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DISENABLING LEVY'S FRANKFURT‐STYLE ENABLING CASES
Author(s) -
HAJI ISHTIYAQUE,
MCKENNA MICHAEL
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0114.2011.01403.x
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , style (visual arts) , virtue , epistemology , philosophy , sociology , literature , art , biochemistry , chemistry
Recently, Neil Levy has proposed that an agent can acquire freedom‐relevant agential abilities by virtue of the conditions in which she finds herself, and in this way, can be thought of as partially constituted by those conditions. This can be so even if the agent is completely ignorant of the relevant environmental conditions, and even if these conditions play no causal role in what the agent does. Drawing upon these resources, Levy argues that Frankfurt‐style examples are not cogent. In this paper, we explain why his argument fails.