Is there a freedom requirement for moral responsibility?

Dialogue 18 (3):289-306 (1979)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The Principle that freedom is necessary for moral responsibility has received a variety of explications, but few philosophers have doubted that in some plausible sense it is true. However, two philosophers have recently challenged it using very different but equally ingenious arguments. J.F.M. Hunter has provided the more obviously direct attack in arguing that considerations of freedom as such are in no way relevant to assessments of moral responsibility. Harry Frankfurt has directed his fire at the version of the freedom principle which says that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. Both Frankfurt and Hunter point out the significance of their arguments for the determinism/moral responsibility debate: if there is no freedom requirement for moral responsibility, then even if determinism threatens freedom, it does not follow that determinism threatens moral responsibility

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Epistemic freedom.J. David Velleman - 1989 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 70 (1):73-97.
My way: essays on moral responsibility.John Martin Fischer - 2006 - New York: Oxford University Press.
About the Needlessness of the Verb “To Be”.Dan Simbotin - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 15:231-236.
An Analysis of Semi-Compatibilism.Gan Hun Ahn - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 15:7-12.
Making sense of freedom and responsibility.Dana Kay Nelkin - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Free will and moral responsibility.John Martin Fischer - 2004 - In David Copp (ed.), Handbook on Ethical Theory. Oxford University Press.
Power and moral responsibility.Thomas Pink - 2009 - Philosophical Explorations 12 (2):127 – 149.

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-09-25

Downloads
60 (#239,890)

6 months
3 (#439,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

The principle of alternative possibilities.Phillip Gosselin - 1987 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (March):91-104.
The Principle of Alternate Possibilities.Phillip Gosselin - 1987 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1):91-104.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1969 - Journal of Philosophy 66 (23):829-839.
Acting freely.Gerald Dworkin - 1970 - Noûs 4 (4):367-83.
The principle of alternate possibilities.David Blumenfeld - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (March):339-44.
Moral responsibility, freedom, and compulsion.Robert N. Audi - 1974 - American Philosophical Quarterly 11 (1):1-14.

View all 6 references / Add more references