Freedom is sometimes cast as the psychological ideal that distinguishes human beings from other animals; sometimes as the ethical ideal that distinguishes some human beings from others; and sometimes as the political ideal that distinguishes some human societies from others. This paper is an attempt to put the three ideals in a common frame, revealing their mutual connections and differences.

In this paper I discuss various hard cases that an account of moral ignorance should be able to deal with: ancient slave holders, Susan Wolf’s JoJo, psychopaths such as Robert Harris, and finally, moral outliers. All these agents are ignorant, but it is not at all clear that they are blameless on account of their ignorance. I argue that the discussion of this issue in recent literature has missed the complexities of these cases by focusing on the question of epistemic (...) fault. It is not clear that all blameworthy morally ignorant agents have committed an epistemic fault. There are other important issues that pull us in various directions: moral capacity, bad will, and formative circumstances. I argue that bad will is what is crucial, and moral ignorance itself can be a form of bad will. I argue that we should distinguish between two sorts of bad will, and correspondingly, two sorts of blameworthiness. Ordinary blameworthiness, requires moral knowledge, and is based on akratic action. The other kind of blameworthiness, objective blameworthiness, applies when the agent is morally ignorant, and when this indicates bad will. Objective blameworthiness can be undermined by unfortunate formative circumstances. (shrink)

Many claims about conceptual matters are often represented as, or inferred from, claims about the meaning, reference, or mastery, of words. But sometimes this has led to treating conceptual analysis as though it were nothing but linguistic analysis. We canvass the most promising justifications for moving from linguistic premises to substantive conclusions. We show that these justifications fail and argue against current practice (in metaethics and elsewhere), which confuses an investigation of a word’s meaning, reference, or competence conditions with an (...) analysis of some concept or property associated with that word. (shrink)

What motivates the benevolent or charitable agent is regard for another’s good or well-being, but talk about regard for others’ good or well- being is simply talk about benevolence or charity in different terms. Yet Hume clearly holds that the regard for another’s good is a motive to produce benevolent acts that is distinct from a sense of their benevolence. So what is the difference? ‘Well’, one might say, ‘intuitively, rights are very different from wellbeing.’ Yes indeed. And that, I (...) shall contend, is Hume’s point. My general contention is that Hume’s discussion of justice is in fact an attack on that concept of rights we think of as having motivated the American and French revolutions, a concept that is still (deplorably in my view) prevalent. I think the very fact that it is so prevalent and so sanctified by its position in the American Constitution has blinded most readers to the power and plausibility of Hume’s attack, which I shall try to defend. (shrink)

Abstract:There is good reason to take a virtue-based approach to business ethics. Moral principles are fairly useful in assessing actions, but understanding how moral people behave and how they become moral requires reference to virtues, some of which are important in business. We must go beyond virtues and refer to character, of which virtues are components, to grasp the relationship between moral assessment and psychological explanation. Virtues and other character traits are closely related to (in technical terms, they supervene on) (...) personality traits postulated by personality psychologists. They may therefore be featured in respectable psychological explanations. But good character fits no familiar psychological pattern. A person of good character is sufficiently self-aware and rational that his or her virtues are not accompanied by the vices that psychologists find usually associated with them. A course in business ethics can help develop this self-awareness, which a good life in business requires. (shrink)

A link between mental disorder and freedom is clearly present in the introduction of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). It mentions “an important loss of freedom” as one of the possible defining features of mental disorder. Meanwhile, it remains unclear how “an important loss of freedom” should be understood. In order to get a clearer view on the relationship between mental disorder and (a loss of) freedom, in this article, I will explore (...) the link between mental disorder and free will. I examine two domains in which a connection between mental disorder and free will is present: the philosophy of free will and forensic psychiatry. As it turns out, philosophers of free will frequently refer to mental disorders as conditions that compromise free will and reduce moral responsibility. In addition, in forensic psychiatry, the rationale for the assessment of criminal responsibility is often explained by referring to the fact that mental disorders can compromise free will. Yet, in both domains, it remains unclear in what way free will is compromised by mental disorders. Based on the philosophical debate, I discuss three senses of free will and explore their relevance to mental disorders. I conclude that in order to further clarify the relationship between free will and mental disorder, the accounts of people who have actually experienced the impact of a mental disorder should be included in future research. (shrink)

