Foreknowledge, Frankfurt, and Ability to Do Otherwise: A Reply to Fischer

KADRI VIHVELIN
2008 Canadian Journal of Philosophy  
There is one important point about which Fischer and I are in agreement. We agree that determinism is compatible with moral responsibility. We disagree about the best way of defending that claim. He thinks that Frankfurt's strategy is a good one, that we can grant incompatibilists the metaphysical victory (that is, agree with them that determinism means that we are never able to do otherwise) while insisting that we are still morally responsible. I think this a huge mistake and I think the
more » ... ature spawned by Frankfurt's attempt to undercut the metaphysical debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists is a snare and a delusion, distracting our attention from the important issues. I am a compatibilist, not a 'semi-compatibilist' but an unabashed traditional compatibilist who believes that determinism (by itself) doesn't render us unable to do otherwise in any signifi cant or morally relevant sense. I don't make these claims lightly; I think that the problem of free will and determinism is a metaphysical problem which can be solved only by paying careful attention to modal and metaphysical issues concerning choice, agency, ability, dispositions, counterfactuals, causation, laws, and so on.
doi:10.1353/cjp.0.0022 fatcat:l4aa2ocbcjhrtdsnaso26vqqhq