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John Fischer and Mark Ravizza defend in this book a painstakingly constructed analysis of what they take to be a core condition ofmoralresponsibility: the notion of guidance control. The volume usefully collects in one place ideas and arguments the authors have previously published in singly or jointly authored works on this and related topics, as well as various refinements to those views and some suggestive discussions that aim to show how their account of guidance control might (...) fit into a more comprehensive account ofmoralresponsibility. (shrink)

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In this article we survey six recent developments in the philosophical literature on free will andmoralresponsibility: (1) Harry Frankfurt's argument thatmoralresponsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise; (2) the heightened focus upon the source of free actions; (3) the debate over whethermoralresponsibility is an essentially historical concept; (4) recent compatibilist attempts to resurrect the thesis thatmoralresponsibility requires the freedom to do otherwise; (5) (...) the role of the control condition in free will andmoralresponsibility, and finally (6) the debate centering on luck. (shrink)

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This paper explores what the metaphysics of time travel might teach us aboutmoralresponsibility. We take our cue from a recent paper by Yishai Cohen, who argues that if time travel is metaphysically possible, then one of the most influential theories ofmoralresponsibility (i.e., Fischer and Ravizza’s) is false. We argue that Cohen’s argument is unsound but that Cohen’s argument can serve as a lens to bring reasons-responsive theories ofmoralresponsibility into (...) sharper focus, helping us to better understand actual-sequence theories ofmoralresponsibility more generally and showing how actual-sequence theorists should respond to a recent criticism. (shrink)

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Exploring the Illusion of Free Will andMoralResponsibility is an edited collection of new essays by an internationally recognized line-up of contributors. It is aimed at readers who wish to explore the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications.

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Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended (...) to ascribemoralresponsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. (shrink)

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This article identifies a novel challenge to standard understandings ofresponsibility practices, animated by experimental studies of biases and heuristics. It goes on to argue that this challenge illustrates a general methodological challenge for theorizing aboutresponsibility. That is, it is difficult for a theory to give us both guidance in real world contexts and an account of the metaphysical and normative foundations ofresponsibility without treating wide swaths of ordinary practice as defective. The general upshot is (...) that theories must either hew more closely to actual practice than they appear to, or they must provide some normative foundation forresponsibility that does not go through actual practice. (shrink)

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Being White, Being Good focuses on white complicity and white complicity pedagogy. It examines the shifts in our conceptualization of the subject, language andmoralresponsibility that are required for understanding white complicity and draws out implications for social justice pedagogy.

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Recent work in contemporary compatibilist theory displays considerable sophistication and subtlety when compared with the earlier theories of classical compatibilism. Two distinct lines of thought have proved especially influential and illuminating. The first developed around the general hypothesis thatmoral sentiments or reactive attitudes are fundamental for understanding the nature and conditions ofmoralresponsibility. The other important development is found in recent compatibilist accounts of rational self-control or reason responsiveness. Strictly speaking, these two lines of thought (...) have developed independent of each other. However, in the past decade or so they have been fused together in several prominent statements of compatibilist theory. I will refer to theories that combine these two elements in this way as RS theories. RS theories face a number of familiar difficulties that relate to each of their two components. Beyond this, they also face a distinct set of problems concerning how these two main components relate or should be integrated. My concerns in this paper focus primarily on this set of problems. According to one version of RS compatibilism, the role ofmoral sentiments is limited to explaining what is required for holding an agent responsible. In contrast with this, the role of reason responsiveness is to explain whatmoral capacities are required for an agent to be responsible, one who is a legitimate or fair target of ourmoral sentiments. More specifically, according to this view,moral sense is not required for rational selfcontrol or reason responsiveness. There is, therefore, no requirement that the responsible agent has some capacity to feelmoral sentiment. Contrary to this view, I argue that a responsible agent must be capable of holding herself and others responsible. Failing this, an agent’s powers of rational self-control will be both limited and impaired. In so far as holding responsible requiresmoral sense, it follows that being responsible also requiresmoral sense. (shrink)

