Taking the Highway on Skepticism, Luck, and the Value of Responsibility

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Vargas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Normative Significance ◽  
The Way

AbstractI consider some themes and issues arising in recent work on moral responsibility, focusing on three recent books—Carlos Moya's Moral Responsibility, Al Mele's Free Will and Luck, and John Martin Fischer's My Way. I argue that these texts collectively suggest some difficulties with the way in which many issues are currently framed in the free will debates, including disputes about what constitutes compatibilism and incompatibilism and the relevance of intuitions and ordinary language for describing the metaphysics of free will and moral responsibility. I also argue that each of the accounts raise more particular puzzles: it is unclear to what extent Moya's account is properly an account of free will; Mele's account raises questions about the significance of luck for compatibilist theories; and Fischer's account of the value of responsibility as self-expression raises questions about the normative significance of moral responsibility.

J. L. Austin

Philosophy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Longworth
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
John Langshaw Austin ◽  
The University ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Perception Action ◽  
The Way

John Langshaw Austin (b. 1911–d. 1960) was White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He made a number of contributions in various areas of philosophy, including important work on knowledge, perception, action, freedom, truth, language, and the use of language in speech acts. Distinctions that Austin drew in his work on speech acts—in particular his distinction between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts—have assumed something like canonical status in more recent work. His work on knowledge and perception figures centrally in some recent work on these topics, especially with respect to questions about the nature of episodes of seeing and the way they can figure in enabling us to know things about our environments. His work on meaning and truth has played an important role in recent discussions of the extent to which sentence meaning can be accounted for in terms of truth-conditions. His work on action and freedom has played a role in some more recent discussions. However, Austin is often aligned with an approach to philosophical questions that focuses heavily on the way we use ordinary language. Many philosophers who are skeptical about the value of that approach are therefore skeptical about the worth of some of Austin’s work.

Recent Work on Free Will and Moral Responsibility

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Levy ◽  
Michael McKenna
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Recent Work

On Determinism and Human Responsibility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S Gazzaniga
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Left Brain ◽  
The Social ◽  
Genetic Mechanisms ◽  
Human Responsibility ◽  
The Brain ◽  
The Way

In Chapter 12, Michael Gazzaniga tells us: “We are . . . animals with brains that carry out every . . . action automatically and outside our ability to describe how it works . . .. a soup of dispositions controlled by genetic mechanisms, some weakly and some strongly expressed.” He also tells us: “We humans have something called the interpreter, located in our left brain, that weaves a story about why we feel and act the way we do.” Gazzaniga explores the concepts of free will and moral responsibility in light of such facts, arguing that we all remain personally responsible for our actions because responsibility arises out of each person’s interaction with the social layer she is embedded in. “Responsibility is not to be found in the brain,” he concludes, rather it is “a needed consequence of more than one individual interacting with another.”

scholarly journals Free Will and Retribution Today

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Mario De Caro ◽  
Massimo Marraffa
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Responsibility Attributions ◽  
The Way

The paper addresses two issues that have been recently debated in the literature on free will, moral responsibility, and the theory of punishment. The first issue concerns the descriptive project, the second both the substantive and the prescriptive project. On theoretical, historical and empirical grounds, we claim that there is no rationale for fearing that the spread of neurocognitive findings will undermine the ordinary practice of responsibility attributions. We hypothetically advocate two opposite views: (i) that such findings would cause the collapse of all punitive practices; (ii) that, on the contrary, such findings would open the way to more humane forms of punishment, which would be justified on purely utilitarian grounds. We argue that these views are both wrong, since whereas a sound punitive system can be justified without any reference to moral responsibility, it will certainly not improve the humaneness of punishment.