Two intuitions lie at the heart of our conception of free will. One intuition locates free will in our ability to deliberate effectively and control our actions accordingly: the ‘Deliberation and Control’ (DC) condition. The other intuition is that free will requires the existence of alternative possibilities for choice: the AP condition. These intuitions seem to conflict when, for instance, we deliberate well to decide what to do, and we do not want it to be possible to act in some (...) other way. I suggest that intuitions about the AP condition arise when we face ‘close calls,’ situations in which, after deliberating, we still do not know what we really want to do. Indeed, several incompatibilists suggest such close calls are necessary for free will. I challenge this suggestion by describing a ‘confident agent’ who, after deliberating, always feels confident about what to do (and can then control her actions accordingly). Because she maximally satisfies the DC condition, she does not face close calls, and the intuition that the AP condition is essential for free will does not seem to apply to her. I conclude that intuitions about the importance of the AP condition rest on our experiences of close calls and arise precisely to the extent that our deliberations fail to arrive at a clear decision. I then raise and respond to several objections to this thought experiment and its relevance to the free will debate. (shrink)

This article discusses the very common moral guideline “Punch up, do not kick down.” Our approach is based on humanistic ethics, and through rigorous philosophical analysis, we will show that while the guideline is commendable and well-intentioned, it does not work as a universal rule and should not be used as an ideological tool. Due to the complexity of our social reality and the fluid nature of hierarchies, there may be cases when punching up is problematic, and kicking down is (...) acceptable. Our theoretical addition to the current ethics of humor is that we propose humor should be evaluated in terms of inclusivity and exclusivity as well. In this, Charles Taylor’s concept of strong evaluation will be indispensable. (shrink)

According to orthodoxy, the most fundamental kind of causation involves one event causing another event. I argue against this event‐causal view. Instead, the most fundamental kind of causation is thing causation, which involves a thing causing a thing to do something. Event causation is reducible to thing causation, but thing causation is not reducible to event causation, because event causation cannot accommodate cases of fine‐grained causation. I defend my view from objections, including C. D. Broad's influential “timing” argument, and I (...) conclude with implications for agent‐causal theories of free will. (shrink)

Contrary to John Bramhall and critics like him, Thomas Hobbes takes the view that no account of liberty or freedom can serve as the relevant basis on which to distinguish moral from nonmoral agents or explains the basis on which an agent becomes subject to law and liable to punishment. The correct compatibilist strategy rests, on Hobbes’s account, with a proper appreciation and description of the contractualist features that shape and structure the moral community. From this perspective human agents may (...) indeed use their liberty to make themselves moral agents. In doing this, however, they are not employing a distinct kind of liberty but rather using a liberty that they share with animals and other nonmoral agents to perform a distinct kind of act (i.e., consent) whereby they become moral agents subject to law and any punishments that are required to enforce it. ____ -/- Originally published in the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe - eds. D. Clarke & C. Wilson, OUP 2011 -/- Republished in Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy: Selected Essays - OUP 2021: Paul Russell]. (shrink)

In this paper I will address a specific luck argument that has been put forward against event causal libertarianism: the disappearing agent objection. I will show why some replies are unsatisfactory while dealing with this objection and, by criticizing the notion of settling and the conception of selfhood invoked by this objection I’ll suggest that the event causal libertarian should reject the objection as it rests on an unacceptable ontology and that consequently, he should bite the bullet and admit that (...) there is some residual arbitrariness in torn decision making. (shrink)

This 183-page introductory part of my dissertation is an overview of some key debates in philosophical moral psychology and its methodology.

