Fischer and Ravizza on Moral Sanity and Weakness of Will

This essay evaluates John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza'smature semi-compatibilist account of moral responsibility, focusingon their new theory of moderate reasons-responsiveness as a model of``moral sanity.' This theory, presented in Responsibility andControl, solves many of the problems with Fischer's earlier weakreasons-responsiveness model, such as its unwanted implication thatagents who are only erratically responsive to bizarre reasons can beresponsible for their acts. But I argue that the new model still facesseveral problems. It does not allow sufficiently for non-psychoticagents (who are largely reasons-responsive) with localized beliefsand desires incompatible with full responsibility. Nor does it take intoaccount that practical ``fragmentation of the self' over time may alsoreduce competence, since moral sanity requires some minimum level ofnarrative unity in our plans and projects. Finally, I argue that actual-sequenceaccounts cannot adequately explain sane but weak-willed agency. This isbecause without libertarian freedom, such accounts have no way to modelthe perverse agent's determination to be irrational or weak.     

On the role of indeterminism in libertarian free will

In a recent paper in this journal, “How should libertarians conceive of the location and role of indeterminism?” Christopher Evan Franklin critically examines my libertarian view of free will and attempts to improve upon it. He says that while Kane's influential [view] offers many important advances in the development of a defensible libertarian theory of free will and moral responsibility?…?[he made] “two crucial mistakes in formulating libertarianism” – one about the location of indeterminism, the other about its role – “both of which have helped fan the flame of the luck argument”. In this paper, I respond to Franklin's criticisms, arguing that, so far from making it significantly more difficult to answer objections about luck and control, as he claims, giving indeterminism the location and role I do makes it possible to answer such objections and many other related objections to libertarian free will. A central theme of this paper will emerge in my responses: In order to make sense of freedom of will in general and to do justice to the complex historical debates about it, one must distinguish different kinds of control agents may have over events and correspondingly different kinds of freedom they may possess.     

Hume's “Wilt Chamberlain Argument” and taxation

Robert Nozick addresses the idea of egalitarian redistribution in an argument standardly considered original: the “Wilt Chamberlain Argument”. However, this argument (without reference to Wilt Chamberlain) is found in David Hume's AnEnquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, first published in 1751. Placing this argument within a Humean and Hayekian, rather than a Lockean or Kantian, perspective radically changes its import for issues of economic justice. Rather than vindicating the radical individualism of Nozick and other libertarians, applied to our circumstances using Hume's conventionalist and evolutionary account of justice, Hume's Wilt Chamberlain argument vindicates moderate redistribution constrained by the rule of general laws and the goal of fostering innovation and industriousness.     

On the moral significance of contribution to poverty

In a paper from 2005, Gerhard Overland defends the thesis that one's responsibility to render assistance is not affected by having contributed to the situation by causing harm. Overland applies this thesis to the issue of what duties relatively well-off people have in terms of rendering assistance to the global poor and argues for the sub-conclusion that contribution carries little momentum when assessing our duty to assist people in severe need if we can do so at a little cost. In this paper, I discuss Overland's argument in favor of the sub-conclusion and try to show that it is not sound.     

Internal reasons and practical limits on rational deliberation

I argue that agent-causal libertarianism has a strong initial rejoinder to Mele's luck argument against it, but that his claim that it has yet to be explained how agent-causation yields responsibility-conferring control has significant force. I suggest an avenue of response. Subsequently, I raise objections to Mele's criticisms of my four-case manipulation argument against compatibilism.     

The Future of Philosophy

In this article the editor of the Philosophical Quarterly briefly outlines the editorial process at that journal; explains why it is foolhardy to attempt to predict the future of philosophy; and, finally, attempts such a prediction. Drawing on his recent book Ethics for a Broken World, he argues that climate change, or some other disaster, may lead to a broken world where the optimistic assumptions underlying contemporary philosophy no longer apply. He argues that the possibility of a broken world has deep and unexpected implications for philosophy.     

A Critique of Frankfurt-Libertarianism

Most libertarians think that some version of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) is true. A number of libertarians, which I call ‘Frankfurt-libertarians,’ think that they need not embrace any version of PAP. In this paper, I examine the writings of one such Frankfurt-libertarian, Eleonore Stump, for her evaluation of the impact of Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs) to PAP. I show how, contrary to her own claims, Stump does need a PAP-like principle for her account of free action. I briefly argue that this discussion also goes some distance to showing that any Frankfurt-libertarian is in a similar position regarding the need for some PAP-like principle. If I am correct, then Frankfurt-libertarians must either renounce their incompatibilism or concede that FSCs fail to show all PAP-like principles to be false.

Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Autonomy

The libertarian view of freedom has attracted considerable attention in the past three decades. It has also been subjected to numerous criticisms regarding its nature and effects on society. G. A. Cohen's recent book, Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality, continues this attack by linking libertarian views on freedom to their view of self-ownership. This paper formulates and evaluates Cohen's major arguments against libertarian freedom and self-ownership. It contends that his arguments against the libertarian rights definition of freedom are inadequate and need modification. Similarly, Cohen's defense of restrictions on self-ownership on behalf of autonomy are also found wanting. Finally, I argue that the thesis of self-ownership (whether in its full or partial version) ought to be rejected.     

Debunking leftward progress

In earlier work, I argued that observed changes in moral values over human history are best explained as cognitive progress: societies tend over the long term to move closer to the objective moral truth. It is also true that, in recent decades, liberal democracies have moved strongly in the direction of greater government regulation and wealth redistribution. Does this mean that extensive regulation and redistribution are objectively good? I argue that the answer is no; these recent trends are importantly different from earlier examples of moral progress in ways that enable them to be satisfyingly explained without adverting to objective moral correctness.     

Compatibilism,Evil, and the Free-Will Defense

It is widely believed that (1) if theological determinism were true, in virtue of God’s role in determining created agents to perform evil actions, created agents would be neither free nor morally responsible for their evil actions and God would not be perfectly good; (2) if metaphysical compatibilism were true, the free-will defense against the deductive problem of evil would fail; and (3) on the assumption of metaphysical compatibilism, God could have actualized just any one of those myriad possible worlds that are populated only by compatibilist free creatures. The primary thesis of this essay is that none of these propositions is true. This thesis is defended by appealing to a recently proposed novel, acausal, composite, unified theory of free action – the Theory of Middle Freedom – that evades the central problems plaguing traditional theories of metaphysical compatibilism.