This project is primarily exegetical in nature and aims to provide a rational reconstruction of the concept of moral responsibility in the work of Immanuel Kant, specifically in his Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (GR), and Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR). It consists of three chapters – the first chapter interprets the concept of freedom that follows from the resolution to the Third Antinomy in the CPR. It argues that Kant is best understood here to be providing an unusual but cogent, compatibilist account of freedom that the author terms meta-compatibilism. The second chapter examines the GR and CPrR to interpret the theory of practical reason and moral agency that Kant develops in these works. This chapter concludes by evaluating what has been established about Kant’s ideas of freedom and moral agency at that point in the project, identifying some problems and objections in addition to providing some suggestions for how Kantian ethics might be adapted within a consequentialist framework. The third chapter argues that, for Kant, there are two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions (in addition to a compatibilist definition of freedom) that must obtain for an individual to qualify as responsible for her actions.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University (Division of Society, Culture, Media & Philosophy, Dept. of Philosophy), 2006. / Bibliography: p. 218-228. / Free will and nature -- Metaphysical free will -- Incompatibilism -- Causal closure of the physical domain -- Free will and physics -- Free will within nature. / There is more than one problem of free will. Many philosophers approach the free will question seeking a foundation for systems of ethics or a justification for societal practices of praise and blame. ... Rather, I address the metaphysical question of how to accommodate free will within the natural world. I conclude that the natural world is not identical with the physical world and that it must contain entities or influences that are not physical in any current sense of that word. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / x, 228 p

This thesis aims to provide a coherent account of free will and practical grounds to prefer it. Its goal is to develop a pragmatic understanding of agency by which to hold individuals morally accountable. The paper begins with a critique of P.F. Strawson, whose seminal paper “Freedom and Resentment” bypasses the question of free will altogether in its claims about morality. Subsequently, it proceeds to a defense of incompatibilism that traces an argument through the existing literature. From this position, it claims that neither Strawson nor traditional compatibilists can provide an account of morality that is reliable or well enough defined to play the role required of it. Instead of being left with hard determinism, however, Kant opens the door to a metaphysics that exists outside of our epistemological limits. Rather then derive an account based on this metaphysics, the necessary characteristics of a free will are derived from an account of morality and proven to be possible using Kantian epistemology. The paper concludes by positing three distinct reasons to prefer a free will framework to a deterministic framework, provided our inability to answer the question empirically. These draw on Pascal’s Wager, William James’ “The Will to Believe,” and inference to the best explanation.

abstract: This dissertation puts forth an account of moral responsibility. The central claim defended is that an agent's responsibility supervenes on the agent's mental states at the time of the action. I call the mental states that determine responsibility the agent's quality of will (QOW). QOW is taken to concern the agent's action, understood from an internal perspective, along with the agent's motivations, her actual beliefs about the action, and the beliefs she ought to have had about the action. This approach to responsibility has a number of surprising implications. First, blameworthiness can come apart from wrongness, and praiseworthiness from rightness. This is because responsibility is an internal notion and rightness and wrongness are external notions. Furthermore, agents can only be responsible for their QOW. It follows that agents cannot be responsible for the consequences of their actions. I further argue that one's QOW is determined by what one cares about. And the fact that we react to the QOW of others with morally reactive emotions, such as resentment and gratitude, shows that we care about QOW. The reactive attitudes can therefore be understood as ways in which we care about what others care about. Responsibility can be assessed by comparing one's actual QOW to the QOW one ought to have had. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Philosophy 2011

This project is primarily exegetical in nature and aims to provide a rational reconstruction of the concept of moral responsibility in the work of Immanuel Kant, specifically in his Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (GR), and Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR). It consists of three chapters – the first chapter interprets the concept of freedom that follows from the resolution to the Third Antinomy in the CPR. It argues that Kant is best understood here to be providing an unusual but cogent, compatibilist account of freedom that the author terms meta-compatibilism. The second chapter examines the GR and CPrR to interpret the theory of practical reason and moral agency that Kant develops in these works. This chapter concludes by evaluating what has been established about Kant’s ideas of freedom and moral agency at that point in the project, identifying some problems and objections in addition to providing some suggestions for how Kantian ethics might be adapted within a consequentialist framework. The third chapter argues that, for Kant, there are two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions (in addition to a compatibilist definition of freedom) that must obtain for an individual to qualify as responsible for her actions.

Student Number : 9112588A - MA Dissertation - School of Social Sciences - Faculty of Humanities / There is a concern that causal determinism might render free-will impossible. I compare some different perspectives, namely Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, Libertarianism, and Hard Determinism, and conclude that Hard Determinism is correct—we lack free-will. To further bolster the case, I consider the work of Libet, who has found neuropsychological evidence that our brains non-consciously cause our actions, prior to our being aware of it. Thus we are also not choosing consciously. I then consider Dennett’s work on the role of the conscious self. I defend his model—of a fragmented self—which could not cause our actions. Finally I argue that many things that free-will purportedly provides, eg., justification for the penal system and reactive attitudes, can be reconstructed without free-will. I then end with some speculations about why people still want free-will.

