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Free Will: Responsibility and ‘Free Will’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Godfrey Vesey
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Extract

As a rule we treat people as responsible for what they do. We admonish them if they behave badly, praise them if they do well. We punish people. And we reward them.

There are exceptions, of course. For example, we do not punish someone for doing something he has been compelled to do, perhaps by having a gun in his back. And we even recognize such a thing as psychological compulsion, as in the case of kleptomania.

Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 24 , March 1988 , pp. 85 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1988

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References

Notes

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