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Free Will: Responsibility and ‘Free Will’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
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As a rule we treat people as responsible for what they do. We admonish them if they behave badly, praise them if they do well. We punish people. And we reward them.
There are exceptions, of course. For example, we do not punish someone for doing something he has been compelled to do, perhaps by having a gun in his back. And we even recognize such a thing as psychological compulsion, as in the case of kleptomania.
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