I entitled this book Our Free Will because I give a humanity-centered account of the freedom required for responsibility. By humanity-centered I mean that we can act freely if and only if, because, and to the extent that we can deliberately perform the kind of action which expresses our good or bad will and to which a suitably-placed observer did or would react with anger, resentment, love, gratitude, and/or another of the reactive attitudes. I call this control Agent & Reaction Control (ARC). By a suitably-placed observer, I mean a human adult with the required cognitive faculties and relevant information but without relevant prejudices; this may or may not be an actual-sequence observer. That observer reflects humanity at our best. ARC’s conditions do not entail that our reactions are always (or often) correct; its conditions are not individual-relative in that sense. But ARC’s conditions do draw on our reflective and reactive nature as well as our natural interactions and relationships. Though their origin is social and humanity-fixed rather than metaphysical and humanity-independent, ARC’s conditions provide clear standards and principles from which to understand the freedom-requirement for responsibility.

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What Is Our Free Will?

  • Daniel Coren

摘要

I entitled this book Our Free Will because I give a humanity-centered account of the freedom required for responsibility. By humanity-centered I mean that we can act freely if and only if, because, and to the extent that we can deliberately perform the kind of action which expresses our good or bad will and to which a suitably-placed observer did or would react with anger, resentment, love, gratitude, and/or another of the reactive attitudes. I call this control Agent & Reaction Control (ARC). By a suitably-placed observer, I mean a human adult with the required cognitive faculties and relevant information but without relevant prejudices; this may or may not be an actual-sequence observer. That observer reflects humanity at our best. ARC’s conditions do not entail that our reactions are always (or often) correct; its conditions are not individual-relative in that sense. But ARC’s conditions do draw on our reflective and reactive nature as well as our natural interactions and relationships. Though their origin is social and humanity-fixed rather than metaphysical and humanity-independent, ARC’s conditions provide clear standards and principles from which to understand the freedom-requirement for responsibility.