This paper puts forth the thesis that free will skeptics should be motivated to develop revisionisteliminativist accounts of free will. As a starting point for this argument, it discusses and expands upon Shaun Nichols (2007) modeling of our reactive attitudes in narrow and widepsychological profiles. Utilizing this descriptive and prescriptive thesis, the paper then puts forthtwo main claims: 1. that revisionism is likely to produce our best descriptive accounts of free willbeliefs, and 2. that it is plausible that eliminativist revisionist is likely to produce our best prescriptive account of free will, as it is can capture some of the value in our “narrowpsychological profile” in ways its conventional counterpart is unable to. It is then argued that these two claims, in combination with the normative influence of free will beliefs, should provide sufficient motivations to develop eliminativist revisionist accounts of free will.

La question de la volonté des personnes privées est traditionnellement considérée comme un objet d’étude relevant du seul droit privé, domaine dans lequel elle se déploie naturellement. Pourtant, elle est un objet à part entière du droit administratif. Une observation du droit positif et de l’évolution des modalités de l’action administrative permet ainsi de révéler l’existence d’un véritable «système de possibilités de volontés» des personnes privées, dont les germes étaient d’ailleurs présents dans le droit administratif classique. L’analyse de ce système contribue à l’identification des moyens et des conditions d’expression de la volonté privée. Cela permet in fine de nous renseigner sur le phénomène volontaire : la volonté privée apparaît ainsi comme une faculté de choix et/ou d’impulsion permettant aux personnes privées de poursuivre un but juridiquement permis. En droit administratif, les différentes phases du processus volontaire des personnes privées sont ainsi organisées et structurées. La réalisation de l’objectif poursuivi n’est cependant pas immédiate et automatique. En effet, la volonté privée a toujours besoin de la médiation de la volonté publique pour pouvoir produire des effets et remplir ses fonctions. Ce phénomène de médiation s’inscrit dans un processus dynamique dont l’étude implique d’accorder une attention particulière aux éléments subjectifs de l’acte juridique. De ce fait, il est possible non seulement de prendre la mesure du rôle susceptible d’être joué par la volonté privée mais également de proposer de nouvelles grilles de lecture du droit administratif. / The topic of private legal persons’ will traditionally falls under the field of private law research, which it naturally belongs to. However, it also is an object of administrative law research. Observing substantive law as well the evolution of the ways and means of administrative action, one can access to an actual “system of possibilities of will”, as far as private legal persons are concerned, stemming itself from classical administrative law. Analyzing this system contributes to the understanding of the means and conditions of expression of private will. In fine, this allows contemplating voluntary phenomenons : private persons’ will so appears as the faculty to make the choice and/or give the impulse that will allow one to pursue alegal, authorized aim. The various phases of private persons’ voluntary process are thus organized and structured in administrative law. However, the actual realization of the pursued aim is neither immediate nor automatic. As a matter of fact, private will needs public will as a media in order to produce its full effects and to fulfil its function. This phenomenon of mediation thus follows a dynamic process which study involves specific attention towards the subjective elements of a legal act. Therefore, not only does this research help to take measure of the part taken by private will, but also does it offer a new reading of administrative law.

Retributive attitudes are deeply held and widespread in the general population and most legal systems incorporate retributive elements. It is probably also the dominant theory of punishment among contemporary philosophers of criminal justice. However, retributivism relies on conceptions of free will and responsibility that have, for millennia, fundamentally divided those who have thought seriously about the subject. Our legal system upholds the principle that the responsibility of the offender has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, before the accused can be punished. In view of the intractable doubts surrounding the soundness of retributivism’s very conception of responsibility, my thesis argues that it is ethically dubious to punish individuals for solely retributive reasons. Instead, my thesis proposes that a person should only be punished if the main theories of punishment agree that punishing that person is appropriate – I call this ‘the convergence requirement’. This approach, I argue, is in accordance with the considerations underlying the beyond reasonable doubt standard. In addition to considering the question of ‘whom to punish’ my thesis considers what methods of responding to criminal behaviour are acceptable. In particular, it attempts to explain, without appealing to the contested notions of free will or retributive desert, what is problematic about ‘manipulative’ methods of dealing with criminal offenders (focussing in particular on the possibility of modifying their behaviour through neurological interventions). The final part of this thesis also gives an overview of some of the practical implications for Scots criminal law of taking doubts about free will and retributivism seriously. Given the severe treatment that offenders undergo within the Scottish penal system (e.g. deprivation of liberty, stigma) and the high rate of recidivism, it is important to consider whether our current penal practices are justified, what alternatives are available and what goals and values should guide attempts at reforming the system.

