Korsgaard and 2 Senses of 'Good'

Korsgaard distinguishes between two ways that we use the word 'good'. First, there is the everyday 'evaluative' sense of the word. For example, when we call something a good book, a good car, a good pair of shoes, a good cup of coffee, etc. In the evaluative sense, a thing is good according to our goals. There is also the 'final' sense of good, i.e., 'the good'. This sense of the word means something like the final aim or total goodness for a thing. This is often thought to be something that is good for it's own sake (good in itself). In this paper, Korsgaard is concerned with the nature of 'the good'.

She then contrasts three theories about the final good. Intrinsic good theory is the theory that goodness is a real property of an object. For example, an action is morally good as a matter of fact in the same way that my new shoes are red. Hedonism is the theory that the final good is what makes us happy. Eudaimonism is the theory that the final good is to function well or to have one's own biological organism in a state of well-being. Korsgaard argues that the benefit of a eudaimonistic theory is that it can explain the relationship between evaluative good and final good. In order to explain this, she introduces the extended-evaluative sense of the word. To be good in the extended-evaluative sense means to be good for some purpose and also be be functioning healthily. In this sense, to have a final good just means to be aware of oneself as being in good condition. In other words, having a final good means being able to take an evaluative approach to one's own life.  As such, the final good requires some level of reflexivity.    In other words, to have a final good, one must be aware of one's final good.  It seems that rational consciousness either introduces another kind of final good or it is a more complex awareness of one's own final good.  Either way, having a final good requires reflexivity.

Heidegger on Dwelling

Heidegger notes that buliding is the manner in which mortals dwell on earth.  To dwell is more than to simply reside or have an address somewhere.  To dwell requires a certain receptivity.  To dwell requires to reveal the Fourfold.  What is the fourfold?  The fourfold is a unity of four different things.  Each of the four parts of the fourfold can only be truly understood in relationship with the other parts.  First, there are the mortals.  Mortals dwell on this earth and have the capacity to regard their death as death; this just means that we can think of death not just as a stopping point of our lives but as something that unifies and brings meaning to our lives.  We can imagine that our lives will end in the sense that a big project has come an end.  Second, there is the earth.  The earth is what nourishes us and sustains us.  The earth is where we get the resources for our projects.  Third is the sky.  The sky represents open possibilities.  Whereas the earth is grounded in practical possibilities, the sky is open.  Fourth are divinities.  Divinities are inherently beyond human comprehension. 

To dwell, then, means to reveal these four things in association with one another.  A peasant farmhouse makes a place to divinities to be welcomed as divinities--which means that we wait for divinities as something unknown.  The roof of a farmhouse is steep to avoid snow building up.  This represents a way in which dwelling requires the ability to be open to possibilities.  Also, the farmhouse is placed on the protected side of a mountain.  This shows how the dwelling takes advantage of practical possibilities already present on the earth.  And this is a place of dwelling for mortals as it serves our human purposes.

Heidegger on the Technological Attitude

When Heidegger talks about the 'essence of technology', he is not concerned with specific technologies (iPads, cell phones, hydroelectric dams, etc.).  Rather, he is concerned with a technological attitude, or way of approaching things.  In this sense, technology is a way of uncovering the truth about things.  The traditional theory of truth is that sentences are true when they correspond to reality.  Heidegger's theory of truth is that things are true when they are uncovered as themselves.  Technology is one way of uncovering things.  All acts of uncovering are dangerous.  To uncover one thing is to cover up another thing.  Think about digging a hole in the dirt.  When you dig up one thing, the dirt you removed has to go somewhere.  The kind of uncovering that characterizes the essence of technology is Gestell, or enframing.  Enframing is a way of uncovering things that necessarily prevents other modes of uncovering and revealing.  Technological enframing reveals all things as energy to be unlocked, transformed, transferred and stored. 

Singer on Vegetarianism

Singer argues that if one accepts utilitarianism, then one must also accept vegetarianism.  Basically, if you accept that pain is morally bad, then eating meat is bad on the grounds that is causes pain to animals. 