In the third and final part of his A Theory of Determinism (TD) Ted Honderich addresses the fundamental question concerning “the consequences of determinism.” The critical question he aims to answer is what follows if determinism is true? This question is, of course, intimately bound up with the problem of free will and, in particular, with the question of whether or not the truth of determinism is compatible or incompatible with the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility. It is (...) Honderich’s aim to provide a solution to “the problem of the consequences of determinism” and a key element of this is his articulation and defence of an alternative response to the implications of determinism that collapses the familiar Compatibilist/Incompatibilist dichotomy. Honderich offers us a third way – the response of “Affirmation” (HFY 125-6). Although his account of Affirmation has application and relevance to issues and features beyond freedom and responsibility, my primary concern in this essay will be to examine Honderich’s theory of “Affirmation” as it concerns the free will problem. (shrink)

Great technological advances in such areas as computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics have brought the advent of artificially intelligent robots within our reach within the next century. Against this background, the interdisciplinary field of machine ethics is concerned with the vital issue of making robots “ethical” and examining the moral status of autonomous robots that are capable of moral reasoning and decision-making. The existence of such robots will deeply reshape our socio-political life. This paper focuses on whether such highly (...) advanced yet artificially intelligent beings will deserve moral protection once they become capable of moral reasoning and decision-making. I argue that we are obligated to grant them moral rights once they have become full ethical agents, i.e., subjects of morality. I present four related arguments in support of this claim and thereafter examine four main objections to the idea of ascribing moral rights to artificial intelligent robots. (shrink)

A difficult problem for contractualists is how to provide an interpretation of the contractual situation that is both subject to appropriately stringent constraints and yet also appropriately sensitive to certain features of us as we actually are. My suggestion is that we should embrace a model of contractualism that is structurally analogous to the “advice model” of the ideal observer theory famously proposed by Michael Smith (1994; 1995). An advice model of contractualism is appealing since it promises to deliver a (...) straightforward solution to the so-called “conditional fallacy.” But it faces some formidable challenges. On the face of it, it seems to be straightforwardly conceptually incoherent. And it seems to deliver a solution to the conditional fallacy at the cost of being vulnerable to what I shall call “the concessional fallacy.” I shall consider how, if at all, these challenges are to be met. I shall then conclude by considering what this might mean for the so-called “ideal/non-ideal theory” issue. (shrink)

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)

Contemporary philosophers of moral responsibility are in widespread agreement that we can only be blamed for actions that express, reflect, or disclose something about us or the quality of our wills. In this paper I reject that thesis and argue that self disclosure is not a necessary condition on moral responsibility and blameworthiness: reactive responses ranging from aretaic appraisals all the way to outbursts of anger and resentment can be morally justified even when the blamed agent’s action expresses or discloses (...) nothing significant about his or her “deep self,” judgments and cares, or the quality of his or her will. I argue that the self-disclosure requirement on responsibility overestimates the extent to which our blaming practices and responsibility judgments are responsive to agents as opposed to actions, and that this mistake has the potential to distort both our reactive responses and our understanding of blamed agents’ characters. (shrink)

A sourcebook/textbook on the problem of free will and determinism. Contains a history of the free will problem, a taxonomy of current free will positions, the standard argument against free will, the physics, biology, and neuroscience of free will, the most plausible and practical solution of the problem, and reviews of the work of the leading determinist Ted Honderich, the leading libertarian Robert Kane, the well-known compatibilist Daniel Dennett, and the determinism-agnostic Alfred Mele.

Because of the idealizations involved in the ideas of a total state of the world and of all the laws of nature, the thesis of all-encompassing determinism is unverifiable. Our everyday non-scientific talk of causation does not imply determinism; nor is it needed for the Kantian argument for a general causal framework as a condition for experience of an objective world. Determinism is at best a regulative ideal for science, something to be approached but never reached.

