Action and Responsibility (Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, Band 18) - Softcover

Sneddon, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9048170087 ISBN 13: 9789048170081

Verlag: Springer, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

This book is an exploration of what it takes for an event to count as an action. I first became interested in this topic nearly a decade ago while working on a different topic. I kept coming across philosophers making claims about the nature of action that seemed false or at least dubious to me. As a consequence I turned to the philosophy of action directly, to get to the heart of the matter. I have wrestled with this territory ever since. I hope that, with this book, I have finally earned the intuitions that put me at odds with the philosophers I was originally reading. This book develops ideas in Part Two of my doctoral dissertation, which I wrote at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. I loved being at Queen’s, for both professional and personal reasons. My thanks go to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support as a doctoral candidate. Steve Leighton and Ronald de Sousa were readers for my dissertation. They provided some early and invaluable challenges to the ideas developed here. My deepest debt of gratitude is owed to David Bakhurst, my supervisor. I learned a lot from David; this book would not be the same without his help.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Andrew Sneddon is Lecturer in History at Ulster University, UK. He is the author of two previous books and numerous articles on British and Irish history, including witchcraft and magic. He has held research fellowships and awards from Queen's University, Belfast and the Wellcome Trust.

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What makes an event count as an action? Typical answers appeal to the way in which the event was produced: e.g., perhaps an arm movement is an action when caused by mental states (in particular ways), but not when caused in other ways. Andrew Sneddon argues that this type of answer, which he calls "productionism", is methodologically and substantially mistaken. In particular, productionist answers to this question tend to be either individualistic or foundationalist, or both, without explicit defence. Instead, Sneddon offers an externalist, anti-foundationalist account of what makes an event count as an action, which he calls neo-ascriptivism, after the work of H.L.A. Hart. Specifically, Sneddon argues that our practices of attributing moral responsibility to each other are at least partly constitutive of events as actions.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Springer
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 9048170087
• ISBN 13: 9789048170081
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 212
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Springer Nature Customer Service Center GmbH; ProductSafety@springernature.com; ; Europaplatz 3; Heidelberg; 69115; Deutschland