P.F. Strawson’s (1962) “Freedom and Resentment” has provoked a wide range of responses, both positive and negative, and an equally wide range of interpretations. In particular, beginning with Gary Watson, some have seen Strawson as suggesting a point about the “order of explanation” concerning moral responsibility: it is not that it is appropriate to hold agents responsible because they are morally responsible, rather, it is ... well, something else. Such claims are often developed in different ways, but one thing remains (...) constant: they meant to be incompatible with libertarian theories of moral responsibility. The overarching theme of this paper is that extant developments of “the reversal” face a dilemma: in order to make the proposals plausibly anti-libertarian, they must be made to be implausible on other grounds. I canvas different attempts to articulate a “Strawsonian reversal”, and argue that none is fit for the purposes for which it is intended. I conclude by suggesting a way of clarifying the intended thesis: an analogy with the concept of funniness. The result: proponents of the “reversal” need to accept the difficult result that if we blamed small children, they would be blameworthy, or instead explain how their view escapes this result, while still being a view on which our blaming practices “fix the facts” of moral responsibility. (shrink)

A common objection to particular views of attributability is that they fail to account for weakness of will. In this paper, I show that the problem of weakness of will is much deeper than has been recognized, extending to all views of attributability on offer because of the general form that these views take. The fundamental problem is this: current views claim that being attributionally responsible is a matter of exercising whatever capacity that they take to be relevant to attributability; (...) however, weakness of will cases show that we can be attributionally responsible for actions that result from failing to exercise that capacity. I propose a novel solution that any view of attributability can and must take on board in order to be viable. The solution is to recognize that being attributionally responsible is not fundamentally a matter of exercising the attributability-relevant capacity but is rather a matter of having that capacity, so long as that capacity figures in the explanation of the action. (shrink)

In this article we survey six recent developments in the philosophical literature on free will and moral responsibility: (1) Harry Frankfurt's argument that moral responsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise; (2) the heightened focus upon the source of free actions; (3) the debate over whether moral responsibility is an essentially historical concept; (4) recent compatibilist attempts to resurrect the thesis that moral responsibility requires the freedom to do otherwise; (5) the role of the control condition in free (...) will and moral responsibility, and finally (6) the debate centering on luck. (shrink)

Take determinism to be the thesis that for any instant, there is exactly one physically possible future (van Inwagen 1983, 3), and understand incompatibilism regarding responsibility to be the view that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. Of the many different arguments that have been advanced for this view, the crux of a relatively traditional one is this: If determinism is true, then we lack alternatives.1 If we lack alternatives, then we can't be morally responsible for any of our behavior. (...) Therefore, if determinism is true, then we can't be morally responsible for any of our behavior. The second premise is a version of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP): persons are morally .. (shrink)

Take determinism to be the thesis that for any instant, there is exactly one physically possible future, and understand incompatibilism regarding responsibility to be the view that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. Of the many different arguments that have been advanced for this view, the crux of a relatively traditional one is this: If determinism is true, then we lack alternatives. If we lack alternatives, then we can't be morally responsible for any of our behavior. Therefore, if determinism is (...) true, then we can't be morally responsible for any of our behavior. The second premise is a version of the principle of alternate possibilities : persons are morally responsible for what they have done only if they could have done otherwise. This principle, in conjunction with the assumptions that responsibility requires control, and that this control consists in the freedom to do otherwise, provides the vital bridge from the initial premise to the skeptical conclusion. Some incompatibilists, joining ranks with various compatibilists, have sought to reject this principle by invoking so-called ‘Frankfurt examples.’. (shrink)

Orthodoxy holds that the difference between weakness of will and compulsion is a matter of the resistibility of an agent's effective motivation, which makes control-based views of agency especially well equipped to distinguish blameworthy weak-willed acts from non-blameworthy compulsive acts. I defend an alternative view that the difference between weakness and compulsion instead lies in the fact that agents would upon reflection give some conative weight to acting on their weak-willed desires for some aim other than to extinguish them, but (...) not to their compulsive desires. This view allows identificationist theorists of moral responsibility to explain why weak-willed actions, but not compulsive actions, are attributable to agents such that they can, in theory, be praised or blamed for them. After motivating and presenting the view in detail, I show how it has unique resources for explaining the ethics of managing one's compulsions. (shrink)

