George Sher

Who Knew?

Responsibility Without Awareness

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

To be responsible for their acts, agents must both perform those acts voluntarily and in some sense know what they are doing. Of these requirements, the voluntariness condition has been much discussed, but the epistemic condition has received far less attention. In Who Knew? George Sher seeks to rectify that imbalance. The book is divided in two halves, the first of which criticizes a popular but inadequate way of understanding the epistemic condition, while the second seeks to develop a more adequate alternative. It is often assumed that agents are responsible only for what they are aware of doing or bringing about--that their responsibility extends only as far as the searchlight of their consciousness. The book criticizes this "searchlight view" on two main grounds: first, that it is inconsistent with our attributions of responsibility to a broad range of agents who should but do not realize that they are acting wrongly or foolishly, and, second, that the view is not independently defensible.

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Unlike most other discussion of responsibility, which focus on the idea that to be responsible, agents must in some sense act voluntarily, this book focuses on the relatively neglected idea that they must in some sense know what they are doing. Because it integrates first-and-third personal elements, this account is well suited to capture the complexity of responsible agents, who at once have their own private perspectives and live in a public world.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press, USA
• Seitenzahl: 168
• Erscheinungstermin: 7. August 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 211mm x 145mm x 15mm
• Gewicht: 318g
• ISBN-13: 9780195389197
• ISBN-10: 0195389190
• Artikelnr.: 27347507

Autorenporträt

George Sher is Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Philosophy at Rice University

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements
1: The Searchlight View
2: Responsibility Without Awareness
3: Responsibility and Practical Reason
4: Kantian Fairness
5: Knew--Or Should Have Known?
6: A New Beginning
7: Setting the Norms of Recognition
8: The Responsible Self
9: Out of Control
Index