[Derek Parfit] "For some act of ours to be wrong, because we ought to have acted differently, it must be true that we could have acted differently. But the relevant sense of ‘could’ is the hypothetical, motivational sense. And this sense of ‘could’ is compatible with determinism. Even if our acts are causally determined, we could have the kind of freedom morality requires." To clarify, "...for it to be relevantly true that we could have acted differently, it need only be true that we would have acted differently if we had wanted to, and had chosen to do so. We can call this the hypothetical, motivational sense of ‘could’. This sense of ‘could’ is compatible with determinism. You could have helped the blind man cross the street in the sense that you would have done so if you had chosen to do so. It is irrelevant whether, given your actual desires and other mental states, it was causally inevitable that you did not choose to act in this way."
Parfit's argument shows only that a "causally inevitable" act can be morally wrong, not that the actor is morally responsible for the act. Craig 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
