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  1. Defending nonhistorical compatibilism: A reply to Haji and cuypers1.Michael McKenna - 2012 - Philosophical Issues 22 (1):264-280.
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  • Rational Capacities.Michael Smith - 2003 - In Sarah Stroud & Christine Tappolet (eds.), Weakness of will and practical irrationality. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 17-38.
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  • Rational Capacities, or: How to Distinguish Recklessness, Weakness, and Compulsion.Michael Smith - 2003 - In Sarah Stroud & Christine Tappolet (eds.), Weakness of will and practical irrationality. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 17-38.
    We ordinarily suppose that there is a difference between having and failing to exercise a rational capacity on the one hand, and lacking a rational capacity altogether on the other. This is crucial for our allocations of responsibility. Someone who has but fails to exercise a capacity is responsible for their failure to exercise their capacity, whereas someone who lacks a capacity altogether is not. However, as Gary Watson pointed out in his seminal essay ’Skepticism about Weakness of Will’, the (...)
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  • Weakness of will and practical irrationality.Sarah Stroud & Christine Tappolet (eds.) - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Among the many practical failures that threaten us, weakness of will or akrasia is often considered to be a paradigm of irrationality. The eleven new essays in this collection, written by an excellent international team of philosophers, some well-established, some younger scholars, give a rich overview of the current debate over weakness of will and practical irrationality more generally. Issues covered include classical questions such as the distinction between weakness and compulsion, the connection between evaluative judgement and motivation, the role (...)
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  • 'Can' in theory and practice: A possible worlds analysis.Keith Lehrer - 1976 - In M. Brand & Douglas Walton (eds.), Action Theory. Reidel. pp. 241-270.
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  • The Soft-Line Solution to Pereboom's Four-Case Argument.Kristin Demetriou - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4):595-617.
    Derk Pereboom's Four-Case Argument is among the most famous and resilient manipulation arguments against compatibilism. I contend that its resilience is not a function of the argument's soundness but, rather, the ill-gotten gain from an ambiguity in the description of the causal relations found in the argument's foundational case. I expose this crucial ambiguity and suggest that a dilemma faces anyone hoping to resolve it. After a thorough search for an interpretation which avoids both horns of this dilemma, I conclude (...)
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  • Knowing One’s Own Mind.Donald Davidson - 1987 - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 60 (3):441-458.
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  • Autonomous Agents: From Self Control to Autonomy.Alfred R. Mele - 1995 - New York, US: Oxford University Press.
    Autonomous Agents addresses the related topics of self-control and individual autonomy. "Self-control" is defined as the opposite of akrasia-weakness of will. The study of self-control seeks to understand the concept of its own terms, followed by an examination of its bearing on one's actions, beliefs, emotions, and personal values. It goes on to consider how a proper understanding of self-control and its manifestations can shed light on personal autonomy and autonomous behaviour. Perspicuous, objective, and incisive throughout, Alfred Mele makes a (...)
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  • A compatibilist theory of alternate possibilities.Joseph Keim Campbell - 1997 - Philosophical Studies 88 (3):339-44.
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  • A Compatibilist Theory of Alternative Possibilities.Joseph Keim Campbell - 1997 - Philosophical Studies 88 (3):319-330.
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  • Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes From Harry Frankfurt.Sarah Buss & Lee Overton (eds.) - 2002 - MIT Press, Bradford Books.
    The original essays in this book address Harry Frankfurt's influential writing on personal identity, love, value, moral responsibility, and the freedom and ...
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  • Global control and freedom.Bernard Berofsky - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 131 (2):419-445.
    Several prominent incompatibilists, e.g., Robert Kane and Derk Pereboom, have advanced an analogical argument in which it is claimed that a deterministic world is essentially the same as a world governed by a global controller. Since the latter world is obviously one lacking in an important kind of freedom, so must any deterministic world. The argument is challenged whether it is designed to show that determinism precludes freedom as power or freedom as self-origination. Contrary to the claims of its adherents, (...)
