Personal Identity and Quasi-Responsibility

Abstract

In many different ways, our answers to ontological questions may affect and be affected by our answers to questions about moral responsibility. Most obviously, philosophers have long debated whether determinism, if true, negates the moral responsibility of agents. Compatibilists argue that agents whose actions are determined may nevertheless be responsible for what they do. Others insist that it makes no sense to hold an agent responsible for an action if she couldn’t have done otherwise. But I want to think about a different area of philosophy where ontological questions may affect and be affected by questions about moral responsibility. Not only may we wonder whether to hold a person responsible for an action if we suspect that her action was determined. We also may wonder whether to hold her responsible if it is unclear whether she was the person who performed the action. We don’t seem to hold people responsible for what other people do. (Or, at least we don’t in the same way.) And so our ascriptions of moral responsibility may be affected not only by our views about determinism, but also by our views about personal identity.

[T]he moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown. Indeed, if one would explain how the abstrusest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really came about, it is always well (and wise) to ask first: at what morality does all this (does he) aim?

-Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil