Is free will real? Is there really free will? That of course depends on what “free will” is. And, on what “real” is. I begin from the free will problem as it appears in the contemporary free will debate, and set out to explore how my view on it affects various senses of reality. The picture that emerges is complex, pluralistic, multi-faceted, and paradoxical. In some sense free will is real, in another sense it is not, and both greatly matter. (...) The sense that is unreal creates a reality of shallowness and tragedy. Finally, both ethically and pragmatically, we require illusion in order to create reality, in creating our moral and personal selves. (shrink)

Saul Smilansky presents an original new approach to the problem of free will, which lies at the heart of morality and self-understanding. He maintains that the key to the problem is the role played by illusion. Smilansky boldly claims that we could not live adequately with a complete awareness of the truth about human freedom and that illusion lies at the center of the human condition.

ABSTRACT I argue, counter‐intuitively, that under certain conditions many people are under some moral requirement to attempt to bring children into being . There is only rarely a strict obligation to have children, but more moderate, inclining moral considerations in favour of having children, have a place in our moral world. I begin by considering a large number of arguments in favour and against the possibility of an obligation to have children. Then I examine when the weight of one set (...) of arguments is greater. And I conclude by pointing out some general lessons from the discussion. (shrink)

I point out an odd consequence of the role that broadly pragmatic considerations regularly play in determining moral demands. As a result of the way in which moral demands are formed, it turns out that people will frequently become morally good in a strange and rather dubious way. Because human beings are not very good, we will lower our moral demands and, as a result, most people will turn out, in an important sense, to be morally good. Our relative badness, (...) by giving us good reasons to limit moral demands, makes us morally good. (shrink)

Sometimes people are unfortunate in ways which facilitate their success ‐ and happiness. This creates the perplexity whether someone can be said to have been unfortunate, if an apparent misfortune has been, overall, beneficial to his or her life. I argue that whether something is a misfortune cannot be determined in itself, even in seemingly obvious cases. It depends also upon what one makes of it, what it makes of one. In short, it depends upon what happens later. People cannot (...) claim to have suffered a misfortune for which they are to be pitied or compensated, when this ‘misfortune’ is crucial in having made them what they are, what they are happy to be. Hard determinism aside, the notion of ‘fortunate misfortune’ lacks, however, an easy parallel in ‘unfortunate good‐fortune’. (shrink)

There is a widespread view according to which deontology can be construed as a flexible, reasonable view, able to incorporate consequentialist considerations when it seems compelling to do so. According to this view, deontologists can be moderate, and their presentation as die-hard fanatics, even if true to some historical figures, is basically a slanderous and misleading philosophical straw man. I argue that deontologists, properly understood, are not moderate. In the way deontology is typically understood, a deontology, as such, conceptually needs (...) to be overriding. The error I point out has pernicious implications, which are noted. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that morality applies universally to all human beings as moral targets, and our general moral obligations to people will not, as a rule, be affected by their views. I propose and explore a radical, alternative normative moral theory, ‘Designer Ethics’, according to which our views are pro tanto crucial determinants of how, morally, we ought to be treated. For example, since utilitarians are more sympathetic to the idea that human beings may be sacrificed for the greater (...) good, perhaps it is permissible to give them ‘priority’ as potential victims. This odd idea has manifold drawbacks but I claim that it also has substantial advantages, that it has some affinities to more commonly accepted moral positions, and that it should be given a significant role in our ethical thinking. (shrink)

In Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, Derk Pereboom proposes an optimistic model of life that follows on the rejection of both libertarian and compatibilist beliefs in free will, moral responsibility, and desert. I criticize his views, focusing on punishment. Pereboom responds to my earlier argument that hard determinism must seek to revise the practice of punishment in the direction of funishment, whereby the incarcerated are very generously compensated for the deprivations of incarceration. I claimed that funishment is a (...) practical reductio: of hard determinism. Pereboom replies, but I claim that he misses a key component of my reductio, the idea that moving in the direction of funishment will considerably weaken the deterrence of potential criminals so that hard determinism becomes self-defeating in practice. Beyond the challenge of funishment, I raise various other difficulties with Pereboom’s model, concerning its deeply unintuitive implications, the harm it does to the motivation of potential criminals, its weakness in resisting utilitarian-like dangers, and more. Our conclusions should lead to a re-evaluation of the compatibilist interpretation of moral life, as a richer, more plausible, and safer interpretation than hard determinism. This needs to be combined with a true hard determinist acknowledgment of the deep injustice and tragedy involved in punishment in light of the absence of libertarian free will. Such a complex view will come closer to doing justice to notions of justice, morality, and decency. (shrink)

