<ul><li>
WINNER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION BOOK PRIZE (2015).</li></ul> Building Better Beings presents a new theory of moral responsibility. Beginning with a discussion of ordinary convictions about responsibility and free will and their implications for a philosophical theory, Manuel Vargas argues that no theory can do justice to all the things we want from a theory of free will and moral responsibility. He goes on to show how we can nevertheless justify our responsibility practices and provide a normatively and naturalistically adequate account of responsible agency, blame, and desert. Three ideas are central to Vargas' account: the agency cultivation model, circumstantialism about powers, and revisionism about responsibility and free will. On Vargas' account, responsibility norms and practices are justified by their effects. In particular, the agency cultivation model holds that responsibility practices help mold us into creatures that respond to moral considerations. Moreover, the abilities that matter for responsibility and free will are not metaphysically prior features of agents in isolation from social contexts. Instead, they are functions of both agents and their normatively structured contexts. This is the idea of circumstantialism about the powers required for responsibility. Third, Vargas argues that an adequate theory of responsibility will be revisionist, or at odds with important strands of ordinary convictions about free will and moral responsibility. Building Better Beings provides a compelling and state-of-the-art defense of moral responsibility in the face of growing philosophical and scientific skepticism about free will and moral responsibility.

Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility

Politics & Social Sciences

Vargas, Manuel

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility is a series of volumes presenting outstanding new work on a set of connected themes, investigating such questions as: · What does it mean to be an agent? · What is the nature of moral responsibility? Of criminal responsibility? What is the relation between moral and criminal responsibility (if any)? · What is the relation between responsibility and the metaphysical issues of determinism and free will? · What do various psychological disorders tell us about agency and responsibility? · How do moral agents develop? How does this developmental story bear on questions about the nature of moral judgment and responsibility? · What do the results from neuroscience imply (if anything) for our questions about agency and responsibility? OSAR thus straddles the areas of moral philosophy and philosophy of action, but also draws from a diverse range of cross-disciplinary sources, including moral psychology, psychology proper (including experimental and developmental), philosophy of psychology, philosophy of law, legal theory, metaphysics, neuroscience, neuroethics, political philosophy, and more. It is unified by its focus on who we are as deliberators and (inter)actors, embodied practical agents negotiating (sometimes unsuccessfully) a world of moral and legal norms. Volume 8 focuses on non-ideal agency and responsibility.

Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 8: Non-Ideal Agency and Responsibility

Shoemaker, David

Amaya, Santiago

<ul><li>
WINNER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION BOOK PRIZE (2015).</li></ul>
Building Better Beings presents a new theory of moral responsibility. Beginning with a discussion of ordinary convictions about responsibility and free will and their implications for a philosophical theory, Manuel Vargas argues that no theory can do justice to all the things we want from a theory of free will and moral responsibility. He goes on to show how we can nevertheless justify our responsibility practices and provide a normatively and naturalistically adequate account of responsible agency, blame, and desert.

Four Views on Free Will (Great Debates in Philosophy)

Pereboom, Derk

Fischer, John Martin

Kane,Robert

Wiley/Blackwell

Four Views on Free Will

Focusing on the concepts and interactions of free will, moral responsibility, and determinism, this text represents the most up-to-date account of the four major positions in the free will debate.     Four serious and well-known philosophers explore the opposing viewpoints of libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism, and revisionism  The first half of the book contains each philosopher’s explanation of his particular view; the second half allows them to directly respond to each other’s arguments, in a lively and engaging conversation  Offers the reader a one of a kind, interactive discussion  Forms part of the acclaimed Great Debates in Philosophy series

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