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A Metaphysics For Freedom
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Book Synopsis A Metaphysics for Freedom by : Helen Steward
Download or read book A Metaphysics for Freedom written by Helen Steward and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-08 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Steward argues that determinism is incompatible with agency itself--not only the special human variety of agency, but also powers which can be accorded to animal agents. She offers a distinctive, non-dualistic version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.
Book Synopsis A Metaphysics for Freedom by : Helen Steward
Download or read book A Metaphysics for Freedom written by Helen Steward and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Metaphysics for Freedom argues that agency itself-and not merely the special, distinctively human variety of it-is incompatible with determinism. For determinism is threatened just as surely by the existence of powers which can be unproblematically accorded to many sorts of animals, as by the distinctively human powers on which the free will debate has tended to focus. She suggests that a tendency to approach the question of free will solely through the issue of moral responsibility has obscured the fact that there is a quite different route to incompatibilism, based on the idea that animal agents above a certain level of complexity possess a range of distinctive 'two-way' powers, not found in simpler substances. Determinism is not a doctrine of physics, but of metaphysics; and the idea that it is physics which will tell us whether our world is deterministic or not presupposes what must not be taken for granted-that is, that physics settles everything else, and that we are already in a position to say that there could be no irreducibly top-down forms of causal influence. Steward considers questions concerning supervenience, laws, and levels of explanation, and explores an outline of a variety of top-down causation which might sustain the idea that an animal itself, rather than merely events and states going on in its parts, might be able to bring something about. The resulting position permits certain important concessions to compatibilism to be made; and a convincing response is also offered to the charge that even if it is agreed that determinism is incompatible with agency, indeterminism can be of no possible help. The whole is an argument for a distinctive and resolutely non-dualistic, naturalistically respectable version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.
Book Synopsis A Philosophy of Freedom by : Lars Svendsen
Download or read book A Philosophy of Freedom written by Lars Svendsen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom of speech, religion, choice, will—humans have fought, and continue to fight, for all of these. But what is human freedom really? Taking a broad approach across metaphysics, politics, and ethics, Lars Svendsen explores this question in his engaging book, while also looking at the threats freedom faces today. Though our behaviors, thoughts, and actions are restricted by social and legal rules, deadlines, and burdens, Svendsen argues that the fundamental requirement for living a human life is the ability to be free. A Philosophy of Freedom questions how we can successfully create meaningful lives when we are estranged from the very concept of freedom. Svendsen tackles such issues as the nature of free agency and the possibility of freedom in a universe governed by natural laws. He concludes that the true definition of personal freedom is first and foremost the liberty to devote yourself to what really matters to you—to realize the true value of the life you are living. Drawing on the fascinating debates around the possibility of freedom and its limits within society, this comprehensive investigation provides an accessible and insightful overview that will appeal to academics and general readers alike.
Book Synopsis The Paradoxes of Freedom by : Sidney Hook
Download or read book The Paradoxes of Freedom written by Sidney Hook and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-09-23 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.
Book Synopsis Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals by : Pamela Hieronymi
Download or read book Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals written by Pamela Hieronymi and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative reassessment of philosopher P. F. Strawson’s influential “Freedom and Resentment” P. F. Strawson was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his 1962 paper “Freedom and Resentment” is one of the most influential in modern moral philosophy, prompting responses across multiple disciplines, from psychology to sociology. In Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals, Pamela Hieronymi closely reexamines Strawson’s paper and concludes that his argument has been underestimated and misunderstood. Line by line, Hieronymi carefully untangles the complex strands of Strawson’s ideas. After elucidating his conception of moral responsibility and his division between “reactive” and “objective” responses to the actions and attitudes of others, Hieronymi turns to his central argument. Strawson argues that, because determinism is an entirely general thesis, true of everyone at all times, its truth does not undermine moral responsibility. Hieronymi finds the two common interpretations of this argument, “the simple Humean interpretation” and “the broadly Wittgensteinian interpretation,” both deficient. Drawing on Strawson’s wider work in logic, philosophy of language, and metaphysics, Hieronymi concludes that his argument rests on an implicit, and previously overlooked, metaphysics of morals, one grounded in Strawson’s “social naturalism.” In the final chapter, she defends this naturalistic picture against objections. Rigorous, concise, and insightful, Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals sheds new light on Strawson’s thinking and has profound implications for future work on free will, moral responsibility, and metaethics. The book also features the complete text of Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment.”
Book Synopsis Freedom and Determinism by : Joseph Keim Campbell
Download or read book Freedom and Determinism written by Joseph Keim Campbell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A state-of-the-art collection of previously unpublished essays on the topics of determinism, free will, moral responsibility, and action theory, written by some of the most important figures in these fields of study.
Book Synopsis Self, Reason, and Freedom by : Andrea Christofidou
Download or read book Self, Reason, and Freedom written by Andrea Christofidou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds new light on the role of freedom in Descartes' thought and defends the theory of an internal relation between freedom and reason in his metaphysics.
Book Synopsis Time, Change and Freedom by : L. Nathan Oaklander
Download or read book Time, Change and Freedom written by L. Nathan Oaklander and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-18 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in an engaging dialogue style, Smith and Oaklander cover metaphysical topics from a student's perspective and introduce key concepts through a process of explanation, reformulation and critique.