No description available.

This dissertation examines the writings of

Research suggests that intuitions about thought experiments are vulnerable to a wide array of seemingly irrelevant factors. I argue that when arguments hinge on the use of intuitions about thought experiments, research on the subtle factors that affect intuitions must be taken seriously. To demonstrate how failing to consider such psychological influences can undermine an argument, I discuss Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. I argue that by failing to consider the impact of subtle psychological influences such as order effects, Pereboom likely mis-identifies what really leads us to have the intuitions that we have about his cases, and this in turn undermines his argument for incompatibilism. Last, I consider objections and discuss how to empirically test my hypothesis.

The doping culture represents an issue for sport and for society. Normative debates on doping have been mainly concerned with questions of the justifiability of doping. The practice of assigning responsibility for doping behaviour has chiefly been individual-based, focusing mainly on the individual athlete’s doping behaviour. The overarching aim of this thesis is to investigate the relevance and the importance of the ideas of responsibility in relation to ethical debates on doping. The more specific aim is to examine the possibility of broadening the scope of responsibility beyond the individual athlete, and to sketch a theoretical framework within which this expansion could be accommodated. In the first study, it is argued that bioethicists have a moral/professional responsibility to start out from a realistic and up-to-date view of genetics in ethical debates on gene doping, and that good bioethics requires good empirics. In study 2, the role played by affective processes in influencing athletes’ attitudes towards doping behaviour is investigated, both on an individual and on a collective level. It is concluded that an exclusive focus on individual-level rule violation and sanctions may entail overlooking the greater social picture and would prove to be ineffective in the long term. In study 3, the common doping-is-cheating arguments are examined and it is argued that they fail to capture vital features of people’s moral responses to doping behaviour. An alternative account of cheating in sport is presented in terms of failure to manifest good will and respect. It is concluded that putting cheating in the broader context of human interpersonal relationships makes evident the need to broaden the scope of moral responsibility and agency beyond the individual athlete. In study 4, the particular case of assigning responsibility for doping to sports physicians is used to examine the current individual-based approach to responsibility. This approach underestimates the scope of the responsibility by leaving out a range of other actors from the discourse of responsibility. The central conclusion of the thesis is that transforming the current doping culture requires broadening the scope of responsibility to include individuals and groups of individuals other than the athletes themselves.

In this thesis I develop an account of Nietzsche’s great man framed around the idea that he is a ‘monster of energy.’ In the first part I establish that Nietzsche developed a criterion to assess the value of values, centred on whether they express abundance or exhaustion. Cultivating an abundance of energy is the key to how we should approach the problem of suffering, how we master ressentiment, and ultimately, how we experience authentic joy. We should thus use energy expenditure as the standard to evaluate the different narratives that we use to interpret ourselves and our existence. In the second part I use this criterion to establish the types of narratives most conducive to creating oneself as the monster of energy. I argue that the great man should desire to determine his own will, should cultivate strength of character, believe in the freedom of his will, and take responsibility for the self that he has created. Finally, I examine the attitude the great man should adopt towards his past, and argue that we should reject the idea that the eternal return plays an important role in the process of becoming a great man, since this process should emphasise the necessity of self-mastery, asceticism, and the cultivation of a unified and volitional self.

Whether Kant’s account of free will is coherent or not depends upon how we interpret him. On the one hand, if we understand Kant as providing some metaphysical solution to the problem of free will, which secures the reality of free will for agents, then his account seems to be incoherent. One the other hand, if we understand Kant’s account as merely providing a defense of the assumption, or idea of freedom for practical purposes, then his account seems to be useful and coherent. I will argue that the latter account of free will is the one that Kant provides in his works, and will illustrate how this account might shed light on to our epistemic limits and our nature as human beings.

There are some subordinates that have a deep understanding of their supervisor’s world. More than others, they understand their supervisor’s work relationships, preferences, demands, and resources. The goal of this thesis was to predict and test how this collection of strategic and sensitive information, or follower political knowledge, develops. Using the active perspective-taking framework, I focused on a subordinate’s motivation, capacity, and opportunity to acquire follower political knowledge. In particular, I hypothesized that key individual, relational, and contextual factors would predict follower political knowledge. Two studies were conducted to test these predictions: a cross-sectional survey of 467 employees and a cross-sectional survey of 174 supervisor-subordinate dyads. Across studies, political skill, leader-member exchange, and supervisors’ trust were the strongest predictors of follower political knowledge. The implications of these findings present a case to be made for the role of follower political knowledge in effective followership. / October 2016