Freedom and Responsibility in Context

Freedom and Responsibility in Context argues for a contextualist account of freedom and moral responsibility. It aims to challenge the largely unarticulated orthodoxy of invariantism, by arguing that contextualism is crucial to an understanding of both freedom and moral responsibility. The argument for contextualism regarding freedom and moral responsibility focuses upon their respective control conditions. Abilities are argued to be central to an understanding of the control required for freedom and moral responsibility. A unified, ability analysis of control is developed, which supports the thesis that attributions of freedom and moral responsibility are context dependent. The resulting contextualism offers a rapprochement of compatibilism and incompatibilism. By going beyond the false dichotomy of invariant compatibilism and invariant incompatibilism, it is argued that both positions can be given their due, since there is no 'right' answer to the question of whether or not determinism undermines freedom and moral responsibility.

Ann Whittle, Lecturer, Philosophy Department, University of Manchester

Ann Whittle is Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of Manchester where she has been since 2007. She studied at Oxford (BA) and University College London (MPhil and PhD). After her PhD, she was a Jacobsen Research Fellow at the University of London and then a lecturer at Trinity
and Churchill Colleges, Cambridge). Her main areas of interest are Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and Ethics. She is interested in how our agency can be accommodated in the natural world and her recent research has focused on the area of abilities, freedom, and moral responsibility.