2005 Handbooks

This unit focuses on three topics that are central to contemporary moral psychology: theories of autonomy and agency; theories of moral responsibility; and conceptions of identity and selfhood. The first section focuses on the nature and value of autonomy and on debates about whether autonomy is compatible with the facts of socialisation. In the second section we consider a range of issues concerning moral responsibility. These include the implications of luck and causal determination for responsibility, the kind of freedom that is necessary for moral responsibility, and the conditions under which persons should be exempted from responsibility for their actions. The third section relates the issue of agency to contemporary debates about personal identity. The central focus of this section is on different ways in which philosophers have answered the question of what constitutes the unity of a person's life.