causes and pays special attention to decisions caused in this way.

Contents:

Deciding to act

Actions, explanations, and causes

Agents' abilities

Free will and moral responsibility: does either require the other?

Is what you decide ever up to you?

Arbitrary decisions and the problem of present luck

Complete control and disappearing agents

Libertarianism and human agency

Two libertarian theories: or why event-causal libertarians should prefer my daring libertarian view to Robert Kane's view

Living without agent causation.

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-065999-8

0-19-066000-7

0-19-065998-X