Certain kinds of prediction, foreknowledge, and future‐oriented action appear to require settled future truths. But open futurists think that the future is metaphysically unsettled: if it is open whether p is true, then it cannot currently be settled that p is true. So, open futurists—and libertarians who adopt the position—face the objection that their view makes rational action and deliberation impossible. I defuse the epistemic concern: open futurism does not entail obviously counterintuitive epistemic consequences or prevent rational action.

In this paper, we explore how free will should be understood within the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, particularly on the assumption of traditional Christology. We focus on two issues: reconciling Christ's free will with the claim that Christ's human will was subjected to the divine will in the Incarnation; and reconciling the claims that Christ was fully human and free with the belief that Christ, since God, could not sin.

I examine Manuel Vargas's revisionist justification for continuing with our responsibility-characteristic practices in the absence of basic desert. I query his claim that this justification need not depend on how we settle questions about the content of morality, arguing that it requires us to reject the Kantian principle that prohibits treating anyone merely as a means. I maintain that any convincing argument against this principle would have to be driven by concerns that arise within the sphere of moral theory itself, (...) whereas Vargas's argument draws solely on concerns about the expensive metaphysics involved in a libertarian conception of freedom. I argue that this amounts not just to changing the concept of free will by stipulation, but also (more problematically) to changing our moral principles by stipulation. (shrink)

Is moral responsibility compatible with determinism? Peter Strawson’s first answer is: I do not know what the thesis of determinism is. His second answer seems to be: Yes, it is, and we can see this by looking to relevant pockets of our ordinary practices and attitudes, especially our responses (resentment, anger, love, forgiveness) to quality of will. His second answer has shaped subsequent discussions of moral responsibility. But what exactly is Strawson’s compatibilism? And is it a plausible view? By attending (...) to Strawson’s account of parenting and the development of moral agents from children to adults, I’ll clarify and defend the following account: For Strawson, the appropriateness conditions for holding responsible change by degrees, over time, based on an agent’s susceptibility to empathy and quality of will, and this shows us that determinism is irrelevant to responsibility. (shrink)

Free will, before being an object of beliefs or theories susceptible of verification, is the omnipresent supposition of our conscious life. This paper claims that this omnipresence, even though it is not enough to validate theoretically free will, entails two significant consequences. First, that free will is the essential presumption of our actions, without which they would become incomprehensible. Second, that all denial of this – a rational action in itself – presupposes that which is denied.

In this paper, we do three things. First, we put forth a novel hypothesis about judgments of moral responsibility according to which such judgments are a species of explanatory judgments. Second, we argue that this hypothesis explains both some general features of everyday thinking about responsibility and the appeal of skeptical arguments against moral responsibility. Finally, we argue that, if correct, the hypothesis provides a defense against these skeptical arguments.