Steve said: Playing the causation game doesn't depend on any particular metaphysics. But once you start looking for explanations in terms of causes, the serpent of causation is found to run over everything.
Matt: That's a good way of putting it. One of the most powerful, succinct statements of this view--that once you start "playing the causation game" the viewpoint of morality based on free will seems to disappear before your very eyes--is Thomas Nagel's "Moral Luck." Nagel ultimately believes morality does need a notion of free will, but he nevertheless acknowledges how paradoxical the Kantian framework is (which he considers necessary to morality). The idea is that free will is flexed when you have _control_, and Nagel's point is that when you look too close, you don't have control over much. Bernard Williams paper of the same name (both appeared at the same time, as part of the same colloquium) is also useful on this issue, except Williams thinks that the Kantian framework is (therefore) bankrupt. His Shame and Necessity is a largescale attempt to fund our notions of ethical behavior without the notion of a will (he thinks "will," which nearly comes attached with "free," is ultimately a Christian vocable that is unnecessary for ethical behavior). Likewise, Iris Murdoch's first chapter to The Sovereignty of Good makes beautiful, quick work of this notion of an isolatable, _free_standing will that just decides to do stuff. She renders a wonderful, alternative phenomenological account of how we actually make choices. Nagel's "Moral Luck" is collected in his Mortal Questions. Williams's "Moral Luck" is collected in his Moral Luck. Matt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html