Real-self Accounts of Freedom
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Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
ABSTRACT
Compatibilist, real-self accounts of freedom distinguish between various types of motivational element. They claim that only acts performed in accordance with and suitably related to elements of this kind that somehow constitute the agent's real self are free. While such accounts are more intuitively compelling than classical compatibilist ones, they are flawed in various ways. First, non-trivially identified real-self motivations are susceptible to estrangement. Second, realself accounts are unable to accommodate cases where the agent neither identifies, nor disidentifies, with his action and yet seems to exercise free will. Third, compared with classical compatibilism, real-self accounts give us an improved account of impediments to the will, but they do not provide an account of freedom itself. Finally, real-self theories are vulnerable to counterexamples in which the provenance of the agent's real self undermines freedom.
© Philosophia Press 2002
Articles in the same Issue
- Rationality and emotion
- Computational Processes: A Reply to Chalmers and Copeland
- Real-self Accounts of Freedom
- Heidegger's Concept of Truth Revisited
- Nagel's case against Physicalism
- Det kunstneriske ved kunsten. Institusjonsteori og jakten på kunstens definisjon
- Curing The Liar Syndrome
- Doctor's Diagnosis Sustained
- McMahan, Jeff: The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002
- When Self-Consciousness Breaks: Alien Voices and Inserted Thoughts. By G. Lynn Stephens and George Graham. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 2000. Pp xii + 198)
- Peter Kemp: Praktisk visdom. Om Paul Ricœurs etik. Forum, Kbh. 2001. 150 sider incl. Litteraturliste, person- og emneregister. 188,- kr.
- From Saga to Hegel. Páll Skúlason: Saga & Philosophy and Other Essays. Introduction by Paul Ricœur. Reykjavik: The University of Iceland Press
- Logi Gunnarsson, Wittgensteins Leiter (Berlin & Vienna: Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000). 119 pp.
Articles in the same Issue
- Rationality and emotion
- Computational Processes: A Reply to Chalmers and Copeland
- Real-self Accounts of Freedom
- Heidegger's Concept of Truth Revisited
- Nagel's case against Physicalism
- Det kunstneriske ved kunsten. Institusjonsteori og jakten på kunstens definisjon
- Curing The Liar Syndrome
- Doctor's Diagnosis Sustained
- McMahan, Jeff: The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002
- When Self-Consciousness Breaks: Alien Voices and Inserted Thoughts. By G. Lynn Stephens and George Graham. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 2000. Pp xii + 198)
- Peter Kemp: Praktisk visdom. Om Paul Ricœurs etik. Forum, Kbh. 2001. 150 sider incl. Litteraturliste, person- og emneregister. 188,- kr.
- From Saga to Hegel. Páll Skúlason: Saga & Philosophy and Other Essays. Introduction by Paul Ricœur. Reykjavik: The University of Iceland Press
- Logi Gunnarsson, Wittgensteins Leiter (Berlin & Vienna: Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000). 119 pp.
