Article

Responsibility and Inevitability

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.

... See alsoWaller's (1990), (2011), and (2015), Pereboom's (2001) & (2014), and Honderick's (2002). 4 John Martin Fischer argues against the symmetry of PPA and PAP in his (1985) as well as in his and MarkRavizza's (1991). They argue that PAP is false but PPA true. ...
Article
Full-text available
The problem known as Buridan’s Ass says that a hungry donkey equipoised between two identical bales of hay will starve to death. Indecision kills the ass. Some philosophers worry about human analogs. Computer scientists since the 1960s have known about the computer versions of such cases. From what Leslie Lamport calls ‘Buridan’s Principle’—a discrete decision based on a continuous range of input-values cannot be made in a bounded time—it follows that the possibilities for human analogs of Buridan’s Ass are far more wide-ranging and securely provable than has been acknowledged in philosophy. We are never necessarily decisive. This is mathematically provable. I explore four consequences: first, increased interest of the literature’s solutions to Buridan’s Ass; second, a new asymmetry between responsibility for omissions and responsibility for actions; third, clarification of the standard account of akrasia; and, fourth, clarification of the role of credences in normative decision-theory.
... To ensure the relevant similarity, Fischer and Ravizza (1991) suggest a different case that better matches the structure of Shooting, namely the FrankfurtStyle Omission Case (FSOC): ...
Chapter
Most experimental philosophy employs small-N studies with randomization. Additional light may be shed on philosophical questions by large-scale observational studies that employ Big Data methodologies. This chapter explains and showcases the promising methodology of testimonial network analysis and visualization for experimental epistemology, arguing that it can be used to gain insights and answer philosophical questions in social epistemology. The use case is the epistemic community that discusses vaccine safety primarily in English on Twitter. In two studies, the authors show, using both statistical analysis and exploratory data visualization, that there is almost no neutral or ambivalent discussion of vaccine safety on Twitter. Roughly half the accounts engaging with this topic are pro-vaccine, while the other half is con-vaccine. The results also indicate that these two camps rarely engage with one another, and that the con-vaccine camp has greater epistemic reach and receptivity than the pro-vaccine camp. In light of these findings, the authors question whether testimonial networks as they are currently constituted on popular forums such as Twitter are living up to their promise of delivering the wisdom of crowds.
... 19 Das ist der bereits angesprochene konsequentialistische Aspekt der funktionalen 18 Siehe zur Diskussion darum, welche Vermögen Akteure brauchen, damit sie die psychologischen Grund vor aus setzun gen für veränderbare reaktive Ein stellungen erfüllen, u.a. (Fischer und Ravizza 1991), (Fischer und Ravizza 1994) sowie (Mele 2006 Ein naheliegender Kandidat dafür, wie eine effiziente Verantwortungszu schreibung im Kontext der globalen Wirtschaftsordnung ausbuchstabiert werden kann, ist demnach, das Effizienzkriterium mit der Ansprache der jenigen, die über Gestaltungsmacht verfügen, zu füllen. Im Kontext der glo balen Wirtschaftsordnung haben wir es mit Großstrukturen zu tun, weshalb sich sogleich zwei Einwände gegen das gerade Gesagte vorbringen lassen. ...
Article
Full-text available
Die globale Wirtschaftsordnung hat einen maßgeblichen Einfl uss auf die Wirtschaft einzelner Staaten und dadurch auf das Leben der meisten Menschen. Daher muss diskutiert werden, wie mit ihrem jetzigen Aufbau umzugehen ist und wie sie zukünftig gestaltet werden soll. Um diese Diskussion sinnvoll führen zu können, muss zuerst geklärt werden, wie die globale Wirtschaftsordnung ausgestaltet ist und wer die Akteure sind, die die globale Wirtschaftsordnung beeinflussen oder beeinflussen können. Wie sich zeigt, sind dies bezogen auf die vergleichsweise nur schwach regulierten globalen Märkte vor allem in Institutionen eingebundene Akteure, die in der Politik sowie in Unternehmen arbeiten, aber auch Konsumenten. Um diesen Akteuren Verantwortung für sowohl die bisherigen positiven wie negativen Folgen dieser Wirtschaftsordnung als auch ihre zukünftige Gestaltung zuzuweisen, greife ich auf eine funktionalistische Verantwortungstheorie zurück. Maßgebliches, wenn auch nicht alleiniges Kriterium dieser auch konsequentialistisch, pragmatisch, instrumentell oder revisionistisch genannten Verantwortungstheorie ist dabei die Effizienz der Zuschreibung. Daher muss vor allem die Gestaltungsmacht der einzelnen Akteure in den Blick genommen werden. Die Stärke einer solchen Verantwortungstheorie ist einerseits, dass sie weitgehend mit metaphysisch anspruchslosen Grundannahmen auskommt, andererseits, dass sie sich für den Umgang mit den relevanten Akteuren als sinnvoll erweist. Aufgrund der Komplexität der Institutionen, mit denen man es bei der globalen Wirtschaftsordnung zu tun hat, und der unterschiedlichen Akteure, die sie beeinflussen können, stößt auch diese Theorie an Grenzen. Diese Grenzen betreffen jedoch auch andere Verantwortungskonzepte. Zudem sind die spezifischen Probleme der funktionalistischen Verantwortungszuschreibungen in Zusammenhang mit Institutionen weniger gravierend. Deshalb sollte eine funktionalistische Theorie bei Verantwortungszuschreibungen für Aspekte der globalen Wirtschaftsordnung zugrunde gelegt werden.