Abstract:Why does it matter that every negative thought you have had about car salespeople, they have likely had about you? The answer to this question opens up the distinctive challenges, and opportunities, facing business ethics. Those challenges and opportunities emerge from the significant bearing organizational reality has upon individuals’ conduct. As we consider how to assign responsibility for misconduct; how to provide guidance to organizational actors about what they ought to do; and how to develop responsive ethical theory, we need (...) to take psychological and social forces into account. Organizations shape human behavior in ways that pose unavoidable questions about responsibility, practical guidance, and the enterprise of business ethics itself. Adopting the agents’ perspective suggests that business ethics can take a leading role in addressing these vexing questions that confront ethical inquiry and social science more broadly. (shrink)

Plausibly, agents act freely iff their actions are responses to reasons. But what sort of relationship between reason and action is required for the action to count as a response? The overwhelmingly dominant answer to this question is modalist. It holds that responses are actions that share a modally robust or secure relationship with the relevant reasons. This thesis offers a new alternative answer. It argues that responses are actions that can be explained by reasons in the right way. This (...) explanationist answer comes apart from the modalist answer. For it holds that actions are responses to reasons if they are explained by those reasons even if they don’t share a modally robust relationship. Explanationism thus offers a novel way of vindicating the intuition that alternative possibilities don’t matter to responding to reasons and (consequently) free agency. The key dialectical position the thesis develops is that both modalism and explanationism constitute attempts to capture he core type of relationship encoded by the notion of a response. Responses to reasons, at core, involve a non-accidental relationship between reason and action. We can either understand non-accidentality as a modal phenomenon – as a modally robust tracking between two facts. Or we can understand non-accidentality as an explanatory phenomenon – as a special explanatory relationship between two facts. According to my rival explanationist proposal, two facts share a non-accidental relationship iff we can give a unified explanation of why both obtain. Unified explanations are explanations of why [p&q] that cannot be decomposed into two (or more) separate independent explanations of p and of q. Consequently, according to explanationism about responding to reasons, actions are responses to reasons iff those reasons offer a rational explanation of the action that cannot be decomposed into separate independent components. (shrink)

Many contemporary compatibilists about free will and determinism are agnostic about whether determinism is true, yet do not doubt that we have free will. They are thus committed to the thesis that free will is compatible with both determinism and indeterminism. This paper explores the prospects for this version of compatibilism, including its response to the argument that indeterminism would introduce an element of randomness or chance or luck that is inimical to free will and moral responsibility.

This article examines the free will problem as it arises within Thomas Hobbes' naturalistic science of morals in early modern Europe. It explains that during this period, the problem of moral and legal responsibility became acute as mechanical philosophy was extended to human psychology and as a result human choices were explained in terms of desires and preferences rather than being represented as acts of an autonomous faculty. It describes how Hobbes changed the face of moral philosophy, through his Leviathan, (...) in ways that still structure and resonate within the contemporary debate. (shrink)

