Abstract
In a recent article, P. Roger Turner and Justin Capes argue that no one is, or ever was, even partly morally responsible for certain world-indexed truths. Here we present our reasons for thinking that their argument is unsound: It depends on the premise that possible worlds are maximally consistent states of affairs, which is, under plausible assumptions concerning states of affairs, demonstrably false. Our argument to show this is based on Bertrand Russell’s original ‘paradox of propositions’. We should then opt for a different approach to explain world-indexed truths whose upshot is that we may be (at least partly) morally responsible for some of them. The result to the effect that there are no maximally consistent states of affairs is independently interesting though, since this notion motivates an account of the nature of possible worlds in the metaphysics of modality. We also register in this article, independently of our response to Turner and Capes, and in the spirit of Russell’s aforementioned paradox and many other versions thereof, a proof of the claim that there is no set of all true propositions one can render false.
Highlights
The direct argument for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility, as formulated by van Inwagen (1983: pp. 182–188), makes use of two deduction rules involving the notion of not being morally responsible for the fact that p, where p is Synthese any true proposition.1 Let NR p abbreviate that p and no one is, or ever has been, even partly morally responsible for the fact that p
Where P is a true proposition describing the complete state of the universe at some point in the remote past, L is the conjunction of all the laws of nature, and p is a true proposition about something that happened after P, the direct argument can be formulated : 1. ((P ∧ L) ⊃ p) Premise, from Determinism 2. (P ⊃ (L ⊃ p)) 1, by Modal Exportation 3
Even though (Beta ) is the only rule that is required for this argument, it is straightforward to verify that, under plausible assumptions, (Beta ) entails (A): If q is a necessary truth, it is strictly implied by any proposition, including, in particular, any true proposition p such that NR p is true, and so (Beta ) yields the conclusion that q and no one is, or ever has been, even partly morally responsible for the fact that q
Summary
The direct argument for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility, as formulated by van Inwagen (1983: pp. 182–188), makes use of two deduction rules involving the notion of not being morally responsible for the fact that p, where p is. Even though (Beta ) is the only rule that is required for this argument, it is straightforward to verify that, under plausible assumptions, (Beta ) entails (A): If q is a necessary truth, it is strictly implied by any proposition, including, in particular, any true proposition p such that NR p is true, and so (Beta ) yields the conclusion that q and no one is, or ever has been, even partly morally responsible for the fact that q. First, that there is an orthodox and well-motivated conception of what it takes for a proposition to be true at a possible world that helps to motivate the counterexample in question We believe this conception is preferable to the alternative endorsed by Turner and Capes, and we think that this conception is generally correct. In the appendix, and independently of our response to Turner and Capes, is the fact that a Russellian ‘paradox’ can be achieved with respect to a certain notion that is central to the free will problem, to wit, the notion of rendering a proposition false
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