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Any agent who has the power to do something must believe ... — Carmelics

Home/Moral Responsibility

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Any agent who has the power to do something must believe himself to have that power.

Free Will & Foreknowledge Moral Responsibility

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2 reasons against

Reasons For

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Genuine possession of a power is accompanied by the agent's belief that the agent possesses that power.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against 1 of 2

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1.Agents routinely possess capacities they have never exercised and have no epistemic access to, as Ryle's dispositional analysis of abilities demonstrates.
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2.A disposition can be real and causally efficacious without the possessor having any belief about it, as shown by unconscious competencies in skill acquisition research.
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Reason against 2 of 2

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1.Frankfurt's cases demonstrate that agents can act from powers they mistakenly believe are absent, as when a coerced agent acts freely without recognizing their own uncoerced will.
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2.If an agent can exercise a power while believing they lack it, then belief in the power is neither necessary nor constitutive of its possession.
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Moral Responsibility Free Will & Foreknowledge

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A disposition can be real and causally efficacious without the possessor having ...Agents routinely possess capacities they have never exercised and have no episte...Frankfurt's cases demonstrate that agents can act from powers they mistakenly be...Genuine possession of a power is accompanied by the agent's belief that the agen...

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If an agent can exercise a power while believing they lack it, then belief in th...

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Any agent who has the power to do something also has the power not to ...88%An agent is genuinely able to do something only if the agent has shown...87%An agent has the ability to do something only if there is a possible w...84%Genuine possession of a power is accompanied by the agent's belief tha...84%

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AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid

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Reid is clear that power is not the sort of thing that admits of a logical definition. We cannot reduce it to some set of simpler qualities. However, this doesn't mean that we can't say anything about what power is. On the contrary, Reid makes a variety of claims about power. Importantly, he claims that power is the quality that, when coupled with exertion, necessitates a particular effect. Taking a cue from ordinary language, he holds that it is a contradiction to say that an entity has the pow

Extraction notes

Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 3 (1 for, 2 against)
Edits: 1 edit