The compatibility question lies at the center of the free will problem. Compatibilists think that determinism is compatible with moral responsibility and the concomitant notions, while incompatibilists think that it is not. The topic of this paper is a particular form of charge against compatibilism: that it is shallow. This is not the typical sort of argument against compatibilism: most of the debate has attempted to discredit compatibilism completely. The Argument From Shallowness maintains that the compatibilists do have a case. (...) However, this case is only partial, and shallow. This limited aim proves itself more powerful against compatibilists than previous all-or-nothing attempts. It connects to the valid instincts of compatibilists, making room for them, and hence is harder for compatibilists to ignore. (shrink)

I shall argue that compatibilism cannot resist in a principled way the temptation to prepunish people. Compatibilism thus emerges as a much more radical view than it is typically presented and perceived, and is seen to be at odds with fundamental moral intuitions.

Presenting ten diverse and original moral paradoxes, this cutting edge work of philosophical ethics makes a focused, concrete case for the centrality of paradoxes within morality. Explores what these paradoxes can teach us about morality and the human condition Considers a broad range of subjects, from familiar topics to rarely posed questions, among them "Fortunate Misfortune", "Beneficial Retirement" and "Preferring Not To Have Been Born" Asks whether the existence of moral paradox is a good or a bad thing Presents analytic (...) moral philosophy in a provocative, engaging and entertaining way; posing new questions, proposing possible solutions, and challenging the reader to wrestle with the paradoxes themselves. (shrink)

Moral life sometimes involves life-and-death decisions, and philosophers often consider them by examining intuitions about ideal cases. Contemporary philosophical discourse on such matters has been dominated by Trolley-type cases, which typically present us with the need to make decisions on whether to sacrifice one person in order to save a larger number of similar others. Such cases lead to a distinct view of moral dilemmas and of moral life generally. The case I present here, “Hostage Situation,” is quite unlike them (...) and should generate intuitions that differ greatly from those brought forth by standard Trolley-type cases. The implications are surprising and suggest that familiar and widely prevalent perceptions of the normative field are inadequate. (shrink)

Sir Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ was a landmark in the philosophical understanding of the free will problem. Building upon it, I attempt to defend a novel position, which purports to provide, in outline, the next step forward. The position presented is based on the descriptively central and normatively crucial role of illusion in the issue of free will. Illusion, I claim, is the vital but neglected key to the free will problem. The proposed position, which may be called ‘Illusionism’, (...) is shown to follow both from the strengths and from the weaknesses of Strawson’s position. (shrink)

ABSTRACT All ethical systems seem to call for more ethical sensitivity. The dangers to personal life of too much ethical sensitivity have received much attention lately, in attempts to limit the demands of morality. But the ethical dangers of ethical sensitivity have hardly been noticed. I argue that, in a number of different ways, too much ethical sensitivity can be ethically harmful. The normative, the psychological and the pragmatic pictures are for more complex than is commonly realised.

People do good or bad things, and get or do not get good or bad credit for their actions, depending (in part) on knowledge of their actions. I attempt to unfold some of the interconnections between these matters, and between them and the achievement of moral worth. The main conclusion is that the heights of moral worth seem to appear in the oddest places.

