Pessimists, Pollyannas, and the New Compatibilism

This chapter examines a number of contemporary compatibilist views on freedom and responsibility. The discussion is organized around themes from Daniel Dennett’s influential compatibilist work, Elbow Room (1984), and in the light of these themes the chapter also considers a number of other related compatibilist views (including the reason-responsive views of John M. Fischer and Mark Ravizza). The incompatibilist pessimism that Dennett challenges is essentially Pascalian and turns, according to Dennett, on analogies and metaphors that are more misleading than illuminating. In reply to Dennett and other like-minded compatibilist optimists, this chapter argues that, whatever the merits of reason-responsive views, we must still confront worries about ultimacy and the limits of agency. Even if the worries here are not Pascalian, they provide no basis for pollyannaish optimism

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.

Agnosticism about Moral Responsibility

Traditionally, incompatibilism has rested on two theses. First, the familiar Principle of Alternative Possibilities says that we cannot be morally responsible for what we do unless we could have done otherwise. Accepting this principle, incompatibilists have then argued that there is no room for such alternative possibilities in a deterministic world. Recently, however, a number of philosophers have argued that incompatibilism about moral responsibility can be defended independently of these traditional theses (Ginet 2005: 604-8; McKenna 2001; Stump 1999: 322-4, 2000 and 2002; van Inwagen 1983: 182-8; and Zagzebski 2000). Incompatibilists of this stripe are generally motivated by the concern that, if determinism is true, we are not genuine or ultimate sources of our actions and, hence, we are not responsible for what we do. Following Michael McKenna (2001), I shall call this view source incompatibilism. While the source incompatibilist's concern is rather vague as stated, it has given rise to a powerful argument against any attempt to reconcile moral responsibility and determinism. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza (1998) have labeled this the Direct Argument, as it avoids the detour of alternative possibilities.