Reactive emotion accounts hold that blameworthiness should be analyzed in terms of the familiar reactive emotions. However, despite the attractions of such views, we are not persuaded that blameworthiness is ultimately a matter of correctly felt reactive emotion. In this paper, we draw attention to a range of little-discussed considerations involving the moral significance of the passage of time that drive a wedge between blameworthiness and the reactive emotions: the appropriateness of the reactive emotions is sensitive to the passage of (...) time in ways that attributions of blameworthiness are not. There are a number of ways in which reactive emotion accounts might attempt to accommodate the moral significance of time, however. We consider the most important of these, but ultimately find them wanting. Accordingly, we conclude that the prospects for the reactive emotion accounts are bleak. Our argument, if successful, has a range of implications for legal theory, most importantly in providing a novel moral basis for statutes of limitations and in shedding light on new avenues in the theory of criminal law generally. (shrink)

This is the introduction to a volume of new essays in the metaphysics of moral responsibility by John Martin Fischer, Carl Ginet, Ishtiyaque Haji, Alfred R. Mele, Derk Pereboom, Paul Russell, and Peter van Inwagen. I provide some background for the essays, cover the main debates in the metaphysics of moral responsibility, and emphasize some of the authors' contributions to this area of philosophy.

Moral psychology investigates human functioning in moral contexts, and asks how these results may impact debate in ethical theory. This work is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on both the empirical resources of the human sciences and the conceptual resources of philosophical ethics. The present article discusses several topics that illustrate this type of inquiry: thought experiments, responsibility, character, egoism v . altruism, and moral disagreement.

In this paper, I aim to make two general points. First, I claim that the discussions in Repetti (2017) assume different, sometimes conflicting, notions of free will, so the guiding question of the book is not as clear as it could be. Second, according to Buddhist tradition, the path to enlightenment requires rejecting the delusional belief in the existence of a persisting self. I claim that if there is no persisting self, there are no intentional actions; and, if there are (...) no intentional actions, there is no hope for Buddhist enlightenment. Thus, rejecting the allegedly delusional belief in a persisting self has disastrous consequences, both for the existence of intentional action and for Buddhist soteriology. (shrink)

This work develops a philosophically credible and psychologically realisable account of control that is necessary for moral responsibility. We live, think, and act in an environment of subjective uncertainty and limited information. As a result, our decisions and actions are influenced by factors beyond our control. Our ability to act freely is restricted by uncertainty, ignorance, and luck. Through three articles, I develop a naturalistic theory of control for action as a process of error minimisation that extends over time. Thus (...) conceived, control can serve to minimise the influence of luck on action and enable freedom in uncertainty. -/- In Article 1, Thor Grünbaum and I argue for a psychologically plausible account of the kind of control that is necessary for moral responsibility. We begin by establishing the relationship between agentive contribution and responsibility-level control. One way to determine whether one the right kind and degree of control to be morally responsible is to track one’s degree of contribution to an action. However, a psychologically plausible account of control in terms of agentive contribution may seem to contradict the types of functional-mechanistic explanations used in cognitive science. In cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, personal-level capacities are explained by a set of sub-personal mechanisms. Often, such explanations leave no room for a contribution by the agent. By integrating insights from theories of cognitive control and incorporating them into a philosophical account of intentions, we propose a way of thinking about the distribution of cognitive control resources as something the agent does. -/- Article 2 argues that a classic argument concerning luck, originally aimed at libertarianism, generalises beyond any specific theory of free will, and regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism is true. I call this mental luck. Because we all make decisions under conditions of relative uncertainty and limited information, it is possible for an agent to make decisions that are contrary to their own motivation. In such situations, it may be a matter of luck whether the agent makes the right decision. Mentally lucky decisions are not rationally governed by attitudes within the agent's perspective, and thus, may be indistinguishable from unlucky ones. From the perspective of the agent, such decisions may resemble the outcome of a lottery. Therefore, mental luck poses a challenge to most prominent theories of free action and moral responsibility. -/- Finally, article 3 engages with the issue of resultant luck, namely luck in how things turn out. Resultant luck raises a challenge for theories of moral responsibility because its existence suggests that one may be responsible for factors beyond one’s control. Prominent responses to resultant luck led to a choice between internalism and scepticism. I argue that familiar cases of resultant luck are based on the assumption that actions are events. Instead, I propose an alternative ontology of action as an ongoing goal-directed process with a many-shots structure. Described this way, cases of resultant luck are not representative of ordinary action. The proposal of action as a many-shots process is consistent with predictive coding, a cognitive architecture which centres around error minimisation. Under this framework, cases of resultant more luck are no longer failures of action, but rather anticipated errors to be settled within the ordinary process of action. (shrink)