... Fischer (1985 Fischer ( -1986 andFischer and Ravizza (1991) defend AT, but Fischer has been convincedpartly because ofFrankfurt's (1994) reply-that the simple version of AT is false. ...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents a new challenge to the thesis that moral responsibility for an omission requires the ability to do the omitted action, whereas moral responsibility for an action does not require the ability to do otherwise than that action. Call this the asymmetry thesis. The challenge arises from the possibility of cases in which an omission is identical to an action. In certain of such cases, the asymmetry thesis leads to a contradiction. The challenge is then extended to recent variations of the asymmetry thesis defended by John Martin Fischer and Carolina Sartorio. Finally, a possible objection to the challenge is addressed.
... 2 In his original article, Frankfurt suggests that a twitch might be used to indicate that Jones is about to decide to do A (as opposed to no twitch for B). Over the years, variations on this 'sign' have appeared, such as flushing bright red (Blumenfeld, 1971) or similarly blushing (Widerker 1995), the monitoring of the protagonist's brain for an unspecified sign Ravizza 1991, andZagzebski 2000), the initiation of a specified sequence of neuronal excitation (Stump 1996) or a neurological pattern in the brain (Fischer 2002), the subject's deliberations and intentions (McKenna 2005), or even the occurrence of moral reasoning of a specified force (Pereboom 2000). 3 The twin world condition also avoids getting bogged down in the debate over whether the relationship between the sign and the decision is indicative of determinism or is indeterminate (Ginet and Palmer 2010;Robinson 2012;Shabo 2011). ...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this paper is to present a version of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) which is not susceptible to the Frankfurt-style counter-example. I argue that PAP does not need to be endorsed as a necessary condition for moral responsibility and, in fact, presenting PAP as a sufficient condition maintains its usefulness as a maxim for moral accountability whilst avoiding Frankfurt-style counter-examples. In addition, I provide a further sufficient condition for moral responsibility – the twin world condition – and argue that this provides a means of justifying why the protagonist in Frankfurt-style scenarios (e.g., Jones) is still felt to be morally responsible. I conclude with the claim that neither the amended PAP nor the twin world condition is necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility; rather, what is necessary is simply that one of these conditions is satisfied.
... Here we are not concerned with Frankfurt's actual view concerning free will and responsibility, but rather the e ect that so-called 'Frankfurt cases' play in the literature.6 We take this example fromFischer and Ravizza (1991) as we think it nicely illustrates the distinction. Though Fischer and Ravizza ultimately settle for a form of semi-compatibilism, for which only moral responsibility -but not free will -is compatible with the lack of alternative possibilities, it is still possible to refuse to dissociate free will and moral responsibility, and use their argument in favor of a more classical form of compatibilism. ...
Article
Full-text available
In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions. In a recent paper, Feltz and Millan (in press) have challenged this conclusion by claiming that most laypeople are only compatibilists in appearance, and are rather willing to attribute free will no matter what. As evidence for this claim, they have shown that an important proportion of laypeople still attribute free will to agents in fatalistic universes. In this paper we first argue that Feltz and Millan's error-theory rests on a conceptual confusion: it is perfectly acceptable for a certain brand of compatibilists to judge free will and fatalism to be compatible, as long as fatalism does not prevent agents from being the source of their actions. We then present the results of two studies showing that laypeople's intuitions are best understood as following a certain brand of source compatibilism rather than a " free-will-no-matter-what " strategy.
... Moral responsibility (MR) has been relatively neglected in the social psychology of group processes and intergroup relations but has been studied by philosophers (e.g., Arendt, 2003;Fischer, 1986;Fischer & Ravizza, 1991May, 1992) and political scientists (e.g., Schaap, 2001). Philosophical conceptualizations highlighted that MR implies a moral duty to society and a motivation to act. ...
