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HOW CHANGES IN ONE'S PREFERENCES CAN AFFECT ONE'S FREEDOM (AND HOW THEY CANNOT): A REPLY TO DOWDING AND VAN HEES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

Ian Carter  and
Matthew H. Kramer
Ian Carter
Affiliation:
University of Pavia
Matthew H. Kramer
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Extract

How is a person's freedom related to his or her preferences? Liberal theorists of negative freedom have generally taken the view that the desire of a person to do or not do something is irrelevant to the question of whether he is free to do it. Supporters of the “pure negative” conception of freedom have advocated this view in its starkest form: they maintain that a person is unfree to Φ if and only if he is prevented from Φ-ing by the conduct or dispositions of some other person(s) (Steiner, 1994; Carter, 1999; Kramer, 2003). This definition of freedom is value-neutral in the sense that no reference is made to preferences over options or indeed to any other indicators of the values of options, either in the characterization of “Φ-ing” itself (any conduct fits the bill) or in the characterization of the way in which Φ-ing can be constrained (any prevention counts as a constraint on freedom).

Type
Essay
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 81 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

REFERENCES

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