Moral responsibility and the metaphysics of free will: Reply to Van Inwagen

Philosophical Quarterly 48 (191):215-220 (1998)
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Abstract

In _The Philosophical Quarterly, 47 (1997), pp. 373-381, van Inwagen argues in a critical notice of my book _The Metaphysics of Free Will that the impression that Frankfurt-type examples show that moral responsibility need not require alternative possibilities results from insufficient analytical precision. He suggests various precise principles which imply that moral responsibility requires alternative possibilities. In reply, I seek to defend the conclusion I have drawn from Frankfurt-type examples: moral responsibility need not require alternative possibilities. I contend that van Inwagen's principle the principle of possible prevention and the no-matter-what principle are invalid, and I suggest that their plausibility comes from thinking about a proper subset of the relevant cases

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2002

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10.1111/1467-9213.00096

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John Fischer
University of California, Riverside

Citations of this work

Reasons reactivity and incompatibilist intuitions.Michael McKenna - 2005 - Philosophical Explorations 8 (2):131-143.
Indeterminism and Frankfurt‐type examples.Ishtiyaque Haji - 1999 - Philosophical Explorations 2 (1):42-58.

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References found in this work

Fischer on moral responsibility.Peter van Inwagen - 1997 - Philosophical Quarterly 47 (188):373–381.
The inevitable.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1992 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (4):388 – 404.

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