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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 G.E. Moore's compatibilist analysis reduces 'could have done otherwise' to counterfactual conditionals about behavior, requiring no deep metaphysical commitments.

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.If determinism is true, counterfactuals about alternative choices are vacuously true given the actual causal history, making them metaphysically empty.
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    • 2.The intuitive sense of 'could have done otherwise' requires genuine alternative possibilities, not merely unexercised dispositions conditional on different desires.
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    • 3.Moore's reduction ignores that our deepest conviction about moral agency presupposes we could have acted differently *given identical circumstances and laws*.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Counterfactual conditionals ('if I had chosen differently, I would have acted differently') capture the ordinary meaning of 'could have done otherwise.'
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    • 2.Compatibilism avoids the incoherence of libertarian free will while preserving moral responsibility through causal analysis of agency.
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    • 3.Moore's approach succeeds because agents with intact deliberative capacities satisfy the conditions for saying they could have done otherwise.
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