Philosophical work on free will, contemporary as well as historical, is inevitably framed by the problem of free will and determinism. One of my goals in what follows is to give a feel for the main lines of that debate in philosophy today. I will also be outlining a particular perspective on free will. Many working philosophers consider themselves Compatibilists; the perspective outlined, building on a number of arguments in the recent literature, is a contemporary form of such a view. (...) It cannot, however, claim to be the contemporary philosophical perspective. There is no such thing. Against a background of the perennial problem of free will and determinism, through ongoing argument and debate, philosophers continue to try to work toward an understanding of precisely what it means for an action to be free. (shrink)

Eine Analyse unseres auf dem gesunden Menschenverstand beruhenden Freiheitskonzeptes ergibt zwei „minimale Kriterien“: 1) Autonomie bedeutet einen Unterschied zwischen Freiheit und Zwang; 2) Urheberschaft bedeutet einen Unterschied zwischen Freiheit und Zufall. Die Auslegung von Freiheit als „Selbstbestimmung“ kann für beide Kriterien in Anspruch genommen werden. „Selbstbestimmung“ wird verstanden als Bestimmung anhand „persönlicher Vorlieben“, die für die betreffende Person konstituierend sind. Freiheit und Determinismus sind also kompatibel. Die Schlüsselfrage ist nicht, ob unser Handeln überhaupt determiniert ist, sondern eher, ob dies durch (...) persönliche Vorlieben geschieht. Diese Erklärung kann den meisten freiheitsbezogenen Intuitionen gerecht werden, einschließlich der Fähigkeit, anders [als gewohnt] zu handeln. Im Gegensatz dazu würde der Verzicht auf eine Determinierung eher das genannte Minimalkriterium verletzen, als „mehr“ Freiheit zu ermöglichen. Der Verfasser kommt zum Schluss, dass Selbstbestimmung die Verwirklichung aller unserer Ansprüche ermöglicht, wenn wir Freiheit fordern. (shrink)

In his early thought, Heidegger offers a rich description of our practical engagement with the world. The aim of this project is to develop a Heideggerian conception of action from these early, concrete descriptions of the practical dimension of human life. The central feature of this Heideggerian conception of action is that action is understood as involving interdependent aspects of passivity and activity. Considered in its entirety, my dissertation provides what I take to be a fruitful interpretation of Heidegger's early (...) thought from the standpoint of his understanding of action. It also provides the provisional basis and framework for the further development of a general conception of human agency that can be extended beyond Heidegger's thought. (shrink)

Both a traditional notion of free will, present in human beings, and artificial intelligence are often argued to be inherently incompatible with determinism. Contrary to these criticisms, this paper defends that an account of free will compatible with determinism, the responsibility strategy (coined here) specifically, is a variety of free will worth wanting as well as a variety that is possible to (in principle) artificially construct. First, freedom will be defined and related to ethics. With that in mind, the two (...) theses of free will are addressed (namely could have done otherwise and source origination) for both human beings and artificial agents. (shrink)

L’analyse de la conception commune de la liberté produit deux « critères minimaux » : 1) L’autonomie distingue la liberté de la contrainte ; 2) La responsabilité distingue la liberté du hasard. Interpréter la liberté comme « autodétermination » correspond aux deux critères. L’autodétermination se comprend comme une détermination par les « préférences personnelles », constitutives de la personne. La liberté et le déterminisme sont ainsi compatibles. La question essentielle n’est pas de savoir si une action est déterminée ou pas, (...) mais plutôt de savoir si elle est déterminée par les préférences personnelles. Cette explication est juste à l’égard des intuitions les plus importantes concernant la liberté, y compris le pouvoir d’agir autrement. Abandonner la détermination, par contraste, violerait les critères minimaux au lieu de procurer « davantage » de liberté. Dans la conclusion, il est indiqué que l’autodétermination procure tout ce qu’on peut demander si on demande la liberté. (shrink)