An apparently increasing number of philosophers take free will skepticism to pose a serious challenge to some of our practices. This must seem odd to many-why should anyone think that free will skepticism is relevant for our practices, when nobody seems to think that other canonical forms of philosophical skepticism (for example, skepticism about induction or other minds) are relevant for our practices? Part of the explanation may be epistemic, but here I focus on a metaethical explanation. Free will skepticism is special because it is compatible with 'basic moral reasons'-moral reasons acknowledged by all mainstream ethicists-and other minds and induction skepticism are not. One example is our reason not to intentionally harm others. Practical seriousness about other minds and induction skepticism undermines this reason, but practical seriousness about free will skepticism only undermines a potential overrider of this reason, that is, the reason of retribution.
Ben Vilhauer I.IntroductionKant's mature moral philosophy is incompatibilistic about determinism and moral Kant thinks he can hold this position because of his distinction between agents qua phenomena, and qua noumena: agents qua noumena are 'outside' the deterministic empirical causal series, so to speak, and they ground the causality of agents qua phenomena. Kant thereby makes room for agents to spontaneously originate empirical causal sequences, and to have alternative possibilities of action. He holds that such freedom is necessary if agents are to be held morally responsible, a view which compatibilists reject. Kant's goal in this is to preserve what he takes to be our everyday incompatibilist conception of moral responsibility, despite the truth of determinism. Said differently, Kant uses the metaphysics of the agent qua noumenon to undermine the significance of determinism for moral responsibility. According to Kant, his theory makes it possible for every agent to say of every unlawful action he perpetrated, that he could have omitted it, although as appearance it is sufficiently determined in the past and, so far, is inevitably necessary; for…he attributes to himself, as cause independent of all sensibility, the causality of those appearances. (2C98) 3 conditions is resolved by appealing to a noumenal foundation, this idea alone can at best lead us to posit a single noumenal foundation for the single global causal series of nature, not individual noumenal foundations for individual phenomenal agents. (Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1992, pp. 517-18.) But this more complex picture is integral to Kant's view of free will. An inference to this picture is only possible if we begin from the 'fact of reason'. Thus for the sake of philosophical clarity, it makes most sense to see Kant's theory of free will as depending directly on the Second Analogy and the 'fact of reason', rather than on the more general conceptions at play in the Third Antinomy. It should be emphasized that a 'strong' interpretation of the Second Analogy is endorsed in this paper, i.e. an interpretation according to which the Second Analogy implies that all events are governed by causal laws. Some commentators, among them Henry Allison, who will be discussed later in this paper, reject this, and instead adopt a 'weak' interpretation according to which the Second Analogy implies particular relations of causal necessitation, but not causal laws. But as an interpretation of Kant, this view is difficult to sustain, in view of Kant's A91/B94 claim that the concept of cause 'strictly requires that something, A, should be such that something else, B, follows from it necessarily and in accordance with an absolutely universal rule.' For more on this issue, see Michael Friedman, 'Causal Laws and the Foundations of Natural Science', in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, edited by Paul Guyer (Cambridge, 1992). 3 References to Kant's texts will be made as follows: materi...
This paper is about an asymmetry in the justification of praising and blaming behavior which free will theorists should acknowledge even if they do not follow Wolf and Nelkin in holding that praise and blame have different control conditions. That is, even if praise and blame have the same control condition, we must have stronger reasons for believing that it is satisfied to treat someone as blameworthy than we require to treat someone as praiseworthy. Blaming behavior which involves serious harm can only be justified if the claim that the target of blame acted freely cannot be reasonably doubted. But harmless praise can be justified so long as the claim that the candidate for praise did not act freely can be reasonably doubted. Anyone who thinks a debate about whether someone acted freely is truth-conducive has to acknowledge that reasonable doubt is possible in both these cases.
In contemporary free will theory, a significant number of philosophers are once again taking seriously the possibility that human beings do not have free will, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. (Free will is understood here as whatever satisfies the control condition of moral responsibility.) Free will theorists commonly assume that giving up the belief that human beings are morally responsible implies giving up all our beliefs about desert. But the consequences of giving up the belief that we are morally responsible are not quite this dramatic. Giving up the belief that we are morally responsible undermines many, and perhaps most, of the desert claims we are pretheoretically inclined to accept. But it does not undermine desert claims based on the sheer fact of personhood. Even in the absence of belief in moral responsibility, personhood-based desert claims require us to respect persons and their rights. So personhood-based desert claims can provide a substantial role for desert in free will skeptics’ ethical theories.
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