Moral responsibility and free will

What does it mean to be morally responsible? Is determinism true? What is free will and determinism? Philosophers commonly say that ‘ought’ implies ‘can. To justifiably tell someone that she ( morally ) ought to do something, it would also have to be the case that she can do that thing.

The question of free will leads to issues of moral responsibility.

And these two issues are of direct interest to humanism. There are those who believe that determinism is incompatible with free will and moral responsibility. There are two theories of free will that are often discussed in relation to ethical responsibility. The first is usually called “libertarianism,” and it is typical of Arminian theology. Many philosophers have also argued for it, from Epicurus in ancient times to C. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga and many others recently.

In this paper I wish to argue that PAP is ultimately untenable. My conception of responsibility will be one in accordance with which personal responsibility (praise or blame) attaches to those actions which occur in a foreseen way as a natural consequence of the agentâ s intentions to perform the action in question. Probably the best reason for caring is that free will is closely related to two other important philosophical issues: freedom of action and moral responsibility.

The existence of free will seems to be presupposed by the notion of moral responsibility. Most people would agree that a person cannot be morally responsible for actions that he could not help but perform. Ideas about moral responsibility were often a yard stick by which analyses of free will were measure with critics objecting to an analysis of free will by arguing that agents who satisfied the analysis would not, intuitively, be morally responsible for their actions. Jul There is an extreme philosophy, one that is not only not intuitive but jarring. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition.

Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed are seen as deserving credit or blame. If a person with a brain tumor breaks the law, should that person be judged by lower standards? Arguments for free will are based on the subjective experience of freedom, on sentiments of guilt, on revealed religion, and on the universal supposition of responsibility for personal actions that underlies the concepts of law, rewar punishment, and incentive (for additional discussion of free will and determinism, see moral responsibility , problem of). In the philosophical literature on free will and moral responsibility , it is commonly assumed that the latter depends on the former. The assumption is not that the only actions for which we can be morally responsible are actions that we perform freely or of our own free will.

Fundamental beliefs about free will and moral responsibility are often thought to shape our ability to have healthy relationships with others and ourselves. Emotional reactions have also been shown. The free will debate in philosophy is largely concerned with the question of to what extent each of these aspects is, indee essential to the concept of free will. More precisely, at the moment, it is not clear which of these senses is pertinent to a notion of free will that is required for moral responsibility.

A largely unquestioned assumption was that free will is required for moral responsibility , and the central questions had to do with the ingredients of free will and with whether their possession was compatible with determinism. Though the Swede has professed a belief in the inescapability of his death that night, and as such implicitly rejected responsibility for his actions, the sign could be interpreted as in keeping with the Easterner’s commentary on free will and moral responsibility —that is, an acknowledgement that people’s actions determine their fate, since the price they pay is a direct result of their. Editors: Vincent, Nicole A. The fallacious reasoning goes something like this - If free will is required for moral responsibility , we can deny moral responsibility be denying free will.

Naturalists seem to naively accepted the ancient religious arguments that free will is an exclusive property of humans (some religions limit it to males). Free Will and Decision Making. Since moral responsibility is based on the reactive attitudes, Strawson thinks that moral responsibility is compatible with the truth of determinism.

And if free will is a requirement for moral responsibility , Strawson’s argument gives support to compatibilism.