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Options and Agency

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  • © 2022

Overview

  • Resolves many of the outstanding questions in the metaphysics and semantics of agentive modality

  • Develops original accounts of topics that have been central to philosophy since Aristotle

  • Articulates an austere and uncompromising form of compatibilism about free will

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book develops an original theory of agentive modality: the kind of modality that is distinctive to agents. The central thesis is that the idea of an option should be taken as primitive, and that other agentive notions – such as ability, skill, and free will – should be understood in terms of options. 


The main contributions of this book are twofold. First, it resolves many of the outstanding questions in the metaphysics and semantics of agentive modality. In doing so, it develops original accounts of topics that have been central to philosophy since Aristotle. It also contributes to a lively contemporary literature on these topics. Second, it articulates an austere and uncompromising form of compatibilism about free will, termed “simple compatibilism.” Simple compatibilism is so-called because it rejects both the reductive theses endorsed by traditional compatibilists and the sophisticated proposals of many contemporary compatibilists. Instead, it turns precisely on insisting that options are analytically simple. Arguments for incompatibilism are shown to rest on auxiliary principles that should, in light of the book’s general account of options, be rejected.


 

Authors and Affiliations

  • Cambridge, USA

    John T. Maier

About the author



John T. Maier is an Outpatient Therapist at the Freedom Trail Clinic in Boston. He is also adjunct faculty in Philosophy at Bentley University and in Educational Studies at Lesley University. He has previously held positions at the Australian National University, Cambridge University, and Peking University.


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Options and Agency

  • Authors: John T. Maier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10243-1

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-10242-4Published: 23 September 2022

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-10245-5Published: 24 September 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-10243-1Published: 21 September 2022

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXX, 170

  • Topics: Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics, Ethics

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