When may someone complain, morally? And what, if any, is the relationship between legitimate moral complaint and one's own behaviour? I point out a perplexity about a certain class of moral complaints. Two very different conceptions of moral complaint seem to be operating, and they often have contrary implications. Moreover, both seem intuitively compelling. This is theoretically and practically troubling, but has not been sufficiently noticed. The Paradox of Moral Complaint seems to point to an inherent difficulty in our reflective (...) moral intuitions. Given the legislative nature of moral agency, the plausible limitations upon reasonable moral complaint seem to contradict the inviolability of central moral constraints and the complaints they allow. In the sort of cases under discussion, morality seems at once both to insist upon the possibility of moral complaint, and to deny it. (Published Online August 21 2006). (shrink)

We can morally compare possible alternative states of affairs, judging that various actual historical occurrences were bad, overall—the Holocaust, World War I, and slavery, for example. We should prefer that such events had not occurred, and regret that they had occurred. But the vast majority of people who now exist would not have existed had it not been for those historical events. A ‘package deal’ is involved here: those events, together with oneself; or, the absence of the historical calamity, and (...) the absence of oneself. So, all considered, ought one to prefer never to have existed, and to regret that one exists? Not in itself, of course, but as part of the conjunction? There seems to be a strong case for saying that morally one must wish and prefer that certain historical events had not occurred, even if that would have meant that one would never have existed. One ought to regret, all considered, that the aggregate state of affairs that includes one's existence is the one that materialized. After setting out this idea, I explore arguments against it, and attempt to reach a conclusion. (shrink)

Black magic (henceforth BM) is acting in an attempt to harm human beings through supernatural means. Examples include the employment of spells, the use of special curses, the burning of objects related to the purported victim, and the use of pins with voodoo dolls. For the sake of simplicity, we shall focus on attempts to kill through BM. The moral attitude towards BM has not been, as far as we know, significantly discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy. Yet the topic brings (...) up interesting questions and poses challenges, occasionally even reaching the level of paradoxes. Ideas of respecting persons, in particular, will be seen to be challenged by this form of magic. The notion of respecting persons will be treated here broadly and pluralistically. Indeed part of the interest in the discussion will be the unfolding of the diverse ways in which this term should be understood, and the contrasts between its various uses. Often, as we shall see, respect for persons and disrespect for them, in different senses, will co‐exist, and the dilemma will be one where avoiding some forms of disrespect will involve us in disrespect in other senses. (shrink)

Getting people not to harm others is a central goal of morality. But while it is commonly perceived that those who benefit others merit gratitude, those who do not harm others are not ordinarily thought to merit anything. I attempt to argue against this, claiming that all the arguments against gratitude to the non-maleficent are unsuccessful. Finally, I explore the difference it would make if we thought that we owe gratitude to those who do not harm us.

“Teflon immorality’’ (or TI) is immorality that goes on unchecked—the wrongdoing is not stopped and its perpetrators, beyond the reach of punishment or other sanction, often persist in their immoral ways. The idea that the immoral prosper has been recognized as morally (and legally) disturbing presumably for as long as humanity has been reflective, and can be found already in the Bible. The reasons behind a great deal of successful immorality are important practically, but uninteresting philosophically. Sometimes, however, we face (...) events that are more interesting philosophically, and Teflon immorality results from oddities such as moral paradoxes and perversions. These, however, have remained largely unnoticed. I will outline a tentative survey of this topic. After showing its pervasiveness and importance, I will briefly reflect on its relevance to the way we should think about morality and about the means to further it, and confront possible objections. (shrink)

Bernard Williams once said that doing moral philosophy could be hazardous because there, presumably unlike in other areas of philosophy, we may run the risk of misleading people on important matters.1 This risk seems to be particularly present when considering the topic of terrorism. I would like to discuss what seems to be a most striking feature of contemporary terrorism, a feature that, as far as I know, has not been noted. This has implications concerning the way that we should (...) view terrorism (and counterterrorism) and shows the force of a number of neglected illusions surrounding the issue of terrorism, as well as its justification. (shrink)

