Last Seminary

In Defense of Frankfurt

"One widespread strategy among compatibilists with respect to moral responsibility and determinism employs so-called Frankfurt-Style Cases (FSCs), marshalling them as counterexamples to the so-called principle(s) of alternate possibilities...Since many arguments for incompatibilism with respect to moral responsibility and determinism rely on these very principles, FSCs constitute an important maneuver in the compatibilist's overall strategy. While there are many objections to these compatibilist employments of FSCs, one, if successful, is particularly devastating. Call it the Kane/Widerker Objection (KWO). In Section 1, I briefly indicate the importance of FSCs in contemporary debates about free will and moral responsibility. In Section 2, I exposit the KWO, which takes the form of a dilemma for proponents of FSCs. In Section 3, I examine one response to the KWO by John Martin Fischer (to take the first horn of the dilemma), and I find it lacking. In Section 4, I examine more closely the metaphysics of determinism and success conditions for FSCs. Out of this discussion, I continue in Section 5 to give a case that meets these success conditions. My cumulative argument constitutes a defense of FSCs against the KWO."
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Some Unsound Arguments for Incompatibilism

"In this paper, I contend that several arguments for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility are unsound. In Section 1, I exposit a widely influential argument for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism. The argument relies on the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, a principle famously subject to so-called Frankfurt-style counterexample. In Section 2, I consider a 'direct' argument for incompatibilism. But the transfer principle deployed by the argument will be subject to Frankfurt-style counterexamples too, casting doubt on the argument's validity. In Section 3, I argue that strengthening the transfer principle is not sufficient to avoid these counterexamples. In Section 4, I consider a radically different strategy: an argument for incompatibilism employing a provably valid transfer principle. This strategy, too, will be subject to criticism via Frankfurt-style counterexample. In doing all this, I dismantle an entire class of motivations for incompatibilism about determinism and moral responsibility."
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Moral Responsibility Without Libertarianism

"I shall defend compatibilism in two steps: First, I shall argue that libertarianism is false: no one has libertarian freedom. So, if moral responsibility entails libertarianism, then we are never morally responsible for anything that we do. Second, since I do believe that we are morally responsible for certain of our actions, I shall propose nonlibertarian (i.e., compatibilist) conditions for moral responsibility—a ReflectiveEndorsement view. I shall add to Harry Frankfurt’s compatibilist conditions to make them sufficient for moral responsibility. Then, I shall defend compatibilism against a recent sustained attack by Derk Pereboom."
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Why Christians Should Not Be Libertarians: An Augustinian Challenge

"The prevailing view of Christian philosophers today seems to be that Christianity requires a libertarian conception of free will. Focusing on Augustine’s mature anti-Pelagian works, I try to show that the prevailing view is in error. Specifically, I want to show that—on Augustine’s view of grace—a libertarian account of free will is irrelevant to salvation. On Augustine’s view, the grace of God through Christ is sufficient as well as necessary for salvation. Salvation is entirely in the hands of God, totally independent of anything that any human being might do. And faith, the human response to salvation, is best understood in terms of a compatibilist account of freedom."
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Our Freedom Reconciled with Determinism

"Following on closely from his discussions of causation and of determinism, which are best read first, the blessed David here gives what has become the most famous expression of the doctrine that determinism and freedom are perfectly consistent. Certainly he clarifies the declaration of Thomas Hobbes. He offers, too, a diagnosis of why the controversy about freedom was already an old one in his 18th Century."
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Compatibilism: The State of the Art

"Those interested in the state of the art are invited to read this supplementary section. It surveys six of the positions currently on stage. Each view will receive only a brief discussion. [For other survey-oriented discussions of the state of the art for compatibilism, see the fine essays by Berofsky (2002), Haji (2002), and Russell (2002b) in Kane, ed. (2002).] More advanced treatment is best found in the current journals or directly from the relevant author's book-length treatments."
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Compatibilism

"Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem. This philosophical problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism."
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