Teleology and degrees of freedom
| Abstract | There is a debate in philosophy of mind about the nature of reason explanations of action, and this volume is testament to a resurgence of interest in non-causal accounts. In Teleological Realism: Mind, Agency, and Explanation,2 I have proposed a non-causal account according to which common-sense reason explanations of action are irreducibly teleological in form. I claim that we explain behavior by citing the state of affairs towards which the agent was directing her behavior, i. e., by citing the purpose or goal of the behavior. I will not be defending that account of action explanation here, but will be assuming it and applying it to the free will debate. I will argue that the teleological account of action explanation leads to a view of free will with some interesting and attractive features. Philosophical accounts of free will typically propose some sort of criterion for determining which behaviors count as free, e. g., that the agent could have done otherwise, or that the behavior was in accord with the agent’s second-order volitions. The account is then usually used to answer the question of whether we have free will, and especially whether we can have free will even if determinism is true. To test these accounts, philosophers make arguments of various sorts, but the primary method is with cases. Here’s the recipe for an objection to an account of free will: come up with a case where the theory says that the agent is free, but our intuition says that the agent is unfree, or vice versa. I won’t question the method of cases in principle; it’s what we have and it makes some sense. On the picture of analytic philosophy as conceptual analysis, it makes perfect sense. Philosophers put forward a precisely spelled out version of our concept of free will; but if such an account is at odds with firm intuitions in particular cases, then it can’t be what we mean. We know that the situation is not really so simple as that. Our ordinary concept of free will might be messy and not perfectly consistent; accordingly, any particular theory might get a few cases ›wrong‹ as judged by our intuitions.. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Similar books and articlesChandra Sekhar Sripada (2012). What Makes a Manipulated Agent Unfree? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (3):563-593.
Ishtiyaque Haji (2004). Active Control, Agent-Causation and Free Action. Philosophical Explorations 7 (2):131-148.
Scott R. Sehon (2000). An Argument Against the Causal Theory of Action Explanation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1):67-85.
Meghan Griffith (2007). Freedom and Trying: Understanding Agent-Causal Exertions. Acta Analytica 22 (1):16-28.
Frank Hindriks (2008). The Freedom of Collective Agents. Journal of Political Philosophy 16 (2):165–183.
Kevin Timpe, Free Will. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Vere Chappell (1994). Locke on the Freedom of the Will. In G. A. J. Rogers (ed.), Locke's Philosophy: Content and Context. Oxford University Press.
Ishtiyaque Haji (2005). Libertarianism, Luck, and Action Explanation. Journal of Philosophical Research 30:321-340.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-03-09Total downloads38 ( #30,920 of 549,122 )Recent downloads (6 months)3 ( #25,740 of 549,122 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
