Against Moral Responsibility, by Bruce N. Waller.

Abstract

For many years, the debate regarding how best to account for the metaphysical underpinnings of moral responsibility revolved around three well-known views. First, there is hard determinism, according to which no one is ever morally responsible for anything, since causal determinism is true and its truth precludes our possession of the kind of freedom necessary for such responsibility. Then there is soft determinism, according to which causal determinism is true but its truth does not preclude this kind of freedom. (Most soft determinists add that we in fact do often enjoy such freedom.) Finally, there is libertarianism, according to which such freedom would indeed be precluded by causal determinism, were it true; but we do sometimes possess such freedom, and so causal determinism is not true. Each of these traditional views has been ably defended in recent years, but new positions have also recently emerged. Some philosophers have argued that moral responsibility does not require any freedom at all. Others have argued that moral responsibility is impossible, on the grounds that the kind of freedom it requires is precluded by both causal determinism and its negation. Still others have made somewhat less revisionary proposals. One that has received considerable attention has been advanced by John Martin Fischer who, on the basis of Harry Frankfurt’s much-discussed argument against the principle of alternate possibilities, holds that, although it may be true that the freedom to do otherwise is incompatible with causal determinism, this is not the kind of freedom that is necessary for moral responsibility; moreover, the kind of freedom that is necessary for such responsibility is wholly compatible with causal determinism, and it is a kind of freedom that we sometimes possess. Fischer calls his view ‘semi-compatibilism’. In the book presently under review, Bruce Waller argues, as he did in an earlier book, for a view that stands in stark contrast to Fischer’s, one that could perhaps be called ‘semi-incompatibilism’. (In the present book, Waller does not use this or any other label to describe his view; in his earlier book, he called it ‘no-fault naturalism’.) Waller’s position, for which he argues vigorously and passionately, is that causal determinism is true and precludes the kind of freedom that is necessary for moral responsibility, but it does not preclude our having the freedom to do otherwise, a valuable kind of freedom that we occasionally possess and which is well worth promoting.