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19What Moral Responsibility is NotIn James F. Childress & Michael Quante (eds.), Thick (Concepts of) Autonomy: Personal Autonomy in Ethics and Bioethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 1-16. 2021.Moral responsibility and autonomy are closely related structurally and contentwise: they are both members of the “freedom family”. Here I argue that because of these similarities, they are often conflated or at least not carefully separated, and that this has resulted in confusions in important contemporary debates. Autonomy and moral responsibility involve the agent’s identification with the sources of her actions; but autonomy-identification is more robust than responsibility-identification.
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18Destinism: Puzzle SolvedPhilosophia 50 (4): 1785-1789. 2022.In a recent article in this journal, “Destinism,” Andrew Bailey presents a puzzle for “Destinism,” the view that the only things we can do are those we in fact do. The puzzle is intriguing and important in part because it challenges a doctrine that many philosophers think could be true compatibly with our being morally responsible. Destinism is at least a viable view. Bailey’s puzzle derives from very plausible assumptions, but I argue that these assumptions are not as plausible as they appear. …Read more
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110Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life: Precis and Further ReflectionsThe Journal of Ethics 26 (3): 341-359. 2022.I offer an overview of the book, _Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life_, summarizing the main issues, arguments, and conclusions (Fischer 2020). I also present some new ideas and further developments of the material in the book. A big part of this essay is drawing connections between the specific issues treated in the book and those in other areas of philosophy, and in particular, the theory of agency and moral responsibility. I highlight some striking similarities of both structure and conte…Read more
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48Replies to Timmerman and GormanThe Journal of Ethics 26 (3): 395-414. 2022.In my reply to the thoughtful comments of Timmerman and Gorman, I take up, and further explore, some main questions, including: Can a horribly immoral person (a moral monster) lead a meaningful life? Similarly, can a significantly deluded person lead a meaningful life? What role do judgments of meaningfulness play in our normative framework? How can we understand the debate between those who would embrace the possibility of immortality and those who would reject it? What is the role of narrativi…Read more
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20Morał z przykładów frankfurtowskichRoczniki Filozoficzne 69 (4): 441-465. 2021.Przekład na podstawie: “The Frankfurt Cases: The Moral of the Stories”, Philosophical Review 119 : 315–336. Przekład za zgodą Autora Autor argumentuje, że morał przykładów frankfurtowskich jest następujący: jeśli determinizm przyczynowy wyklucza odpowiedzialność moralną, to nie na mocy eliminacji alternatywnych możliwości, a następnie odpowiada na najważniejsze wyzwanie dla tej tezy, mianowicie argument nazywany „obroną przez dylemat”.
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17Zdolność reagowania na racje a odpowiedzialność moralnaRoczniki Filozoficzne 69 (4): 467-496. 2021.Przekład na podstawie: „Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility”, w: Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, red. Ferdinand Schoeman, 81–106; przedruk w: John Martin Fischer, My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility, 63–83. Przekład za zgodą Autora. Autor przedstawia model odpowiedzialności moralnej oparty na faktycznej sekwencji i pojęciu zdolności reagowania na racje, a następnie przeprowadza analogię między tym modelem a opracowanym przez Roberta Nozicka mod…Read more
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1Free Will and Moral ResponsibilityIn David Copp (ed.), The Oxford handbook of ethical theory, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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77When is Death Bad, When it is Bad?Philosophia 49 (5): 2003-2017. 2021.On a view most secularists accept, the deceased individual goes out of existence. How, then, can death be a bad thing for, or harm, the deceased? I consider the doctrine of subsequentism, according to which the bad thing for the deceased, or the harm of death to the deceased, takes place after he or she has died. The main puzzle for this view is to explain how we can predicate a property at a time (such as having a misfortune or being harmed) to an individual who does not exist at that time. Thi…Read more
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761Struggling With Evil: Comments on Wandering in DarknessEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (3): 109--122. 2012.
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49Initial Design, Manipulation, and Moral ResponsibilityCriminal Law and Philosophy 15 (2): 255-270. 2021.This is a critical notice of Alfred Mele’s, Manipulated Agents: A Window to Moral Responsibility. I agree with Mele that moral responsibility is a historical phenomenon, but give some considerations in favor of a positive, rather than negative, historical condition for moral responsibility. I focus on Mele’s Zygote Argument, which is intended to present a challenge for compatibilism. I contend that the challenge can be met, and I offer an error theory of the appeal of the Zygote Argument.