Article
In six studies (N = 1045) conducted in three European countries, we demonstrate distinctions between causal responsibility, group-based guilt, and moral responsibility. We propose that causal responsibility is an antecedent of group-based guilt linking the ingroup to previous transgressions against the victim group. In contrast, moral responsibility is a consequence of group-based guilt and is conceptualized as a sociomoral norm to respond to the consequences of the ingroup's transgressions and the current needs of the victim group. As such, moral responsibility can be stimulated by group-based guilt and directly predicts individual action intentions. Studies 1 and 2 focus on the conceptual distinctions among the three constructs. Study 3 tests the indirect effect of causal responsibility on moral responsibility via group-based guilt. The remaining studies explore the mediating role of moral responsibility in associations between group-based guilt and compensatory action tendencies, that is, financial compensation (study 4), approach and avoidance tendencies (study 5) and public apology (study 6). Together these studies show that causal and moral responsibility are psychologically distinct concepts from group-based guilt and that moral responsibility plays an important role in shaping the effects of group-based guilt on behavioral intentions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Suppose someone acts in a prima facie blameworthy way, for bad reasons but reasons that are her reasons (Fischer and Ravizza 1991, 258). Standing by is a counterfactual intervenor who wants her to act just as she acts, but who is prepared, in case he predicts she will waver, to intervene to bring it about that she goes ahead. ...
Article
Dans le cadre du debat traditionnel sur la responsabilite et la capacite d'agir autrement, qui s'inscrit dans le debat plus vaste sur la volonte libre et le determinisme, l'A. mesure les consequences de la distinction entre sequence actuelle et sequence alternative sur les conceptions de la responsabilite fondees en raison, d'une part, et montre comment l'intuition alternative inapplicable emerge de la comparaison entre S. Wolf et J. M. Fischer, d'autre part. Examinant les differentes formes de responsabilite (responsabilite-raison, asymetrique), l'A. met en evidence l'evolution du debat depuis les cas Frankfurt jusqu'au developpement de l'analyse conditionnelle de la capacite d'agir autrement.
... Moral responsibility (MR) has been relatively neglected in the social psychology of group processes and intergroup relations but has been studied by philosophers (e.g., Arendt, 2003;Fischer, 1986;Fischer & Ravizza, 1991May, 1992) and political scientists (e.g., Schaap, 2001). Philosophical conceptualizations highlighted that MR implies a moral duty to society and a motivation to act. ...
... 14 Not only can people be held responsible for actions and dispositions, it is also agreed that people can be held responsible for omissions; if the condition is satisfied that the action that was omitted could have been performed by the person we hold responsible (cf. Fischer and Ravizza 1991). ...
Article
Full-text available
In 2008 a young man committed suicide while his webcam was running. 1,500 people apparently watched as the young man lay dying: when people finally made an effort to call the police, it was too late. This closely resembles the case of Kitty Genovese in 1964, where 39 neighbours supposedly watched an attacker assault and did not call until it was too late. This paper examines the role of internet mediation in cases where people may or may not have been good Samaritans and what their responsibilities were. The method is an intuitive one: intuitions on the various potentially morally relevant differences when it comes to responsibility between offline and online situations are examined. The number of onlookers, their physical nearness and their anonymity have no moral relevance when it comes to holding them responsible. Their perceived reality of the situation and ability to act do have an effect on whether we can hold people responsible, but this doesn't seem to be unique to internet mediation. However the way in which those factors are intrinsically connected to internet mediation does seem to have a diminishing effect on responsibility in online situations.
Article
Full-text available
Frankfurt‐style action cases have been immensely influential in the free will and moral responsibility literatures because they arguably show that an agent can be morally responsible for a behavior despite lacking the ability to do otherwise. However, even among the philosophers who accept Frankfurt‐style action cases, there remains significant disagreement about whether also to accept Frankfurt‐style omission cases – cases in which an agent omits to do something, is unable to do otherwise, and is allegedly morally responsible for that omission. Settling this debate about Frankfurt‐style omission cases is significant because the resolution entails an important fact about moral responsibility: whether there is there a moral asymmetry between actions and omissions with respect to the ability to do otherwise. My proposal is that both Frankfurt‐style action cases and omission cases involve the same type of causal structure: causal preemption. However, the preemptor and the preemptee differ. In action cases, the Frankfurted agent preempts the neuroscientist and is causally and morally responsibility for the effect. In omission cases, Frankfurted agent is neither causally nor morally responsible for the effect. Instead, the neuroscientist preempts the Frankfurted agent. Thus, there are no Frankfurt‐style omission cases.
Article
V reakci na knihu Petra Dvořáka Kauzalita činitele. Úvod do analytické diskuse o svobodě vůle hájím určitý typ kompatibilismu. Dvořák upozorňuje, že pokud bylo něčí rozhodnutí predeterminováno od něj odlišnými příčinami, pak onomu jedinci za jeho volbu nepřisuzujeme morální odpovědnost. Mým návrhem je však „asymetrické“ řešení otázky. V oblasti predeterminovaných voleb připouštím nepřítomnost odpovědnosti v případě všech morálně zlých voleb, nikoli však v případě všech voleb hodnocených jako morálně dobré. Existují totiž takové dobrovolné volby, při kterých sice nejsme s to – např. na základě silných morálních důvodů – volit jinak, avšak přesto vnímáme své rozhodnutí jako svobodné. Navíc platí, že i kdybychom se při tom dověděli, či uvěřili, že daná volní nutnost není důsledkem naší minulé „libertariánské“ sebeformace, stěží by nám takové mínění zabránilo cítit se ve své volbě svobodnými. Způsoby, jakými svobodu vůle prožíváme, bychom ovšem měli jakožto filosofové respektovat.