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Retributive emotions and behavior are thought to be adaptive for their role in improving social coordination. However, since retaliation is generally not in the short-term interests of the individual, rational self-interest erodes the motivational link between retributive emotions and the accompanying adaptive behavior. I argue that two different sets of norms have emerged to reinforce this link: (1) norms about honor and (2) norms aboutmoralresponsibility and desert. I observe that the primary difference between these types of (...) retribution motivators lies in where the normative focus is placed after an offense. In the first form of retribution, the normative focus is on the offended party. In the second, it is on the offender. Next, I show how each class of norms is well tailored to the particular features of the environment in which these forms of retributive behavior emerge. Finally, I consider some philosophical implications of these observations. I suggest that my account, if correct, would pose tough challenges for contemporary philosophical theories ofmoralresponsibility and punishment. (shrink)

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This introductory chapter discusses the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications--including the debate between Saul Smilansky's "illusionism," Thomas Nadelhoffer's "disillusionism," Shaun Nichols' "anti-revolution," and the "optimistic skepticism" of Derk Pereboom, Bruce Waller, Tamler Sommers, and others.

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Moral and legalresponsibility is diminished in neuropsychiatric patients who lack the capacity to use reasoning to determine morally appropriate behavior. Patients with behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), however, develop immoral behaviors as a result of their disease despite the ability to explicitly state that their behavior is wrong. In order to determine whether bvFTD patients should be held responsible for their immoral behavior, we begin by discussing the philosophical concepts of free will, determinism, andresponsibility. Those who (...) believe in both determinism and free will are called compatibilists. We argue that reason-responsiveness, a specific type of compatibilism, cannot fully determineresponsibility in bvFTD patients if reason-responsiveness is considered to be a single, unified concept. Instead, we argue that several different neuropsychological capacities, including many that are impaired in bvFTD patients, contribute to a patient's ability to respond to certain reasons in specific situations. Finally, we propose a new framework for understanding reason-responsiveness, using case examples to illustrate how this model can be used to determineresponsibility in neuropsychiatric patients. (shrink)

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The leading idea of our theory ofmoralresponsibility is thatresponsibility is associated with control. But we contend that there are two distinct kinds of control. Regulative control involves alternative possibilities: it is a kind of dual power of free action. In contrast, guidance control does not, by its nature, involve alternative possibilities. Whereas typically it might be thought that regulative and guidance control go together, the Frankfurt-type cases show that they are separate and distinct sorts (...) of control. And, whereas typically it is thought thatmoralresponsibility requires regulative control, we claim thatmoralresponsibility—for actions, omissions, and consequences—simply requires guidance control. Thus, although we do not believe thatmoralresponsibility requires alternative possibilities, we preserve the traditional association ofmoralresponsibility with control. (shrink)

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PowerMaster was a malt liquor which Heileman Brewing Company sought to market to inner-city blacks in the early 1990s. Due to widespread opposition, Heileman ceased its marketing of PowerMaster. This paper begins by exploring themoral objections ofmoral illusion,moral insensitivity and unfair advantage brought against Heileman’s marketing campaign. Within the current market system, it is argued that none of these criticism was clearly justified. Heileman might plausibly claim it was fulfilling its individual moralresponsibilities.Instead, Heileman’s marketing (...) program must be viewed as part of a group of marketing programs which all targeted inner-city blacks. It is argued that those marketers who target this particular market segment constitute a group which is collectively responsible for theharms imposed by their products on inner-city blacks. Thisresponsibility is reducible neither to individualresponsibility nor to a sharedresponsibility. It constitutes a dimension ofmoralresponsibility to which marketers must pay attention. (shrink)

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This article advances research onmoralresponsibility in organizations by drawing on both philosophical virtue ethics grounded in the Aristotelian tradition and Positive Organizational Scholarship research concerned with virtuousness. The article discusses the very conditions that make possible the realization of virtues and virtuousness, respectively. These conditions ground notions ofmoralresponsibility and the resulting praise or blame on organizational contexts. Thus, we analyze the way individuals and organizations may be ascribed interconnected degrees of retrospective (...) class='Hi'>moralresponsibility and blame as depending on the interplay between the individual conditions leading to virtue and the organizational conditions leading to virtuousness. Based on this analysis, we develop a two‐level account ofmoralresponsibility in organizations that connects individual and organizationalmoralresponsibility through the concepts of virtue and virtuousness. This is further operationalized into practical guidelines to ascribe degrees of individual and organizational blame, which can be used as a tool by managers, policymakers, or industry regulators. (shrink)