I distinguish between two concepts of effort, E-effort and T-effort. E-effort is the familiar one, which focuses on the experiential qualities of making an effort (such the energy and time we put into effort making, or the hardship we endure). Teleological effort (or T-effort) is the motivated and active focus on the intended purpose or goal of the effort; the aim to do what it takes to reach the target of the effort. When we make a T-effort we concentrate on (...) the best way of getting to where we want to be, which may involve putting in less E-effort. Focusing upon T-efforts should help us both to better understand the relationship between effort and success; and to make what I call Real Efforts. (shrink)

At a time of acute danger, people commonly petition God for help for themselves or their loved ones; such as praying that an avalanche heading in one's direction be diverted, or that an organ donor be found for one's dying child. Such prayer seems natural and, indeed, for believers, reasonable and acceptable. It seems perverse to condemn such typical prayer, as wrong. But once we closely examine what is actually happening in such situations, we shall see that frequently prayer of (...) this sort is morally problematic. I argue that such prayer ought to be seen as a form of action (rather than, say, mere hope), thereby needing to meet the higher moral standards that apply to actions; and that the assumption of the benevolence of the deity does not suffice to make such prayer legitimate. (shrink)

The notion of social progress is not much in favour in these sophisticated times of scepticism, cynicism, relativism and political correctness; at least in the West. Most people might admit that some indubitable advances have occurred, primarily in terms of this or that useful technological innovation. But any wider claim about ‘social progress’ is often met by overwhelming doubt and suspicion, if not outright derision. I provide a short argument for belief in progress.

Choice-egalitarianism (CE) is, broadly, a version of egalitarianism that gives free choice a pivotal role in justifying any inequality. The basic idea is this: we can morally evaluate equality and inequality in many respects, which we can call factors. Factors might be income, primary goods, wellbeing, how well someone’s life proceeds, and so on. But whatever the relevant factor may be, the baseline for egalitarianism is equality: we start, normatively, by assuming that everyone should receive the baseline, unless not receiving (...) it can be justified. In choice-egalitarianism the only acceptable justification for not receiving the baseline is that this follows from one’s free choice. For example, assume that the factor being equalized is access to some form of higher education: everyone can go to college for free. If one does not go to college because one does not like studying and prefers surfing, that is fine. Admittedly one ends up without a college education, but the choice-egalitarian does not find this objectionable, for it follows from one’s free choice. (shrink)

We sometimes harm people legitimately, by standing in front of them in the queue at the cinema and buying the last available ticket, for instance, or by acting in self-defense. If we harm them illegitimately, however, we ostensibly have a moral obligation to compensate them for the harm done. And the more we harm them, the greater the compensation that, prima facie, we need to offer. But if the harm increases further, at some point we will need to offer less (...) compensation. Yet more harm, and it is quite likely that no compensation at all will be morally expected. In such situations, the greater the harm, the better off we will be, morally, in one important respect. This is morally absurd but, I claim, true, and it does not appear to have received significant philosophical attention. I explore the issue. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Note.

I present an analogy between analytic philosophy and a particular sort of computer game, and analyze some aspects of John Martin Fischer's My Way in the light of this analogy. I set out the different levels of the free will question, and explore how well Fischer does on them. On the compatibility level, he succeeds, in my view, in confronting the "metaphysical challenge" and the "manipulation challenge", but does less well with the "moral arbitrariness challenge". The compatibilist perspective captures only (...) part of the moral and personal truth on the compatibility issue, and is shown to be inherently shallow. On the next levels we see that Fischer confronts particular dangers: the very virtues that make his minimalist position so resilient on the second (compatibility) level, render it too impoverished when it comes to the third, which asks about the very importance of taking moral responsibility seriously. Connecting to other positions (such as P.F. Strawson's version of naturalism) may be an imperative, but would also be risky. Likewise, on the fourth level, where we confront the difficulty of deciding how to deal with the previous conclusions, it is doubtful how well Fischer can do, given his previous philosophical commitments. (shrink)

Why is it that we think today so very differently about distributive and retributive justice? Why is the notion of desert so neglected in our thinking about distributive justice, while it remains fundamental in almost every account of retributive justice? I wish to take up this relatively neglected issue, and put forth two proposals of my own, based upon the way control functions in the two spheres.