Externalism is the view that facts about one's history or past in the external world that bear on the acquisition of one's responsibility-grounding psychological elements are pertinent to whether one's actions are free and, hence, pertinent to whether one can be morally responsible for them. Internalism is the thesis that the conditions of moral responsibility can be specified independently of facts about how the person acquired her responsibility-grounding psychological elements. In this paper we defend a position that navigates between externalism (...) and internalism: moral responsibility does not require that one have a past but it does require that one not have certain kinds of past. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to show that externalist compatibilism in the debate on personal autonomy and manipulated freedom is as yet untenable. I will argue that Alfred R. Mele’s paradigmatic, history-sensitive externalism about psychological autonomy in general and autonomous deliberation in particular faces an insurmountable problem: it cannot satisfy the crucial condition of adequacy “H” for externalist theories that I formulate in the text. Specifically, I will argue that, contrary to first appearances, externalist compatibilism does not resolve the CNC (...) manipulation problem. After briefly reflecting on the present status of responses to the manipulation problem in the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists of various stripes, I will draw the over-all pessimistic conclusion that no party deals with this problem satisfactorily. (shrink)

abstract An appeal to children's authenticity is widespread in major debates in the philosophy of education. However, no evident uniform conception of authenticity informs the dialectic. We begin with examples that confirm this multiplicity. We then uncover a common strand that unifies these seemingly differing conceptions: authenticity is exemplified by motivational elements, such as the agent's desires, when these elements are, in a manner to be explicated, ‘truly the agent's own’. It is this view of authenticity that is the mainstay (...) of a predicament in the philosophy of education: if education entails intentional instilment of certain motivational elements in the child but such intentional moulding, in the absence of the agent's consent, is generally incompatible with authenticity, how is an authentic education possible? We respond by developing a relational account of authenticity that denies that motivational elements are authentic in their own right; they are authentic only relative to ensuring certain ends. (shrink)