Free will

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galen Strawson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Adult Human ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
The Will ◽  
Freedom Of Action ◽  
The Way

‘Free will’ is the conventional name of a topic that is best discussed without reference to the will. Its central questions are ‘What is it to act (or choose) freely?’, and ‘What is it to be morally responsible for one’s actions (or choices)?’ These two questions are closely connected, for freedom of action is necessary for moral responsibility, even if it is not sufficient. Philosophers give very different answers to these questions, hence also to two more specific questions about ourselves: (1) Are we free agents? and (2) Can we be morally responsible for what we do? Answers to (1) and (2) range from ‘Yes, Yes’ to ‘No, No’ – via ‘Yes, No’ and various degrees of ‘Perhaps’, ‘Possibly’, and ‘In a sense’. (The fourth pair of outright answers, ‘No, Yes’, is rare, but appears to be accepted by some Protestants.) Prominent among the ‘Yes, Yes’ sayers are the compatibilists, who hold that free will is compatible with determinism. Briefly, determinism is the view that everything that happens is necessitated by what has already gone before, in such a way that nothing can happen otherwise than it does. According to compatibilists, freedom is compatible with determinism because freedom is essentially just a matter of not being constrained or hindered in certain ways when one acts or chooses. Thus normal adult human beings in normal circumstances are able to act and choose freely. No one is holding a gun to their heads. They are not drugged, or in chains, or subject to a psychological compulsion. They are therefore wholly free to choose and act even if their whole physical and psychological make-up is entirely determined by things for which they are in no way ultimately responsible – starting with their genetic inheritance and early upbringing. Incompatibilists hold that freedom is not compatible with determinism. They point out that if determinism is true, then every one of one’s actions was determined to happen as it did before one was born. They hold that one cannot be held to be truly free and finally morally responsible for one’s actions in this case. They think compatibilism is a ‘wretched subterfuge…, a petty word-jugglery’, as Kant put it (1788: 189–90). It entirely fails to satisfy our natural convictions about the nature of moral responsibility. The incompatibilists have a good point, and may be divided into two groups. Libertarians answer ‘Yes, Yes’ to questions (1) and (2). They hold that we are indeed free and fully morally responsible agents, and that determinism must therefore be false. Their great difficulty is to explain why the falsity of determinism is any better than the truth of determinism when it comes to establishing our free agency and moral responsibility. For suppose that not every event is determined, and that some events occur randomly, or as a matter of chance. How can our claim to moral responsibility be improved by the supposition that it is partly a matter of chance or random outcome that we and our actions are as they are? The second group of incompatibilists is less sanguine. They answer ‘No, No’ to questions (1) and (2). They agree with the libertarians that the truth of determinism rules out genuine moral responsibility, but argue that the falsity of determinism cannot help. Accordingly, they conclude that we are not genuinely free agents or genuinely morally responsible, whether determinism is true or false. One of their arguments can be summarized as follows. When one acts, one acts in the way one does because of the way one is. So to be truly morally responsible for one’s actions, one would have to be truly responsible for the way one is: one would have to be causa sui, or the cause of oneself, at least in certain crucial mental respects. But nothing can be causa sui – nothing can be the ultimate cause of itself in any respect. So nothing can be truly morally responsible. Suitably developed, this argument against moral responsibility seems very strong. But in many human beings, the experience of choice gives rise to a conviction of absolute responsibility that is untouched by philosophical arguments. This conviction is the deep and inexhaustible source of the free will problem: powerful arguments that seem to show that we cannot be morally responsible in the ultimate way that we suppose keep coming up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we continue to believe that we are ultimately morally responsible.

Free will

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galen Strawson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Adult Human ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
The Will ◽  
Freedom Of Action ◽  
The Way