Article
Alternatif Olanaklar İlkesi, kişinin yaptığından başka türlü yapabilirse ahlaken sorumlu olacağını iddia eder. Alternatif Olanaklar İlkesi’nin sonucuna göre özgür irade, ahlaki sorumluluk için zorunlu bir koşul olarak varsayılır. Frankfurt ise Alternatif Olanaklar İlkesi’nin yanlış olduğunu, özgür iradenin ve ahlaki sorumluluğun yanlış anlaşıldığını savunur. Frankfurt, bu iddiasını desteklemek için karşı-örnekler oluşturur. Bu karşı-örnekler ile kişinin yaptığından başka türlü yapabileceği iddia edilir. Bu makalenin amacı, Alternatif Olanaklar İlkesi'ni Frankfurt’un özgür irade ve ahlaki sorumlulukla ilgili düşünceleri çerçevesinde incelemek ve tartışmaktır.
Article
This article provides analysis of the mechanisms and outputs involved in language-use mediated by a neuroprosthetic device. It is motivated by the thought that users of speech neuroprostheses require sufficient control over what their devices externalize as synthetic speech if they are to be thought of as responsible for it, but that the nature of this control, and so the status of their responsibility, is not clear.
Article
The principle of respect for autonomy often dominates the bioethical discourse. Yet despite its prominence, the exact contours are not always well defined. Widespread disagreement about the nature of autonomy has led some to conclude that autonomy is hopelessly vague and therefore ought to be abandoned in contemporary bioethics. Despite calls to move beyond it, autonomy remains at the center of bioethical reflection. The challenge, then, if autonomy is to function as a bedrock of contemporary bioethics, is to define more clearly the shape of autonomy, to mark more precisely its conceptual boundaries, and to delineate more carefully how best autonomy is put into practice in medical ethics. In this article, I raise questions about the ways autonomy is used in theory, as well as the ways that it is operationalized in practice.
Chapter
Equine veterinarians have special knowledge and skills. However, society governs the use of this knowledge through laws, as a service to the public. Society is rarely aware of the complexities of the special knowledge possessed by equine practitioners. While the practical application of ethics may not always be easy, a strong code of professional ethics, practiced both individually and organizationally, helps to keep the public's trust in equine veterinarians and encourages the horse‐owning public to continue seeking their advice and services. Ethical standards and behavior provide confidence to the public about the reliability and actions they can expect when using the services of a professional. The fact that veterinarians profit from what they sell is full of ethical landmines. The fact that veterinarians may ethically sell products does not mean that all products are sold or recommended ethically. Experimental treatments are an ethical dilemma in equine practice.
Article
Full-text available
Partial compatibilism says that there are basically two kinds of freedom of the will: some free volitions cannot be determined, while others can. My methodological choice is to examine what as- sumptions will appear necessary if we want to take seriously—and make understandable—our ordinary moral life. Sometimes, typically when we feel guilty about a choice of ours, we are sure enough that we, at the considered moment, actually could have taken a different option. At other times, however, typically when we are aware of some unquestionable moral reasons for a certain choice, we may perceive our choice as voluntary and free in spite of the fact that it is, in the given situation, unthinkable for us to choose otherwise than we actually do (there are situations when responsible agents, because of their strong moral reasons/motives, cannot choose differently). The assumption that experiences of the first kind are not always mistaken excludes our world being deterministic. Yet free will and determinism go together in some of those possible worlds which contain only the second kind of free volitions. Partial compatibilism represents a ‘third way’ between standard compatibilism and incompatibilism, a way to solve that old dilemma.
Article
V reakci na knihu Petra Dvořáka Kauzalita činitele. Úvod do analytické diskuse o svobodě vůle hájím určitý typ kompatibilismu. Dvořák upozorňuje, že pokud bylo něčí rozhodnutí predeterminováno od něj odlišnými příčinami, pak onomu jedinci za jeho volbu nepřisuzujeme morální odpovědnost. Mým návrhem je však „asymetrické“ řešení otázky. V oblasti predeterminovaných voleb připouštím nepřítomnost odpovědnosti v případě všech morálně zlých voleb, nikoli však v případě všech voleb hodnocených jako morálně dobré. Existují totiž takové dobrovolné volby, při kterých sice nejsme s to – např. na základě silných morálních důvodů – volit jinak, avšak přesto vnímáme své rozhodnutí jako svobodné. Navíc platí, že i kdybychom se při tom dověděli, či uvěřili, že daná volní nutnost není důsledkem naší minulé „libertariánské“ sebeformace, stěží by nám takové mínění zabránilo cítit se ve své volbě svobodnými. Způsoby, jakými svobodu vůle prožíváme, bychom ovšem měli jakožto filosofové respektovat.