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The paper discusses some thematic issues that emerge from the Kantian study of diseases of cognition and volition, taking into consideration his anthropological works and some problems emerging from his main critical works. Starting from the explanation of the taxonomy of the main mental illnesses, some epistemological themes will be illustrated, linked to the fallible relationship between transcendental truths and the empirical dimension of knowledge and to the Kantian concept of error. Subsequently, the study of affects and passions, conceived as (...) illnesses of volition, will show the difficulties linked to a total involvement of reason inmoral action, concerning the shortcomings of human action with respect to the principle ofresponsibility. Finally, the paper will focus on the role of legal imputability in relation tomoralresponsibility and to mental diseases. (shrink)

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Exploring the Illusion of Free Will andMoralResponsibility is an edited collection of new essays by an internationally recognized line-up of contributors. It is aimed at readers who wish to explore the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications.

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This paper examines the account of guidance control given in Fischer and Ravizza's book,Responsibility and Control, with the aim of revising it so as to make it a better account of what needs to be added to having alternatives open to yield a specification of the control condition forresponsibility that will be acceptable to an adherent of the principle that one is responsible for something only if one could have avoided it.

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In popular culture psychopaths are inaccurately portrayed as serial killers or homicidal maniacs. Most real-world psychopaths are neither killers nor maniacs. Psychologists currently understand psychopathy as an affective disorder that leads to repeated criminal and antisocial behavior. Counter to this prevailing view, I claim that psychopathy is not necessarily linked with criminal behavior. Successful psychopaths, an intriguing new category of psychopathic agent, support this conception of psychopathy. I then consider reactive attitude theories ofmoralresponsibility. Within this tradition, (...) psychopaths are thought to be blameless as a result of their pronounced affective deficits. Psychopaths are considered morally blind because they lack themoral emotions that make us sensitive tomoral reasons. I argue that, even if they are morally blind, psychopaths remain open to forms of blame stemming from non-moral reactive attitudes. These reactive attitudes remain appropriate because psychopaths can express hateful, disgusting, or contemptible non-moral values in their judgments. (shrink)

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Frankfurt-style cases are supposed to constitute counter-examples to the principle of alternate possibilities, for they are cases in which we have the intuition that an agent is morally responsible for his action, even though he could not have done otherwise. In a recent paper, Swenson rejects this conclusion, on the basis of a comparison between standard FSCs, which typically feature actions, and similar cases involving omissions. Because the absence of alternate possibilities seems to precludemoralresponsibility in the (...) cases of omissions, and because there is no morally relevant difference between the cases of actions and omissions, Swenson concludes that agents are not morally responsible in standard FSCs. In the present paper, I argue that Swenson’s argument fails because there are at least two very important differences between both types of cases. First, there is a difference about whether agents in such cases actually perform the relevant action: while agents actually perform the relevant action in standard FSCs, they do not in FSCs supposedly involving omissions, for omissions require the possibility to have done otherwise. Second, while the agent’s behavior in standard FSCs actually explain that he performed the relevant action, the agent’s behavior in FSCs including omission actually fails to explain why the agent did not perform the relevant action. Beyond Swenson’s argument, I end up discussing what factors ultimately explain our intuitions about FSCs involving omissions. (shrink)

