The doyen of living English philosophers, by these reflections, took hold of and changed the outlook of a good many other philosophers, if not quite enough. He did so, essentially, by assuming that talk of freedom and responsibility is talk not of facts or truths, in a certain sense, but of our attitudes. His more explicit concern was to look again at the question of whether determinism and freedom are consistent with one another -- by shifting attention to certain personal (...) rather than moral attitudes, first of all gratitude and resentment. In the end, he arrived at a kind of Compatibilist or, as he says, Optimist conclusion. That is no doubt a recommendation but not the largest recommendation of this splendidly rich piece of philosophy. (shrink)

I present two different models of moral responsibility -- two different accounts of what we value in behavior for which the agent can legitimately be held morally responsible. On the first model, what we value is making a certain sort of difference to the world. On the second model, which I favor, we value a certain kind of self-expression. I argue that if one adopts the self-expression view, then one will be inclined to accept that moral responsibility need not require (...) alternative possibilities. (shrink)