Ann Whittle

espanolEn este articulo examino criticamente el libro de Sartorio Causation and free will. Sar-torio ofrece una detallada defensa de una concepcion de secuencia real de la libertad, que presta una minuciosa atencion a cuestiones de filosofia de la causalidad y su relacion con la libertad. Lo que defiendo es que, aunque poner el foco en la causalidad es iluminador, el proyecto de Sartorio se enfrenta a serios problemas. Quizas el mas preocupante de to-dos ellos es si la explicacion sensible a razones y basada en el agente propuesta por Sarto-rio es consistente con los casos tipo Frankfurt; es decir, los casos que se proponen como la unica razon para defender una concepcion de secuencia real de la libertad. Asimismo, sugiero que, dado que habilidades y causalidad estan tan intimamente relacionadas, se desdibuja el debate si se las concibe como rivales. EnglishIn this paper, I take a critical look at Sartorio’s book Causation and Free Will (2016). Sartorio offers a rich defence of an a...

This chapter begins relating the rather abstract issues considered so far to the issue of moral responsibility. It introduces the notion of guidance control in the first section, before examining some influential analyses that have been offered of this form of control. In particular, the chapter examines both reasons-sensitivity and hierarchical analyses of this notion. It is argued that there is reason to be sceptical of the claim that such analyses can offer an adequate account independent of considerations regarding abilities to do otherwise. This discussion, in addition to a counterexample offered, challenges the view that we can cleanly divorce the concepts of regulative and guidance control as is often proposed. The chapter ends by sketching an alternative, unified ability analysis of control, which combines elements associated with both regulative and guidance analyses of control.

In an outline of a paper found amongst his philosophical papers and correspondence after his untimely death in 2001—“Nihil Obstat: An Analysis of Ability,” reproduced in this volume—David Lewis sketched a new compatibilist account of abilities, according to which someone is able to A if and only if there is no obstacle to their A-ing, where an obstacle is a ‘robust preventer’ of their A-ing. In this paper, we provide some background context for Lewis’s outline, a section-by-section commentary, and a general discussion of the account’s main features.

Freedom and Responsibility in Context argues for a contextualist account of freedom and moral responsibility. It aims to challenge the largely unarticulated orthodoxy of invariantism, by arguing that contextualism is crucial to an understanding of both freedom and moral responsibility. The argument for contextualism regarding freedom and moral responsibility focuses upon their respective control conditions. Abilities are argued to be central to an understanding of the control required for freedom and moral responsibility. A unified ability analysis of control is developed, which supports the thesis that attributions of freedom and moral responsibility are context dependent. The resulting contextualism offers a rapprochement of compatibilism and incompatibilism. By going beyond the false dichotomy of invariant compatibilism and invariant incompatibilism, it is argued that both positions can be given their due, since there is no ‘right’ answer to the question of whether or not determi...

If the ability analysis of control is correct, it demonstrates that abilities are pivotal to an account of the control required for moral responsibility. But the precise details do not matter for the argument of the last two chapters. All that requires is the much less contentious claim that abilities to do otherwise are part of an analysis of robust control. If this is so, then the issue of the consequences of a contextualist theory of agential modals for a theory of moral responsibility arises. The aim of this chapter is to begin exploring these consequences. The first four sections outline a positive case for the view that our attributions of moral responsibility have different semantic values relative to different contexts of utterance. This argument draws upon the preceding considerations, semantic evidence, the argument from manipulation, and experimental data regarding our folk intuitions. The chapter ends by contrasting the resulting contextualist analysis of moral responsib...

The co-instantiation thesis is pivotal to a significant solution to the problem of causal exclusion. But this thesis has been subject to some powerful objections. In this paper, I argue that these difficulties arise because the thesis lacks the necessary metaphysical framework in which its claims should be interpreted and understood. Once this framework is in place, we see that the co-instantiation thesis can answer its critics. The result is a rehabilitated co-instantiation solution to the troubling problem of causal exclusion. But questions remain concerning the viability of certain of its applications.