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Childmoral agency is dismissed in many historical and contemporary accounts based on children's supposed lack or marginal possession of agency-bearing capacities, including reason, deliberation, and judgment, amongst others. Given its prominence in the philosophical canon, I call this the traditional view of child agency. Recent advancements inmoral developmental psychology challenge the traditional view, pointing toward the possession of relevant capacities and competencies formoral and responsible agency in early and middle childhood. I argue that both (...) views—traditional and developmental—underdetermine our practices of holding children responsible in our common interactions. For one, we face significant epistemic barriers in accurately assessing children’s agential status qua possession ofresponsibility-bearing capacities and competencies. Second, overreliance on assessments of individualistic capacities emphasizes an atomistic view of agency at the expense of relational views that are of particular relevance for children as uniquely developing persons. Our practices of holding children responsible and the values that guide these practices in the context of supportive relationships are central to both supporting current and drawing out future responsible agency in childhood and, importantly, provide us with a path to regard children as participants in ourmoral communities, as opposed to mere agents-in-waiting. (shrink)

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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Contributors -- Preface -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Alternate Possibilities andMoralResponsibility -- Chapter 2Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 3 Blameworthiness and Frankfurt's Argument Against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 4 In Defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: Why I Don't Find Frankfurt's Argument Convincing -- Chapter 5Responsibility, Indeterminism and Frankfurt-style (...) Cases: A Reply to Mele and Robb -- Chapter 6 Classical Compatibilism: Not Dead Yet -- Chapter 7 Bbs, Magnets and Seesaws: The Metaphysics of Frankfurt-style Cases -- Chapter 8MoralResponsibility without Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 9 Freedom, Foreknowledge and Frankfurt -- Chapter 10 Source Incompatibilism and Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 11 Robustness, Control, and the Demand for Morally Significant Alternatives: Frankfurt Examples with Oodles and Oodles of Alternatives -- Chapter 12 Alternate Possibilities and Reid's Theory of Agent-causation -- Chapter 13Responsibility and Agent-causation -- Chapter 14 Soft Libertarianism and Flickers of Freedom -- Chapter 15 'Ought' Implies 'Can', Blameworthiness, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities -- Chapter 16 TheMoral Significance of Alternate Possibilities -- Chapter 17 The Selling of Joseph - A Frankfurtian Interpretation -- Chapter 18 Some Thoughts Concerning PAP -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

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Hospital acquired infections (HAIs) are a major threat to patient safety. This paper addresses the following question: given what is known about the causes of and possible interventions on HAIs, to whom or what should themoralresponsibility for preventing these infections be attributed? First, we show how generating robust evidence on the effectiveness of preventive hygiene measures is a complex endeavour and review the existing evidence on the causes of HAIs. Second, we demonstrate that the existing literature (...) on the ethical aspects of infection control has focused onresponsibility at the individual-level. Thirdly, we argue that these accounts do not accommodate systemic factors relevant for HAI prevention. We show that the notion of collectiveresponsibility is useful for making understandable how systemic factors, such as employment conditions in hospitals, are both causally and ethically relevant in infection control. (shrink)

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The tragic crash of Air New Zealand's flight TE-901 into Mt. Erebus in Antarctica provides a fascinating case for the exploration of the notion of corporatemoralresponsibility. A principle of accountability that has Aristotelian roots and is significantly different from the usual strict intentional action principles is examined and defined. That principle maintains that a person can be held morally accountable for previous non-intentional behavior that has harmful effects if the person does not take corrective measures to (...) adjust his ways of behavior so as not to produce repetitions. This principle is then applied to the Mt. Erebus disaster. (shrink)

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The structure of our ethical experience depends, crucially, on a fundamental distinction between what we are responsible for doing or deciding and what is given to us. As such, the boundary between chance and choice is the spine of our conventional morality, and any serious shift in that boundary is thoroughly dislocating. Against this background, I analyze the way in which techniques of prenatal genetic diagnosis (PGD) pose such a fundamental challenge to our conventional ideas of justice andmoral (...)responsibility. After a short description of the situation, I first examine the influential luck egalitarian theory of justice, which is based on the distinction between choice and luck or, more specifically, between option luck and brute luck, and the way in which it would approach PGD (section II), followed by an analysis of the conceptual incoherencies (in section III) andmoral problems (in section IV) that come with such an approach. Put shortly, the case of PGD shows that the luck egalitarian approach fails to express equal respect for the individual choices of people. The paradox of the matter is that by overemphasizing the fact of choice as such, without regard for the social framework in which they are being made, or for the fundamental and existential nature of particular choices—like choosing to have children and not to undergo PGD or not to abort a handicapped fetus—such choices actually become impossible. (shrink)