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  • Freedom From Necessity: The Metaphysical Basis of Responsibility.Bernard Berofsky - 1987 - New York: Routledge.
    Introduction No philosophical problem is more deserving of the title 'the free will problem' than that concerning the assessment of the claim that a ...
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  • Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage: An Essay on Free Will.Nomy Arpaly - 2006 - Princeton University Press.
    Perhaps everything we think, feel, and do is determined, and humans--like stones or clouds--are slaves to the laws of nature. Would that be a terrible state? Philosophers who take the incompatibilist position think so, arguing that a deterministic world would be one without moral responsibility and perhaps without true love, meaningful art, and real rationality. But compatibilists and semicompatibilists argue that determinism need not worry us. As long as our actions stem, in an appropriate way, from us, or respond in (...)
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  • Involuntary sins.Robert Merrihew Adams - 1985 - Philosophical Review 94 (1):3-31.
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  • Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):5-20.
    It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...)
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  • Metaphysics.Richard Taylor - 1963 - Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall.
    This classic, provocative introduction to classical metaphysical questions focuses on appreciating the problems, rather than attempting to proffer answers.
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  • Freedom and necessity.A. J. Ayer - 2000 - In Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 271-284.
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  • The Trouble with Tracing.Manuel Vargas - 2005 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1):269-291.
    Many prominent theories of moral responsibility rely on the notion of “tracing,” the idea that responsibility for an outcome can be located in (i.e., “traced back to”) some prior moment of control, perhaps significantly antecedent to the proximate sources of a considered action. In this article, I show how there is a problem for theories that rely on tracing. The problem is connected to the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. Many prima facie good candidate cases for tracing analyses appear to (...)
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  • Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.Harry Frankfurt - 2004 - In Tim Crane & Katalin Farkas (eds.), Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology. Oxford University Press UK.
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  • Frankfurt-style compatibilism.John Martin Fischer - 2002 - In Sarah Buss & Lee Overton (eds.), Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes From Harry Frankfurt. MIT Press, Bradford Books.
    In this essay I shall begin by sketching a "Frankfurt-type example." I shall then lay out a disturbing challenge to the claim I have made above that these examples help us to make significant progress in the debates about the relationship between moral responsibility and causal determinism. I then will provide a reply to this challenge, and the reply will point toward a more refined formulation of the important contribution I believe Frankfurt has made to defending a certain sort of (...)
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  • Born yesterday: Personal autonomy for agents without a past.David Zimmerman - 1999 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23 (1):236–266.
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  • Soft libertarianism and hard compatibilism.Gary Watson - 1999 - The Journal of Ethics 3 (4):351-365.
    In this paper I discuss two kinds of attempts to qualify incompatibilist and compatibilist conceptions of freedom to avoid what have been thought to be incredible commitments of these rival accounts. One attempt -- which I call soft libertarianism -- is represented by Robert Kane''s work. It hopes to defend an incompatibilist conception of freedom without the apparently difficult metaphysical costs traditionally incurred by these views. On the other hand, in response to what I call the robot objection (that if (...)
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  • Soft Libertarianism and Hard Compatibilism.Gary Watson - 1999 - The Journal of Ethics 3 (4):353-368.
    In this paper I discuss two kinds of attempts to qualify incompatibilist and compatibilist conceptions of freedom to avoid what have been thought to be incredible commitments of these rival accounts. One attempt -- which I call soft libertarianism -- is represented by Robert Kane's work. It hopes to defend an incompatibilist conception of freedom without the apparently difficult metaphysical costs traditionally incurred by these views. On the other hand, in response to what I call the robot objection (that if (...)
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  • Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments.R. Jay Wallace - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
    R. Jay Wallace argues in this book that moral accountability hinges on questions of fairness: When is it fair to hold people morally responsible for what they do? Would it be fair to do so even in a deterministic world? To answer these questions, we need to understand what we are doing when we hold people morally responsible, a stance that Wallace connects with a central class of moral sentiments, those of resentment, indignation, and guilt. To hold someone responsible, he (...)
