Randolph Clarke

Philosophical theories of agency have focused primarily on actions and activities. But, besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. How is this aspect of our agency to be conceived? This book offers a comprehensive account of omitting and refraining, addressing issues ranging from the nature of agency and moral responsibility to the metaphysics of absences and causation. Topics addressed include the role of intention in intentional omission, the connection between negligence and omission, the distinction between doing and allowing, and the distinction in law between act and omission.

Some recent accounts of blameworthiness present this property as response-dependent: an agent is blameworthy, they say, if and only if, and (if so) in virtue of the fact that, it is fitting to respond to her with a certain blaming emotion. Given the explanatory aim of these views, the selected emotion cannot be said simply to appraise its object as blameworthy. We argue that articulation of the appraisal in other terms suggested by proponents yields a failure of the coextension required by the accounts. We then address the promise to explain why the conditions that render one blameworthy are as they are. According to proponents, these conditions render one blameworthy because they render fitting the selected emotion. But why do just these conditions do the latter? We find no good answer to this question from proponents of the accounts. While we do not contend that blameworthiness is response-independent, we are unconvinced that it is response-dependent.

What is it to be morally responsible for something? Recent philosophical work reveals considerable disagreement on the question. Indeed, some theorists claim to distinguish several varieties of moral responsibility, with different conditions that must be satisfied if one is to bear responsibility of one or another of these kinds. Debate on this point turns partly on disagreement about the kinds of responses made appropriate when one is blameworthy or praiseworthy. It is generally agreed that these include "reactive attitudes" such as resentment and gratitude, but theorists disagree about the nature of these attitudes. They dispute the connections between moral responsibility, desert, and the justification of punishment as well. Many theorists take it that, whatever the appropriate responses are, they are responses to an agent's "quality of will," but there is no consensus on what this comes to. Are the agent's beliefs about the moral status of her behavior what matter, or is it what she cares about, or what she judges important? This volume presents twelve original essays from participants in these debates. The contributors include prominent established figures as well as influential younger philosophers. A substantive introduction by the editors surveys recent debates and situates the contributions within it.

The first, the Transfer Version, employs an inference principle concerning the transfer of one's powerlessness with respect to certain facts. The principle says, roughly, "If a person is powerless over one thing, and powerless over that thing's leading to another, then the person is powerless over the second thing". The key premises are the Fixity of the Past and the Fixity of the Laws. Fischer defends the transfer principle against objections that have been raised by Anthony Kenny and Michael Slote.

The first, the Transfer Version, employs an inference principle concerning the transfer of one's powerlessness with respect to certain facts. The principle says, roughly, "If a person is powerless over one thing, and powerless over that thing's leading to another, then the person is powerless over the second thing". The key premises are the Fixity of the Past and the Fixity of the Laws. Fischer defends the transfer principle against objections that have been raised by Anthony Kenny and Michael Slote.

Several theorists maintain that a consideration is a reason to ϕ (where ϕ-ing is an act-type) if and only if that consideration is a reason to intend to ϕ, and some hold as well that a consideration is a reason not to ϕ if and only if that consideration is a reason to intend not to ϕ. The claims often stem from views about what it is to be a practical reason. Here it is argued that both equivalence claims are false. Although no view of practical reasons is advanced, views that imply either equivalence claim are shown to be mistaken.

Freedom of the will is intrinsically valuable in deliberation and action, and it is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. Free will is not a sufficient condition for the latter; other abilities, and the absence of certain responsibility-undermining conditions, are also necessary. The free will requisite for moral responsibility is a self-determination in coming to have a particular intention in action. It does not consist even partly in an ability to do otherwise. ;Deliberation requires believing that one is free to choose and to act as one chooses. But deliberation does not require believing that one can perform each of the actions one is considering. Nevertheless, it is desirable in deliberation and action to determine, oneself, what ends one will pursue, and this self-determination appears to be incompatible with determinism. ;A leading compatibilist view identifies free will with a capacity to direct one's behavior by reflective practical reasoning. The freedom that agents have in akratic behavior and in some kinds of wrongdoing are especially difficult to account for on this view. A general consideration against the adequacy of this view is that an agent in a deterministic world, even if she acted with the capacity in question, would be in a thorough sense a product of the distant past. Though it might be appropriate to make moral judgements of such an agent, she would not deserve moral praise or blame. ;Incompatibilist views that simply add an element of chance to human action are also unsatisfactory. What must be secured is that generally when an agent acts, there are several different courses of action that are genuinely open to her, and she makes it happen that she performs one of these actions in particular. The most promising account of this kind of self-determination is an agent-causal view on which agents cause the orderings of reasons for which they act. It can be allowed that free actions are probabilistically caused by prior events. However, the agent causation that is required for free will is not reducible to event causation.