A type of transcendental argument for libertarian free will maintains that if acting freely requires the availability of alternative possibilities, and determinism holds, then one is not justified in asserting that there is no free will. More precisely: if an agent A is to be justified in asserting a proposition P (e.g. "there is no free will"), then A must also be able to assert not-P. Thus, if A is unable to assert not-P, due to determinism, then A is not (...) justified in asserting P. While such arguments often appeal to principles with wide appeal, such as the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, they also require a commitment to principles that seem far less compelling, e.g. the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’ or the principle that having an obligation entails being responsible. It is argued here that these further principles are dubious, and that it will be difficult to construct a valid transcendental argument without them. (shrink)

According to a popular view, excuses undermine blameworthiness. At the same time, philosophers commonly accept that blameworthiness is composed of two necessary conditions: a moral objectionability condition and a responsibility condition. For excuses to do their job, they must undermine at least one of these conditions. In this paper, I conclude that excuses do neither. By inference to the best explanation, I propose a view that reconciles this conclusion with the function of excuses.

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)

The concept of missed care refers to an irrefragable truth that required nursing care, which is left undone, occurs in the delivery of health care. As a technical concept, missed care offers nurses the opportunity to articulate a problematic experience. But what are we to make of missed care from an ethical perspective? Can nurses be held morally responsible for missed care? Ethically speaking, it is generally accepted that if a person has a moral obligation to do something, s/he needs (...) to have the capacity to do it. If a person does not have the capacity to fulfil a moral obligation, then s/he cannot be held responsible for failing to do so. This is captured by the “ought implies can” (OIC) principle. This paper brings the OIC principle to the forefront of the discussion on missed care. It is contended that nurses – qua moral agents – may be discharged from a moral obligation to carry out a required caring act because of some inability that is not of their making and therefore may not be morally responsible for missed care. However, the OIC principle may not be applied to all situations of missed care depending on their causes. In addition, following in the thought of Sapontzis (The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1991, XXIX, 383–393) it is contended that when an original obligation to deliver a required act of care cannot be fulfilled, other obligations may be generated as summed up in the “Principle of Making Amends” and the “Principle of Appropriate Feeling.” It is the view of this paper that these further principles could prevent the OIC principle from being used to simply excuse omissions of care from a normative standard and could support the view that nurses continue to have alternative obligations to make amends and to respond with appropriate feelings to missed care. (shrink)

It is a dominant dictum in ethics that ‘ought implies can’ (OIC): if an agent morally ought to do an action, the agent must be capable of performing that action. Yet, with current technological developments, such as in direct-to-consumer genomics, big data analytics and wearable technologies, there may be reasons to reorient this ethical principle. It is our modest aim in this article to explore how the current wave of allegedly disruptive innovation calls for a renewed interest for this dictum. (...) As an effect of prevention and prediction oriented technological innovation, an increased focus on assumedly controllable lifestyle risks may be anticipated. For lay people who might turn into patients, this may entail a reinforced behavior-based individual responsibilisation. Holding on to the OIC dictum, such responsibilisation seems to require that individuals can actually control what is framed as ‘lifestyle risks’ when there is not always a reliable consensus about what one should do. As such, reference to OIC may be mobilised in function of a political task of designing institutions so as to enable such choice and control. (shrink)