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12The Education for Democracy ProjectInquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 23 (4): 7-12. 2004.
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30Review of R. Jay Wallace: Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (review)Ethics 106 (4): 850-853. 1996.
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15Review of Michael J. Zimmerman: An essay on moral responsibility (review)Ethics 101 (2): 408-409. 1991.
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869Incompatibilism and the Fixity of the PastIn John A. Keller (ed.), Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes From the Philosophy of Peter van Inwagen, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 140-148. 2017.A style of argument that calls into question our freedom (in the sense that involves freedom to do otherwise) has been around for millennia; it can be traced back to Origen. The argument-form makes use of the crucial idea that the past is over-and-done-with and thus fixed; we cannot now do anything about the distant past (or, for that matter, the recent past)—it is now too late. Peter van Inwagen has presented this argument (what he calls the Consequence Argument) in perhaps its clearest and mos…Read more
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1244The Near-Death Experience Argument Against Physicalism: A CritiqueJournal of Consciousness Studies 21 (7-8): 158-183. 2014.Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, including the mind. One argument against physicalism appeals to neardeath experiences, conscious experiences during episodes, such as cardiac arrest, when one's normal brain functions are severely impaired. The core contention is that NDEs cannot be physically explained, and so we have reason to appeal to the non-physical in explaining them. In this paper, we consider in detail a recent article by Pim van Lommel in which he appeals to NDEs i…Read more
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106Excerpts from John Martin Fischer's Discussion with Members of the AudienceThe Journal of Ethics 4 (4). 2000.
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9The Education for Democracy ProjectInquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 23 (4): 7-12. 2004.
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11God, Time, and Knowledge by William Hasker and The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes by Edward R. Wierenga (review)Journal of Philosophy 88 (8): 427-433. 1991.
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250The truth about tracingNoûs 43 (3): 531-556. 2009.Control-based models of moral responsibility typically employ a notion of "tracing," according to which moral responsibility requires an exercise of control either immediately prior to the behavior in question or at some suitable point prior to the behavior. Responsibility, on this view, requires tracing back to control. But various philosophers, including Manuel Vargas and Angela Smith, have presented cases in which the plausibility of tracing is challenged. In this paper we discuss the example…Read more
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253The Physiognomy of ResponsibilityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (2): 381-417. 2011.Our aim in this paper is to put the concept of moral responsibility under a microscope. At the lowest level of magnification, it appears unified. But Gary Watson has taught us that if we zoom in, we will find that moral responsibility has two faces: attributability and accountability. Or, to describe the two faces in different terms, there is a difference between being responsible and holding responsible. It is one thing to talk about the connection the agent has with her action; it is quite ano…Read more
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134The logic of theological incompatibilism: a reply to WestphalAnalysis 73 (1): 46-48. 2013.In our paper, "Omniscience, Freedom, and Dependence" (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88: 346-367), we argued that recent attempts (by Merricks, McCall, and Westphal) to resolve the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge fail because they are question-begging. Westphal replied to our paper in an earlier issue of Analysis, and this article is our rejoinder to his reply.
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22The Significance of Free Will by Robert KaneThe Significance of Free Will (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 141. 2000.
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162Omniscience, Freedom, and DependencePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2): 346-367. 2014.Several theorists (Merricks, Westphal, and McCall) have recently claimed to offer a novel way to respond to the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge, rooted in Molina's insight that God's beliefs depend on what we do, rather than the other way around. In this paper we argue that these responses either beg the question, or else are dressed-up versions of Ockhamism.
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219Engaging with Pike: God, Freedom, and TimePhilosophical Papers 38 (2): 247-270. 2009.Nelson Pike’s article, “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action,” is one of the most influential pieces in contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Published over forty years ago, it has elicited many different kinds of replies. We shall set forth some of the main lines of reply to Pike’s article, starting with some of the “early” replies. We then explore some issues that arise from relatively recent work in the philosophy of time; it is fascinating to note that views suggested by recent work in thi…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |