In this article we survey six recent developments in the philosophical literature on free will and moral responsibility: (1) Harry Frankfurt's argument that moral responsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise; (2) the heightened focus upon the source of free actions; (3) the debate over whether moral responsibility is an essentially historical concept; (4) recent compatibilist attempts to resurrect the thesis that moral responsibility requires the freedom to do otherwise; (5) the role of the control condition in free (...) will and moral responsibility, and finally (6) the debate centering on luck. (shrink)

The W-defense is among the most prominent arguments for the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP). Here I offer some considerations in support of the W-defense and respond to what I see as the most forceful objections to it to date. My response to these objections invokes the well-known flicker of freedom response to Frankfurt cases. I argue that the W-defense and the flicker response are mutually reinforcing and together yield a compelling defense of PAP.

This paper develops a new argument against free will, understood as the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP). This principle has been central in debates around free will and moral responsibility; however, it is almost always stated in terms of bodily rather than mental action, and it is therefore mainly understood as the possibility to physically act differently, rather than to think differently. The argument presented here is aimed at the latter, which is termed the possibility of alternative thought (PAT). It (...) argues on psychological grounds that it is impossible for a subject to think differently than it does in a given situation. First, I make the possibility of alternative thought explicit, explain what it means for a self to entertain a thought (or conscious content), and I define a notion of conscious control that is required for the argument. I then offer a taxonomy of content types, based on how they are being controlled. In the third section, I analyse the scenarios of content generation for each type of content, to determine whether they can satisfy the PAT. It will be shown that this cannot be the case. (shrink)

In Harry Frankfurt’s seminal “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” he advances an argument against the Principle of Alternate Possibilities: if an agent is responsible for performing some action, then she is able to do otherwise. However, almost all of the Frankfurt cases in this literature involve impermissible actions. In this article, I argue that the failure to consider other deontic categories exposes a deep problem, one that threatens either to upend much current moral theorizing or to upend the relevance of (...) Frankfurt cases. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is an influential family of views in the ethics of self-defense and war: views that ground the agent’s liability to be attacked in self-defense in the agent’s moral responsibility for the threat posed (“Responsibility Views”). I critically examine the concept of responsibility employed by such views, by looking at potential connections with the contemporary literature on moral responsibility. I start by uncovering some of the key assumptions that Responsibility Views make about the relevant concept of (...) responsibility, and by scrutinizing those assumptions under the lens of more general theorizing about responsibility. I identify an important conflict that arises at that point. The problem is that the concept presupposed by Responsibility Views is in tension with the standard way of understanding the connection between the neutral and non-neutral forms of moral responsibility. I draw attention to a particular strategy that could be used to address this challenge, but I also identify some important obstacles that stand in the way. (shrink)

This paper presents an Anscombian alternative to the traditional deontic conception of ought. According to the Anscombian conception of ought developed here, ought is general as opposed to ‘peculiarly moral’, norm-referring instead of law- or obligation-referring, and ‘heroic’ in the sense that it does not presuppose that individuals can do or be as they ought. Its connection to matters of fact can, moreover, be clearly stated. In the first part of the paper, I describe some significant logical characteristics of this (...) conception, and argue that it provides a more suitable account of the oughts of ethics as compared to the deontic conception. One particular strength of the Anscombian conception of ought is that it does justice to the possibility of tragedy in human life, where tragedy is understood as the possibility that a thoroughly well-intentioned individual might sometimes ensure her own moral imperfection, precisely by doing what is morally right or best at every step along the way. To motivate this feature of the view, I sketch a corresponding picture of responsibility for actions in terms of ownership of one’s deeds. This conception of responsibility allows that what one ought to do is not always constrained by what one can do, while saving the intuitions about fairness and the practical scope of moral norms that principally motivate ‘ought implies can’. To illustrate and motivate the overall account I discuss a number of cases, including the character Winston from George Orwell’s 1984. (shrink)

This article argues that there can be epistemic dilemmas: situations in which one faces conflicting epistemic requirements with the result that whatever one does, one is doomed to do wrong from the epistemic point of view. Accepting this view, I argue, may enable us to solve several epistemological puzzles.