Article
In this paper, we motivate, propose and defend the following two conditions as individually sufficient and disjunctively necessary for moral responsibility: (1) PODMA(s) (the principle of doxastic moral asymmetry)—originally proposed by Coren, Acta Analytica, 33, 145–159, (2018), now cast as sufficient rather than necessary—and (2) the TWC* (twin world condition), which amends versions presented by Young (Philosophia, 44(3), 961–969, 2016; Philosophia, 45(3), 1365–1380, 2017). We explain why there is a need for new necessary and sufficient conditions, how these build on and improve existing ideas, particularly in relation to Frankfurt-style counterexamples and the continuing discussion on their effectiveness, and why PODMA(s) and the TWC* are good candidates. Finally, we defend the proposal against anticipated objections in order to clarify why we think these individually sufficient and disjunctively necessary conditions are plausible and able to inform the ongoing debate on the role of alternate possibilities in the ascription of moral responsibility.
Article
Although convinced by Frankfurt-style cases that moral responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise, semicompatibilists have not wanted to accept a parallel claim about moral responsibility for omissions, and so they have accepted asymmetrical requirements on moral responsibility for actions and for omissions. In previous work, I have presented a challenge to various attempts at defending this asymmetry. My view is that semicompatibilists should give up these defences and instead adopt symmetrical requirements on moral responsibility for actions and omissions, and in this paper I highlight three advantages of doing so: first, it avoids a strange implication of the truth of determinism; second, it allows for a principled reply to Philip Swenson’s recent ‘No Principled Difference Argument’; third, it provides a reason to reject a crucial inference rule invoked by Peter van Inwagen’s ‘Direct Argument’ for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism.
Chapter
A billionaire tells you: “That chair is in my way; I don’t feel like moving it myself, but if you push it out of my way I’ll give you 100.Youdecideyoudontwantthebillionairesmoneyandyoudratherhavehimgothroughthetroubleofmovingthechairhimself,soyougraciouslyturndowntheofferandgohome.Asitturnsout,thebillionaireisalsoastingyoldmiser;hewasneverwillingtoletgoof100.” You decide you don’t want the billionaire’s money and you’d rather have him go through the trouble of moving the chair himself, so you graciously turn down the offer and go home. As it turns out, the billionaire is also a stingy old miser; he was never willing to let go of 100. Knowing full well that the chair couldn’t be moved due to the fact that it was glued to the ground, he simply wanted to have a laugh at your expense.
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, I consider a novel challenge to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza’s reasons-responsiveness theory of moral responsibility. According to their view, agents possess the control necessary for moral responsibility if their actions proceed from a mechanism that is moderately reasons-responsive. I argue that their account of moderate reasons-responsiveness fails to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for moral responsibility since it cannot give an adequate account of the responsibility of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Empirical evidence suggests that autistic individuals demonstrate impairments in counterfactual thinking, and these impairments, I argue, are such that they cast doubt on Fischer and Ravizza’s construal of moderate reasons-responsiveness. I then argue that modifying the view in order to accommodate individuals with ASD forces them to defend a strong reasons-responsive account despite the fact that they explicitly deny that such an account can adequately characterize what it is to be morally responsible for one’s actions.
Article
Full-text available
The common thought of Christian and Moslem philosophers considers moral responsibility of a person as dependent on his or her ability to choose from several options. However, Harry Frankfurt in his famous paper " alternate possibilities and moral responsibility" challenges freedom condition for moral responsibility with implicit reasons and makes use of several examples to show that it is completely possible for a person to be considered as morally responsible despite failure to access any kind of alternate possible. However, there are two reasons presented by Frankfurt that contrary to his claims show that presence of alternate possibilities or at least imagination for presence of alternatives is the base for responsibility or difficulty of moralactor and if sometimes anactor is regarded as responsible despite absence of alternate possible, this is resulted from his or her "ignorance" of the matter and also the impact of his "intention" in doing action. One of the main defects of theories which deal with moral responsibility conditions is ignoring the intention and purpose of moralactor. This is while ethics domain includes internal actions like intention and will of moral actor as well as apparent actions.
Article
In previous work, I presented a challenge for philosophers who appeal to the Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) in order to undermine the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). My challenge relied on the claim that there are cases of omitting to act in which the agent is not responsible for her behavior (or lack thereof) and which should yield the same verdict regarding responsibility as the Frankfurt-style cases. In this paper I take a closer look at particular accounts of responsibility for omissions on offer in the literature and argue that they fail to overcome my challenge. In particular I focus on accounts offered by Fischer and Ravizza, Randolph Clarke, and Carolina Sartorio.
