Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities

by McKenna,Michael

• ISBN13: 9780754656982
• ISBN10: 0754656985
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2016-04-07
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book explores an important issue within the free will debate: the relation between free will and moral responsibility. In his seminal article 'Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility', Harry Frankfurt launched a vigorous attack on the standard conception of that relation, questioning the claim that a person is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise. Since then, Frankfurt's thesis has been at the center of philosophical discussions on free will and moral responsibility. Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities, edited by David Widerker and Michael McKenna, draws together the most recent work on Frankfurt's thesis by leading theorists in the area of free will and responsibility. As the majority of the essays appear here for the first time, Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities offers the newest developments in this important debate.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility

Responsibility and alternative possibilities

Blameworthiness and Frankfurt's argument against the principle of alternative possiblities

In defense of alternative possibilities: why I don't find Frankfurt's argument convincing

Responsibility, indeterminism and Frankfurt-style cases: a reply to Mele and Robb

Classical compatibilism: not dead yet

BBs, magnets, and seesaws: the metaphysics of Frankfurt-style cases

Moral responsibility without alternative possibilities

Freedom, foreknowledge, and Frankfurt

Source incompatibilism and alternative possibilities

Robustness, control, and the demand for morally significant alternatives: Frankfurt examples with oodles and oodles of alternatives

Alternate possiblities and Reid's theory of agent causation

Responsibility and agent causation

Soft libertarianism and flickers of freedom

'Ought' implies `can', blameworthiness, and the principle of alternate possibilities

The moral significance of alternate possiblities

The selling of Joseph - a Frankfurtian interpretation

Some thoughts concerning PAP

Index

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