115 research outputs found
Semicompatibilism and Moral Responsibility for Actions and Omissions: In Defence of Symmetrical Requirements
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 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 defenses 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 Swensonâs recent âNo Principled Difference Argumentâ; third, it provides a reason to reject a crucial inference rule invoked by Peter van Inwagenâs âDirect Argumentâ for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism
Manipulation Arguments and Libertarian Accounts of Free Will
In response to the increasingly popular manipulation argument against compatibilism, some have argued that libertarian accounts of free will are vulnerable to parallel manipulation arguments, and thus manipulation is not uniquely problematic for compatibilists. The main aim of this article is to give this point a more detailed development than it has previously received. Prior attempts to make this point have targeted particular libertarian accounts but cannot be generalized. By contrast, I provide an appropriately modified manipulation that targets all libertarian accounts of freedom and responsibilityâan especially tricky task given that libertarian accounts are a motley set. I conclude that if manipulation arguments reveal any theoretical cost then it is one borne by all accounts according to which we are free and responsible, not by compatibilism in particular
Atemporalism and dependence
It is widely thought that Atemporalismâthe view that, because God is âoutsideâ of time, he does not foreknow anything âconstitutes a unique solution to the problem of freedom and foreknowledge. However, as I argue here, in order for Atemporalism to escape certain worries, the view must appeal to the dependence of Godâs timeless knowledge on our actions. I then argue that, because it must appeal to such dependence, Atemporalism is crucially similar to the recent sempiternalist accounts proposed by Trenton Merricks, Philip Swenson, and Jonathan Westphal, and I conclude by briefly sketching some implications of this result
How Does Death Harm the Deceased?
The most popular philosophical account of how death can harm (or be bad for) the deceased is the deprivation account, according to which death is bad insofar as it deprives the deceased of goods that would have been enjoyed by that person had the person not died. In this paper, the author surveys four main challenges to the deprivation account: the No-Harm-Done Argument, the No-Subject Argument, the Timing Argument, and the Symmetry Argument. These challenges are often raised by Epicureans, who (following Epicurus) claim that death cannot harm the deceased, and each challenge is addressed in Thomas Nagelâs classic essay, âDeath,â which has been very influential on recent developments in the literature on the philosophy of death. The author of this paper summarizes some of these recent developments as the challenges are considered
The Parallel Manipulation Argument
Matt King has recently argued that the manipulation argument against compatibilism does not succeed by employing a dilemma: either the argument infelicitously relies on incompatibilist sourcehood conditions, or the proponent of the argument leaves a premise of the argument undefended. This article develops a reply to Kingâs dilemma by showing that incompatibilists can accept its second horn. Key to Kingâs argument for the second hornâs being problematic is âthe parallel manipulation argument.â I argue that Kingâs use of this argument is problematic, but I suggest that a (modified) parallel manipulation argument is effective for a different, though more restricted, purpose
Freedom, Foreknowledge, and Dependence: A Dialectical Intervention
Recently, several authors have utilized the notion of dependence to respond to the traditional argument for the incompatibility of freedom and divine foreknowledge. However, proponents of this response have not always been so clear in specifying where the incompatibility argument goes wrong, which has led to some unfounded objections to the response. We remedy this dialectical confusion by clarifying both the dependence response itself and its interaction with the standard incompatibility argument. Once these clarifications are made, it becomes clear both (1.) that the dependence response does not beg the question against the proponent of the incompatibility argument and (2.) that the dependence response advances the dialectic whether it is developed as a version of Ockhamism or as a version of multiple-pasts compatibilism
Carving a Life from Legacy: Frankfurtâs Account of Free Will and Manipulation in Greg Eganâs âReasons to Be Cheerfulâ
Many find it intuitive that having been manipulated undermines a person's free will. Some have objected to accounts of free will like Harry Frankfurt's (according to which free will depends only on an agent's psychological structure at the time of action) by arguing that it is possible for manipulated agents, who are intuitively unfree, to satisfy Frankfurt's allegedly sufficient conditions for freedom. Drawing resources from Greg Egan's "Reasons to Be Cheerful" as well as from stories of psychologically sophisticated artificial intelligence (such as Isaac Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man"), I rebut this objection to "structuralist" accounts of free will, arguing that the very possibility of free will for persons like us requires that we admit that a person can be free even when lacking control over the character from which she acts. I conclude with some implications for the freedom and personhood of artificial intelligences
Taking Hobart Seriously
Hobartâs classic 1934 paper âFree Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without Itâ has been widely cited as an example of an argument for the view that free will requires the truth of determinism. In this paper, I argue that this reading of Hobartâs paper is mistaken and that we should instead read Hobart as arguing that an agent exercises their free will only if the proximate causes of the agentâs action deterministically cause their action. After arguing that Hobartâs view, rightly understood, escapes the problems typically raised for Hobartâs compatibilism, I also argue that Hobartâs view is problematic for different reasons. Nevertheless, I argue that there is a crucial insight to be gleaned from Hobartâs paperâone that provides compatibilists with a new recipe for challenging libertarian accounts of free will
Is Semicompatibilism Unstable?
Abstract
Recently, John Maier has developed a unified account of various agentive modalities (such as general abilities, potentialities, and skills). According to him, however, adopting the account provides an alternative framework for thinking about free will and moral responsibility, one that reveals an unacceptable instability in semicompatibilism (the view that the freedom required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism even if the freedom to do otherwise is not). In this paper, I argue that Maier is mistaken about the implications of his account and sketch a semicompatibilist proposal that can, without countenancing any instability, accept Maierâs unified account of the agentive modalities.</jats:p
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