Article
Full-text available
Resumo: O principal objetivo desse artigo é responder a questão sobre o que constitui a responsabilidade moral. Tentaremos demonstrar que a responsabilidade moral tem duas características centrais, a saber, exigências internalistas e autoridade social. Para tal propósito, faremos uso de estratégias compatibilistas. O próximo passo será tentar descrever a concepção de responsabilidade substancial de Thomas Scanlon e, no final desse artigo, estipularemos um argumento sobre um tipo de responsabilidade moral razoável que pode estar contida na teoria da justiça como equidade de John Rawls. Palavras-chave: Responsabilidade. Coerentismo. Razoabilidade. Abstract: The main aim in this article is to answer the question of what constitutes moral responsibility. We will attempt to show that moral responsibility has two essential features, that is, internalistic demands and social authority. For this purpose, we will make use of compatibilistic strategies. We will then attempt to describe Thomas Scanlon's view of substantive responsibility and, in the last part of the article, we will put forward an argument concerning a type of reasonable moral responsibility expressed in John Rawls' theory of justice as fairness. I O que significa dizer que alguém é responsável moralmente por sua ação? Significaria dizer que o agente é responsável por todas as consequências das ações? Ou, alternativamente, que ele seria responsável apenas pela intenção da ação? Ou, ainda, que ele seria responsável por sua identidade mental, o que incluiria sua personalidade, caráter, * Professor do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia da UNISINOS, São Leopoldo, Brasil. Pesquisador do CNPq. A matéria publicada neste periódico é licenciada sob forma de uma Licença Creative Commons-Atribuição 4.0 Internacional.
Article
Full-text available
challenged.' In this paper, I wish to take a fresh look at Frankfurt's attack on PAP from a libertarian viewpoint. I shall try to show that it does not succeed when applied to mental acts such as deciding, choosing, undertaking, forming an intention, that is, mental acts that for the libertarian constitute the basic loci of moral responsibility. If correct, this result will enable us to formulate a necessary condition for moral responsibility that is more adequate than PAP and not vulnerable to Frankfurt's criticism. At the outset, let me state a number of assumptions that I shall employ in the discussion to follow. First, the version of libertarianism I intend to defend is the view that an agent's decision (choice) is free in the sense of freedom required for moral responsibility only if (i) it is not causally determined, and (ii) in the circumstances in which the agent made that decision (choice), he could have avoided making it.2 Second, I take 'a given act A' in
Article
The principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) tells us that an agent is morally responsible for an action only if he could have done otherwise. Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) provide an extremely influential challenge to the PAP (Frankfurt, J Philos 66:829–839, 1969). And Frankfurt-style compatibilists are motivated to accept compatibilism about responsibility and determinism in part due to FSCs. But there is a significant tension between our judgments about responsibility in FSCs and our judgments about responsibility in certain omissions cases. This tension has thus far largely been treated as an internal puzzle for defenders of FSCs to solve. My goal here is to regiment this tension into a clear argument which (if sound) undermines the FSC based critique of PAP. I will also argue that there is an in principle reason to doubt that Frankfurt-Style Compatibilists will be able to successfully respond to my argument.
Article
Actual-sequence views of responsibility are views according to which moral responsibility is a function of actual sequences, histories, or ancestries. In recent years these views have acquired much popularity as an attractive kind of compatibilist answer to the problem of determinism and the freedom of the will. But what does it mean to say that responsibility is 'a function of the actual sequence'? In this paper I examine different possible ways to cash out this idea. I show that one of them is immune to important objections to which the others are prey. This motivates a type of actual-sequence view that is unorthodox in two main respects. First, it understands the expression 'the actual sequence' in a way that is different from the way in which it seems typically to have been understood. Second, on this view, non-actualized possibilities of a certain kind are always relevant to the moral responsibility of agents.
Article
This paper provides a discussion and defense of a recent formulation of the idea that moral responsibility for actions depends on the capacity to respond to reasons. This formulation appears in several publications by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, where the authors argue that moral responsibility involves a kind of control over one’s actions which they call “guidance control.” This kind of control does not require an agent’s ability to do something different from what he actually does, but instead requires only that the actual process leading to the action be responsive in some suitable way to the reasons that the agent has for acting. After summarizing this view, I offer the following two innovations to the authors’ view: I argue that the level of control required for moral responsibility (which I call “regular reasons-responsiveness”) is much stronger than what the author’s view allows for; and 2) I give a common-sense account of the kinds of motivational mechanism relevant to moral responsibility. Given these innovations, I show that this kind of view allows us to easily answer some counterexamples that appear in the current literature on moral responsibility.
