Abstract

Determinism is the thesis that ‘there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.’ When various compatibilists discuss determinism and moral responsibility, they champion the view that although determinism is inconsistent with freedom to do otherwise, it is nevertheless consistent with responsibility. Determinism, then, does not, in the view of these compatibilists, threaten one sort of moral appraisal — the sort we make, for example, when we say that someone is blameworthy for some deed. Call moral deontic normative statuses like those of being morally right, wrong, or obligatory, ‘moral anchors.’ A key objective of this paper is to show that even if compatibilists can secure moral responsibility against the threat of determinism, possibly, by establishing that freedom to do otherwise is not the right sort of freedom required for responsibility, they will not be able to secure the very anchors of morality by any similar line of reasoning. Specifically, I argue that if certain principles of moral obligation are true, nothing can be morally right, wrong, or obligatory in a world in which we lack alternative possibilities. Thus, whereas unfreedom to do otherwise may be compatible with responsibility, it is incompatible with moral anchorage.