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Freedom and Responsibility by Hilary Bok, 1959- is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Freedom and Responsibility about?

Can we reconcile the idea that we are free and responsible agents with the idea that what we do is determined according to natural laws? For centuries, philosophers have tried in different ways to show that we can. Hilary Bok takes a fresh approach here, as she seeks to show that the two ideas are compatible by drawing on the distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning. Bok argues that when we engage in practical reasoning — the kind that involves asking “what should I do?” and sifting through alternatives to find the most justifiable course of action — we have reason to hold ourselves responsible for what we do. But when we engage in theoretical reasoning — searching for causal explanations of events — we have no reason to apply concepts like freedom and responsibility. Bok contends that libertarians’ arguments against “compatibilist” justifications of moral responsibility fail because they describe human actions only from the standpoint of theoretical reasoning. To establish this claim, she examines which conceptions of freedom of the will and moral responsibility are relevant to practical reasoning and shows that these conceptions are not vulnerable to many objection

Who reads Freedom and Responsibility?

Author

Hilary Bok, 1959-

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published

1998

Language

EN

ISBN

9781400822737

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Philosophy, Humanities