According to typical ought-implies-can principles, if you have an obligation to vaccinate me tomorrow, then you can vaccinate me tomorrow. Such principles are uninformative about conditional obligations: what if you only have an obligation to vaccinate me tomorrow if you synthesize a vaccine today? Then maybe you cannot vaccinate me tomorrow ; what you can do instead, I propose, is make it the case that the conditional obligation is not violated. More generally, I propose the ought-implies-can-obey principle: an agent has (...) an obligation only at times at which the agent can obey the obligation. I also propose another principle, which captures the idea that ‘ought’ implies ‘can avoid’. I defend both principles mainly by arguing that they help explain why agents lose obligations, including conditional ones. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In light of recent empirical evidence, however, some skeptics conclude that philosophers should stop assuming the principle unconditionally. Streumer, however, does not simply assume the principle’s truth; he provides arguments for it. In this article, we argue that his arguments fail to support the claim that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’.

Those who want to deny the ‘ought implies can’ principle often turn to weakened views to explain ‘ought implies can’ phenomena. The two most common versions of such views are that ‘ought’ presupposes ‘can’, and that ‘ought’ conversationally implicates ‘can’. This paper will reject both views, and in doing so, present a case against any pragmatic view of ‘ought implies can’. Unlike much of the literature, I won't rely on counterexamples, but instead will argue that each of these views fails (...) on its own terms. ‘Ought’ and ‘can’ do not obey the negation test for presupposition, and they do not obey the calculability or the cancelability tests for conversational implicature. I diagnose these failures as partly a result of the importance of the contrapositive of ‘ought implies can’. I end with a final argument emphasizing the role the principle plays in moral thinking, and the fact that no pragmatic account can do it justice. (shrink)

Continuing prior work by the author, a simple classical system for personal obligation is integrated with a fairly rich system for aretaic (agent-evaluative) appraisal. I then explore various relationships between definable aretaic statuses such as praiseworthiness and blameworthiness and deontic statuses such as obligatoriness and impermissibility. I focus on partitions of the normative statuses generated ("normative positions" but without explicit representation of agency). In addition to being able to model and explore fundamental questions in ethical theory about the connection between (...) blame, praise, permissibility and obligation, this allows me to carefully represent schemes for supererogation and kin. These controversial concepts have provided challenges to both ethical theory and deontic logic, and are among deontic logic's test cases. (shrink)

I defend the following version of the ought-implies-can principle: (OIC) by virtue of conceptual necessity, an agent at a given time has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to do only what the agent at that time has the ability and opportunity to do. In short, obligations correspond to ability plus opportunity. My argument has three premises: (1) obligations correspond to reasons for action; (2) reasons for action correspond to potential actions; (3) potential actions correspond to ability plus opportunity. In the (...) bulk of the paper I address six objections to OIC: three objections based on putative counterexamples, and three objections based on arguments to the effect that OIC conflicts with the is/ought thesis, the possibility of hard determinism, and the denial of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that it cannot be the case that a person ought to perform an action if this person cannot perform this action. However, most of these philosophers do not give arguments for the truth of this claim. In this paper, I argue that it is plausible to interpret this claim in such a way that it is entailed by the claim that there cannot be a reason for a person to perform an action if it is impossible that (...) this person will perform this action. I then give three arguments for the truth of the latter claim, which are also arguments for the truth of the former claim as I interpret it. (shrink)

The set with the following members is inconsistent: F-Lesson: A person can be blameworthy for performing an action even though she cannot refrain from performing it. Equivalence: ‘Ought not’ is equivalent to ‘impermissible.’ OIC: ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’ and ‘ought not’ implies ‘can refrain from.’ BRI: Necessarily, one is morally blameworthy for doing something only if it is overall morally impermissible for one to do it. Since Equivalence seems unassailable, one can escape the inconsistency by renouncing any one of the other (...) members. I first argue against BRI and then motivate a replacement for it that ties blameworthiness to belief in impermissibility. (shrink)

This article raises some incompatibilist challenges for, and queries some of the implications of, Ronald Dworkin’s arguments in his "Justice for Hedgehogs" (2011), that responsibility is compatible with both determinism and epiphenomenalism.

Some accounts of moral responsibility hold that an agent's responsibility is completely determined by some aspect of the agent's mental life at the time of action. For example, some hold that an agent is responsible if and only if there is an appropriate mesh among the agent's particular psychological elements. It is often objected that the particular features of the agent's mental life to which these theorists appeal (such as a particular structure or mesh) are not necessary for responsibility. This (...) is because there appear to be cases in which an agent acts at an earlier time which causes her to lack the appropriate psychological features at some later time and yet, intuitively, she is responsible at that later .. (shrink)

In this article I argue that it is possible to be blameworthy for doing something that was not objectively morally wrong. If I am right, this would have implications for several debates at the intersection of metaphysics and moral philosophy. I also float a view about which actions can serve as legitimate bases for blame that allows for the possibility of blameworthiness without objective wrongdoing and also suggests an explanation for the appeal of the commonly held view that blameworthiness requires (...) objective wrongdoing. (shrink)

Here it is argued that in order for something someone “does” to count as a genuine action, the person needn’t have been able to refrain from doing it. If this is right, then two recent defenses of the principle of alternative possibilities, a version of which says that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have refrained from doing it, are unsuccessful.

