The impact moral judgments have on our deliberations and actions seems to vary a great deal. Moral judgments play a large part in the lives of some people, who are apt not only to make them, but also to be guided by them in the sense that they tend to pursue what they judge to be of moral value, and shun what they judge to be of moral disvalue. But it seems unrealistic to claim that moral judgments play a pervasive (...) role in the lives of all or even most people. There are considerable variations in how strong a tendency people have to think in moral terms, and in how such thoughts affect their decisions and actions. For every moral hero who single- mindedly pursues moral values, there are thousands of less com- mitted people who only do so when it does not cost them too much in material comfort, personal relations, or social standing. And of course, what counts as too much varies from person to person. On top of such variations, there are those who consistently display mor- al indifference-people who concede, for example, that certain investment policies have morally problematic consequences, but who can readily and without compunction ignore that in their busi- ness decisions. There even seem to be moral subversives, people who intentionally and knowingly pursue what they acknourledge to be morally u~ong or bad, and do so for that very reason. (shrink)

In the Nova dilucidano Kant defines freedom as libertas spontaneitatis. Free acting is always determined acting. It differs from necessary acting by the fact that the determinating reasons are inherent in the acting subject. These reasons must not only be spontaneous but also rational ones. By this, Kant agrees in the main with the Leibnizian and Wolf fian conception of freedom. At the same time Kant refuses expressly the conception of freedom of Crusius. According to Crusius, free acting can not (...) be determined acting, because freedom is defined as unconditioned causality. This conception of freedom Kant postulates in the Critic of pure reason. The proof of the possibility of freedom given by Kant there differs however entirely from the proofs of freedom given by Crusius. According to Kant, it is not impossible to think freedom, because one and the same acting, one and the same phenomenon can be thought at the same time caused by laws of nature and by unconditioned causality, that is freedom, without any contradiction. This central argument of Kant's has an equivalent in the late Leibnizian theory of substance — not in the theory of freedom. Unconditioned causality as the causality of the vis activa primitiva and laws of nature as conditioned causality do not exclude each other at the same time in one and the same acting or phenomenon. Consequently already Leibniz postulates the Kantian thesis that the relation between unconditioned and conditioned causality is not a really disjunctive one. (shrink)

Davidson held that the explanation of action in terms of reasons was a form of causal explanation. He challenged anti-causalists to identify a non-causal relation underlying reasons---explanation which could distinguish between merely having a reason and that reason being the one for which one acts. George Wilson attempts to meet Davidson’s challenge, but the relation he identifies can serve only in explanations of general facts, whereas reasons explanation is often of particular acts. This suggests that the relation underlying reasons explanation (...) is not only causal, but singular as well. A further proposal, extracted from Fred Dretske’s views, characterizes this singular causal relation in terms of non-mental triggers. But this suggestion underestimates the explanatory role of the environment at the time of action, and shares with Wilson’s proposal the inability to account for the rationalization of particular acts. A situational environmentalist conception of reasons explanation, however, does not face these difficulties. (shrink)

This article critically examines recent work on free will and moral responsibility by Randolph Clarke, Robert Kane, and Timothy O’Connor in an attempt to clarify issues about control and luck that are central to the debate between libertarians (agent causationists and others) and their critics. It is argued that luck poses an as yet unresolved problem for libertarians.

J. B. Schneewind's "The Invention of Autonomy" has been hailed as a major interpretation of modern moral thought. Schneewind's narrative, however, elides several serious interpretive issues, particularly in the transition from late medieval to early modern thought. This results in potentially distorted accounts of Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and G. W. Leibniz. Since these thinkers play a crucial role in Schneewind's argument, uncertainty over their work calls into question at least some of Schneewind's larger agenda for the history of ethics.