- This pseudo-Paper is intended as the mechanism to record time spent on the Note 'Wantons1' during my Thesis research, as from 2011.
- For the actual time recorded, click on "Paper Statistics" above.
Write-up2 (as at 14/07/2019 18:05:46): Wantons
Plug Note3- “Wanton” is a term of art introduced in "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person".
- Wantons are human beings4 who aren’t moral persons, because they lack second order desires (they don’t want to want to do x or be morally like y).
- Most human beings (the persons5) care what their moral likes and dislikes are, and want to reform or improve their moral sensibilities and characters. They care about their moral state. Wantons don’t; they are happy as they are (and not because they are moral saints).
- While the term “wanton” is a useful one, I think excluding wantons from falling under the concept6 “person” is making that concept too narrow. Frankfurt may have hijacked the term wanton, but he has left no important semantic gap in so doing (he has probably done no more than perform a service by clarifying the term).
- However, in restricting the term “person” to non-wantons, he is (I would claim) invoking a semantic shift that would then require a new term, PERSON-Minus, to cover those wanton human beings who enjoy the non-moral properties that Frankfurt-persons enjoy. Maybe they would be persons of reduced degree7?
- For a page of Links8 to this Note, Click here. This revealed precious little in my database, and what little there was, was mostly irrelevant, and has been suppressed.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read9, include the following:-
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - When Do Persons Begin and End?", Baker10
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood", Dennett
- "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", Frankfurt
- "Snowdon (Paul) - The Self and Personal Identity", Snowdon
- A reading list (where not covered elsewhere) might start with:-
- "Velleman (David) - The Way of the Wanton", Velleman
- This is mostly a place-holder11.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 2: - This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (14/07/2019 18:05:46).
- Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 10: - Baker doesn’t actually mention wantons, but might have!
- The same goes for the paper by Snowdon.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2020