The present paper probes the relation between the metaphysics of human freedom and the Rothbardian branch of Austrian economics. It transpires that Rothbard and his followers embrace metaphysical libertarianism, which holds that free will is incompatible with determinism and that the thesis of determinism is false as pertaining to human action. However, as we demonstrate, their economics with its reliance on value scales requires for its tenability compatibilist freedom. Moreover, we attempt to show that the notion of value scales (or (...) preferences) postulated by them implies that value scales are determinative of choices people make. We contend that it is for this reason that the said Austrians should jettison their metaphysical libertarianism. (shrink)

The principle of alternate possibilities says that you are morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for something you do only if you could have done otherwise. Frankfurt examples are putative counterexamples to PAP. These examples feature a failsafe mechanism that ensures that some agent cannot refrain from doing what she does without intervening in how she conducts herself, thereby supposedly sustaining the upshot that she is responsible for her behavior despite not being able to do otherwise. I introduce a Frankfurt example in (...) which the agent who could not have done otherwise is God. Paying attention to the freedom requirements of moral obligation, the example is commissioned, first, to assess whether various statesof affairs that are unavoidable for God can be obligatory for God and for whichGod can be praiseworthy. The example is, next, used to unearth problems with conventional Frankfurt examples that feature human agents. I argue that conceptual connections between responsibility and obligation cast suspicion on these examples. Pertinent lessons that the divine Frankfurt example helps to reveal motivate the view that divine foreknowledge and determinism, assuming that both preclude freedom to do otherwise, may well imperil obligation and responsibility. (shrink)

In this investigation, I focus on individual memory behaviors for which we commonly blame and praise each other. Alas, we too often do so unreflectively. Blame and praise should not be undertaken lightly or without a good grasp on both what we are holding people responsible for, and the conditions under which they can be held responsible. I lay out the constructivist view of memory with consideration for both remembering and forgetting, and special attention to how we remember events as (...) well as whether we remember them. I generate seven defeasible generalized moral rules that should govern individual memory behaviors including remembering our own past wrongs, holding grudges, and creating positive as well as negative memories. By such means may we all remember and forget rightly and not for ill. (shrink)

It is widely thought that moral obligations are necessarily guidance giving. This supposed fact has been put to service in defence of the ‘ought-implies-can’ principle according to which one cannot be morally obligated to do the impossible, since impossible-to-satisfy obligations would not give guidance. It is argued here that the supposed fact is no such thing; moral obligations are not necessarily guiding giving, and so the ‘guidance argument’ for ought-implies-can fails. This is the result of no non-trivial condition being ‘luminous’.

It typically taken for granted that agents can be morally responsible for such things as, for example, the death of the victim and the capture of the murderer in the sense that one may be blameworthy or praiseworthy for such things. The primary task of a theory of moral responsibility, it is thought, is to specify the appropriate relationship one must stand to such things in order to be morally responsible for them. I argue that this common approach is problematic (...) because it attempts to explain the way in which an agent can be morally responsible for something that is external to her, the agent. Since, I argue, everything that matters for moral responsibility is internal to the agent, the accounts that emerge from this approach are committed to a particular form of moral luck. Instead, we should reject this form of moral luck, and with it, the possibility of moral responsibility for objects external to the agent. We are, I argue, morally responsible only for our inner willings. Thus, a form of internalism about moral responsibility is defended. (shrink)

Psychiatry widely assumes an internalist biomedical model of mental illness. I argue that many of psychiatry’s diagnostic categories involve an implicit commitment to constitutive externalism about mental illness. Some of these categories are socially externalist in nature.

