Constitutive Moral Luck and Strawson's Argument for the Impossibility of Moral Responsibility
Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (2):165-183 (2018)
Abstract
Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument is that because self-creation is required to be truly morally responsible and self-creation is impossible, it is impossible to be truly morally responsible for anything. I contend that the Basic Argument is unpersuasive and unsound. First, I argue that the moral luck debate shows that the self-creation requirement appears to be contradicted and supported by various parts of our commonsense ideas about moral responsibility, and that this ambivalence undermines the only reason that Strawson gives for the self-creation requirement. Second, I argue that the self-creation requirement is so demanding that either it is an implausible requirement for a species of true moral responsibility that we take ourselves to have or it is a plausible requirement of a species of true moral responsibility that we have never taken ourselves to have. Third, I explain that Strawson overgeneralizes from instances of constitutive luck that obviously undermine moral responsibility to all kinds of constitutive luck.
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Revision history

The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility.Strawson, Galen J.
The View From Nowhere.Nagel, Thomas
The Zygote Argument is Invalid: Now What?Mickelson, Kristin M.
Moral Ignorance and Blameworthiness.Mason, Elinor
Taking Luck Seriously.Zimmerman, Michael J.
View all 37 references / Add more references

Moral Luck and the Unfairness of Morality.Hartman, Robert J.
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2018-05-09
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2018-05-09
Total downloads
280 ( #9,125 of 37,113 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
117 ( #2,599 of 37,113 )
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