Key elements of Randolph Clarke's libertarian account of freedom that requires both agent-causation and non-deterministic event-causation in the production of free action is assessed with an eye toward determining whether agent-causal accounts can accommodate the truth of judgments of moral obligation.

Luck looms large in numerous different philosophical subfields. Unfortunately, work focused exclusively on the nature of luck is in short supply on the contemporary analytic scene. In his highly impressive recent book Epistemic Luck, Duncan Pritchard helps rectify this neglect by presenting a partial account of luck that he uses to illuminate various ways luck can figure in cognition. In this paper, I critically evaluate both Pritchard’s account of luck and another account to which Pritchard’s discussion draws our attention—viz., that (...) due to Nicholas Rescher. I also assess some novel analyses of luck that incorporate plausible elements of Pritchard’s and Rescher’s accounts. (shrink)

(2014). Cross-world luck at the time of decision is a problem for compatibilists as well. Philosophical Explorations: Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 112-125. doi: 10.1080/13869795.2014.912673.

Plusieurs ont soutenu par le passé que les descriptions libertariennes de l’action libre achoppent sur le problème de la chance. Il a récemment été proposé que les descriptions compatibilistes, selon lesquelles l’action libre et le déterminisme sont compatibles, sont affaiblies par un problème similaire. Dans cet article, je soutiens que le problème de la chance compatibiliste n’est pas nouveau, dans la mesure où il s’agit d’une manifestation d’une question plus générale à laquelle les compatibilistes et les libertariens ont répondu. En (...) outre, j’avance que ces réponses ne constituent pas des solutions efficaces au problème de la chance envisagé du point de vue libertarien. (shrink)

Externalism is the view that facts about one's history or past in the external world that bear on the acquisition of one's responsibility-grounding psychological elements are pertinent to whether one's actions are free and, hence, pertinent to whether one can be morally responsible for them. Internalism is the thesis that the conditions of moral responsibility can be specified independently of facts about how the person acquired her responsibility-grounding psychological elements. In this paper we defend a position that navigates between externalism (...) and internalism: moral responsibility does not require that one have a past but it does require that one not have certain kinds of past. (shrink)