Taking Luck Seriously

Abstract

Suppose someone were to say to you, Look, grant that moral responsibility requires freedom and that freedom requires alternate Nonetheless, it's perfectly possible for someone to morally responsible even in the absence of alternate possibilities. You would mystified. You would, in G. E. Moore's1 gentle phrase, be entitled to laugh at him and to distrust his future statements about moral responsibility (ibid., p. 13). So, too, if he were to say, I grant that moral responsibility requires freedom and that freedom is incompatible with causal determinism. Still, it's perfectly possible for someone to morally responsible even if determinism is true.