Moral Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes and Freedom of Will

The Journal of Ethics 20 (1-3):229-246 (2016)
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Abstract

In his influential paper, “Freedom and Resentment,” P. F. Strawson argued that our ordinary practices of holding persons morally responsible and related reactive attitudes were wholly “internal” to the practices themselves and could be insulated from traditional philosophical and metaphysical concerns, including concerns about free will and determinism. This “insulation thesis” is a controversial feature of Strawson’s influential paper; and it has had numerous critics. The first purpose of this paper is to explain my own reasons for thinking that our practices of holding responsible cannot be entirely insulated from incompatibilist concerns about freedom and determinism. The second purpose is to argue that these incompatibilist concerns are in fact legitimate concerns: There are sound reasons to believe that our ordinary practices of holding persons morally responsible do require at least sometimes in our lives that we must be capable of acting freely in a manner that is not determined. I defend this thesis by spelling out why I believe various compatibilist strategies attempting to show that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism fail to show this. In the course of this critique, a general theme will emerge: In order to do full justice to our ordinary practices of holding persons responsible and the freedoms thus involved, one must distinguish between different types of freedom, and in particular, between freedom of action and freedom of will.

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Robert Kane
University of Texas at Austin

Citations of this work

Frankfurt-Style Cases and Moral Responsibility: A Methodological Reflection.Koji Ota - 2021 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 29 (3):295-319.

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References found in this work

Freedom and Resentment.Peter Strawson - 2003 - In Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will. Oxford University Press.
Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.Harry Frankfurt - 1971 - In Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will. Oxford University Press.
The view from nowhere.Thomas Nagel - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (2):221-222.
The Significance of Free Will.Robert Kane - 1996 - Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 60 (1):129-134.
Masked Abilities and Compatibilism.M. Fara - 2008 - Mind 117 (468):843-865.

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