Free Will and Values: Adaptive Mechanisms and Strategies of Prey and Predators

Forsideomslag
SUNY Press, 1. jan. 1985 - 229 sider
This book shows how two topics of longstanding philosophical interest--free will and value relativism--are connected in unsuspected ways. The ancient doctrine that all values are relative provides clues needed to resolve some important philosophical problems about free will. One of these problems concerns theories that deny the compatibility of free will and determinism; it is often said that such "incompatibilist" theories involve obscure conceptions of agency and are essentially mysterious. The book answers this charge by developing--in greater detail than has ever been attempted before--an incompatibilist theory of freedom consistent with current scientific evidence, avoiding all appeals to obscure or mysterious forms of agency. This theory exploits neglected clues in the history of philosophy about free will and action, objectivity and relativism in ethics, and about the foundations of liberalism in political theory.
 

Indhold

Introduction
1
The Free Will Issue
7
Will
15
Indeterminism and Power
28
Special Cause Strategies
52
Relativistic Alternatives
79
Reason Sets and Practical Reason
100
Relativism Empiricism
117
Moral and Prudential Choice
142
Factual Issues
165
Values Relativity Ethics
189
Copyright

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Almindelige termer og sætninger

Om forfatteren (1985)

R. Kane is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.

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