Abstract

Realism, the thesis that the world has an ontological independence from any mind which may know it or any person who may inhabit it, although under increasing attack from many quarters, nonetheless remains the unquestioned framework within which the problem of free will is considered. Yet the solutions which realism can provide to this problem are deeply unsatisfying, for none of them permits the existence of moral responsibility. Compatibilism, the affirmation of the coexistence of determinism and moral responsibility, is false because within a determined universe there is no means whereby an action could be morally ours. Libertarianism, the affirmation of the coexistence of indeterminism and moral responsibility, is false as well because with an undetermined universe there is no means whereby a person could be morally responsive to the situation he faces. As realism entails that the world be either determined or undetermined and as neither determinism nor indeterminism is compatible with moral responsibility, realism is incompatible with moral responsibility. ;The first two chapters of the dissertation examine Daniel Dennett's Elbow Room and Robert Kane's Free Will and Values, arguing that neither of the theories of human moral freedom proposed is compatible with moral responsibility. The third chapter extends the arguments against the theories of Dennett and Kane to establish that no realist theory of freedom is compatible with moral responsibility. The fourth chapter argues that this failure to accommodate moral responsibility stems from the realist foundation upon which both compatibilism and libertarianism have been constructed. It concludes by revealing a number of dubitable and unacknowledged assumptions that the realist holds concerning moral responsibility and argues that at least one particular non-realist ontology can provide an adequate foundation for moral responsibility.