Leibniz on Causation and Agency PDF Download

Author: Julia Jorati
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107192676
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
A fresh and thorough exploration of Leibniz's often controversial theories, including his thought on teleology, contingency, freedom, and moral responsibility.

Author: F. Vollmer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940159225X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
We act for reasons. But, it is sometimes claimed, the mental states and events that make up reasons, are not sufficient conditions of actions. Reasons never make actions happen. We- as agents (persons, selves, subjects) - make our actions happen. Actions are done by us, not elicited by reasons. The present essay is an attempt to understand this concept of agent causality. Who -~ or what - is an agent ? And how - in virtue of what - does an agent do things, or refrain from doing them? The first chapter deals with problems in the theory of action that seem to require the assumption that actions are controlled by agents. Chapters two and three then review and discuss theories of agent cau sality. Chapters four and five make up the central parts of the essay in which my own solution is put forth, and chapter six presents some data that seem to support this view. Chapter seven discusses how the theory can be reconciled with neuro-physiological facts. And in the last two chapters the theory is confronted with conflicting viewpoints and phe nomena. Daniel Robinson and Richard Swinburne took time to read parts of the manuscript in draft form. Though they disagree with my main viewpoints on the nature of the self, their conunents were very helpful. I hereby thank them both.

Author: Toby Handfield
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191565415
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
In recent decades, the analysis of causal relations has become a topic of central importance in analytic philosophy. More recently, dispositional properties have also become objects of intense study. Both of these phenomena appear to be intimately related to counterfactual conditionals and other modal phenomena such as objective chance, but little work has been done to directly relate them. Dispositions and Causes contains ten essays by scholars working in both metaphysics and in philosophy of science, examining the relation between dispositional and causal concepts. Particular issues discussed include the possibility of reducing dispositions to causes, and vice versa; the possibility of a nominalist theory of causal powers; the attempt to reduce all metaphysical necessity to dispositional properties; the relationship between dispositions, causes, and laws of nature; the role of causal capacities in explaining the success of scientific inquiry; the grounding of dispositions and causes in objective chances; and the type of causal power required for free agency. The introductory chapter contains a detailed overview of recent work in the area, providing a helpful entry to the literature for non-specialists.

Author: Randolph Clarke
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195306422
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This comprehensive study offers a balanced assessment of libertarian accounts of free will. Bringing to bear recent work on action, causation, and causal explanation, Clarke defends a type of event-causal view from popular objections concerning rationality and diminished control. He subtly explores the extent to which event-causal accounts can secure the things for the sake of which we value free will, judging their success here to be limited. Clarke then sets out a highly original agent-causal account, one that integrates agent causation and nondeterministic event causation. He defends this view from a number of objections but argues that we should find the substance causation required by any agent-causal account to be impossible. Clarke concludes that if a broad thesis of incompatibilism is correct - one on which both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism - then no libertarian account is entirely adequate.

Author: Joseph Y. Halpern
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262035022
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression.

Author: Timothy O'Connor
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198030509
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
This provocative book refurbishes the traditional account of freedom of will as reasons-guided "agent" causation, situating its account within a general metaphysics. O'Connor's discussion of the general concept of causation and of ontological reductionism v. emergence will specially interest metaphysicians and philosophers of mind.

Author: E. F. Schumacher
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060906111
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
The author of the world wide best-seller, Small Is Beautiful, now tackles the subject of Man, the World, and the Meaning of Living. Schumacher writes about man's relation to the world. man has obligations -- to other men, to the earth, to progress and technology, but most importantly himself. If man can fulfill these obligations, then and only then can he enjoy a real relationship with the world, then and only then can he know the meaning of living. Schumacher says we need maps: a "map of knowledge" and a "map of living." The concern of the mapmaker--in this instance, Schumacher--is to find for everything it's proper place. Things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and there proper places end to be filled by other things that ought not be there at all and therefore serve to mislead. A Guide for the Perplexed teaches us to be our own map makers. This constantly surprising, always stimulating book will be welcomed by a large audience, including the many new fans who believe strongly in what Schumacher has to say.

Author: Carolina Sartorio
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191063762
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Carolina Sartorio argues that only the actual causes of our behaviour matter to our freedom. Although this simple view of freedom clashes with most theories of responsibility, including the most prominent 'actual sequence' theories currently on offer, Sartorio argues for its truth. The key, she claims, lies in a correct understanding of the role played by causation in a view of that kind. Causation has some important features that make it a responsibility-grounding relation, and this to the success of the view. Also, when agents act freely, the actual causes are richer than they appear to be at first sight; in particular, they reflect the agents' sensitivity to reasons, where this includes both the existence of actual reasons and the absence of other (counterfactual) reasons. So acting freely requires more causes and quite complex causes, as opposed to fewer causes and simpler causes, and is compatible with those causes being deterministic. The book connects two different debates, the one on causation and the one on the problem of free will, in new and illuminating ways.

Author: W. Matthews Grant
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350082910
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The traditional doctrine of God's universal causality holds that God directly causes all entities distinct from himself, including all creaturely actions. But can our actions be free in the strong, libertarian sense if they are directly caused by God? W. Matthews Grant argues that free creaturely acts have dual sources, God and the free creaturely agent, and are ultimately up to both in a way that leaves all the standard conditions for libertarian freedom satisfied. Offering a comprehensive alternative to existing approaches for combining theism and libertarian freedom, he proposes new solutions for reconciling libertarian freedom with robust accounts of God's providence, grace, and predestination. He also addresses the problem of moral evil without the commonly employed Free Will Defense. Written for analytic philosophers and theologians, Grant's approach can be characterized as “neo-scholastic” as well as “analytic,” since many of the positions defended are inspired by, consonant with, and develop resources drawn from the scholastic tradition, especially Aquinas.

Author: Corey Barnes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040113176
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
This book examines scholastic conceptions of final causality through the methods and concerns of historical theology. It argues the history of final causality is most profitably understood according to the interplay of regularity, order, and intentionality as interpretive categories. Within this analytic framework, the author explores the history and theological implications of final causality from Aristotle to Nicole Oresme, utilizing shifts in the dominant interpretive category to clarify how final causality could change from one of four co-equal explanatory strategies in Aristotle to the cause of causes in Avicenna to a merely metaphorical cause in Walter Chatton. Theological debates – ranging from questions of creation, the relationship of primary and secondary causality and of the ultimate good to secondary goods, the autonomy or instrumentality of nature, and the compatibility of chance with providence – motivated many of these changes. The chapters examine final causality in Aristotle and the commentorial tradition from late antiquity to medieval Arabic sources and then consider in detail various scholastic understandings and uses of final causality. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of historical theology, systematic theology, scholastic thought, and medieval philosophy.