Taking Free Will Skepticism Seriously

Vilhauer, Benjamin

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9213.2012.00077.x

Cited by 23 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Ben Vilhauer in particular has done much to address the consequences of our not knowing that we have free will. As well the citation above, see also his , and .…”

mentioning

confidence: 60%

Free Will Agnosticism

Kearns

2013

Nous

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“…Ben Vilhauer in particular has done much to address the consequences of our not knowing that we have free will. As well the citation above, see also his , and .…”

mentioning

confidence: 60%

Free Will Agnosticism

Kearns

2013

Nous

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“…In a number of papers, Benjamin Vilhauer ( 2009 , 2012 ) has argued for an analogous conclusion on parallel grounds. Vilhauer argues that anyone who takes the possibility of free will scepticism seriously, where taking free will scepticism seriously is thinking that such scepticism is intellectually respectable enough to be worth engaging with, is committed to thinking that harsh punishment is unjustified.…”

Section: Sceptical Worriesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Responsibility as an Obstacle to Good Policy: The Case of Lifestyle Related Disease

Levy

2018

Bioethical Inquiry

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There is a lively debate over who is to blame for the harms arising from unhealthy behaviours, like overeating and excessive drinking. In this paper, I argue that given how demanding the conditions required for moral responsibility actually are, we cannot be highly confident that anyone is ever morally responsible. I also adduce evidence that holding people responsible for their unhealthy behaviours has costs: it undermines public support for the measures that are likely to have the most impact on these harms. I claim that these two facts—the fact that we cannot be highly confident that anyone is morally responsible and the fact that holding people responsible for their unhealthy behaviours has costs—interact. Together they give us a powerful reason for believing, or acting as if we believed, that ordinary people are not in fact responsible for their unhealthy behaviours.

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“…Offenders receive long prison sentences in an environment designed to be punitive rather than rehabilitative; some crimes might even be punishable by death. Should we have Harsh Retributivism? Ben Vilhauer, Gregg Caruso, Michael Louis Corrado and Elizabeth Shaw have all advanced versions of an epistemic argument against Harsh Retributivism [1][2][3][4][5][6]. I will primarily focus on Vilhauer and Caruso; they have full arguments that I believe are on the right track.…”

Section: The Epistemic Argument Against Harsh Retributivismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retributivism, Justification and Credence: The Epistemic Argument Revisited

Jeppsson

2020

Neuroethics

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Harming other people is prima facie wrong. Unless we can be very certain that doing so is justified under the circumstances, we ought not to do it. In this paper, I argue that we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist criminal justice systems for this reason; we cannot be sufficiently certain that the harm is justified. Gregg Caruso, Ben Vilhauer and others have previously argued for the same conclusion; however, my own version sidesteps certain controversial premises of theirs. Harsh retributivist criminal justice can only be morally right if the following three propositions are true: Moral responsibility exists, retributivism is right, and we can find out how much punishment offenders deserve for their crimes. Suppose that we initially assign a high credence to each of the three propositions; I assume for the sake of argument that there are good arguments in support of each. Nevertheless, these arguments ultimately depend on intuitions. Since we have philosophical peers whose intuitions differ from ours, we ought to downgrade our credence in each. However, even slightly less credence in each proposition means far less credence in a conjunction of all three. Since the stakes are high and there are morally safer options for a criminal justice system, we ought to dismantle harsh retributivist ones.

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Taking Free Will Skepticism Seriously

Cited by 23 publications

References 16 publications

Free Will Agnosticism

Free Will Agnosticism

Responsibility as an Obstacle to Good Policy: The Case of Lifestyle Related Disease

Retributivism, Justification and Credence: The Epistemic Argument Revisited

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