"We wish this volume to be a sure companion to the study of free will, broadly construed to include action theory, moral and legal responsibility, and cohort studies feathering off into adjacent fields in the liberal arts and sciences. In addition to general coverage of the discipline, this volume attempts a more challenging and complementary accompaniment to many familiar narratives about free will. In order to map out some directions such accompaniment will take, in this introduction we anchor the thirty (...) contributions to this volume in some common history from which they arise, and attempt to indicate where future work in free will and moral responsibility will–and has already begun to–depart from that history." -Excerpt from Introduction. ... ... To read full introduction, (1) download attached file or (2) follow wiley_dot_com link below, click "Read An Excerpt", then click :Excerpt 3:(pdf)". (shrink)

Recent experimental research has revealed surprising patterns in people's intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. One limitation of this research, however, is that it has been conducted exclusively on people from Western cultures. The present paper extends previous research by presenting a cross-cultural study examining intuitions about free will and moral responsibility in subjects from the United States, Hong Kong, India and Colombia. The results revealed a striking degree of cross-cultural convergence. In all four cultural groups, the majority of (...) participants said that (a) our universe is indeterministic and (b) moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism. (shrink)

Some people endorse a view called incompatibilism, which states that free will is incompatible with determinism. No free action could possibly be determined, they think. More informatively, incompatibilists think it is impossible that someone’s freely acting be causally guaranteed to happen by things that occur before she freely acts. Some people hold a view called libertarianism, which states both that incompatibilism is true and that someone actually performs a free action. Other people reject incompatibilism. They hold to compatibilism, which is (...) the view that it is possible that previous happenings in the world could absolutely causally guarantee—that is, could cause in a deterministic way—that someone freely acts. In this chapter, I argue that libertarianism is, for the time being at least, the most sensible view. (shrink)

Are animals moral agents? In this article, a theologian and an anthropologist unite to bring the resources of each field to bear on this question. Alas, not all interdisciplinary conversations end harmoniously, and after much discussion the two authors find themselves in substantial disagreement over the answer. The article is therefore presented in two halves, one for each side of the argument. As well as presenting two different positions, our hope is that this article clarifies the different understandings of morality (...) in our respective fields and will help to offset confusion in interdisciplinary dialogue. In what follows, we each present our case. In the first section, Adam Willows argues that moral activity necessarily involves the use of reason, symbolic thought, and language and is on that basis an exclusively human affair. In the second, Marcus Baynes-Rock discusses his experience of relationality with other creatures; a relationality which, he argues, creates a shared understanding of obligations which are characteristically moral. (shrink)

Rule A: if it's metaphysically necessary that p, we may validly infer that no one is even partly morally responsible for the fact that p. Our principal aim in this article is to highlight the importance of this rule and to respond to two recent challenges to it. We argue that rule A is more important to contemporary theories of moral responsibility than has previously been recognized. We then consider two recent challenges to the rule and argue that neither challenge (...) successfully undermines the rule's initial appeal. (shrink)

An important disagreement in contemporary debates about free will hinges on whether an agent must have alternative possibilities to be morally responsible. Many assume that notions of alternative possibilities are ubiquitous and reflected in everyday intuitions about moral responsibility: if one lacks alternatives, then one cannot be morally responsible. We explore this issue empirically. In two studies, we find evidence that folk judgments about moral responsibility call into question two popular principles that require some form of alternative possibilities for moral (...) responsibility. Survey participants given scenarios involving agents that fail to satisfy these principles nonetheless found these agents to be morally responsible, blameworthy, deserving of blame, and at fault for morally bad actions and consequences. We defend our interpretation of this evidence against objections and explore some implications of these findings for the free will debate. (shrink)

This paper proposes a logical framework for studying the structure of moral responsibility for outcomes. The analysis incorporates two vital features: an agency condition and a negative condition of an alternative possibility. The logical language allows us to identify and disambiguate seven plausible criteria for moral responsibility. To accommodate interdependent decision contexts, the semantics are given in terms of so-called responsibility games. The logical framework enables us to classify the logical relations between these seven criteria for moral responsibility. Although all (...) seven criteria are logically distinct, I also identify circumstances where the seven criteria locally reduce to only three. (shrink)

In this project, I will analyze, summarize, and critique the incompatibilist theory known as source incompatibilism, which argues that a moral agent is morally responsible for an action only if they are the proper source of that action. More specifically, I will analyze the source incompatibilist views of event-causal incompatibilism, which argues that an agent has free will only if there exists indeterminacy in her decision-making process, either before the formation of a decision itself of during the formation of a (...) decision. I will argue that event-causal incompatibilist views suffer from problems of control and moral chanciness. Thus I will argue that event-causal incompatibilism is no more philosophically tenable than its compatibilist counterparts. If this is true, the event-causal incompatibilist ought to abandon it due to considerations of parsimony. After I have successfully refuted event-causal incompatibilism, I will introduce a novel theory of moral responsibility compatibilism of my own, which I will argue is the only tenable philosophical theory left for the proponent of event-causal incompatibilism. I will attempt to reconcile moral responsibility with causal determinism, utilizing an argument from the philosophy of David Enoch in his book Taking Morality Seriously. When this is complete, I will defend my compatibilist theory from various objections by philosophers Saul Smilansky and Ishtiyaque Haji. I will end the discussion with a brief introduction to other non-libertarian views of moral responsibility and determinism, which do not require libertarian notions of free will and thus do not require indeterminacy for freedom. These include Saul Smilansky’s illusionism and Derk Pereboom’s hard incompatibilism. I will analyze these views, but ultimately I will critique them. I will argue that these theories also are lacking, and so they are not viable alternatives to the proponent of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Philosophers and theologians alike have debated endlessly over the relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom. Too often, in these debates, human freedom is either denied altogether or reduced to a compatibilist notion. Many people fear that granting humans too much freedom would destroy God's sovereignty. However, the purpose of granting humans freedom is not to elevate the creature over the Creator; rather to uphold both moral responsibility and God's justice. Any theory that preserves God's sovereignty at the expense of (...) His justice, or makes His justice arbitrary, by sacrificing the kind of freedom that preserves moral responsibility, is not worthy to be held by any Christian. This thesis will contend that only libertarian freedom preserves moral responsibility, since only libertarian freedom preserves legitimate possibilities for the agent. However, a dilemma arises for Christians who advocate libertarian freedom: How can God know what future actions will occur if the actualization of the action is dependent on the libertarian free choice of an agent who does not yet exist? Many of the traditional attempts to preserve libertarian freedom fail because such attempts hold that the future is exhaustively settled. This raises a problem for libertarian freedom since an exhaustively settled future is one without possibilities, which libertarian freedom requires. In order to solve this dilemma, it will be argued that God decided not to determine all events. Instead, God actually gives humans options allowing for legitimate possibilities. In such a world, God knows all those things which He has determined to bring about, as well as all the possibilities He permits. The important distinction this thesis will make is that God knows future possibilities as possible until the agent exercises one's free choice. (shrink)