Philosophy subject Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Philosophy subject - Essay ExampleThe question this scenario presents us students with is whether or non this boy is responsible for his actions. There are many philosophers that have very different answers to this troubling question. For purposes of this exam, I focus on Susan Wolf.Susan Wolf, the author of Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility, takes Frankfurts suck ups one step further, combining them with those views of Taylor and Watson. She puts forth the Deep-Self enchant(53), which basically stated, says that there is a deep self, which governs our actions and is influenced by our environment. This deep-self view allows for victims of brainwashing and persons with disorders like kleptomania to not be held responsible for their actions, even though they could have second-order desires somewhat them. The reason for this is that these peoples wills are not governed by their deep selves, but by forces external to and independent from them(53). Wolf separates desires d etermined foreign to oneself from desires which are determined by ones self,(54) or deep-self. This view allows for some determinism, while also providing a vehicle for a freedom of the will. However, Wolf admits that the deep-self view needs further revision for it to be feasible. The deep-self view would hold someone responsible of their actions every time their deep-self determines a desire not controlled by some external or foreign source. However, Wolfs poser of JoJo, the son of a cruel dictator, shows that although JoJos deep-self may truly want to do what is obviously rail at, he cannot be held responsible for his actions because of his upbringing. This idea is not reconcilable with Wolfs deep-self view at first. However, Wolf adds an addendum to her original hypothesis namely, that the deep-self view holds true only if the individual is reasonable. The definition of sanity that Wolf uses the MNaughten Rule, which states a person is sane if (1) he knows what he is doing, an d (2) he knows that what he is doing is, as the case may be, right or wrong.(55). If a person were insane, i.e. did not have a storage area of the difference between right and wrong, then they would not be held responsible for their actions. By modifying the deep-self view in this manner, the case of JoJo is reconcilable with the deep-self view in that JoJo does not have an understanding of what is right or wrong, and therefore need not be held responsible for his actions. Wolf then summarizes her view by saying that in order to be responsible for our actions, the sane deep-self view analyzes what is necessary in order to be responsible for our selves as (1) the cleverness to evaluate ourselves sensibly and accurately, and (2) the ability to transform ourselves insofar as our evaluation tells us to do so.(57) Thus, Wolfs idea of responsibility is dependent upon our ability to understand the difference between right and wrong and our ability to evaluate and change our deep-selves o ver time.When applying Wolfs sane deep-self theory to the case about the twelve year-old killer stated above, Wolf would most likely repugn that the boy was responsible for h