William Simkulet - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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Papers by William Simkulet

This article contends that recent attempts to construct Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) are irreleva... more This article contends that recent attempts to construct Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) are irrelevant to the debate over free will. The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) states that moral responsibility requires indeterminism, or multiple possible futures. Frankfurt's original case purported to demonstrate PAP false by showing an agent can be blameworthy despite not having the ability to choose otherwise; however he admits the agent can come to that choice freely or by force, and thus has alternate possibilities. Neo-FSCs attempt to show that alternate possibilities are irrelevant to explaining an agent's moral responsibility, but a successful Neo-FSC would be consistent with the truth of PAP, and thus is silent on the big metaphysical issues at the center of the free will debate.

Helen Frowe (2006/2010) contends that there is a substantial moral difference between killing and... more Helen Frowe (2006/2010) contends that there is a substantial moral difference between killing and letting die, arguing that in Michael Tooley's infamous machine case it is morally wrong to flip a coin to determine who lives or dies. Here I argue that Frowe fails to show that killing and letting die are morally inequivalent. However, I believe that she has succeeded in showing that it is wrong to press the button in Tooley's case, where pressing the button will change who lives and dies. I argue that because killing and letting die are morally equivalent we have no reason to press the button in the machine case. Pressing the button in this case is morally wrong because there is no reason to do it; to press the button is to treat matters of life and death irreverently.

Derivative moral responsibility is not moral responsibility at all. Much of the confusion found i... more Derivative moral responsibility is not moral responsibility at all. Much of the confusion found in the literature concerning moral responsibility and the free will problem can be traced back to a penchant to reconcile our philosophical theories of moral responsibility with our folk commonsense linguistic accounts of moral responsibility, a tradition that is notable for its utter lack of making two important distinctions - (1) the distinction between derivative moral responsibility and non-derivative moral responsibility (what Galen Strawson calls “true moral responsibility”) and (2) the distinction between the scope and degree of one’s moral responsibility.1 The failure to make such distinctions, ultimately, leads to confusion in interpreting the content of folk intuitions about moral responsibility, and as a result leads many philosophers to adopt watered down, or overly complex theories of moral responsibility. In “The Epistemic Requirements for Moral Responsibility,” Carl Ginet fails to make such distinctions, and as a result the requirement he arrives at is unwieldy at best. By making such distinctions, I will provide a much more straightforward account of what moral responsibility requires.

In his recent article “Defending Hard Incompatibilism Again,” Pereboom (2008) presents what he ca... more In his recent article “Defending Hard Incompatibilism Again,” Pereboom (2008) presents what he calls the “Tax Evasion” case, a Frankfurt-style case designed to show the falsity of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP). According to Pereboom, PAP requires robust alternate possibilities such that an agent could have acted in a manner in which she knew she would have lacked moral responsibility for her actions. However, according to his “Tax Evasion” case, the tax evader lacks such robust alternate possibilities, and yet is still uncontroversially morally responsible for his actions. Here I argue Pereboom’s account of robust alternate possibilities is deficient, offer a more intuitively plausible account of robust alternate possibilities, and argue that Pereboom’s tax evasion case fails to cut off morally relevant alternate possibilities.

In ''Abortion and Ownership'' John Martin Fischer argues that in Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinis... more In ''Abortion and Ownership'' John Martin Fischer argues that in Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist case you have a moral obligation not to unplug yourself from the violinist. Fischer comes to this conclusion by comparing the case with Joel Feinberg's cabin case, in which he contends a stranger is justified in using your cabin to stay alive. I argue that the relevant difference between these cases is that while the stranger's right to life trumps your right to property in the cabin case, the violinist's right to life does not trump your right to liberty in the violinist case.

In his recent article "Deontic Cycling and the Structure of Commonsense Morality," Tim Willenken ... more In his recent article "Deontic Cycling and the Structure of Commonsense Morality," Tim Willenken argues that commonsense ethics allows for rational agents having both ranked reasons (A > B, B > C, and A > C) and cyclical reasons (A < B, B < C, and A > C). His goal is to show that not all plausible views are variations of consequentialism, as consequentialism requires ranked reasons. I argue instances of apparent deontic cycling in commonsense morality are the byproducts of incomplete characterizations of the cases in question.

In "Should Race Matter?," David Boonin proposes the compensation principle: When an agent wrongfu... more In "Should Race Matter?," David Boonin proposes the compensation principle: When an agent wrongfully harms another person, she incurs a moral obligation to compensate that person for the harms she has caused. Boonin then argues that the United States government has wrongfully harmed black Americans by adopting pro-slavery laws and other discriminatory laws and practices following the end of slavery, and therefore the United States government has an obligation to pay reparations for slavery and discriminatory laws and practices to those who have been harmed by them - in particular, to contemporary black Americans. Here I argue that the compensation principle is false because it violates the control principle, the foundational principle of ethics that states that moral responsibility requires control; for an agent to be morally responsible for something, whether or not she does that thing must be within her control. If the compensation principle creates a moral obligation for an agent to compensate a harmed party, failure to do so will result in that agent's being morally blameworthy for failing in her obligation. Because some harms cannot be compensated for, agents who wrongfully harm others will be required to do something that is outside of their control.

The debate surrounding free will and moral responsibility is one of the most intransigent debates... more The debate surrounding free will and moral responsibility is one of the
most intransigent debates in contemporary philosophy - but it does not
have to be. At its heart, the free will debate is a metaethical debate - a
debate about the meaning of certain moral terms - free will, moral
responsibility, blameworthiness, praiseworthiness. Compatibilists argue
that these concepts are compatible with wholly deterministic world,
while incompatibilists argue that these concepts require indeterminism,
or multiple possible futures. However, compatibilists and
incompatibilists do not disagree on everything - both parties agree that
free will and moral responsibility require control - the kind of control
that we believe we have over the majority of our everyday actions. Over
the course of any given day each of us makes countless choices, and in
most situations as we make these choices we cannot help but believe that
we are in control of them - that our actions are free and we are morally
responsible for them. Here I argue that our concepts of free will and
moral responsibility are inexorably tied to this experience of apparent
liberty.

We share a common space-time with everything that we interact with in our world. An island univer... more We share a common space-time with everything that we interact with in our world. An
island universe would be a spatiotemporally interrelated segment of reality that is isolated from the
rest of reality; it would be part of our world but something that we cannot interact with.
Spatiotemporal interrelatedness plays an important role in a number of metaphysical theories
concerning possible worlds. Here I discuss four problems surrounding the possibility of island
universes. I contend the most troubling of these problems gives us good reason to think that island
universes are possible; metaphysical theories that cannot make sense of the possibility of island
universes end up having bizarre implications about alternate possible worlds.