Talk given at the Burn (Paper Summary): Moral Responsibility and Responding to Reasons

Abstract

One prima facie plausible version of compatibilism regarding moral responsibility and determinism holds that an agent is morally responsible in performing some action just in case this action is performed for a reason. (See e.g. Fischer & Ravizza 1999). Intuitive enough: the account rightly says we aren’t responsible for what we do if we are hypnotized, or if we are robots, or if we don’t intend to act. Free will is important because it is important that we can conceive of ourselves as moral agents. So this is an account that, since acting for a reason is a way of being caused, rescues the important part of agency – moral responsibility – from the threat of determinism. But we shall see that any such account is problematic.