Abstract
Moral responsibility and autonomy are closely related structurally and contentwise: they are both members of the “freedom family”. Here I argue that because of these similarities, they are often conflated or at least not carefully separated, and that this has resulted in confusions in important contemporary debates. Autonomy and moral responsibility involve the agent’s identification with the sources of her actions; but autonomy-identification is more robust than responsibility-identification.
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Notes
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- 2.
I do not mean to claim that all of these philosophers themselves have been insufficiently attentive to the distinction; some of them have been explicit in making the distinction. My main point is that a proper evaluation of some of their work will require care in distinguishing moral responsibility from autonomy.
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- 4.
In his 2002 article “Reply to John Martin Fischer,” Frankfurt further elaborated and explained his views on the traditional problem of the relationship between causal determinism and moral responsibility. Here he explained that his goal has been to address certain objections to compatibilism, although he remains officially neutral about the compatibility of causal determinism and moral responsibility insofar as he is not sufficiently confident that causal determination is consistent with being active (rather than passive): p. 29.
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Here I follow Fischer (2012).
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- 9.
For additional argumentation for this point, see Fischer (2012).
- 10.
In his work on Frankfurt, it is obvious that Jan Bransen (1996, 2000) interprets Frankfurt in a similar fashion. Bransen emphasizes the distinction between “identifying with” and “identifying as”, and he contends that the proper interpretation of Frankfurt employs “identifying as”. According to this approach, when an agent identifies as such and such, he picks out such and such as an “alternative of oneself”. So, on this picture, identification is not about selecting a certain designated mental element, but, rather, about defining oneself in a certain way.
- 11.
For a very thoughtful exploration of this (and related issues), see: Andrew Eshleman (2004).
- 12.
Watson (1975); reprinted in Moral Responsibility (1986), ed. Fischer, pp. 81–96. All references will be to the reprinted version.
- 13.
I am indebted to Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin for this suggestion.
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- 15.
Velleman (1992); reprinted in Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (1993), eds. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, pp. 188–210. Subsequent citations will be to the reprinted version.
- 16.
Velleman agrees: see note 11, p. 192 of paper as reprinted in Fischer and Ravizza, eds., Perspectives on Moral Responsibility.
- 17.
I am indebted to Justin Coates for this point.
- 18.
I have benefitted from very helpful comments on previous versions of this paper by Justin Coates and Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin. Also, I delivered the paper at the conference on “Thick (Concepts of) Autonomy” at the University of Münster in October, 2012, and I am especially grateful to helpful discussions on that occasion with Michael Quante, Alfred Mele, James Taylor, and John Christman.
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Fischer, J.M. (2022). What Moral Responsibility is Not. In: Childress, J.F., Quante, M. (eds) Thick (Concepts of) Autonomy. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 146. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80991-1_1
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