Book Synopsis Metaphysics of Freedom? by : Christian H. Krijnen
Download or read book Metaphysics of Freedom? written by Christian H. Krijnen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-08-27 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective scrutinizes the mostly neglected cosmological foundation of Kant’s concept of freedom.
Book Synopsis Time and Freedom by : Christophe Bouton
Download or read book Time and Freedom written by Christophe Bouton and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christophe Bouton's Time and Freedom addresses the problem of the relationship between time and freedom as a matter of practical philosophy, examining how the individual lives time and how her freedom is effective in time. Bouton first charts the history of modern philosophy's reengagement with the Aristotelian debate about future contingents, beginning with Leibniz. While Kant, Husserl, and their followers would engage time through theories of knowledge, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Kierkegaard, and (later), Heidegger, Sartre, and Levinas applied a phenomenological and existential methodology to time, but faced a problem of the temporality of human freedom. Bouton's is the first major work of its kind since Bergson's Time and Free Will (1889), and Bouton's "mystery of the future," in which the individual has freedom within the shifting bounds dictated by time, charts a new direction.
Book Synopsis For a Philosophy of Freedom and Strife by : Günter Figal
Download or read book For a Philosophy of Freedom and Strife written by Günter Figal and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first book-length work of the prominent German philosopher Gunter Figal to appear in English offers a radical defense of metaphysical philosophy in the era of postmodern thought. For Figal, metaphysics does not represent an anachronistic and pernicious mode of thought that ought to be overcome but rather is a type of thinking that proceeds from a recognition of the necessary coherence of everything with its opposite. It is this agonistic relationship of opposites that Figal, following Heraclitus, terms strife. Rather than regarding the conflict of opposites as necessarily resulting in the dissolution of meaning and sense, as many contemporary thinkers maintain, Figal contends that sense and meaning can only come into existence metaphysically, that is to say, as a consequence of strife. And, the context within which strife occurs is freedom. Using these concepts of strife and freedom, Figal proposes new and provocative readings of Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, as well as of some of the most controversial figures of twentieth-century philosophy.
Book Synopsis A Social Theory of Freedom by : Mariam Thalos
Download or read book A Social Theory of Freedom written by Mariam Thalos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of fit between that agent’s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic—it is the logic of fit between one’s aspirations and one’s circumstances, what Thalos calls the logic of agency. The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one’s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one’s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a political one.
Book Synopsis Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy by : Susanne Bobzien
Download or read book Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy written by Susanne Bobzien and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1999-01-29 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy is the first comprehensive study of one of the most important intellectual legacies of the ancient Greek world: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. The book identifies the main problems that the Stoics addressed and reconstructs the theory, and explores how they squared their determinism with their conceptions of possibility, action, freedom, and moral responsibility, and how they defended it against objections and criticism by other philosophers. It shows how the Stoics distinguished their causal determinism from ancient theories of logical determinism, fatalism, and necessitarianism. Along the way an authoritative account is given of many other related aspects of Stoic thought, including their views on the predictability of the future, the role of empirical sciences, the determination of character, and moral freedom. Bobzien's study of these central doctrines of Stoicism reveals the considerable philosphical richness and power that they retain today.
Book Synopsis Freedom within Reason by : Susan Wolf
Download or read book Freedom within Reason written by Susan Wolf and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-10-21 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers typically see the issue of free will and determinism in terms of a debate between two standard positions. Incompatibilism holds that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature. According to compatibilism, people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. In Freedom Within Reason, Susan Wolf charts a path between these traditional positions: We are not free and responsible, she argues, for actions that are governed by desires that we cannot help having. But the wish to form our own desires from nothing is both futile and arbitrary. Some of the forces beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of it: they endow us with faculties of reason, perception, and imagination, and provide us with the data by which we come to see and appreciate the world for what it is. The independence we want, Wolf argues, is not independence from the world, but independence from forces that prevent or preclude us from choosing how to live in light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. The freedom we want is a freedom within reason and the world.
Book Synopsis Persons and Causes by : Timothy O'Connor
Download or read book Persons and Causes written by Timothy O'Connor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-14 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis Creative Experiencing by : Charles Hartshorne
Download or read book Creative Experiencing written by Charles Hartshorne and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vigorous and wide-ranging defense of Hartshorne’s “neoclassical metaphysics” of creative freedom.
Book Synopsis Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility by : Susanne Bobzien
Download or read book Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility written by Susanne Bobzien and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility brings together nine essays on determinism, freedom and moral responsibility in antiquity by Susanne Bobzien. The essays present the main ancient theories of determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility ranging from Aristotle via Epicureans and Stoics to Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE. The author discusses questions about rational and autonomous human agency and their compatibility with preceding causes, external or internal; with external impediments; with divine predetermination and theological questions; with physical theories like atomism and continuum theory, and with the sciences more generally; with elements that determine character development from childhood, such as nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with necessity and modal theories generally; with folk theories of fatalism; and also with questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, virtue and wisdom, blame and praise. Historically unified, philosophically profound, and methodologically rigorous, Bobzien's discussions show that in classical and Hellenistic philosophy these topics were all debated without reference to freedom to do otherwise or to free will, and that the latter two notions were fully developed only later.