No description available.

No description available.

The objective was to examine students’ attitudes versus the concepts of free will and determinism, and to juxtapose these to anxiety and religiosity.An online survey was filled in by 162 Swedish students aged between 18 and 20 in an upper secondary high school. To measure the concepts of free will and determinism the Paulhus & Carey FAD-Plus scale (2011) has been used. Anxiety was measured with two types of the short STAI-index.The factor analysis did not support the idea of an extra division of the original FAD-plus index into the factors ‘free will without moral responsibility’ and the fac-tor ‘moral responsibility’. Some minor sex differences were notices in that females scored higher on fatalistic determinism as well as anxiety. The correlation be-tween free will and scientific determinism were very small negative and not sig-nificant, implying that the two concepts are compatible to at least some respond-ents. The same week correspondence were noticed between scientific determin-ism and moral, showing that the dichotomy between the concepts having low support among students.The traditionally seen opposite concepts of fatalistic and scientific determin-ism were surprisingly positively and significant corresponding.Conclusion of the survey results support the view that the question on free will and determinism is more complex than a simple two way street as shown by Paulhus & Carey (2011) and Nichols & Knobe (2007). Moral responsibility is strongly connected to free will, but is not negatively correlated to determinism showing an interesting paradox in the traditional view of these concepts.

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2018-11-01T11:28:26Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tania Schneider da Fonseca_.pdf: 1196065 bytes, checksum: 6650454e54f549cdd2039dee6b94da86 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-11-01T11:28:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tania Schneider da Fonseca_.pdf: 1196065 bytes, checksum: 6650454e54f549cdd2039dee6b94da86 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-08-27 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Quais são as condições necessárias e suficientes para responsabilizar moralmente o comportamento do agente? Várias respostas a essa pergunta têm sido dadas na história recente da filosofia. De um lado, diversos filósofos acreditam que o critério especificando essas condições poderia ser compatível com a tese determinista. Por outro lado, há aqueles que negam que esse critério possa conciliar-se com a visão de um mundo determinista. Tradicionalmente, a liberdade enquanto uma capacidade para agir de outro modo é defendida como uma condição necessária para a responsabilidade moral. Com o seu artigo de 1969, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility”, Harry Frankfurt mudou o curso do debate sobre o problema da vontade livre. Ele forneceu exemplos hipotéticos, por meio de experimentos de pensamento, de agentes que, conforme ele argumentou, embora não pudessem ter agido de outro modo, ainda assim seriam moralmente responsáveis pelas suas ações. O artigo de Frankfurt entusiasmou muitos filósofos, destacadamente John Fischer, a repensar o problema da responsabilidade moral. Para Fischer, Frankfurt teria mostrado que o debate não diz mais respeito ao problema de demonstrar a compatibilidade entre liberdade e determinismo, mas, sim, à questão da compatibilidade da responsabilidade moral com o determinismo. Para lidar com essa questão, e qualificar a posição de Frankfurt, Fischer desenvolve o que ele denomina de uma posição semicompatibilista. Essa posição responderia às objeções incompatibilistas, assim mostrando a compatibilidade da responsabilidade moral com o determinismo. Esse trabalho é dedicado a um estudo dessa posição. A tese defendida é a de que o semicompatibilismo proposto por Fischer de fato responde às principais objeções dos incompatibilistas, e é mais vantajosa se comparada à posição compatibilista tradicional, que defende que a capacidade para agir de outro modo seria uma condição necessária para a responsabilidade moral. / What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the moral responsible agency? Many answers to this question have been given in the recent history of philosophy. On the one side, some philosophers believe that the criterion specifying these conditions could be compatible with the determinist’s worldview. On the other side, there are those who deny that this criterion and the determinist’s position could be ever reconciliated. Traditionally, freedom as a capacity to do otherwise has been defended as a necessary condition for moral responsibility. In 1969, when “Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility” (1969) was published, Harry Frankfurt changed the course of the discussion about the free will problem. Frankfurt showed, through some thought experiments, agents that, he argued, were moral responsible for their actions even though they could not have acted otherwise. Frankfurt’s essay pushed several philosophers, remarkably John Fischer, to rethink the problem of moral responsibility. For Fischer, Frankfurt showed that the debate should not be about the compatibility between freedom and determinism, but rather should address the question of whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. To deal with this problem, and to further qualify Frankfurt’s position, Fischer develops, as he calls it, a semicompatibilist position. This position, he claims, successfully address the objections from the incompatibilists, thus showing that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. This study is an investigation of this position. The thesis defended is that the semicompatibilism proposed by Fischer does indeed answers the main incompatibilist’s objections, and it is better than the traditional compatibilist position, which argues that the capacity to do otherwise is a necessary condition for moral responsibility.