John Fischer

I begin with two compatibilist analyses of freedom: the conditional analysis and Lehrer's possible-worlds analysis. While certain arguments fail to undermine the conditional analysis, I present one which shows the inadequacy of the simple conditional analysis and a class of refinements of it. I find reason to reject the simple conditional analysis, refinements designed to account for "schizophrenic" objects, and Lehrer's conjunction of conditionals. ;I show how we might modify Lehrer's possible-worlds analysis to avoid compatibilist objections, by replacing the notion of an "advantage" with that of an "obstacle". This produces an analysis which, though acceptable to a compatibilist, will not satisfy an incompatibilist. This is because the account of an obstacle entails the debatable proposition that it need not be unreasonably difficult to violate a natural law. ;I discuss a family of arguments designed to show that any compatibilist analysis will be inadequate. I sketch a preliminary version of the "standard argument for incompatibilism about determinism and freedom", and I compare this argument with a parallel argument for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. I show how we can refine the Ockhamist response in such a way as to defend compatibilism about freedom and divine foreknowledge without also defending compatibilism about freedom and causal determinism. ;The refinement of Ockhamism shows that the compatibilist about divine foreknowledge and freedom need not say either that a person can so act that a natural law which actually holds wouldn't hold or that a person can so act that a fact which is simply about the past wouldn't be a fact. ;I next examine critically a general formulation of the standard argument for the incompatibility of freedom and causal determinism and draw out its implications. ;I sketch an account of moral responsibility which doesn't require freedom to do otherwise--an actual-sequence account--contrast it with various alternate-sequence approaches to responsibility, and show how it needn't entail compatibilism about determinism and moral responsibility

I explore two thought-experiments in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s important article, “A Defense of Abortion”: the violinist example and the people-seeds example. I argue (contra Thomson) that you have a moral duty not to unplug yourself from the violinist and also a moral duty not to destroy a people-seed that has landed in your sofa. Nevertheless, I also argue that there are crucial differences between the thought-experiments and the contexts of pregnancy due to rape or to contraceptive failure. In virtue of these differences, it would not follow from my conclusions about the violinist and people-seeds cases that abortion would not be permissible in a case of rape or in a case of voluntary intercourse with contraceptive failure

It is often thought that if a developing human being is considered a “person” from the beginning, then it would follow that abortion would be impermissible. For, after all, a person has a stringent right to life, and because life is a prerequisite for enjoying any other goods, it is plausible that the right to life is a “basic” or “fundamental” one, not easily overridden by other considerations. The right to life, it would seem, could not be outweighed by another individual's preferences, even preferences about what should happen in or to her body

In a previous paper, we argued that death's badness consists in the deprivation of pleasurable experiences which one would have had, had one died later rather than at the time of one's actual death. Thus, we argued that death can be a bad thing for the individual who dies, even if it is an experiential blank. But there is a pressing objection to this view, for if the view is correct, then it seems that it should also be the case that it is a bad thing for a person that he is born when he actually is born, rather than earlier. That is, if the deprivation account is the correct account of death's badness, then it appears that one should have symmetric attitudes to prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. But clearly we do not in general have symmetric attitudes toward the period before our birth and the period after our death; in general, we do not think of our late births as a bad thing, but we can indeed consider our early deaths as bad for us. Thus, it appears that there is a problem for the deprivation account of death's badness.

It seems that, whereas a person's death needn't be a bad thing for him, it can be. In some circumstances, death isn't a "bad thing" or an "evil" for a person. For instance, if a person has a terminal and very painful disease, he might rationally regard his own death as a good thing for him, or at least, he may regard it as something whose prospective occurrence shouldn't be regretted. But the attitude of a "normal" and healthy human being - adult or child - toward the prospect of his death is different; it is not unreasonable in certain cases to regard one's own death as a bad thing for oneself. If this is so, then the question arises as to why death is bad, in those cases in which it is bad.

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.