Moral anchors and control

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 175-203

  Haji, Ishtiyaque ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84983582092     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.1999.10717510     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. van Inwagen, Peter. 1983. An Essay on Free Will 3Oxford: Clarendon Press.
2. See, for example, Daniel C. Dennett Elbow Room (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1984); Harry G. Frankfurt; ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’ Journal of Philosophy68 (1971) 5–20; and John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (New York: Cambridge University Press 1998).
3. American Philosophical Quarterly, 125 For discussion of such breaks, see Randolph Clarke's ‘Indeterminism and Control,’ 32 (1995,–38; Robert Kane's ‘Two Kinds of Incompatibilism/in T. O'Connor, Agents, Causes, Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press 1995), 115–50; and Alfred Mele's Autonomous Agents: From Self-Control to Autonomy (New York: Oxford University Press 1995), esp. ch.12.
4. 1996. The Significance of Free Will 120–23. New York: Oxford University Press. Difficulties for the traditional variety of agent causation have been raised by Robert Kane, ‘Two Kinds of Compatibilism.’ and Carl Ginet, ‘Freedom, Responsibility, and Agency,’ The Journal of Ethics1 (1997) 85–98; and Randolph Clarke, ‘Agent Causation and Event Causation in the Production of Free Action,’ Philosophical Topics24 (1996) 19–48.
5. Zimmerman, Michael J., 1996. The Concept of Moral Obligation 49New York: Cambridge University Press. As Zimmerman notes, Fred Feldman makes very similar remarks as well. See Feldman's Doing The Best We Can (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1986), 24–5.
6. Lemos, Ramon M., 1980. ‘Duty and Ignorance,’. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 24: 301–12. at 301. H.J. McCloskey also seems to believe that ignorance of facts can be ‘obligation subversive.’ See his ‘Utilitarianism: Two Difficulties,’ Philosophical Studies241973 62–3
7. Vihvelin, Kadri. See ‘Libertarian Compatibilism.’
8. Journal of Philosophy, 828 On Frankfurt-type cases, see, for example, Harry G. Frankfurt ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,’ 66 (1969,–39; and John Martin Fischer, The Metaphysics of Free Will (Oxford: Blackwell 1994).
9. For simplicity, I ignore temporal indices.
10. One has an objective moral obligation as of time t, to do action a, if and only if as of t one ought to do a. In contrast, one has a subjective moral obligation as of t to do a if and only if one believes that, as of t, one ought to do a.
11. I owe this concern to Jarrett Leplin.
12. Doing The Best We Can See, esp. ch. 2.
13. Doing The Best We Can 19 Feldman cautions that, in the event that for every world accessible to agent s, at t, there is a better one accessible too, MO be formulated in this way: s morally ought, as of t, to see to the occurrence of p if and only if p occurs in some world accessible to s at t, and it is not the case that the negation of p occurs in any accessible world as good as (or better than) that one (38).
14. The Concept of Moral Obligation 27–31. Note, with MO's explicit emphasis on intrinsic value, MO is itself a particular substantive theory and so it isn't correct to say that MO is compatible with almost all substantive theories of obligation. Rather, my claim is that a theory structurally like MO with its emphasis on deontic value and not intrinsic value is compatible with almost all substantive theories of obligation. Zimmerman defends such a theory in the Concept of Moral Obligation.
15. I suggest that under the condition that no one has freedom to do otherwise, ‘permissible’ does not follow from ‘not wrong.’
16. 1990. An Essay on Free Will; For arguments for (a), see, for example, van Inwagen's Carl Ginet's On Action (New York: Cambridge University Press and Fischer's The Metaphysics of Free Will. For a recent important defense of Principle K, see Zimmerman's The Concept of Moral Obligation, ch. 3.
17. 1991. 222–4. This sort of response is suggested by David Widerker in ‘Frankfurt on ‘Ought Implies Can’ and Moral Responsibility,’ Analysis51
18. 1998. Moral Appraisability: Puzzles, Proposals, and Perplexities New York: Oxford University Press. See Ishtiyaque Haji, esp. ch. 2.
19. An Essay on Free Will As van Inwagen explains, an agent S, does A and is not causally determined to do A when S does A if and only if S does A, there is a possible world that is exactly like the actual one in every detail up to the moment just prior to the one at which S does A, is governed by the same laws of nature as the actual world, and is such that, in it, S does other than A. See, 136
20. Kane summarizes the crux of the notion of ultimate responsibility in this way: An agent is ultimately responsible for some (event or state) E's occurring only if (R) the agent is personally responsible for E's occurring in a sense which entails that something the agent voluntarily (or willingly) did or omitted, and for which the agent could have voluntarily done otherwise, either was, or causally contributed to, E's occurrence and made a difference to whether or not E occurred; and (U) for every X and Y (where X and Y represent occurrences of events and/or states) if the agent is personally responsible for X, and if Y is an arche (or sufficient ground or cause or explanation) for X, then the agent must also be personally responsible for Y (The Significance of Free Will, 35).
21. Philosophical Explorations. See my ‘Indeterminism and Frankfurt-Type Examples,’ forthcoming in
22. Social Philosophy and Policy See Alfred Mele, ‘Ultimate Responsibility,’ forthcoming in, and ‘Kane, Luck, and the Significance of Free Will,’ forthcoming in Philosophical Explorations.
23. 1996. Autonomous Agents 136–9. See Mele's, ch. 12 and ‘Ultimate Responsibility.’ It should be noted that Mele does not commit himself to the view that indeterministic initiation of action is required for moral responsibility or autonomy. See Autonomous Agents and ‘Soft Libertarianism and Frankfurt-Style Scenarios,’ Philosophical Topics24
24. See Autonomous Agents 216 and ‘Soft Libertarianism and Frankfurt-Style Scenarios.’
25. Autonomous Agents See, ch. 12, and ‘Ultimate Responsibility,’ sec. 4.
26. The Concept of Moral Obligation As Michael Zimmerman explains, if S ought at t to do A at t*, and t is earlier than t*, then S's obligation is remote; otherwise it is immediate. See, 97.
27. Nous, 191 See Clarke's ‘Towards A Credible Agent-Causal Account of Free Will,’ 27 (1993,–203; ‘On the Possibility of Rational Free Action,’ Philosophical Studies881997 37–57; ‘Indeterminism and Control’; and ‘Agent Causation and Event Causation.’
28. Towards, A., Credible Agent-Causal Account’ 197–8; and ‘Agent Causation and Event Causation.’ 22–3.
29. I am very grateful to Randy Clarke, Al Mele, and Michael Zimmerman for their valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. Also, many thanks to members of the philosophy department at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, for their helpful comments on a version of the paper that I presented to them.