Taking Luck Seriously

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Michael Zimmerman, Professor and Philosophy Pre-Law Concentration Advisor (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: Suppose someone were to say to you, "Look, I grant that moral responsibility requires freedom and that freedom requires alternate possibilities. Nonetheless, it's perfectly possible for someone to be morally responsible even in the absence of alternate possibilities." You would be mystified. You would, in G. E. Moore's1 gentle phrase, "be entitled to laugh at him and to distrust his future statements" about moral responsibility (ibid., p. 13). So, too, if he were to say, "I grant that moral responsibility requires freedom and that freedom is incompatible with causal determinism. Still, it's perfectly possible for someone to be morally responsible even if determinism is true."

Additional Information

Publication
Journal of Philosophy
Language: English
Date: 2002
Keywords
Philosophy, Luck, Determinism

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