Abstract
Appealing to Frankfurt examples, Peter French concurs that persons can be morally blameworthy for what they have done even if they could not have done otherwise (the “lesson”). However, if “ought not” implies “can refrain from” and “ought not” is equivalent to “impermissible,” it follows that moral impermissibility requires avoidability. But, then, if the popular principle that one is blameworthy for an action only if it is impermissible for one to do it is true, the lesson should be renounced. In this paper, I suggest that French has the resources to reject this popular principle and, hence, can escape this conundrum. I then give additional reasons against this principle by drawing on some of French’s insightful thoughts about heroism and responsibility. Finally, I introduce cases in which, owing to one’s character, on various occasions one cannot do otherwise. These cases are used as a springboard to explore, briefly, whether determinism or its falsity (indeterminism) threaten obligation.
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Notes
- 1.
I say “presumably” because it seems that French (1992, 119) accepts the principle that “ought” implies “can.”
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
As quoted by Peter van Inwagen (1983, 63–64).
- 5.
For our purposes, take determinism to be the thesis that at any instant there is exactly one physically possible universe (van Inwagen 1983, 3).
- 6.
I set aside agent-causal libertarian views although I have argued that such views also succumb to the problem of luck. See, e.g. Haji (2012a).
- 7.
See also, Mele (2006).
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Zachary Goldberg for the kind invitation to contribute to this volume, and for his useful comments. This paper was written during my tenure of a 2015–2016 Calgary Institute for the Humanities (at the University of Calgary) grant. I am most grateful to the Institute for its support.
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Haji, I. (2017). Reflections on Obligation and Blameworthiness. In: Goldberg, Z. (eds) Reflections on Ethics and Responsibility. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50359-2_6
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