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In this article, I examine the discourse around evil from the perspective of philosophical anthropology. Through an analysis of the religious symbolism of evil and an associated quest for a complete study of being, I intend in this article to explore fresh ways of establishing the relation between our rhetorical practices of evil andmoralresponsibility. I draw on Ricoeur’s work on the primary symbols of evil, which can be seen as a means for clarifying and extending our (...) understanding of evil andmoralresponsibility. I employ the concept of “the double intentionality of symbol” to advance an expressive-performative model of speaking about the full shape ofmoralresponsibility. At stake in my paper is the possibility of recognizing the need to valorise subordinate resources of knowledge that might prevent us from studying and responding to the elusive reality of evil in intellectual abstraction. (shrink)

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Many of the most pressingmoral problems that face our world are structural problems. Problems of this nature present difficulties for Christian ethicists because structural features tend to undermine conditions for the attribution of individualmoralresponsibility. This essay proposes an approach to this problem that reconciles a social account of sin with individualmoralresponsibility. Two key moves drive this proposal. First, I argue for a sharper distinction between sin andmoral wrongdoing than (...) is common. Second, I argue that both sin and individualmoralresponsibility ought to be understood socially. This proposal addresses deep conceptual problems and points practical efforts in a new direction. (shrink)

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John Martin Fischer has recently critiqued the skeptical view that no one is ever morally responsible for their actions in the basic desert sense and has defended a view he calls semiretributivism. This paper responds to Fischer’s concerns about the skeptical perspective, especially those regarding victims’ rights, and further explains why we should reject his semiretributivism. After briefly summarizing the Pereboom/Caruso view and Fischer’s objections to it, the paper argues that Fischer’s defense of basic desertmoralresponsibility is (...) too weak to justify the kind of retributive blame and punishment he wishes to preserve. It then turns to the issue of victims’ rights and argues that Fischer is mistaken that victims want retribution above all else, and that the public health-quarantine model is better able to deal with the concerns of victims. It concludes by offering two additional objections to Fischer’s semiretributivism. (shrink)

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In "The Illusion of Conscious Will," Daniel Wegner (2002) argues that our commonsense belief that our conscious choices cause our voluntary actions is mistaken. Wegner cites experimental results that suggest that brain processes initiate our actions before we become consciously aware of our choices, showing that we are systematically wrong in thinking that we consciously cause our actions. Wegner's view leads him to conclude, among other things, thatmoralresponsibility does not exist. In this article I propose some (...) ways that traditional philosophical defenders ofmoralresponsibility, both compatibilists and libertarians, might accept Wegner's empirical premise regarding the will but amend their theories so that they may reject his conclusion regardingmoralresponsibility. (shrink)

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It is axiomatic for most African scholars that the colonizers are responsible for the present problems facing the African continent. This is given much credence by Maduabuchi Dukor citing a barrage of issues which in summary pointed to the fact that the legacy of the colonizers to the African continent was ill willed to create chaos and therefore to make the African perpetually dependent on the colonizers. This paper accepts this fact but insists that the African as a human being (...) with free will andresponsibility cannot continue to blame the colonizers when he has choice either to reject the colonial predetermined events or to accept them takingresponsibility for his actions. (shrink)

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The article defends the thesis that in the context ofmoralresponsibility (MR) as it is un­derstood in modern Strawsonian theories of MR, psychological approach has significant advantages in comparison with competing approaches to personal identity problem: bio­logical approach, substantialism and narrative view. In the Strawsonian theories, two gen­erally accepted necessary conditions of the appropriateness of holding someone responsi­ble are the conditions ofmoral agency and agency of action. The article shows that for these conditions to be (...) satisfied a person who is to be hold morally responsible now for some past action should stay not only numerically, but also qualitatively identical in re­spect to his quality of will andmoral capacities. That raises the problem of personal iden­tity over time in the context of MR. It is shown that psychological approach helps to clar­ify the kind of personal identity that is required for the conditions ofmoral agency and agency of action to be satisfied, it is compatible with all the Strawsonian theories of MR and copes with much ofmoral collisions that are usually presented as its problematic con­sequences. It is also shown that the competing approaches to personal identity are either cannot clarify the relevant for MR kind of personal identity, or incompatible with most of the Strawsonian theories of MR and leads tomoral collisions. That gives strong reasons to prefer the psychological approach to personal identity in the context of MR. (shrink)

