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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Compatibilists like Lewis (1981) distinguish between the ability to act such that the past would have been different and the ability to act such that the laws would have been violated.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.If all our actions necessarily follow from the past and laws, the distinction between two impossible abilities seems merely verbal.
      ?

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    • 2.Responsibility intuitions suggest we could have genuinely done otherwise; Lewis's distinction may preserve the word 'ability' while losing its force.
      ?

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    • 3.Compatibilist ability requires only counterfactual responsiveness to reasons, but determinism may undermine whether we truly respond to reasons at all.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Moral responsibility requires only that agents act on their own desires and reasoning, not that they could violate physical laws.
      ?

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    • 2.The ability to act differently given identical past and laws is metaphysically impossible, so it shouldn't ground moral responsibility.
      ?

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    • 3.We reasonably hold people accountable for choices flowing from their character, even in a deterministic universe with fixed laws.
      ?

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