Abstract
I seek to reply to the thoughtful and challenging papers by Helen Steward, Saul Smilansky, and John Perry. Steward argues that agency itself requires access to alternative possibilities; I attempt to motivate my denial of this view. I believe that her view here is no more plausible than the view (which she rejects) that it is unfair to hold someone morally responsible, unless he has genuine access to alternative possibilities. Smilansky contends that compatibilism is morally shallow, and that we can see this from the “ultimate perspective.” In reply, I explore the nature of “zooming” arguments, and I contend that even from a somewhat more detached perspective, important features that distinguish us from mere animals can be discerned (even in a causally deterministic universe). Finally, I seek to address Perry’s defense of classical compatibilism. My main objection to his form of compatbilism is that agents must be construed as having a certain kind of “baggage”—even on his own account.
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Notes
The reader will have noted that—for obvious reasons—I expunged the parenthetical material from the book's title!
Fischer (2006a, p. 5).
Steward (2008).
Cartrwright (1999).
Steward (2008).
Steward (2008).
Alfred J. Freddoso’s introductory essay in Freddoso (1988) is an important presentation of (and commentary on) Molina’s views, and it has been highly influential in the subsequent evaluation of those views (and their application to the traditional problem of the relationship between an omniscient God and human freedom. See also Flint (1998). For some recent reflections on Molinism, see: Fischer (forthcoming a).
For a selection of contemporary readings, see Fischer (1989).
Steward (2008).
Steward (2008).
Fischer and Ravizza (1998, pp. 213–214).
Steward (2008).
I have discussed the issue of the relevance of distal causation by an agent with specific intentions in various places, including, most recently, Fischer (forthcoming b).
Smilansky (2008).
Fischer (2006b).
I am indebted here to very helpful comments by Neal Tognazzini.
Compare Thomas Nagel's discussion of skepticism:
Philosophical skepticism [epistemological zooming out] does not cause us to abandon our ordinary beliefs, but it lends them a peculiar flavor. After acknowledging that their truth is incompatible with possibilities that we have no grounds for believing do not obtain—apart from grounds in those very beliefs which we have called into question—we return to our familiar convictions with a certain irony and resignation. Unable to abandon the natural responses on which they depend, we take them back, like a spouse who has run off with someone else and then decided to return; but we regard them differently (not that the new attitude is necessarily inferior to the old, in either case) (Nagel, 1971, reprinted in Benatar, ed., 2004; the quotation is on p. 37 of Benatar 2004).
Perry (2008).
Perry (2008).
Perry (2008).
Fischer (1985).
On another way of developing Ockhamism, God's prior beliefs will have a different sort of baggage: they will turn out to be "hard-type soft facts," that is, soft facts the falsification of which would require that some individual would not have possessed a temporally genuine and nonrelational property at a prior time: Fischer (1986). Again, such facts have baggage that render them out of our power to affect.
Perry (2004, p. 37).
See, for example Fischer (2006a, p. 7).
Similarly, if X is a consequence, then if one has regulative control over X, then one can (in the sense pertinent to the Consequence Argument) bring about X and one can (in the sense pertinent to the Consequence Argument) prevent X from occurring.
Perry (2008).
Perry (2008).
Perry (2008).
The failure to distinguish between the "can" of general ability and the “all-in” sense of “can”—and the notions of possibility expressed by them—vitiates Perry's otherwise incisive discussion in Perry (2008, pp. 241–245).
References
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Acknowledgments
For helpful conversations about the topics of this paper, the author is very grateful to John Perry, Wes Holliday, Neal Tognazzini, and Patrick Todd. The author thanks very much Neal Tognazzini and Dan Speak for comments on a previous draft.
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Fischer, J.M. My Way and Life’s Highway: Replies to Steward, Smilansky, and Perry. J Ethics 12, 167–189 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-008-9029-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-008-9029-8