Most philosophers assume that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, and most of them hold that this principle is true not only universally but also analytically or conceptually. Some skeptics deny this principle, although they often admit some related one. In this article, we show how new empirical evidence bolsters the skeptics’ arguments. We then defend the skeptical view against some objections to the empirical evidence and to its effect on the traditional principle. In light of the new evidence, we conclude that philosophers (...) should stop unconditionally assuming that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt has famously argued against the principle of alternate possibilities by presenting a case in which, apparently, a person is morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not have done otherwise. A number of commentators have proposed dispositionalist responses to Frankfurt, arguing that he has not produced a counterexample to PAP because, contrary to appearances, the ability to do otherwise is indeed present but is a disposition that has been ‘masked’ or ‘finked’ by the presence (...) of a counterfactual controller. This article argues that this response to Frankfurt does not undercut his attack on PAP, since there are Frankfurt-style counterexamples to the principle—‘brain-malfunction’ cases—that evade the dispositionalist analysis. (shrink)

This paper highlights and discusses some key positions on free will and moral responsibility that I have defended. I begin with reflections on a Strawsonian analysis of moral responsibility. Then I take up objections to the view that there is an asymmetry in freedom requirements for moral responsibility and moral obligation: obligation but not responsibility requires that we could have done otherwise. I follow with some thoughts on the viability of different sorts of semi-compatibilism. Next, I turn to defending the (...) “luck objection“ to a popular libertarian account of the control that responsibility requires. This is, roughly, the objection that when our decisions are indeterministically caused, their occurrence is a matter of responsibility-undermining luck. Finally, I comment on Frankfurt examples. (shrink)

Discussions of the principle of alternative possibilities have largely ignored the limits of what Frankfurt-style counter-examples can show. Rather than challenging the coherence of the cases, I argue that even if they are taken to demonstrate the falsity of the principle, they cannot advance the compatibilist cause. For a forceful incompatibilist argument can be constructed from the Frankfurtian premise that agents in Frankfurtian circumstances would have done what they did even if they could have done something else. This 'counterfactual stability' (...) meets the same fate under determinism as does the ability to do otherwise. Thus the cases are irrelevant to the compatibility debate. (shrink)

If you ought to do something, does it follow that you are able to do it? The Kantian thesis that ought-implies-can seems intuitive and is widely accepted. Nevertheless, there are several powerful purported counterexamples. In this paper I will apply an independently motivated contextualism about ‘ought’ to make sense of the intuitions on both sides of the argument. Contextualism explains why ought-implies-can seems compelling despite being false in many contexts. The result will be that philosophers cannot in general appeal to (...) ought-implies-can in their arguments. (shrink)

The traditional debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists was based on the assumption that if determinism deprives us of free will and moral responsibility, it does so by making it true that we can never do other than what we actually do. All parties to the debate took for granted the truth of a claim now widely known as "the principle of alternate possibilities": someone is morally responsible only if he could have done otherwise. In a famous paper, Harry Frankfurt argued (...) that the principle of alternate possibilities is false. I argue that Frankfurt's argument rests on a modal fallacy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity implies that corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human rights abuses. This (...) is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights. (shrink)

A principle that many have found attractive is one that goes by the name “'Ought' Implies 'Can'.” According to this principle, one morally ought to do something only if one can do it. This essay has two goals: to show that the principle is false and to undermine the motivations that have been offered for it. Toward the end, a proposal about moral obligation according to which something like a restricted version of 'Ought' Implies 'Can' is true is floated. Though (...) no full-fledged argument for this proposal is offered, that it fits with a rather natural and intuitive picture of the structure of morality and seems to explain certain salient features of the debate over whether the principle is true, goes some way toward recommending it. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt dramatically shaped the debates over freedom and responsibility by arguing that the sort of freedom germane to responsibility does not involve the freedom to do otherwise. His argument turns upon an example meant to disprove the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: A person is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise. Debate over Frankfurt's argument has turned almost exclusively on the success of the example meant to defeat it. But there is more (...) to Frankfurt's argument than the example in question, and this is not widely recognized. Inattention to these other aspects of Frankfurt's argument has distorted the force of it. In this paper I shall explore avenues for both refuting and advancing Frankfurt's argument that look beyond the examples. These further considerations invite us to think in broader terms about moral responsibility's nature and the sort of freedom required for it. (shrink)

Institutional operability refers to the normative conditions governing the exercise of power of office that makes an institution work. Because institutional action occurs by the interrelated actions of the officeholders, a focus on institutional operability requires the analysis and assessment of the officeholders’ conduct in their institutional capacity. This article distinguishes two perspectives on operability: ‘outward’ and ‘inward.’ The outward view emphasizes predefined instructions for efficient execution, focusing on rule-following to achieve institutional purposes. The inward perspective highlights role-playing and reflective (...) engagement among officeholders to uphold an institution’s raison d’être. The inward perspective brings to the fore the relational aspect of institutional life and officeholders’ interrelated responsibility for guiding institutional action. (shrink)