Article
This treatise presents a transcendental argument for corporate social responsibility. The argument is that corporate social responsibility, or CSR, is best understood as a collective moral practice that is a precondition for sustainable business. There are a number of theories and definitions of CSR in the contemporary business literature. These theories include considerations of economic, legal, social, and environmental notions of what a corporation ought to take responsibility for based on either motives or concerns of accountability for corporate acts. This work focuses on economic theories. I analyze the distinction between the technical terms "responsibility" and "accountability" found in these theories. This enables me to explicate the meaning of corporate responsibility as it relates to the conditions of sustainable business activity. These conditions necessarily include moral content. In other words, this is an applied ethics project. First, I inquire into the intellectual history of the broader sense of corporate responsibility and review various contemporary notions of corporate social responsibility. My concern is whether these notions presuppose broader forms of moral responsibility to others as an obligation, moral responsibility for acts, or to be held morally responsible (i.e., accountable) based on moral tendencies, particular motives, or resulting outcomes. This concern forms the basis of my consideration of the notions of individual and collective responsibility. The following work includes an analysis of the notion of human choice as a collective endeavor of institutional relationships and practice in the economic market system. I argue that corporate motives for moral interrelationships are necessarily implicit in biosocioeconomic multinational market enterprise. I conclude that an analysis of corporate community involvement may be found in a case study of Starbucks Coffee Company's efforts to practice CSR in particular coffee bean farming communities in developing countries.
Article
Full-text available
Aparentemente, ações e omissões não compartilham as mesmas propriedades. Um caso que ilustraria essa assimetria é a causalidade: enquanto as ações são explicadas como a realização efetiva de uma relação causal entre um agente e certos fatos, as omissões parecem dever ser explicadas como a ausência de relações causais entre uma pessoa e os fatos. Neste artigo, mostrarei que ações e omissões são, contrariamente às aparências, simétricas no que diz respeito à atribuição de causalidade genuína.At first sight, actions and omissions do not share the same properties. Some authors hold that an illustration of this assimetry is causality: actions must be explained as the instantiation of a causal relation between an agent and certain facts, while omissions seem to have to be explained as the absence of causal relations between a person and the relevant facts. In this paper, I will show that actions and omissions are, contrary to appearances, simetrical regarding the attribution of genuine causality.
Article
This paper aims to challenge the view that the sign present in many Frankfurt-style scenarios is insufficiently robust to constitute evidence for the possibility of an alternate decision, and therefore inadequate as a means of determining moral responsibility. I have amended Frankfurt’s original scenario, so as to allow Jones, as well as Black, the opportunity to monitor his (Jones’s) own inclination towards a particular decision (the sign). Different outcome possibilities are presented, to the effect that Jones’s awareness of his own inclinations leads to the conclusion that the sign must be either (a) a prior determinate of the decision about to be made, (b) prior and indeterminate (therefore allowing for a contra-inclination decision to be made), or (c) constitutive of a decision that Jones has made but is not yet aware of. In effect, this means that, prior to the intervention of Black, Jones must have decided to do otherwise or could have so decided. Either way, although Frankfurt’s conclusion, that Jones could not have done other than he did, is upheld, the idea that he could not have decided otherwise must be rejected, and with it the view that the sign is nothing more than a flicker of freedom insufficient for assigning morally responsibility.
Article
Presentation des travaux recents consacres au theme de la responsabilite morale et de ses conditions d'application selon P. F. Strawson, R. J. Wallace, M. Oshana, G. Watson. Revisant la conception traditionnelle de l'association de la responsabilite avec le principe des possibilites alternatives et les exemples de type-Frankfurt selon C. Ginet, P. Van Inwagen, R. Kane, T. O'Connor et R. Clarke, l'A. examine les approches libertaristes de l'indeterminisme et du modele probabiliste, d'une part, et les confronte a l'autre approche de la responsabilite morale fondee sur l'idee de sequence actuelle et sur l'idee de controle chez M. Bratman, M. Ravizza et J. M. Fischer, d'autre part, concluant a une position semi-compatibiliste supercompatibiliste
Article
In this paper, the ontological, terminological, epistemological, and ethical aspects of omission are considered in a coherent and balanced framework, based on the idea that there are omissions which are actions and omissions which are non-actions. In particular, we suggest that the approach to causation which best deals with omission is Mackie's INUS conditional proposal. We argue that omissions are determined partly by the ontological conditional structure of reality, and partly by the interests, beliefs, and values of observers. The final upshot is that moral judgments involved in cases of omissions cannot be grounded on, but are the ground for judgments about what INUS conditions count as omissions.
