Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Sources
- 1 Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility
- 2 Freedom of the will and the concept of a person
- 3 Coercion and moral responsibility
- 4 Three concepts of free action
- 5 Identification and externality
- 6 The problem of action
- 7 The importance of what we care about
- 8 What we are morally responsible for
- 9 Necessity and desire
- 10 On bullshit
- 11 Equality as a moral ideal
- 12 Identification and wholeheartedness
- 13 Rationality and the unthinkable
4 - Three concepts of free action
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Sources
- 1 Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility
- 2 Freedom of the will and the concept of a person
- 3 Coercion and moral responsibility
- 4 Three concepts of free action
- 5 Identification and externality
- 6 The problem of action
- 7 The importance of what we care about
- 8 What we are morally responsible for
- 9 Necessity and desire
- 10 On bullshit
- 11 Equality as a moral ideal
- 12 Identification and wholeheartedness
- 13 Rationality and the unthinkable
Summary
There are many situations in which a person performs an action because he prefers it to any other among those he thinks are available to him, or because he is drawn more strongly to it than to any other, and yet is reluctant nonetheless to describe himself without qualification as having acted willingly. He may acknowledge that he did what in some sense he wanted to do, and that he understood well enough what he wanted and what he did. But at the same time he may think it pertinent and justifiable to dissociate himself in a way from his action – perhaps by saying that what he did was not something he really wanted to do, or that it was not something he really wanted to do. Situations of this sort fall into several distinct types.
In situations of Type A, the person's feeling that he acted unwillingly derives from the fact that the external circumstances under which he acted were, as he perceived them, discordant with his desires. It is nearly always possible, of course, for a person to imagine being in a situation that he would like better than the one he is actually in. There is, however, a substantial difference – often easy enough to discern, though difficult to explicate precisely – between recognizing that a state of affairs is less than ideal and being actively discontented by it or resistant to it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Importance of What We Care AboutPhilosophical Essays, pp. 47 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988
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