In this article I look at some the issues, problems and self-imposed dilemmas that emerge from Harry Frankfurt’s well-known essay ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’. That essay has exerted a widespread influence on subsequent thinking in ethics and philosophy of mind, especially through its central idea of ‘second-order’ desires and volitions. Frankfurt’s approach promises a third-way solution to certain longstanding issues – chiefly those of free-will versus determinism and the mind/body problem – that have up (...) to now resisted the best efforts of philosophical deliverance or therapy. It looks very much like the kind of answer that would avoid the ‘high priori road’ of any Kantian or suchlike metaphysical approach by adopting a broadly naturalized conception of human moral agency while not going so far down the path toward wholesale ethical naturalism as to lose the benefits that come with the Kantian conception. However I suggest that this appearance is deceptive and that Frankfurt’s way of addressing these issues – especially his leading idea of second-order desires and volitions – lies open to a long-familiar range of objections from both a naturalist and a strong autonomist quarter. More specifically, I show that his notion of moral will as possessing a multiplex structure whereby higher-order volitions can reject or countermand the promptings of unregenerate first-order desire is one that must inherently give rise to various problems of a logical, metaphysical, and – most importantly in this context – ethical character. I conclude that a thoroughgoing naturalism is the only response that can meet the kinds of challenge increasingly mounted from various scientific quarters, notably those of neurophysiology and cognitive psychology.U ovome članku razmatram neka pitanja, probleme i, kako mi se čini, samonametnute dileme koje proizlaze iz dobro poznatog ogleda Harryja Frankfurta “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”. Taj je ogled izvršio široki utjecaj na kasnije mišljenje u etici i filozofiji uma, naročito svojom središnjom idejom želja i htijenja “drugog reda”. Frankfurtov pristup obećava rješenje u obliku trećeg puta određenih starih problema – uglavnom problema odnosa slobodne volje i determinizma te odnosa uma i tijela – koji su se dosad opirali najboljim naporima filozofskog rješavanja ili terapije. On veoma nalikuje onoj vrsti odgovora koji apriorni put bilo kakva kantovskog ili sličnog metafizičkog pristupa želi izbjeći usvajanjem u širokom smislu naturalizirane koncepcije ljudskog moralnog djelovanja, ali tako da ne ode toliko daleko u smjeru etičkog naturalizma da izgubi prednosti koje su povezane s kantovskim pristupom. Tvrdim, međutim, da takav izgled vara i da je Frankfurtov način pristupanja tim pitanjima – a naročito njegova glavna ideja želja i htijenja drugog reda – podložna odavno poznatim prigovorima koji dolaze kako od strane naturalistâ tako i od strane strogih autonomista . Konkretnije, pokazujem da njegov pojam moralne volje kao nečega što posjeduje kompleksnu strukturu, čime htijenja višeg reda mogu odbaciti ili poništiti poticaje pokvarene želje prvog reda, jest takav da inherentno mora izazvati različite logičke, metafizičke i – što je u ovome kontekstu najvažnije – etičke probleme. Zaključujem da je posvemašnji naturalizam jedini odgovor koji može izaći na kraj s izazovima koji se sve više upućuju iz različitih znanstvenih krugova, naročito iz područja neurofiziologije i kognitivne psihologije. (shrink)

The forensic psychiatrist’s task is often considered to be tightly connected to the concept of free will. Yet, there is also a lack of clarity about the role of the concept of free will in forensic psychiatry. Recently, Morse has argued that forensic psychiatrists should not mention free will in their reports or testimonies, and, moreover, that they should not even think about free will. Starting from a discussion on Morse’s claims, I will develop my own view on how forensic (...) psychiatrists are confronted with the issue of free will and how they should deal with this concept and the confusion surrounding it. I conclude that psychiatrists should at least feel free to think about free will and that the conceptual challenges connected to the issues of free will and accountability could rather encourage than deter forensic psychiatrists to think about them. (shrink)

Libertarians like Robert Kane believe that indeterminism is necessaryfor free will. They think this in part because they hold both (1) thatmy being the ultimate cause of at least part of myself is necessary forfree will and (2) that indeterminism is necessary for this ``ultimateself-causation''. But seductive and intuitive as this ``USCLibertarianism'' may sound, it is untenable. In the end, nometaphysically coherent (not to mention empirically valid) conception ofultimate self-causation is available. So the basic intuition motivatingthe USC Libertarian is ultimately (...) impossible to fulfill. (shrink)

The objection to R-S accounts that was raised by the possibility of external agents requires the acceptance of two premises, viz., that all R-S accounts allow for puppeteers and that puppeteers necessarily make us unfree. The Metaphilosophical reply shows that to the extent that puppeteers are more problematic than determinism per se, pup-peteers may be explicitly excluded since they violate our paradigm of free will. The Metaphilosophical reply also suggests that we should not expect our mature R-S account to supply (...) logically necessary and sufficient conditions for free will, but rather give us answers that agree with our intuitions regarding paradigms of free and unfree decisions. The Irrelevancy reply completed our reply to incompatibilists who continue to object that determinism per se destroys the R-S program. It may be debated whether my autonomy variable account is a satisfactory way to spell out the Irrelevancy reply, but I think that this type of approach suggests the way to vindicating the R-S view from an important type of objection. (shrink)

