An Analysis of Recent Empirical Data on ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’

Cohen, Yishai

doi:10.1007/s11406-017-9892-2

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…By contrast, they also found that judgments of blame were highly sensitive to considerations about ability, which suggests that commonsense morality might accept a "blame implies can" principle or that judgments of blame may play a modulatory role in judgments of obligation (see Buckwalter and Turri 2015;Chituc et al 2016). These empirical findings lend support to Bruce Waller's claim that the OIC principle is a philosopher's invention infected by mistaken assumptions about moral responsibility (for further discussion, see Kurthy and Lawford-Smith 2015;Mizrahi 2015b;Kurthy, Lawford-Smith, and Sousa 2017;Cohen 2018).…”

Section: Moralitymentioning

confidence: 80%

Moral Responsibility Reconsidered

Caruso

Pereboom²

2022

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This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of responsibility associated with attributability, answerability, and accountability-it distinguishes between basic and non-basic desert conceptions of moral responsibility and considers a number of skeptical arguments against each. It then outlines an alternative forward-looking account of moral responsibility grounded in non-desert-invoking desiderata such as protection, reconciliation, and moral formation. It concludes by addressing concerns about the practical implications of skepticism about desert-based moral responsibility and explains how optimistic skeptics can preserve most of what we care about when it comes to our interpersonal relationships, morality, and meaning in life.

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Section: Moralitymentioning

confidence: 80%

Moral Responsibility Reconsidered

Caruso

Pereboom²

2022

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“…There may also be a concern about study participants considering the moral obligation at a time other that which is specified by the experimenters (Cohen, ; Streumer, ). Leben () attacks earlier studies on these grounds and argues that temporal vagueness in the study designs led participants to make judgments inconsistent with OIC.…”

Section: Objections To Empirical Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent experimental work on “ought” implies “can”

Semler

Henne

2019

Philosophy Compass

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While philosophers generally accept some version of the principle "ought" implies "can," recent work in experimental philosophy and cognitive science provides evidence against a presupposition or a conceptual entailment from "ought"to "can." Here, we review some of this evidence, its effect on particular formulations of the principle, and future directions for cognitive scientists and philosophers.

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“…The loss of moral responsibility also follows from the already presumed loss of free will, at least for those persuaded that a necessary condition for moral responsibility is free will. The loss of moral responsibility also follows from the meta-ethical principle that an 'ought implies a can' (Cohen, 2018), as this principle says one cannot be responsible for E without freely causing E. The connection between no control luck and moral responsibility is also frequently articulated and debated in the moral luck literature (Mickelson, 2019, 224;Hartman, 2019, 3179;Nagel, 1979, 26). As Mele summarizes, "Agents' control is the yardstick by which the bearing of luck on their freedom and moral responsibility is measured" (Mele, 2006, 7).…”

Section: The Luck Objectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Libertarian Free Will and the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection

Moore

2021

Philosophia

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Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that agents (or, agent-involving events) cause actions to occur or not occur: Maddy's decision to get a beer causes her to get up off her comfortable couch to get a beer, though she almost chose not to get up. Libertarian free will notoriously faces the luck objection, according to which agential states do not determine whether an action occurs or not, so it is beyond the control of the agent, hence lucky, whether an action occurs or not: Maddy's reasons for getting beer in equipoise with her reasons to remain in her comfortable seat do not determine that she will get up or stay seated, so it seems beyond her control, hence lucky, that she gets up. In this paper I consider a sub-set of the luck objection called the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection, according to which indeterministic physical processes cause actions to occur or not, and agent's lack control over these indeterministic physical processes, so agent's lack control over, hence it is lucky, whether action occurs or not. After motivating the physical indeterminism luck objection, I consider responses from three recent event-causal libertarian models, and conclude that they fail to overcome the problem, though one promising avenue is opened up.This paper is divided into six parts. In Section One, I minimally define libertarian free will as accepting agential indeterminism, which is the conjunction of indeterminism and agential causation, where agential indeterminism occurs when an agent's reasons, efforts or character indeterministically cause actions. In Sections Two and Three I outline the physical indeterminism luck objection to libertarian free will, which states that sub-agential physical processes in the brain indeterministically cause actions to occur, and agents lack control over these indeterministic physical causes, so agent's lack control over whether their actions occur. If agent's lack control over whether actions occur, the occurrence of these actions is lucky, where this luck jeopardizes free will and moral responsibility. In Sections Four through Six I consider three recent libertarian responses to this objection-Mark Balaguer in Section Four, Chris Franklin in Section Five, and Robert Kane in Section Six. I conclude that none of these models satisfactorily overcomes the physical indeterminism luck objection, though one interpretation of Kane yields a promising avenue of reply.

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An Analysis of Recent Empirical Data on ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’

Cited by 7 publications

References 13 publications

Moral Responsibility Reconsidered

Moral Responsibility Reconsidered

Recent experimental work on “ought” implies “can”

Libertarian Free Will and the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection

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