Author: Timothy O'Connor Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780195091571 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
Many philosophers are persuaded by familiar arguments that free will is incompatible with causal determinism. Yet, notoriously, past attempts to articulate how the right type of indeterminism might secure the capacity for autonomous action have generally been regarded as either demonstrably inadequate or irremediably obscure. This volume gathers together the most significant recent discussions concerning the prospects for devising a satisfactory indeterministic account of freedom of action. These essays give greater precision to traditional formulations of the problems associated with indeterministic accounts and to the range of theoretical avenues for pursuing resolutions. The first four essays set out different challenges (from both compatibilists and those skeptical of the possibility of free will) to the adequacy of standard indeterministic theories. The next seven essays meet one or more of these challenges. Each of the fundamental types of approach--simple indeterminism, causal indeterminism, and agent causation--is represented in these novel and sophisticated proposals. The collection finishes with two essays that debate whether compatibilism entails that freedom of choice is a comparatively rare phenomenon within an individual's life. Eloquently presenting some of the most compelling and accessible arguments surrounding this central philosophical issue, Agents, Causes, and Events makes a valuable contribution to courses in free will/action theory and metaphysics.
Author: Timothy O'Connor Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198030509 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 152
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: Donald Davidson Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199246262 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
Donald Davidson has prepared a new edition of his classic 1980 collection of Essays on Actions and Events, including two additional essays.
Author: E. J. Lowe Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191550906 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
Personal Agency consists of two parts. In Part II, a radically libertarian theory of action is defended which combines aspects of agent causalism and volitionism. This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will—a 'two-way' power which rational agents can freely exercise in the light of reason. Lowe contends that substances, not events, are the causal source of all change in the world—with rational, free agents like ourselves having a special place in the causal order as unmoved movers, or initiators of new causal chains. And he defends a thoroughgoing externalism regarding reasons for action, holding these to be mind-independent worldly entities rather than the beliefs and desires of agents. Part I prepares the ground for this theory by undermining the threat presented to it by physicalism. It does this by challenging the causal closure argument for physicalism in all of its forms and by showing that a dualistic philosophy of mind—one which holds that human mental states and their subjects cannot be identified with bodily states and human bodies respectively—is both metaphysically coherent and entirely consistent with known empirical facts.
Author: Kadri Vihvelin Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199795185 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
This book rescues compatibilists from the familiar charge of 'quagmire of evasion' by arguing that the problem of free will and determinism is a metaphysical problem with a metaphysical solution. There is no good reason to think that determinism would rob us of the free will we think we have.
Author: Timothy O'Connor Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190288434 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 160
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: David-Hillel Ruben Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780198235880 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
David-Hillel Ruben's new book pursues some novel and unusual standpoints in the philosophy of action. He rejects, for example, the most widely held view about how to count actions, and argues for what he calls a 'prolific theory' of act individuation. He also describes and argues against thetwo leading theories of the nature of action, the causal theory and the agent causal theory. The causal theory cannot account for skilled activity, nor for mental action. The agent causalist theory unnecessarily reifies causings. He identifies an assumption that they share, and that most actiontheorists have assumed to be unproblematic and uncontroversial, that an action is, or entails the existence of, an event. Several different meanings to that claim are disentangled and in the most interesting sense of that claim, Ruben denies that it is true. His own alternative is simple andunpretentious: nothing informative can be said about the nature of action that explicates action in any other terms.Ruben sketches a theory of causal explanation of action that eschews the requirement for laws or generalisations, and this effectively quashes one argument for the oft-repeated view that no explanations of action can be causal, on the grounds that there are no convincing cases of laws of humanaction. He addresses a number of questions about the knowledge an agent has of his own actions, looking particularly at examples of pathological cases of action in which, for one reason or another, the agent does not know what he is doing.Inspiring and enlightening in its challenge to received wisdom, and in its convincing defence of some unfashionable positions, Action and its Explanation will be required reading for anyone working in this field.
Author: Erasmus Mayr Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191619264 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Our self-understanding as human agents includes a commitment to three crucial claims about human agency: that agents must be active, that actions are part of the natural order of the universe, and that intentional actions can be explained by the agent's reasons for acting. While all of these claims are indispensable elements of our view of ourselves as human agents, they are in continuous conflict and tension with one another, especially once one adopts the currently predominant view of what the natural order must be like. One of the central tasks of philosophy of action consists in showing how, despite appearances, these conflicts can be resolved and our self-understanding as agents be vindicated. The mainstream of contemporary philosophy of action holds that this task can only be fulfilled by an event-causal reductive view of human agency, paradigmatically embodied in the so-called 'standard model' developed by Donald Davidson. Erasmus Mayr, in contrast, develops a new agent-causal solution to these conflicts and shows why this solution is superior both to event-causalist accounts and to Von Wright's intentionalism about agency. He offers a comprehensive theory of substance-causation on the basis of a realist conception of powers, which allows one to see how the widespread rejection of agent-causation rests on an unfounded 'Humean' view of nature and of causal processes. At the same time, Mayr addresses the question of the nature of reasons for acting and complements its substance-causal account of activity with a non-causal account of acting for reasons in terms of following a standard of success.
Author: Timothy O'Connor
Author: Timothy O'Connor
Author: Donald Davidson
Author: 
Author: E. J. Lowe
Author: Kadri Vihvelin
Author: Timothy O'Connor
Author: David-Hillel Ruben
Author: Erasmus Mayr
Author: Derk Pereboom