Abstract
Philosophers both in the continental and the analytic tradition have argued that human beings cannot be morally responsible for any of their actions, unless at least one of the following propositions is true:
-
(a)
human beings are free
-
(b)
human beings are agents that cause at least some of their actions
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(c)
there exist moral norms
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(d)
human beings have a cognitive capacity to access moral norms
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(e)
the soul is immortal
and
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(f)
God exists.1
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References
So when I say that S is morally responsible, I do not intend to say something favourably about S’s character (as I do when I say ‘Jane is a responsible person’), nor do I intend to say that S is ‘in charge’ of a particular event (as I do when I say ‘Jane is responsible for the catering’). Cf. William Frankena, Ethics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973, second edition) 72–3.
This letter is included in William Hamilton’s edition of The Works of Thomas Reid (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994), 65. Reid makes the same point in his Essays on the Active Powers of Man,ed. Hamilton, 522. References to the Active Powers are also to the Hamilton edition and will be preceeded by AP.
Cf William L. Rowe, Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991 ), 49.
Randolph Clarke, ‘Agent Causation and Event Causation in the Production of Free Action’, Derk Pereboom (ed.), Free Will ( Indianapolis: Hacket, 1997 ), 274–276.
Roderick Chisholm, Person and Object. A Metaphysical Study (La Salle: Open Court, 1976) ch.Il; Randolph Clarke, ‘Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Account of Free Will’, Nous 27 (1993), 191–203; Timothy O’Connor, ‘Agent Causation’, Timothy O’Connor (ed.), Agents, Causes, and Events. Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will ( Oxford: OUP, 1995 ), 173–200.
Dale Tuggy discusses the issues involved in his as yet unpublished paper ‘Thomas Reid on Causation’.
Richard Taylor, Action and Purpose ( Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966 ).
To this Reid adds that our ignorance on this point ‘can produce no doubt with regard to the moral estimations of our action’ (AP 528).
Locke says: ‘But though the preference of the mind be always determined…; yet the person who has the power, in which alone consists liberty to act, or not to act, according to such preference, is nevertheless free’ (Essay concerning human understanding,ed. P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon, 1991, II, 21, 33).
For a very good discussion of these matters see William L. Rowe, ‘Two Concepts of Freedom’, in: Timothy O’ Connor (ed.), Agents, Causes, and Events, 153–7.
Rowe, ‘Two Concepts of Freedom’, 154–5.
Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics ( Boulder: Westview, 1993 ), 193.
Metaphysics, ch. 11. See also his contribution to this book ‘Moral Responsibility and Ontology’, section 3.
In his paper ‘Thomas Reid on Free Agency’ (Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (1994), 619–620) Timothy O’Connor argues that for Reid, contrary to what Rowe claims, an exertion of active power to determine the will is not an event. I disagree. If an exertion of active power is not an event, I would not know what else it could be.
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van Woudenberg, R. (2000). Moral Responsibility and Agent Causation. In: van den Beld, T. (eds) Moral Responsibility and Ontology. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2361-9_11
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