This article considers and criticizes criminal law‘s assumption of the moral autonomy of individuals, showing how that view rests on questionable and obscure Kantian commitments about the self, and proposes a naturalistic alternative developed through a synthetic reading of Adorno‘s and Bhaskar‘s account of the subject in relation to nature and society. As an embodied, emergent, changing subject whose practically rational powers are emergent, polymorphous, and contingent, the subject‘s moral autonomy is dependent on the conditions for experiences of solidarity in (...) four-planar nature. This view makes criminal theory‘s Autonomy Assumption look deeply questionable; autonomy must be a complex, nuanced open question, not an abstract, a priori default assumption. (shrink)

In this paper I articulate a view of doxastic control that helps defend the legitimacy of our practice of blaming people for their beliefs. I distinguish between three types of doxastic control: intention-based, reason-based, and influence-based. First I argue that, although we lack direct intention-based control over our beliefs, such control is not necessary for legitimate doxastic blame. Second, I suggest that we distinguish two types of reason-responsiveness: sensitivity to reasons and appreciation of reasons. I argue that while both capacities (...) are necessary for satisfying the control condition, neither is sufficient. Finally, I defend an influence-based view of doxastic control according to which we have the capacity to execute intentions to engage in reflection that causally influences our beliefs in positive epistemic ways. This capacity is both necessary and sufficient for satisfying the control condition for legitimate doxastic blame. I end by defending the view from two objections: that reflection is not necessary for meeting the control condition, and that it is not sufficient. (shrink)

Given dramatic increases in recent decades in the pace of scientific discovery and understanding of the functional organization of the brain, it is increasingly clear that engagement with the neuroscientific literature and research is central to making progress on philosophical questions regarding the nature and scope of human freedom and responsibility. While patterns of brain activity cannot provide the whole story, developing a deeper and more precise understanding of how brain activity is related to human choice and conduct is crucial (...) to the development of realistic, just, and intellectually rigorous models of human agency and moral responsibility. In this special issue, we acknowledge that “free will” and “moral responsibility” are not concepts with which neuroscience can directly engage, and instead focus on self-governance, and the capacities that contribute to self-governance, which are more tractable for scientific investigation and are prerequisites for the presence of moral responsibility. (shrink)

When, in spite of our good intentions, we fail to meet our obligations to others, it is important that we have the correct theoretical description of what has happened so that mutual understanding and the right sort of social repair can occur. Consider an agent who promises to help pick a friend up from the airport. She takes the freeway, forgetting that it is under construction. After a long wait, the friend takes an expensive taxi ride home. Most theorists and (...) non-theorists react to such cases by either judging the agent's action as a violation of her obligation to help or as having satisfied the only obligation she really had, namely to try to help. However, as I show, there are serious difficulties that arise from categorizing this agent's action as satisfying or violating her obligation – difficulties that are avoided if we instead add “mere moral failures” to the basic categories for moral evaluation. An agent merely fails when she neither satisfies nor violates her obligation. She is responsible fo.. (shrink)

Over the years, two models of freedom have emerged as competitors: the alternative-possibilities model and the actual-sequence model. This paper is a partial defense of the actual-sequence model. My defense relies on two strategies. The first strategy consists in de-emphasizing the role of examples in arguing for a model of freedom. Imagine that, as some people think, Frankfurt-style cases fail to undermine the alternative-possibilities model. What follows from this? Not much, I argue. In particular, I note that the counterparts of (...) Frankfurt-style cases also fail to undermine the actual-sequence model. My second strategy of defense consists in revitalizing the original motivation for the actual-sequence model, by revamping it, isolating it from claims that do not fully capture the same idea, and arguing that it can be developed in a successful way. (shrink)

In this paper, I question the view that liberal perfectionism and neutrality are mutually exclusive doctrines. I do so by criticizing two claims made by Jonathan Quong. First, I object to his claim that comprehensive anti-perfectionism is incoherent. Second, I criticize his claim that liberal perfectionism cannot avoid a paternalist stance. I argue that Quong’s substantive assumptions about personal autonomy undermine both of his arguments. I use the discussion of Quong to argue that the standard assumption in liberal theory about (...) mutual exclusivity of liberal perfectionism and neutrality needs to be reconsidered, and I show why the argument about the convergence of perfectionism and neutrality makes conceptual sense. (shrink)