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  • Précis of Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments.R. Jay Wallace - 2002 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (3):680-681.
    Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments offers an account of moral responsibility. It addresses the question: what are the forms of capacity or ability that render us morally accountable for the things we do? A traditional answer has it that the conditions of moral responsibility include freedom of the will, where this in turn involves the availability of robust alternative possibilities. I reject this answer, arguing that the conditions of moral responsibility do not include any condition of alternative possibilities. In the (...)
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  • Free Will Demystified: A Dispositional Account.Kadri Vihvelin - 2004 - Philosophical Topics 32 (1-2):427-450.
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  • The Trouble with Tracing.Manuel Vargas - 2005 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1):269-291.
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  • On the importance of history for responsible agency.Manuel Vargas - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 127 (3):351-382.
    In this article I propose a resolution to the history issue for responsible agency, given a moderate revisionist approach to responsibility. Roughly, moderate revisionism is the view that a plausible and normatively adequate theory of responsibility will require principled departures from commonsense thinking. The history issue is whether morally responsible agency – that is, whether an agent is an apt target of our responsibility-characteristic practices and attitudes – is an essentially historical notion. Some have maintained that responsible agents must have (...)
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  • An Essay on Free Will.Peter Van Inwagen - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    "This is an important book, and no one interested in issues which touch on the free will will want to ignore it."--Ethics. In this stimulating and thought-provoking book, the author defends the thesis that free will is incompatible with determinism. He disputes the view that determinism is necessary for moral responsbility. Finding no good reason for accepting determinism, but believing moral responsiblity to be indubitable, he concludes that determinism should be rejected.
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  • Review of Ferdinand Schoeman: Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology[REVIEW]Laurence Thomas - 1989 - Ethics 99 (4):950-951.
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  • Book Review: Moral appraisability: Puzzles, proposals and perplexities. [REVIEW]Brian Rosebury - 2000 - Philosophical Review 109 (1):132-135.
    Moral Appraisability is not quite such a good book as its confident and lucid introduction leads one to hope, but it is work of both substance and promise. Ishtiyaque Haji’s main project is to determine sufficient conditions for moral appraisability: that is, for the propriety of holding an agent praiseworthy or blameworthy for an action. Identifying three primary conditions—control, autonomy, and epistemic—he refines them with the aid of a meticulous analysis of recent discussions and a range of vivid examples, and (...)
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  • A hard-line reply to the multiple-case manipulation argument.Derk Pereboom - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (1):160-170.
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  • Reactive attitudes, reactivity, and omissions. [REVIEW]Alfred R. Mele - 2000 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2):447-452.
    Regarding a recent book of mine, John Fischer wrote : “I am faced with the difficult task of doing a critical notice of a book, with almost all of which I agree!” I face a similar task here. Fischer and Ravizza’s Responsibility and Control is an excellent book. It develops, in admirable detail, an attractive compatibilist position on moral responsibility in a trio of related spheres—actions, consequences, and omissions—and it presents powerful objections to leading arguments for incompatibilism. Incompatibilists undoubtedly will (...)
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  • Moral responsibility and agents' histories.Alfred Mele - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 142 (2):161 - 181.
    To what extent should an analysis of an agent’s being morally responsible for an action that he performed—especially a compatibilist analysis of this—be sensitive to the agent’s history? In this article, I give the issue a clearer focus than it tends to have in the literature, I lay some groundwork for an attempt to answer the question, and I motivate a partial but detailed answer.
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  • Moral responsibility and history revisited.Alfred R. Mele - 2008 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (5):463 - 475.
    Compatibilists about determinism and moral responsibility disagree with one another about the bearing of agents’ histories on whether or not they are morally responsible for some of their actions. Some stories about manipulated agents prompt such disagreements. In this article, I call attention to some of the main features of my own “history-sensitive” compatibilist proposal about moral responsibility, and I argue that arguments advanced by Michael McKenna and Manuel Vargas leave that proposal unscathed.