‘Free will’ is the conventional name of a topic that is best discussed without reference to the will. Its central questions are ’What is it to act (or choose) freely?’, and ’What is it to be morally responsible for one’s actions (or choices)?’ These two questions are closely connected, for freedom of action is necessary for moral responsibility, even if it is not sufficient. Philosophers give very different answers to these questions, hence also to two more specific questions about ourselves: (1) Are we free agents? and (2) Can we be morally responsible for what we do? Answers to (1) and (2) range from ’Yes, Yes’ to ’No, No’ – via ’Yes, No’ and various degrees of ’Perhaps’, ’Possibly’, and ’In a sense’. (The fourth pair of outright answers, ’No, Yes’, is rare, but appears to be accepted by some Protestants.) Prominent among the ’Yes, Yes’ sayers are the compatibilists, who hold that free will is compatible with determinism. Briefly, determinism is the view that everything that happens is necessitated by what has already gone before, in such a way that nothing can happen otherwise than it does. According to compatibilists, freedom is compatible with determinism because freedom is essentially just a matter of not being constrained or hindered in certain ways when one acts or chooses. Thus normal adult human beings in normal circumstances are able to act and choose freely. No one is holding a gun to their heads. They are not drugged, or in chains, or subject to a psychological compulsion. They are therefore wholly free to choose and act even if their whole physical and psychological make-up is entirely determined by things for which they are in no way ultimately responsible – starting with their genetic inheritance and early upbringing. Incompatibilists hold that freedom is not compatible with determinism. They point out that if determinism is true, then every one of one’s actions was determined to happen as it did before one was born. They hold that one cannot be held to be truly free and finally morally responsible for one’s actions in this case. They think compatibilism is a ‘wretched subterfuge…, a petty word-jugglery’, as Kant put it (1788: 189–90). It entirely fails to satisfy our natural convictions about the nature of moral responsibility. The incompatibilists have a good point, and may be divided into two groups. Libertarians answer ’Yes, Yes’ to questions (1) and (2). They hold that we are indeed free and fully morally responsible agents, and that determinism must therefore be false. Their great difficulty is to explain why the falsity of determinism is any better than the truth of determinism when it comes to establishing our free agency and moral responsibility. For suppose that not every event is determined, and that some events occur randomly, or as a matter of chance. How can our claim to moral responsibility be improved by the supposition that it is partly a matter of chance or random outcome that we and our actions are as they are? The second group of incompatibilists is less sanguine. They answer ’No, No’ to questions (1) and (2). They agree with the libertarians that the truth of determinism rules out genuine moral responsibility, but argue that the falsity of determinism cannot help. Accordingly, they conclude that we are not genuinely free agents or genuinely morally responsible, whether determinism is true or false. One of their arguments can be summarized as follows. When one acts, one acts in the way one does because of the way one is. So to be truly morally responsible for one’s actions, one would have to be truly responsible for the way one is: one would have to be causa sui, or the cause of oneself, at least in certain crucial mental respects. But nothing can be causa sui – nothing can be the ultimate cause of itself in any respect. So nothing can be truly morally responsible. Suitably developed, this argument against moral responsibility seems very strong. But in many human beings, the experience of choice gives rise to a conviction of absolute responsibility that is untouched by philosophical arguments. This conviction is the deep and inexhaustible source of the free will problem: powerful arguments that seem to show that we cannot be morally responsible in the ultimate way that we suppose keep coming up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we continue to believe that we are ultimately morally responsible.

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE FOR ALPHABET-SWITCHING IN THE WORKS OF CICERO: COMMON NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 498-516
Author(s):  
Neil O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Reliable Transmission ◽  
Accurate Record ◽  
The Way

Of the hundreds of Greek common nouns and adjectives preserved in our MSS of Cicero, about three dozen are found written in the Latin alphabet as well as in the Greek. So we find, alongside συμπάθεια, also sympathia, and ἱστορικός as well as historicus. This sort of variation has been termed alphabet-switching; it has received little attention in connection with Cicero, even though it is relevant to subjects of current interest such as his bilingualism and the role of code-switching and loanwords in his works. Rather than addressing these issues directly, this discussion sets out information about the way in which the words are written in our surviving MSS of Cicero and takes further some recent work on the presentation of Greek words in Latin texts. It argues that, for the most part, coherent patterns and explanations can be found in the alphabetic choices exhibited by them, or at least by the earliest of them when there is conflict in the paradosis, and that this coherence is evidence for a generally reliable transmission of Cicero's original choices. While a lack of coherence might indicate unreliable transmission, or even an indifference on Cicero's part, a consistent pattern can only really be explained as an accurate record of coherent alphabet choice made by Cicero when writing Greek words.

Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
The Right

This chapter lays out the book’s central question: Assuming agency reductionism—that is, the thesis that the causal role of the agent in all agential activities is reducible to the causal role of states and events involving the agent—is it possible to construct a defensible model of libertarianism? It is explained that most think the answer is negative and this is because they think libertarians must embrace some form of agent-causation in order to address the problems of luck and enhanced control. The thesis of the book is that these philosophers are mistaken: it is possible to construct a libertarian model of free will and moral responsibility within an agency reductionist framework that silences that central objections to libertarianism by simply taking the best compatibilist model of freedom and adding indeterminism in the right junctures of human agency. A brief summary of the chapters to follow is given.

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