This work shows that two problems—the reference class and the mental state of the agent—undermine the plausibility of the ‘blameworthiness tracks risk thesis’ (BTRT), which states, prima facie, an agent is more blameworthy for imposing a greater rather than smaller risk. The article first outlines core concepts. It then shows how the two problems undermine BTRT; namely, (1) no blame attribution based on risk imposition is unequivocal; (2) when the materialization of risk is subject to chance, an agent’s decision can (...) ground an equal degree of blameworthiness regardless of whether the risk is greater or lesser. (shrink)

Strict akratic actions, by definition, are performed freely. However, agents may seem not to be selfgoverned with respect to such actions and therefore not to perform them autonomously. If appearance matches reality here, freedom and autonomy part company in this sphere. Do they? That is this article's guiding question. To make things manageable, it is assumed that there are free actions, including strict akratic actions. Two theses are defended. First, the combination of (i) an intentional action's being uncompelled and (ii) (...) its being - or executing - in appropriate informational circumstances, a sane decision that, as the agent recognizes, is for a course of action that she believes to be inferior to an alternative course of action open to her is sufficient for the action's being freely performed. (Condition (i) provides elbow room allegedly needed for free action, and (ii) encompasses freedom-level psychological sophistication.) Second, the same combination is sufficient for an intentional action's being autonomously performed. (shrink)

The problem of induced pro-attitudes is simply this: why is action which ultimately issues from pro-attitudes such as desires, volitions, and goals, induced by techniques such as direct manipulation of the brain, hypnosis, or “value engineering,” frequently regarded as action for which its agent cannot be held morally responsible? The problem is of interest for several reasons. Ferdinand Schoeman, for instance, believes that the problem poses a resolvable but challenging predicament for compatibilists: if agents can be held morally responsible for (...) actions that are causally determined, then why should actions that result from induced pro-attitudes be regarded as paradigmatically unfree actions for which agents cannot be held morally accountable? Robert Kane exploits the problem to launch a libertarian attack on compatibilists. He says that a covert non-constraining controller controls the will of another agent by arranging “circumstances beforehand so that the agent wants and desires, and hence chooses and tries, only what the controller intends.” Kane claims that compatibilist accounts of freedom cannot distinguish between cases in which an agent behaves freely and those in which an agent falls prey to the covert non-constraining control of some other party. (shrink)