Article
In 1969 Harry Frankfurt published his hugely influential paper ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’ in which he claimed to present a counterexample to the so-called ‘Principle of Alternate Possibilities’ (‘a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise’). The success of Frankfurt-style cases as counterexamples to the Principle has been much debated since. I present an objection to these cases that, in questioning their conceptual cogency, undercuts many of those debates. Such cases all require a counterfactual mechanism that could cause an agent to perform an action that he cannot avoid performing. I argue that, given our concept of what it is for someone to act, this requirement is inconsistent.Frankfurt-style alleged counterexamples are cases where an agent is morally responsible for an action he performs even though, the claim goes, he could not have avoided performing that action. However, it has recently been argued, e.g. by John Fischer, that a counterexample to the Principle could be a ‘Fischer-style case’, i.e. a case where the agent can either perform the action or do nothing else. I argue that, although Fischer-style cases do not share the conceptual flaw common to all Frankfurt-style cases, they also fail as counterexamples to the Principle.The paper finishes with a brief discussion of the significance of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities.
Article
This paper explicates and challenges John Rawl's argument concerning a rule-utilitarian theory of punishment. In so doing, it argues in favour of a retributivist theory of punishment, one that seeks to justify, not only particular forms of punishment, but the institution of punishment itself. Some crucial objections to retributivism are then considered: one regarding the adverse effects of punishment on the innocent, another concerning proportional punishment, a third pertaining to vengeance and retribution, a Marxian concern with retributive punishment, and a concern with the concept of desert. Each objection is deflected in order to ward-off what seem to be the most serious criticisms of a retributivist view of punishment and to clarify the depth of the retributivist position.
Article
Dans le cadre du debat philosophique sur la signification morale de la responsabilite et du demerite, l'A. souleve la question des oublis pour lesquels l'agent moral peut etre felicite. Examinant la conception kantienne du merite moral qui etablit une symetrie entre l'acte et l'omission, l'A. propose une analyse asymetrique des actions et des omissions, fondee sur la distinction entre l'opportunite de faire le mal, l'action d'un agent moral ordinaire et le comportement moral ideal
Article
Frankfurt‐type examples seem to show that agents can be morally responsible for their actions and omissions even if they could not have done otherwise. Fischer and Ravizza's influential account of moral responsibility is largely based on such examples. I examine a problem with their account of responsibility in cases where we fail to act. The solution to this problem has a surprising and far‐reaching implication concerning the construction of successful Frankfurt‐type examples. I argue that the role of the counterfactual intervener in such examples can only be filled by a rational agent.
Article
In The Philosophical Quarterly, 47 (1997), pp. 373–81, van Inwagen argues in a critical notice of my book The Metaphysics of Free Will that the impression that Frankfurt‐type examples show that moral responsibility need not require alternative possibilities results from insufficient analytical precision. He suggests various precise principles which imply that moral responsibility requires alternative possibilities. In reply, I seek to defend the conclusion I have drawn from Frankfurt‐type examples: moral responsibility need not require alternative possibilities. I contend that van Inwagen's principles — the principle of possible prevention and the no‐matter‐what principle — are invalid, and I suggest that their plausibility comes from thinking about a proper subset of the relevant cases.
Article
Harry Frankfurt has famously criticized the principle of alternate possibilities—the principle that an agent is morally responsible for performing some action only if able to have done otherwise than to perform it—on the grounds that it is possible for an agent to be morally responsible for performing an action that is inevitable for the agent when the reasons for which the agent lacks alternate possibilities are not the reasons for which the agent has acted. I argue that an incompatibilist about determinism and moral responsibility can safely ignore so-called “Frakfurt-style cases” and continue to argue for incompatibilism on the grounds that determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise. My argument relies on a simple—indeed, simplistic—weakening of the principle of alternate possibilities that is explicitly designed to be immune to Frankfurt-style criticism. This alternative to the principle of alternate possibilities is so simplistic that it will no doubt strike many readers as philosophically fallow. I argue that it is not. I argue that the addition of one highly plausible premise allows for the modified principle to be employed in an argument for incompatibilism that begins with the observation that determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise. On the merits of this argument I conclude that deterministic moral responsibility is impossible and that Frankfurt’s criticism of the principle of alternate possibilities—even if successful to that end—may be safely ignored.
An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), espIncompatibilism without the Principle of Alternative PossibilitiesCausing and Being Responsible for What Is Inevitable We discuss and criticize these approaches in our paperResponsibility for Consequences
  • G For
  • L Peter Van Inwagen William
  • Rowe
For such accounts, see, e.g., Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), esp. pp. 171-80; Robert Heinaman, "Incompatibilism without the Principle of Alternative Possibilities," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1986): 266-76; Bernard Berofsky, Freedom from Necessity (New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), esp. p. 35; William L. Rowe, "Causing and Being Responsible for What Is Inevitable," American Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1989): 153-60. We discuss and criticize these approaches in our paper, "Responsibility for Consequences," in Festschrift for Joel Feinberg, ed. Jules Coleman and Allen Buchanan (forthcoming).