Abstract
If we accept Peter van Inwagen’s definition of ‘determinism’ as the thesis that ‘there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future’,1 then one can be ultimately responsible for one’s actions, where ‘action’, broadly construed, encompasses decisions or choices as well, only if determinism is false. This is because the notion of ultimate responsibility entails that one is possessed of this sort of responsibility only if one is a causally undetermined source of at least some of one’s actions.2 It is possible to link the notions of ultimate responsibility and moral responsibility, as Alfred Mele indicates, in at least these two ways: no one is morally responsible for anything unless he or she is ultimately responsible for something (strong UR), or ultimate responsibility makes possible a kind of moral responsibility (refer to it as ‘UM responsibility’) more important or desirable than any compatihilist variety, and that no one is UM responsible for anything unless he or she is ultimately responsible for something (modest UR).3 In this contribution, I examine two rationales for the importance of ultimate responsibility, in outline, that such responsibility undergirds the right sort of freedom or control for moral responsibility, and that it secures foundations for ‘deontic morality’ which, in turn, are presupposed by moral responsibility. I argue that neither is cogent.
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References
P. van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983 ), 3.
See A. Mele, ‘Soft Libertarianism and Frankfurt-Style Scenarios’, Philosophical Topics 24 (1996), 123–141.
See A. Mele, ‘Ultimate Responsibility’, forthcoming in Social Philosophy and Policy,sec. 1.
See, for example, C. Ginet, On Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), ch. 5. John Martin Fischer in The Metaphysics of Free Will (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) argues that the only plausible reason for thinking that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility is that deterministic causal conditions deprive us of alternative options, rendering us unable to do other than what we actually do.
See, for example, D. Pereboom, ‘Determinism al Dente’, Nous 29, (1995), 21–45; R. Kane, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University press, 1996 ), and ‘Two Kinds of Incompatibilism’, Agents, Causes, and Events, T. O’Connor (ed.) ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 ).
R. Kane, The Significance of Free Will ( New York: Oxford University press, 1996 ), 126.
The example is Mele’s. See Mele, op. cit. note 2, sec. 1; and A. Mele, Autonomous Agents: From Self-Control to Autonomy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), ch. 12, secs. 1,2; and op. cit. note 3, sec. 4.
Op. cit. note 6, 79. Kane summarizes the crux of the notion of ultimate responsibility in this way: An agent is ultimately responsible for some (event or state) E’s occurring only if (R) the agent is personally responsible for E’s occurring in a sense which entails that something the agent voluntarily (or willingly) did or omitted, and for which the agent could have voluntarily done otherwise, either was, or causally contributed to, E’s occurrence and made a difference to whether or not E occurred; and (U) for every X and Y (where X and Y represent occurrences of events and/or states) if the agent is personally responsible for X, and if Y is an arche (or sufficient ground or cause or explanation) for X, then the agent must also be personally responsible for Y. (See op. cit. note 6, 35.)
Kane claims that ‘Exact sameness or difference of possible worlds is not defined if the possible world contains indeterminate efforts or indeterminate events of any kinds. And there would be no such thing as two agents having exactly the same life histories if their life histories contain indeterminate efforts and free choices.’ (Op. cit. note 6, 172.)
For other helpful formulations of the ‘luck objection’, see T. Nagel, The View_From Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 113–4; B. Waller, ‘Free Will Gone Out of Control’, Behaviorism 16, (1988), 149–67; and G. Strawson, ‘The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility’, Philosophical Studies 75, (1994), 5–24. Kane (op. cit. note 6, 171–2 and 236–7, n.1) discusses and attempts to rebut Waller’s and Strawsons’s versions of the luck objection.
See Mele, op. cit. note 2; Autonomous Agents: From Self-Control to Autonomy,ch. 12; and op. cit. note 3, sec. 4.
For instructive discussion of this point, see R. Clarke, ‘Indeterminism and Control’, American Philosophical Quarterly 32, (1995), 125–38; and Mele, op. cit. note 2.
See H. G. Frankfurt, ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’, Journal of Philosophy 66, (1969), 829–39; L Haji, Moral Appraisability: Puzzles, Proposals, and Perplexities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), and Mele, op. cit. note 2.
Advocates of the view that determinism is incompatible with freedom to do otherwise include Fischer, op. cit. note, 4; Ginet, op. cit. note 4; and van Inwagen, op. cit. note, 1. Among dissenters are M. Slote, ‘Selective Necessity and the Free Will Problem’, Journal of Philosophy 79, (1982), 5–24, and K. Vihvelin, ‘Critical Notice of The Metaphysics of Free Will,by John Fischer’, forthcoming.
Proponents of the ‘Objective View’ include D. Copp, ‘Defending the Principle of Alternative Possibilities’, Nous 31, (1997), 441–56; L. Fields, ‘Moral Beliefs and Blameworthiness’, Philosophy 69, (1994), 397–415; M. Moore, Law and Psychiatry: Rethinking the Relationship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); H. Smith, ‘Varieties of Moral Worth and Moral Credit’, Ethics 101, (1991), 279–303; and D. Widerker, ‘Frankfurt on ‘Ought Implies Can’ and Alternative Possibilities’, Analysis 51, (1991), 222–4.
For more on this distinction, see M.J. Zimmerman, The Concept of Moral Obligation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), sec. 1.4.
A recent important defence of (K) is to be found in Zimmerman, op. cit. note 27, ch. 3.
I’ve advanced this case in Haji, op. cit. note 21, chs. 8,9. See, also, M. J. Zimmerman, ‘A Plea for Accuses’, American Philosophical Quarterly 34, (1997), 22943 and An Essay on Moral Responsibility ( Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988 ).
Here, and in what follows, I use ‘worst’ and ‘best’ liberally. Following Michael Zimmerman (Zimmerman op. cit. note 27, 14), in saying or implying that one ought to do the best one can, or one ought not to do what is nonbest or worst, or, of all of one’s alternatives, one of them makes the world worst off, I am only committing myself to the claim that there is some way in which what one ought to do is superior to any other of one’s alternatives
See H. A. Prichard, Moral Obligation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), ch. 2.
See Zimmerman, An Essay on Moral Responsibility, 42.
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Haji, I. (2000). On the Value of Ultimate Responsibility. In: van den Beld, T. (eds) Moral Responsibility and Ontology. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2361-9_12
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