In the last decades increasing attention is paid to the topic of responsibility in technology development and engineering. The discussion of this topic is often guided by questions related to liability and blameworthiness. Recent discussions in engineering ethics call for a reconsideration of the traditional quest for responsibility. Rather than on alleged wrongdoing and blaming, the focus should shift to more socially responsible engineering, some authors argue. The present paper aims at exploring the different approaches to responsibility in order to (...) see which one is most appropriate to apply to engineering and technology development. Using the example of the development of a new sewage water treatment technology, the paper shows how different approaches for ascribing responsibilities have different implications for engineering practice in general, and R&D or technological design in particular. It was found that there was a tension between the demands that follow from these different approaches, most notably between efficacy and fairness. Although the consequentialist approach with its efficacy criterion turned out to be most powerful, it was also shown that the fairness of responsibility ascriptions should somehow be taken into account. It is proposed to look for alternative, more procedural ways to approach the fairness of responsibility ascriptions. (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)

Mumford and Anjum (2014) present a new argument for the incompatibility of free will and causal determinism. Although their argument depends on the assumption that free will is, or is the exercise of, a causal power, it does not appeal to any special features of this power. Their new argument does, however, depend upon a general thesis of the incompatibility of causal powers with causal determinism. I argue that Mumford and Anjum have provided no justification for this general thesis. As (...) a consequence, their new argument for the incompatibility of free will and causal determinism is unsuccessful. (shrink)

While agreeing with Fischborn’s (2018) contention that, according to one traditional definition of compatibilism, my position should be classified as that of a libertarian incompatibilist, I argue here for a different view of compatibilism. This view involves, on the one hand, local probabilistic causation of decisions (rather than universal strict determinism) and, on the other, free will conceived as involving decisions generated by a decision-making process carried out by the brain, which consciously contemplates different alternatives and could in principle have (...) been different from what it was, implying that the agent could in normal conditions have done otherwise in the same circumstances. After discussing different views of causation (including determinism) and of free will, I make a revision of some passages from my earlier work, quoted by Fischborn. I conclude that what is crucial in the question of (in)compatibilism is the (in)compatibility between freedom of decisions and natural causation of human actions. According to this looser and, I argue, more pertinent view of compatibilism, I maintain my previous classification of my position on the matter as compatibilist. (shrink)

