Moral responsibility and omissions

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 57, Issue 226, 2007, Pages 56-67

  Byrd, Jeremy ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60949235475     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.468.x     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. J-M. Fischer and M. Ravizza, 'Responsibility and Inevitability', Ethics, 101 (1991), pp. 258-78, at p. 261
2. Responsibility and Control: a Theory of Moral Responsibility, hereafter RC (Cambridge UP, 2000), p. 125
3. R. Clarke, 'Ability and Responsibility for Omissions', Philosophical Studies, 73 (1994), pp. 195-208, at p. 203
4. A similar view is defended by Alison McIntyre in 'Compatibilists Could Have Done Otherwise: Responsibility and Negative Agency', Philosophical Review, 103 (1994), pp. 453-88
5. The same criticism of Clarke's and McIntyre's accounts is advanced by Fischer and Ravizza, RC, pp. 141-3
6. For this type of response, see, e.g., P. van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 166-80
7. For this second type of response, see, e.g., R. Kane, The Significance of Free Will (Oxford UP, 1996), pp. 142-5
8. D. Widerker, 'Libertarianism and Frankfurt's Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities', Philosophical Review, 104 (1995), pp. 227-46
9. D. Speak, 'Fanning the Flickers of Freedom', American Philosophical Quarterly, 39 (2002), pp. 91-105
10. RC, pp. 134-5
11. For criticism of this formulation, see A.R. Mele, 'Reactive Attitudes, Reactivity, and Omissions', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 61 (2000), pp. 447-52. Fischer and Ravizza's reply can be found in the same volume at p. 472
12. Fischer and Ravizza note that Kaplan raised this example in conversation with them: RC, p. 138, n. 22
13. H.G. Frankfurt, 'Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility', Journal of Philosophy, 66 (1969), pp. 829-39, at p. 836, note 4
14. This is a conclusion which Frankfurt also concedes, in 'An Alleged Asymmetry between Actions and Omissions', Ethics, 104 (1994), pp. 620-3, at pp. 622-3
15. I am not directly addressing responsibility for choices here. Should events such as blushes, which serve as triggering events in many Frankfurt-type examples concerning choices, count as merely natural events, or not? Space does not allow me to pursue this problem
16. See van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will, pp. 182-3
17. and 'The Incompatibility of Responsibility and Determinism', in M. Bradie and M. Brand (eds), Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy 2: Action and Responsibility (Bowling Green State UP, 1980), pp. 30-7
18. This indirect defence is similar to the response Fischer and Ravizza offer to another objection raised by van Inwagen: see RC, pp. 95-101