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81. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 22
Peter van Inwagen Some Thoughts on An Essay on Free Will
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In this essay I record some thoughts about my book An Essay on Free Will, its reception, and the way analytical philosophers have thought about the free-will problem since its publication 30 years ago. I do not summarize the book, nor am I concerned to defend its arguments—or at least not in any very systematic way. Instead I present some thoughts on three topics: (1) The question ‘If I were to revise the book today, if I were to produce a second edition, what changes would I make?’; (2) Aspects of the book I should like to call to the attention of readers (aspects that, in my view, readers of An Essay on Free Will, have been insufficiently attentive to); and (3) The course of the discussion of the problem of free will subsequent to the publication of the book.
82. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 22
Eric Mandelbaum, Jake Quilty-Dunn Believing without Reason, or: Why Liberals Shouldn’t Watch Fox News
83. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 22
Todd May From Subjectified to Subject: Power and the Possibility of a Democratic Politics
84. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 22
Andrew Koppelman Does Respect Require Antiperfectionism?: Gaus on Liberal Neutrality
85. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 22
Jody Azzouni Conceiving and Imagining: Some Examples
86. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 22
Agnes Callard The Weaker Reason
87. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Taimur Aziz, Seyyed Hossein Nasr On Tradition, Metaphysics, and Modernity
88. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Martin Bernstein Introduction
89. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Juliet Floyd Positive Pragmatic Pluralism
90. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Yemima Ben-Menahem Hilary Putnam: Philosophy with a Human Face
91. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Geoffrey Hellman Hilary Putnam’s Contributions to Mathematics, Logic, and the Philosophy Thereof
92. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Gary Ebbs Putnam on Methods of Inquiry
93. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Emily Fox-Penner, Aaron Suduiko Editor's Introduction
94. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Paul Franks Hilary Putnam: A Life of Wonder
95. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
David Macarthur Hilary Putnam: Quantum Philosopher
96. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Jonardon Ganeri What Is Philosophy?: A Cross-cultural Conversation in the Crossroads Court of Chosroes
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Three rival conceptions of philosophy overlap, we may imagine, in the Sassinid court of Chosroes (r. 531–579). One is due to Priscian, a refugee from Athens after Justinian’s closing of the philosophical schools. A second and third are from India: the Buddhist conception of Vasubandhu and the Nyāya view of Vātsyāyana. I will argue that the rivalry between these three understandings of philosophy ultimately rests in three different conceptions of what makes an inner life one’s own.
97. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Maria Svedberg, Torbjörn Tännsjö Consequentialism and Free Will: The Conditional Analysis Resuscitated
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Many moral theories incorporate the idea that when an action is wrong, it is wrong because that there was something else that the agent could and should have done instead. Most notable among these are consequentialist theories. According to consequentialism an action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better. Relatively little attention has been given to the question of how to understand the meaning of ‘could have’ in this specific context. However, without an answer to this question, consequentialist theories fail to yield determinate verdicts about the deontic status of actions in real scenarios. It is here argued that the following conditional analysis provides the required answer and gives us the most plausible version of consequentialism: the agent could have done B instead of A if and only if, there is a decision such that had the agent made this decision, then she would have done B, and not A. Such a conditional analysis has been universally rejected as an analysis of the general meaning of ‘could have’, but we show that in the specific context of specifying the meaning of ‘could have’ in a consequentialist criterion of right and wrong action, all the standard objections to it fail.
98. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
John Heil Real Agency
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Peter van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument makes salient the difficulties facing attempts to reconcile determinism and agency. Others go further. Derk Pereboom, for instance, contends that science provides compelling evidence that no action is free, and Galen Strawson argues that conditions for genuinely free action are flatly unsatisfiable. Against such skepticism about free will, the paper introduces considerations in support of the idea that there are probably good reasons to think that conditions for free actions—real agency—are sometimes satisfied, that ascriptions of agency are sometimes true, but that truthmakers for these ascriptions could be wholly deterministic in a way that might seem to, but does not in fact, place them at odds with the possibility of genuinely free action.
99. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Moises Vaca The Contractualist Dilemma
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In moral and political philosophy many contractualist views appeal to hypothetical consent when justifying their proposed normative contents. In this paper I argue that all of them fail. In particular, I defend three claims. First, I consider and develop what I call the common objection to contractualism: that the stipulation of a hypothetical consent adds nothing to the independent reasons offered in contractualist procedures in favor of the normative content in question. Second, I hold that this objection gives rise to what I call the contractualist dilemma. Third, in light of the dilemma, I argue that contractualism should be understood in a non-justificatory way. These three claims might sound familiar to readers versed on the contractualist tradition. It is striking, however, how many contemporary authors continue to defend contractualism as a method of justification despite these arguments. This paper is thus a strong invitation to finally abandon the justificatory interpretation of this view.
100. The Harvard Review of Philosophy: Volume > 24
Guillermo Hurtado The Dialogue as an Adventure
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How can believers and unbelievers engage in a fruitful dialogue? In order to answer this question from a postsecular position, it is claimed that a profound dialogue between believers and unbelievers requires them to go beyond openness and reach adventurousness.