The Principle that freedom is necessary for moral responsibility has received a variety of explications, but few philosophers have doubted that in some plausible sense it is true. However, two philosophers have recently challenged it using very different but equally ingenious arguments. J.F.M. Hunter has provided the more obviously direct attack in arguing that considerations of freedom as such are in no way relevant to assessments of moral responsibility. Harry Frankfurt has directed his fire at the version of the freedom (...) principle which says that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. Both Frankfurt and Hunter point out the significance of their arguments for the determinism/moral responsibility debate: if there is no freedom requirement for moral responsibility, then even if determinism threatens freedom, it does not follow that determinism threatens moral responsibility. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the main reason it is wrong to kill people is that killing them deprives them of all the experiences and activities that would otherwise have constituted their futures. Some of these philosophers have also argued that killing potential people is wrong for the same reason, and have used this as support for a conservative position on abortion. Critics have countered by arguing that if zygotes are potential people so too are gamete pairs, and that the potentialist (...) is therefore committed to saying that contraception is very seriously wrong.The first part of this paper examines critically three potentia!ist lines of defense against the (above) contraception reductio and argues that they all fail. The second part of the paper discusses three attempts to finger the flaw in the (above) deprivation argument that is used by the potentialist, and points to significant problems facing each attempt. It concludes that while there is good reason to believe the potentialist’s deprivation argument is unsound, the flaw in the argument has not yet been convincingly identified. (shrink)

This paper evaluates three recent attacks on what Harry Frankfurt has called the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), i.e., the principle that if a person could not have done otherwise he is not morally responsible for what he has done. One critic of PAP argues that, if a person was drawn irresistibly to a drug yet was “altogether delighted with his condition”, he might well be morally responsible even though he could not have done otherwise. A second critic describes circumstances (...) in which, if the agent had failed to perform a certain action, physical forces would have taken effect and caused him to perform that action. Such a person, he argues, may be morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not have done otherwise. I argue that both of the preceding counterexamples fail. The third argument against PAP shows, I maintain, that PAP is not acceptable as it stands; appropriately supplemented, however, it will continue to serve its traditional role in the compatibilist-incompatibilist debate. (shrink)

The tendency is strong to take the notion of “conflict of interests” for granted as if it had an invariant meaning and an ethical content independent of the historical context. It is doubtful however, from an historical and sociological point of view, that many of the cases now considered as instances of “conflicts of interests” would also have been conceived and perceived as such in, say, the 1930s. The idea of a “conflict of interests” presupposes that there are indeed interests (...) in conflict. Conversely, as long as there is a consensus among the different groups involved, they will not conceive and even less denounce a given practice as being an instance of a “conflict of interests”. In this article we will show that the content of the discussions over conflicts of interests has changed over time in close relation with the transformations of the research system. In other words: there are social conditions for the emergence of “conflicts of interests”. The changing meaning of the notion is assessed by analyzing the presence of the expression “conflicts of interests” in the magazine Science over the past century. Three different meanings emerge and their content has evolved in close link with the changing structure of the relations between the scientific community first with the State and then with industry. It moved from a situation external to the scientific community to a debate going on inside the scientific community generated by the growing relations between university and industries. (shrink)

C. A. Campbell has for many years defended vigorously, and often persuasively, the following libertarian claims: that the libertarian concept of freedom of choice is meaningful; that the libertarian variety of freedom of choice is necessary for moral responsibility; and that the libertarian variety of freedom of choice is a reality. This paper will be concerned with Campbell's effort of will argument for the last claim.

Many philosophers believe that the main reason it is wrong to kill people is that killing them deprives them of all the experiences and activities that would otherwise have constituted their futures. Some of these philosophers have also argued that killing potential people is wrong for the same reason, and have used this as support for a conservative position on abortion. Critics have countered by arguing that if zygotes are potential people so too are gamete pairs, and that the potentialist (...) is therefore committed to saying that contraception is very seriously wrong.The first part of this paper examines critically three potentia!ist lines of defense against the (above) contraception reductio and argues that they all fail. The second part of the paper discusses three attempts to finger the flaw in the (above) deprivation argument that is used by the potentialist, and points to significant problems facing each attempt. It concludes that while there is good reason to believe the potentialist’s deprivation argument is unsound, the flaw in the argument has not yet been convincingly identified. (shrink)

In the preceding article John Hunter attempts to show that my criticisms of his position on freedom and responsibility are defective. Hunter believes that my first criticism is directed against his explanation of why so many people have come to believe in the freedom principle. But at no point in my paper do I even consider the merit of that explanation. What Hunter calls my first criticism is in fact merely a preliminary point I make before attacking his arguments against (...) the freedom principle itself. The preliminary point is that in evaluating Hunter's arguments one must bear the following in mind: in some of the examples of unfreedom he provides it is doubtful that the actions are unfree at all; they are at best borderline cases of unfree acts. (shrink)

This paper evaluates three recent attacks on what Harry Frankfurt has called the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), i.e., the principle that if a person could not have done otherwise he is not morally responsible for what he has done. One critic of PAP argues that, if a person was drawn irresistibly to a drug yet was “altogether delighted with his condition”, he might well be morally responsible even though he could not have done otherwise. A second critic describes circumstances (...) in which, if the agent had failed to perform a certain action, physical forces would have taken effect and caused him to perform that action. Such a person, he argues, may be morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not have done otherwise. I argue that both of the preceding counterexamples fail. The third argument against PAP shows, I maintain, that PAP is not acceptable as it stands; appropriately supplemented, however, it will continue to serve its traditional role in the compatibilist-incompatibilist debate. (shrink)

In 1969 harry frankfurt attacked the principle of alternate possibilities, I.E., The principle that one is morally responsible for what one has done only if one could have done otherwise. The first two parts of this paper offer a supplement to and clarification of that principle; the third part defends the supplemented version of it against three frankfurt arguments; and the fourth comments on a recent discussion of it by michael zimmerman.

The standard argument for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility employs the following two premises:A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise:A person could have done otherwise only if his action was not causally determined.While premise two has been the focus of an enormous amount of controversy, premise one until recently has remained virtually unchallenged. However, since Harry Frankfurt’s provocative paper in 1969, premise one, which he dubbed the principle of (...) alternate possibilities, has begun to attract its share of the debate. Frankfurt argued that PAP is false and that its falsity undermines the position of those who assert the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility. Two previous papers I wrote were devoted in part to showing that Frankfurt’s argument is ineffective; one of those papers also argued that, while PAP is indeed false as it stands, if it is appropriately supplemented, it can continue to serve its traditional role in the determinism-responsibility debate. (shrink)