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This paper returns to the very concept ofmoralresponsibility. Its focus is not on the conditions but on the nature ofmoralresponsibility. First, it introduces the Strawsonian and ledger conceptions ofmoralresponsibility. Next, it contrasts and compares these conceptions. Finally, it evaluates both conceptions and asks which is the right one. Though this article works toward further clarifying the concept ofmoralresponsibility, its conclusion is open-ended.

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In this paper, we motivate, propose and defend the following two conditions as individually sufficient and disjunctively necessary formoralresponsibility: PODMA —originally proposed by Coren, Acta Analytica, 33, 145–159,, now cast as sufficient rather than necessary—and the TWC*, which amends versions presented by Young, 961–969, 2016; Philosophia, 45, 1365–1380, 2017). We explain why there is a need for new necessary and sufficient conditions, how these build on and improve existing ideas, particularly in relation to Frankfurt-style counterexamples and (...) the continuing discussion on their effectiveness, and why PODMA and the TWC* are good candidates. Finally, we defend the proposal against anticipated objections in order to clarify why we think these individually sufficient and disjunctively necessary conditions are plausible and able to inform the ongoing debate on the role of alternate possibilities in the ascription ofmoralresponsibility. (shrink)

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This paper discusses the non-historicist structural ownership condition onmoralresponsibility forwarded by Benjamin Matheson. The structural ownership condition requires that a morally relevant action be grounded or partly grounded in psychological states that are generally coherent. While Matheson does not mean to settle the debate on historicism vs. non-historicism, he does mean to secure the position of the ownership condition against the problems that structuralist theories have faced in the past. This paper will focus on how the (...) ownership condition handles cases of ambivalent agents. Intuitively, ambivalent agents should be responsible for what they do as long as what they do is expressive of their cares or commitments, or their authentic character. At a first glance it appears that the ownership condition follows intuitions about ambivalence, but with a closer look we can see that Matheson has provided a potential counter example to this position. (shrink)