Associamos questões de responsabilidade ao que julgamos deveres ou obrigações que cada um tem para com os demais. Dentre essas obrigações há as que expressam deveres estritos. Mas como nem todos “deveres morais” expressam deveres em sentido estrito, é comum atribuirmos responsabilidade moral para além daquilo a que estamos estritamente obrigados. Não é incomum afi rmar que alguém deveria ter feito ou deixado de fazer algo, mesmo se ele não tinha a obrigação estrita de fazê-lo ou deixar de fazê-lo. Mas (...) como poderíamos “culpar” ou “condenar” moralmente alguém se ele não tinha a obrigação estrita de fazê-lo? É que o escopo de nossas avaliações “morais”, sendo amplo, comporta tipos diversos de “demandas”, o mesmo devendo valer para nossas “atitudes reativas”, tais como o ressentimento e seus análogos vicários, como a indignação. Porém, reações como o ressentimento e a indignação não podem ser reações genéricas à má vontade, à indiferença ou à falta de consideração, mas reações “apropriadas”a injustiças. Se alguém devia fazer algo, porém não estava efetivamente submetido ao dever estrito de fazê-lo, indignar-se é reagir exageradamente, muito além do que é contextualmente apropriado. Afinal, o modo como reagimos moralmente de forma apropriada não pode estar completamente dissociado do modo como interpretamos certos fatos. Neste ensaio, pretendo examinar o conceito de “responsabilidade moral”. Tratarei do problema das atribuições de responsabilidades e dos juízos de responsabilidade que Thomas Scanlon chamou apropriadamente de juízos de “responsabilidade substantiva.” Defenderei que há ações moralmente razoáveis, e até mesmo, em algum sentido, moralmente “requeridas”, porém sob circunstâncias que não pressupõem qualquer submissão do agente a algum dever em sentido estrito . Para tanto, revisarei o conhecido problema do trólei desgovernado e os problemas concernentes ao princípio do duplo-efeito. Veremos que é possível avaliar as ações de alguém sem atribuir-lhe responsabilidade substantiva por suas decisões corretas ou incorretas. Se eu estiver correto, conclusões práticas sobre a razoabilidade de certas ações não pressupõem necessariamente que seus agentes estejam submetidos previamente a quaisquer responsabilidades em termos substantivos. Sendo assim, as teorias tradicionais sobre a responsabilidade moral deveriam ser revisadas, assim como certas noções em psicologia moral acerca de que atitudes reativas são moralmente apropriadas.Questions of responsibility are associated to what we judge we owe to each other. Among these “duties” there are obligations that express strict duties . But since not all “moral oughts” express duties in the strict sense, it is also common to attribute responsibilities beyond what we consider a duty or an obligation in the strict sense. It is not unusual to assert that one should have to do or not to do something even if they didn’t have a strict obligation of doing or not doing that. But how could we morally “blame” or “condemn” someone if they didn’t have a strict obligation of doing something? As a matter of fact, the scope of our “moral” evaluations, being large, comprehends several types of “demands”, and the same should be applied to our “reactive attitudes”, like resentment, and their vicarious analogous, like indignation. But reactions like resentment and indignation cannot be generic reactions to unwillingness, to indifference, or want of consideration, but appropriated reactions to injustices. If a person should do something, but he was not actually submitted to the strict duty of doing so, then indignation is an exaggerated reaction beyond of what is contextually appropriated. After all the way we appropriately morally react cannot be completely disassociated with the way we interpret some facts. In this paper I will investigate the concept of “moral responsibility”. I will deal with problems of attributions of responsibilities and judgments of responsibility that Thomas Scanlon appropriately called judgments of substantive responsibility. My thesis will be that there are morally reasonable actions, and, at least in some sense, morally “required” actions, that don’t presuppose under some circumstances any submission of the agent to some duty in a strict sense . In this connection, I will reexamine the famous trolley problem and correlated problems on the principle of the double-effect. We will see that it is possible to evaluate someone actions without attributing substantive responsibility for his right or wrong decisions. If I am right, practical conclusions on the reasonability of certain actions don’t necessarily presuppose that their agents are previously submitted to whatever responsibilities in substantive terms. In such case, traditional theories on moral responsibilities have to be revised, as well as certain notions in moral psychology about what reactive attitudes are morally appropriated. (shrink)

It is suggested that the current hierarchical (Frankfurt-Dworkin) model of personal autonomy in philosophical anthropology gives expression to the fundamental presupposition of self-determination in much educational practice and pedagogical theory. Radical criticisms are made of the notions of self-identification and self-evaluation which are of the utmost importance to this model. Instead of relying on such ‘acts of the will’ as decision and choice for the explanation of self-identification and self- evaluation, the non-intentional as well as the non-individualistic character of these (...) processes is stressed and analysed in terms of volitional necessity and social dependence. The consequence of this criticism is the substitution of the concept of extreme personal autonomy by that of caring about oneself as the first principle of education. (shrink)

It is suggested that the current hierarchical (Frankfurt-Dworkin) model of personal autonomy in philosophical anthropology gives expression to the fundamental presupposition of self-determination in much educational practice and pedagogical theory. Radical criticisms are made of the notions of self-identification and self-evaluation which are of the utmost importance to this model. Instead of relying on such ‘acts of the will’ as decision and choice for the explanation of self-identification and self- evaluation, the non-intentional as well as the non-individualistic character of these (...) processes is stressed and analysed in terms of volitional necessity and social dependence. The consequence of this criticism is the substitution of the concept of extreme personal autonomy by that of caring about oneself as the first principle of education. (shrink)