This thesis explores Aristotle's theories of habituation and voluntariness and their impact on his ability to attribute moral responsibility to agents. Ultimately, I conclude that Aristotle should drop his assertions that we are morally responsible for our states of character in order to accommodate a compatibilist view that will still allow him to attribute moral responsibility for action to agents.

In this thesis, I defend compatibilism from all manipulation arguments. Manipulation arguments are supported by control cases. These cases purport to be counter-examples to all plausible current compatibilist conditions on moral responsibility. Some compatibilists – historicists – have argued that manipulation arguments can be undermined by endorsing the view that an individual’s moral responsibility for her actions is, in some sense, sensitive to her history. In Part One, I first argue that historicism is without motivation and is untenable. I then sketch a form of compatibilism – the structural-narrative view. This view differs from standard compatibilist accounts because it not only makes clear the synchronic ‘ownership’ (the free will or control condition), but also the diachronic ‘ownership’ conditions (normally taken to be personal identity) on moral responsibility. Both conditions have a narrative component, which I draw from narrative views of personal identity. These conditions insulate my structural-narrative from the manipulation arguments that motivate historicism, thereby providing compatibilists with a tenable alternative to historicism. In Part Two, I argue that the remaining manipulation arguments do not show that compatibilism is false. I first clarify the structure of manipulation arguments. In particular I argue that compatibilists ought to focus their efforts on showing that the control cases that support manipulation arguments are not in fact counter-examples to the compatibilist conditions on moral responsibility. I then distinguish two types of control case: threatening and unthreatening. I argue that the remaining threatening control cases only seem to be counter-examples because of ambiguities in their descriptions that result in us misidentifying the locus of moral responsibility in those cases; once these ambiguities are clarified, the non-responsibility judgement elicited by those cases soon dissipates. I then present three related to arguments to support the claim that unthreatening cases are not counter-examples the compatibilist conditions on moral responsibility; hence I conclude that manipulation arguments do not show that compatibilism is false.

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I sketch a more-or-less compatibilist solution to the free will/determinism problem, defining free will as that which an agent must exhibit in order to be legitimately held accountable for his/her actions. Based on this definition it would seem that, judging by fairly widespread social conventions, free will consists in a series of capacities, such as the ability to respond rationally to information. I argue that these capacities are not undermined by the potential truth of universal determinism, but I would like. not to settle for a compatibilism that stops at the recognition of that fact. After all, why should we feel obliged to reconcile our free will with metaphysical determinism? I argue that the deterministic character of the universe is not so much a discovery that has been made by scientists as it is a methodological presupposition that is mandatory for doing science in the first place. With that in mind, determinism is, at its core, an epistemic notion and not an ontological one. My guiding idea is that free will exists insofar as it is a category mistake to conceive of the futures of intentional systems (like human beings) as facts of nature. I take "nature" to be that which is the subject of scientific research and therefore necessarily objective, where a fact's being objective consists in it being the way it is regardless of what anyone thinks about it. The future of any individual does not meet these criteria (that is, it is not a fact of nature) because one's future (unlike, say, the chemical composition of water) is not something that is the way it is regardless of what one thinks about it. We form different attitudes toward different futures and these attitudes contribute to our behavior. Since "deterministic" is a property predicated of events in nature, it is a category mistake to apply the term outside of that domain.

In this dissertation, I develop an interpretation of Leibniz on modality and free will. I do so for two reasons: first, I am attempting to revitalize the notion that Leibniz is the predecessor of contemporary modal semantics; second, I am using Leibniz's philosophical system to motivate responses to contemporary philosophical issues in modality and free will. In Chapter One, I argue that Leibniz's basic principles are plausible theoretical tools that ought to be used by contemporary philosophers in developing their philosophical systems. In Chapter Two, I develop Leibniz's views on the nature of individuals. I argue that possible individuals are actually of the same sort as individuals in the actual world--possible individuals and actual individuals are complete creatures that do not differ ontologically from each other. In Chapter Three, I argue that Leibniz's views on possible individuals make him a modal realist and compare his view with contemporary modal realism in order to support this claim. I also argue that counterparts avoid many of the problems set for them by contemporary thinkers; I end with the ways that Leibniz's view differs from contemporary accounts. In Chapter Four, I argue that Leibniz provides two different analyses of modality. The first is an infinite analysis account; the second is a possible worlds account. I argue that these two accounts are compatible and amount to two different descriptions of the same theory of modality. I address objections to each account in order to show this. In Chapter Five, I argue that Leibniz is a compatibilist about free will. Importantly, I argue that it is precisely Leibniz's account of modality that allows for this compatibilism, as against a necessitarian like Spinoza. I then use Leibniz's account to challenge contemporary libertarians about free will on the basis of the principle of sufficient reason. I also show how Leibniz can help semicompatibilism avoid a worry concerning necessitarianism. At the end of the day, I claim that adopting elements of Leibniz's system can help us better understand modality and the freedom of the will and can be an aid in furthering contemporary philosophical theory.

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.

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.

In this paper I consider a recent objection to compatibilism—the manipulation argument. This argument relies on two plausible principles: a manipulation principle that holds that manipulation precludes free will and moral responsibility, and a ‘no difference principle’ that holds that manipulation is relevantly similar to determinism. To respond to this argument, the compatibilist must reject either the manipulation principle or the ‘no difference principle.’ I argue that rejecting the manipulation principle offers the compatibilist the most compelling response to the manipulation argument. Incompatibilists claim that this strategy is implausible because it requires that some victims of manipulation are free and responsible. I aim to show that this consequence is not as implausible as it might initially appear.

Many philosophers tend to defend the view that there is a significant relation between the problem of determinism / indeterminism and the problem of free will. The belief that there exists such a significant relation is supported by our intuitions / however, in this thesis, I defend just the opposite view: free will has no significant dependence on the deterministic or indeterministic character of causal relations. In the same way, I propose that the question, whether or not determinism is true, cannot be answered based on observations about the problem of free will. I believe that the genuine question whose answer would illuminate the darkness surrounding free will is whether or not will supervenes on anything other than itself. Therefore, in order to decide whether or not we are free, the question we should ask is &ldquo / Does will supervene upon something other than itself?&rdquo / Moreover, I defend the position that no matter whether the world is deterministic or indeterministic, if physicalism is true, i.e. if properties of free will supervene upon physical properties, then we cannot enjoy genuine freedom. The position of the thesis has some important ethical implications: If we cannot be genuinely free, we cannot be genuinely responsible for our actions either. This implies that retributive and admirative desires towards other persons are rationally untenable. I defend the view that only practical attitudes like reinforcement and punishment or isolation and inclusion are rationally tenable.

There is an apparent disagreement between recent commentators who find in Nietzsche both a constructive philosophy and a compatibilist account of freedom, and Brian Leiter’s reading that rejects both. The reason for this disagreement, I argue, is that Leiter’s “illiberal” view is limited in scope to Nietzsche’s critical philosophy, while Nietzsche also has a constructive philosophy aimed at select readers. I read Nietzsche’s critical philosophy as targeting the metaphysical entities that underpin asceticism and herd values, not the mental states and processes with which these entities are associated. The “no such entity” reading preserves the resources needed to read Nietzsche as offering a replacement for the ascetic ideal—and an alternative source for life’s meaning. Although few of his readers will have been born with the drives needed to throw off herd values and enjoy compatibilist freedom, these readers are the intended audience for Nietzsche’s constructive philosophy.