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This paper answers the question ‘what does Buddhism say about free will?’ I begin by investigating Charles Goodman’s influential answer, according to which Buddhists reject getting angry at wrongdoers because they believe that people are not morally responsible. Despite putative evidence to the contrary, Goodman’s interpretation of Buddhism is problematic on three counts: Buddhist texts do not actually support rejection ofmoralresponsibility; Goodman’s argument has the unwanted upshot of undermining positive attitudes like compassion, which Buddhism unambiguously endorses; (...) and his argument overlooks crucial developments in current literature onmoralresponsibility. I propose instead to understand Buddhism as implicating a quality of will theory, on which agents can be morally responsible and their underlying motivation determines whether they are praiseworthy or blameworthy. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Multiple Personality andMoralResponsibility”Stephen R. L. Clark (bio)Theaitetos sleeping is not quite “the same” as Theaitetos waking, any more than Alcibiades drunk is Alcibiades sober. Nor am I, at fifty, quite “the same” as Stephen was when he was five. In one way, my sober fifty-year-old waking self can reasonably disclaimresponsibility for what Stephen did or seemed to do when he was (...) dreaming, drunk, or five years old. Those other Stephens were not “fully responsible,” were not doing what they freely chose because they chose it—though it would be odd to deny that they were acting willingly. Nor am I now very likely to do the things that—drunk, asleep, or five years old—“I” did: in that sense I can disown those actions and never fully “owned” them anyway. Maybe now I can even disown such actions as I once really owned: once I thought them the right thing, and now I do not.On the other hand, as Stephen Braude says, even children (even, he might have added, dogs) are treated “as if” they are “responsible”: as if, that is, they know what they were doing and may be deterred from doing it again. Should Alcibiades sober be made accountable for what “he” did when drunk? Why not, if this deters him from getting drunk again? Perhaps, as Aristotle suggested, those who do wrong when they are drunk should be fined double the amount. Perhaps those who find it difficult not to drink habitually should be fined ten times the amount. What matters is the amount of money that will put them off, that will force them to “takeresponsibility” for their own future lives. People who know that they can’t trust themselves when they are drunk, sexually excited, or driving a fast car must put it out of their own power to be in those positions—and if they can’t do that, then others must do it for them. Free men and women “takeresponsibility,” take charge of their own lives, and wish to be held responsible for what they do and have done. Those who cannot “take control” must, technically, be slaves.There is no point expecting “natural slaves” to take control of their own lives; to measure what they want against what is allowed by society. Such “slaves,” at best, can be controlled by an immediate threat or prize. In a way, it is pointless to punish them, though it may be necessary to imprison, maim, or kill them. Much the same thing may be said of some who are not, strictly, slavish. Should eighty-year-olds be “held responsible” for what they did in their forgotten youth, a world away? They will not be doing it again, and may not, even now, have any greater understanding than the rest of us as to why they did it in the past. “Punishment” in such a case can only [End Page 55] be used to deter others who might follow the same path, to help them to control their lives in ways that do not injure others. Otherwise, we are not strictly speaking of “punishment” at all: perhaps more often than we like to admit, public condemnation, incarceration, or execution is a symbolic elimination of a perceived evil, whether or not we think, or have good grounds for thinking, that the victim is really guilty. The sacrificial victim carries away our anger or unhappiness.Pragmatically, in other words, we punish people for things that—even at the time of the action—they did not control, or which they have long forgotten. For punishment to deter them, they must understand what they are being punished for. For it to reform them, they must accept that the punishment inflicted is just. Those who neither understand nor accept punishment may still be treated harshly, for the sake of others—maimed, or killed, or simply (if we choose to be humane) imprisoned. There are some acts, so Aristotle said, below the level of humanity: such bestiality cannot be punished. It does not follow that the perpetrators should be “free.” Pragmatism permits us to retain the rites of sacrifice, even... (shrink)

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The Principle that freedom is necessary formoralresponsibility 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 ofmoralresponsibility. 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/moralresponsibility debate: if there is no freedom requirement formoralresponsibility, then even if determinism threatens freedom, it does not follow that determinism threatensmoralresponsibility. (shrink)

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In “Freedom and Resentment,” P.F. Strawson (1962) introduced the “reactive attitudes” as attitudes to which we are prone in response to amoral agent’s expressed quality of will. Theorists have since represented a subset of those attitudes as modes of holding agents responsible. To resent another for some wrongdoing – or again, to experiencemoral indignation toward her – is to hold her responsible for the act. To experience guilt, on the other hand, is to hold oneself responsible. (...) Importantly, on many accounts, we can also hold ourselves and others responsible for morally good actions. Though the locution sounds a bit odd, in experiencing gratitude toward my neighbor for helping me move, I, in some sense, “hold him responsible” for his supererogatory act. And just as gratitude is the positive analog of resentment, there would seem to be a positive analog of guilt as well. Theorists have variously referred to this attitude asmoral self-congratulations,moral self-approbation, and (a kind of)moral pride. The point is that, whatever we decide to call it, there is a distinctive attitude by which we hold ourselves responsible – or perhaps better, takeresponsibility – for morally good conduct. It is this attitude that I am concerned to examine here. (shrink)

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Judicial obligation to enforce the law is typically regarded as both unproblematic and important: unproblematic because there is little reason to doubt that judges have a general, if prima facie, obligation to enforce law, and important because the obligation gives judges significant reason to limit their concern in adjudication to applying the law. I challenge both of these assumptions and argue that norms of political legitimacy, which may be extra-legal, are irretrievably at the basis of responsible judicial reasoning.

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