Against Logical Versions of the Direct Argument: A New Counterexample

American Philosophical Quarterly 47 (3):239-252 (2010)
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Abstract

Here I motivate and defend a new counterexample to logical (or non-causal) versions of the direct argument for responsibility-determinism incompatibilism. Such versions purport to establish incompatibilism via an inference principle to the effect that non-responsibility transfers along relations of logical consequence, including those that hold between earlier and later states of a deterministic world. Unlike previous counterexamples, this case doesn't depend on preemptive overdetermination; nor can it be blocked with a simple modification of the inference principle. In defending this counterexample, I show that van Inwagen's technical notion of being partly responsible for a state of affairs, which figures in his statement of the principle, is problematic.

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Seth Shabo
University of Delaware

Citations of this work

Uncompromising source incompatibilism.Seth Shabo - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (2):349-383.
Incompatibilism and the transfer of non-responsibility.Justin A. Capes - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (6):1477-1495.
Shabo on logical versions of the Direct Argument.P. Roger Turner - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (8):2125-2132.

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