Frankfurt examples invite controversy over whether the pertinent agent in these examples lacks the specific ability to do otherwise, and whether what she does can be obligatory or permissible. We develop an account of ability that implies that this agent does not have the specific ability to refrain from performing the germane action. The account also undergirds a view of obligation that entails that it is morally required or prohibited for an agent to perform an action only if she has (...) the specific ability to do, and to do otherwise than, perform it. Therefore, in Frankfurt examples, it is neither obligatory nor impermissible for the relevant agent to do what she does. (shrink)

It is often alleged that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves a negative interpersonal response for that transgression, blaming responses such as resentment and indignation being paradigms. Aside from a few exceptions, guilt is cited in recent discussions of moral responsibility, if at all, as merely an effect of being blamed, or as a reliable indicator of moral responsibility, but not itself an explanation of moral responsibility. In this paper, (...) I argue that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves to feel moral guilt for that transgression. I argue that this alternative view offers all that the predominant blame-focused view offers, while also solving some puzzling features of moral responsibility. Specifically, it offers a compelling way to reconcile conflicting intuitions about the suberogatory, and allows those who do not understand what Darwall calls ‘second-personal’ reasons to be morally responsible for their immoral acts. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 4, Page 799-811, August 2022.

I argue that, each of the following, appropriately clarified to yield a noteworthy thesis, is true. Moral obligation can affect moral responsibility. Obligation succumbs to changes in responsibility. Obligation is immune from changes in responsibility.

Defenders of compatibilism occupy one of two camps: those who think that free will requires the ability to do otherwise, and those who deny this. Those compatibilists who think that free will requires the ability to do otherwise are interested in defending a reading of ‘can’ such that one can do otherwise even if determinism is true. By contrast, those compatibilists who think that free will does not require the ability to do otherwise tend to join incompatibilists in denying that (...) determinism is compatible with the ability to do otherwise. The primary goal of this paper is to fight for the first camp and against the second camp. The secondary goal is to draw greater attention to a relatively overlooked aspect of the debate about alternative possibilities: that giving up on alternative possibilities might mean giving up on much of morality. (shrink)

Many moral philosophers assume that a person is entitled to respect; this suggests that there is a right to respect. I argue, however, that there is no such right. There can be no right to respect because of what respect is, in conjunction with what a right demands and certain limitations of human agency. In this paper, I first examine the nature and ontological basis of rights. I next consider the notion of respect in general; I adduce several varieties of (...) respect, then present a primary distinction needed to discern the notion of respect relevant to the putative right. Then I propound the argument that there can be no right to respect and consider some means of challenging its conclusion. In closing, I trace some of the consequences of this argument and suggest how it might motivate a different approach to understanding our most basic obligations to one another. (shrink)

Every kind of ‘ought’ implies some kind of ‘can’ – but there are many kinds of ‘ought’ and even more kinds of ‘can’. In this essay, I shall focus on a particular kind of ‘ought’ – specifically, on what I shall call the “rational ‘ought’”. On every occasion of use, this kind of ‘ought’ is focused on the situation of a particular agent at a particular time; but this kind of ‘ought’ is concerned, not with how that agent acts at (...) that time, but with what beliefs or intentions the agent has at the time, or with the sort of reasoning by means of which the agent at that time forms or revises those beliefs or intentions. (shrink)

Obligation incompatibilism is the view that determinism precludes moral obligation. I argue for the following. Two principles, ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and ‘ought not’ is equivalent to ‘impermissi...

It is often argued that the requirement that moral obligations be ‘action guiding’ motivates the claim that one can be obligated to ϕ only if one can ϕ. I argue that even on its most plausible interpretation, this argument fails, since the reasoning behind it leads to the absurd conclusion that one is permitted to ϕ if one cannot ϕ.

I defend the principle that a person is blameworthy for her action only if that action was morally wrong. But what should we say about an agent who does the right thing based on bad motives? I present three types of cases that have these features. In each, I argue, the agent is not culpable for her action; however, she violates the norm of moral responsibility, and thus acts in a morally irresponsible way. This analysis, I show, has several virtues. (...) It also has important theoretical ramifications: it allows for a more nuanced approach to moral luck and paves the way for an unexplored line of defense in favor of a particular norm of moral responsibility. (shrink)