ISBN : 9780192845603
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 determinism undermines freedom and moral responsibility.
Introduciton
1 Agential Modal Contextualism
2 Abilities and Incompatibilism
3 All-in Abilities in Context
4 A Contextualist Account of Regulative Freedom
5 Problems for Alternative Analyses
6 Control
7 Defending an Ability Analysis of Control
8 A Contextualist Account of Moral Responsibility
9 The Problem of Unfairness
Conclusion