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  • Moral responsibility and agents’ histories.Alfred Mele - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 142 (2):161-181.
    To what extent should an analysis of an agent’s being morally responsible for an action that he performed—especially a compatibilist analysis of this—be sensitive to the agent’s history? In this article, I give the issue a clearer focus than it tends to have in the literature, I lay some groundwork for an attempt to answer the question, and I motivate a partial but detailed answer.
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  • Manipulation, Compatibilism, and Moral Responsibility.Alfred R. Mele - 2008 - The Journal of Ethics 12 (3-4):263-286.
    This article distinguishes among and examines three different kinds of argument for the thesis that moral responsibility and free action are each incompatible with the truth of determinism: straight manipulation arguments; manipulation arguments to the best explanation; and original-design arguments. Structural and methodological matters are the primary focus.
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  • Free Will and Luck.Alfred R. Mele - 2006 - New York, US: Oxford University Press.
    Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free will--one for readers who are convinced that free will is incompatible (...)
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  • Free will and luck: Reply to critics.Alfred R. Mele - 2007 - Philosophical Explorations 10 (2):153 – 155.
    Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free will--one for readers who are convinced that free will is incompatible (...)
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  • Responsibility and Globally Manipulated Agents.Michael McKenna - 2004 - Philosophical Topics 32 (1-2):169-192.
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  • Putting the lie on the control condition for moral responsibility.Michael McKenna - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 139 (1):29 - 37.
    In “Control, Responsibility, and Moral Assessment” Angela Smith defends her nonvoluntarist theory of moral responsibility against the charge that any such view is shallow because it cannot capture the depth of judgments of responsibility. Only voluntarist positions can do this since only voluntarist positions allow for control. I argue that Smith is able to deflect the voluntarists’ criticism, but only with further resources. As a voluntarist, I also concede that Smith’s thesis has force, and I close with a compromise position, (...)
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  • Assessing reasons - responsive compatibilism.Micheal S. McKenna - 2000 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 8 (1):89 – 114.
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  • A Hard‐line Reply to Pereboom’s Four‐Case Manipulation Argument 1.Michael Mckenna - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (1):142-159.
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  • A Hard-line Reply to Pereboom’s Four-Case Manipulation Argument.Michael Mckenna - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (1):142-159.
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  • Three Concepts of Free Action.Don Locke & Harry G. Frankfurt - 1975 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 49 (1):95-126.
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  • Are we free to break the laws?David Lewis - 1981 - Theoria 47 (3):113-21.
    I insist that I was able to raise my hand, and I acknowledge that a law would have been broken had I done so, but I deny that I am therefore able to break a law. To uphold my instance of soft determinism, I need not claim any incredible powers. To uphold the compatibilism that I actually believe, I need not claim that such powers are even possible. My incompatibilist opponent is a creature of fiction, but he has his prototypes (...)
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  • The Soft-Line Solution to Pereboom's Four-Case Argument.Kristin Mickelson - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4):595-617.
    Derk Pereboom's Four-Case Argument is among the most famous and resilient manipulation arguments against compatibilism. I contend that its resilience is not a function of the argument's soundness but, rather, the ill-gotten gain from an ambiguity in the description of the causal relations found in the argument's foundational case. I expose this crucial ambiguity and suggest that a dilemma faces anyone hoping to resolve it. After a thorough search for an interpretation which avoids both horns of this dilemma, I conclude (...)
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  • Aborting the zygote argument.Stephen Kearns - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (3):379-389.
    Alfred Mele’s zygote argument for incompatibilism is based on a case involving an agent in a deterministic world whose entire life is planned by someone else. Mele’s contention is that Ernie (the agent) is unfree and that normal determined agents are relevantly similar to him with regards to free will. In this paper, I examine four different ways of understanding this argument and then criticize each interpretation. I then extend my criticism to manipulation arguments in general. I conclude that the (...)
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  • The Significance of Free Will.Robert Kane - 1996 - Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 60 (1):129-134.
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