Manuel Vargas is a contemporary American philosopher specializing in free will, moral responsibility, and agency. He is best known for developing 'revisionism,' the position that our ordinary concept of free will should be revised in light of philosophical and empirical pressures rather than simply accepted or abandoned. His work integrates metaphysics, ethics, and empirical psychology to construct a forward-looking account of moral responsibility.
Developed revisionism about free will: the view that folk concepts of free will should be revised, not merely accepted or rejected
Authored Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (2013, Oxford University Press)
Argued that disputes about free will are ineluctably entangled with both metaphysical and ethical commitments
Advanced forward-looking justifications for moral responsibility practices grounded in their role in shaping agency
Contributed to debates bridging philosophy of action, neuroscience, and normative ethics
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