Empirical perspectives on consciousness and its relationship to free will and moral responsibility

Neil Levy*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

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    Abstract

    It is traditional to distinguish two kinds of conditions that an agent must satisfy in order to qualify as acting with free will: a control condition and an epistemic condition. The control condition has attracted the bulk of philosophers’ attention, largely because the debate has centered around the question whether free will is compatible with causal determinism (or, in a version now less central, with God’s foreknowledge). Causal determinism (and foreknowledge) seem much more plausibly a threat to control than to the epistemic dimensions of freedom; while it might be plausible to think that I lack some kind of control over my behavior if how I will act is in some sense already settled prior to my making up my mind, it is much less plausible to think that my beliefs concerning the circumstances in which I act are undermined or altered by determinism or foreknowledge.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationThe Routledge companion to free will
    EditorsKevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith, Neil Levy
    Place of PublicationLondon ; New York
    PublisherRoutledge, Taylor and Francis Group
    Chapter38
    Pages434-443
    Number of pages10
    ISBN (Electronic)9781317635475, 9781315758206
    ISBN (Print)9781138795815
    Publication statusPublished - 2017

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