Zdolność reagowania na racje a odpowiedzialność moralna

Przekład na podstawie: „Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility”, w: Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, red. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 81–106; przedruk w: John Martin Fischer, My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility (Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 63–83. Przekład za zgodą Autora. Autor przedstawia model odpowiedzialności moralnej oparty na faktycznej sekwencji i pojęciu zdolności reagowania na racje, a następnie przeprowadza analogię między tym modelem a opracowanym przez Roberta Nozicka modelem wiedzy opartej na faktycznej sekwencji, oraz wprowadza pojęcie semikompatybilizmu.

Desirability without Desire: Life Extension, Boredom and Spiritual Experience

In response to Bernard Williams’ suspicion that we would inevitably become bored with immortal life, John Martin Fischer has argued that we could continue to enjoy repeatable pleasures such as fine wine, beautiful music, and spiritual experiences. In more recent work on near-death experiences, Fischer has also explored the non-religious meaning of spiritual experiences in more depth. I join this deeper exploration of spiritual experience, and I also join Williams’ critics who question his view that character and desire are needed to explain the desirability of life, while providing additional reason for concern that Williams’ way of valuing life may itself actually be a cause of boredom with life. With an eye to spiritual experience, I indicate how we can distance ourselves even further from Williams’ view, and I suggest how the attitude that life is good but death is not bad emerges from spiritual experience, as expressed in numerous religious and secular spiritual traditions. This lends support to the conclusion that radically extended life is desirable even if not actively desired.

Ability, relevant possibilities, and the fixity of the past

In several writings, John Martin Fischer has argued that those who deny a principle about abilities that he calls ‘the Fixity of the Past’ are committed to absurd conclusions concerning practical reasoning. I argue that Fischer’s ‘practical rationality’ argument does not succeed. First, Fischer’s argument may be vulnerable to the charge that it relies on an equivocation concerning the notion of an ‘accessible’ possible world. Secondly, even if Fischer’s argument can be absolved of that charge, I maintain that it can be defeated by appeal to an independently plausible principle about practical reasoning that I call ‘the Knowledge Principle’. In addition, I point out that Fischer’s own presentation of his argument is flawed by the fact that the principle that he labels ‘the Fixity of the Past’ does not, in fact, succeed in representing the intuitive idea that it is intended to capture. Instead, the debate (including Fischer’s practical rationality argument) should be recast in terms of a different (and stronger) principle, which I call ‘the Principle of Past-Limited Abilities’. The principal contribution of my paper is thus twofold: to clarify the terms of the debate about the fixity of the past, and to undermine Fischer’s ‘practical rationality’ argument for the fixity of the past.

Book Review of John Martin Fischer, Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life

Book review.

Free Will, Resiliency and Flip-flopping

Many philosophers accept with certainty that we are morally responsible but take it to be an open question whether determinism holds. They treat determinism as epistemically compatible with responsibility. Should one who accepts this form of epistemic compatibilism also hold that determinism is metaphysically compatible with responsibility—that it is metaphysically possible for determinism and responsibility to coexist? John Martin Fischer gives two arguments that appear to favor an affirmative answer to this question. He argues that accounts of responsibility, such as his, that are neutral with respect to whether responsible actions are determined have a “resiliency” that counts in their favor. Furthermore, he criticizes libertarians who argue on a priori grounds that determinism cannot coexist with responsibility and who admit that they would retract their argument if determinism were shown to hold; this “metaphysical fl ip-flopping” is said to render their positions implausible. I assess the merits of these arguments.

Does Molinism Reconcile Freedom and Foreknowledge?

John Martin Fischer has argued that Molinism does not constitute a response to the argument that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom. I argue that T. Ryan Byerly’s recent work on the mechanics of foreknowledge sheds light on this issue. It shows that Fischer’s claim is ambiguous, and that it may turn out to be false on at least one reading, but only if the Molinist can explain how God knows true counterfactuals of freedom.

Responsibility and Omissions

Mark Ravizza and John Martin Fischer have previously offered an account of moral responsibility for omissions. On this account, the conditions for such responsibility are parallel in an important way to the conditions for moral responsibility for actions: that is, neither responsibility for actions nor responsibility for omissions requires access to alternative possibilities. This helps in the semicompatibilist project (i.e., to show that moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism). This chapter seeks to address some salient critiques of the account proposed by Ravizza and Fischer, especially in recent work by Randolph Clarke, Carolina Sartorio, and Philip Swenson.