The contours of control

Philosophical Studies 170 (3):395-411 (2014)
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Abstract

Necessarily, if S lacks the ability to exercise control, S is not an agent. If S is not an agent, S cannot act intentionally, responsibly, or rationally, nor can S possess or exercise free will. In spite of the obvious importance of control, however, no general account of control exists. In this paper I reflect on the nature of control itself. I develop accounts of control ’s exercise and control ’s possession that illuminate what it is for degrees of control —that is, the degree of control an agent possesses or exercises in a given circumstance—to vary. Finally, I demonstrate the usefulness of the account on offer by showing how it generates a solution to a long-standing problem for causalist theories of action, namely, the problem of deviant causation

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Joshua Shepherd
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Citations of this work

Conscious Control over Action.Joshua Shepherd - 2015 - Mind and Language 30 (3):320-344.
Experts and Deviants: The Story of Agentive Control.Wayne Wu - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (1):101-26.

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References found in this work

On Action.Carl Ginet - 1990 - Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Motivation and agency.Alfred R. Mele - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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