1. If Utilitarianism is true, then pain and pleasure are the basis of all moral value.

2.  Animals experience pleasure and pain.

3.  If pleasure and pain are the basis of all moral value, then animals are morally significant.

4.  So, if utilitarianism is true, then animals are morally significant.

Singer notes that there are three ways that this kind of argument seems to fall short of supporting full-fledged vegetarianism.  First, it seems like utilitarianism gives good reason only to avoid certain kinds of sourcing meat.  Specifically, it seems like factory farming should be avoided but that free-range organic methods of raising animals are morally neutral or good.  Singer replies by reminding the reader that A) most meat on the market is from factory farms and B) even if we raise livestock in humane ways before we kill and eat it, even the mere act of killing animals puts us on a slippery slope towards further harm towards animals.  Second, someone might object that the consequences of abolishing factory farming are worse than the consequences of business as usual.  Singer notes that many things must be taken into account: the potential loss of happiness of vegetarians, the loss of livelihood of producers of factory-farmed products, environmental consequences, global and individual health concerns and the suffering of animals.  Even if the loss to those employed by the industrial livestock industry were greater than the suffering animals are caused now, Singer notes that this would be a one-time loss of happiness, whereas business as usual means the continued suffering of animals.  Third, Singer note that some people may think that consequentialist analysis cannot lead to the conclusion of vegetarianism.  Consider, for example, that it may take ten thousand vegetarians to save the lives of twenty thousand chickens.  Unless you are the ten thousandth vegetarian, then you will not meet a threshold needed to save those chickens.  But Singers says that consequentialists act based on likely outcomes, so being certain that I save ten chickens is just as good as being the single vegetarian responsible for saving twenty thousand chickens.  Perhaps this is not his best point.  But he notes that refusing to consume meat is the most straightforward and practical step to limit meat consumption.  Also, by refusing to eat meat, one expresses condemnation for a practice that causes animals to suffer.  Either way, Singer thinks that utilitarianism will lead to vegetarianism.

Proof of the Greatest Happiness Principle

Mill's Proof of the Greatest Happiness Principle.
(1) if you see something, this proves that it is visible.
(2) Similarly, desiring something proves that it is desirable.
(3) The only thing that each person truly desires is happiness.
(4) The only thing that is truly desirable for a person is his or her own happiness.
(5) Hence each person should perform the actions that promote the greatest happiness.

Three Problems with this Argument:
First,  (2) does not follow from (1).  Visibility and desirability are not the same kinds of things.
Second,  (4) does not follow from (3).  To assume that we can derive an "ought" from an "is" is to make the naturalistic fallacy, which is a point made by David Hume.
Third,  (5) does not follow from (4).  Just because your own happiness is desirable does not mean that the happiness of other people is also desirable.

Further Objections to Utilitarianism:
(1) We cannot always predict what the consequences of our actions will be.  It is difficult if not impossible to judge the morality of an action based on what the predicted consequences will be.
(2) It is difficult to quantify pleasures.  In other words, it is hard to represent pleasures with numbers in order to determine if happiness will be maximized by an action. Cost-benefit analysis is difficult if not impossible.
(3) Also, the process of trying to determine if an action will maximize happiness is time-consuming and difficult.  It is not practical that we will be able to do such a calculation before we perform an action.
(4) Utilitarianism cannot explain special duties or obligations that we have to people like our friends, family and neighbors.
(5) If we only care about sum total happiness, then there will be actions that are good while these actions do cause a great amount of pain for some people.  For example, say that six of the seven dwarves decide to torture, beat and murder the Dopey for fun.  Even though Dopey experiences a lot of pain, utility is still maximized because the other dwarves are so happy.  Thus a utilitarian must say that it is good for the dwarves to murder Dopey.
(6) Utilitarianism fails to respect individual rights.  The rights of a single person can be violated as long as the greatest good is still maximized.
(7) Utilitarianism does not address the question of what kind of a person we should be.  The focus is entirely on consequences rather than the character of people.  For example, if I am offered a job as an assassin, I might think that killing people for a job would be OK because even if I do not take the job, someone else will.  This means that whether or not I am an assassin, the consequences are the same, hence the moral value of either choice is equal.
(8)  Pain is either entirely subjective (meaning that it does not exist) or perhaps pain is a good thing itself.

The first three objections do not attack the theory but rather the practice of the theory.  Objections (1), (2) and (3) are all objections that the theory is impractical and difficult (if not impossible) to use as a way of making moral decisions.  Objections (4), (5), (6), (7) and (8) object on the grounds that the results of utilitarian theory will conflict with strong moral intuitions or other reasons to consider when deciding if an action is good or bad.

Intro to Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill is a great example of a classic consequentialist.  His view in particular is called utilitarianism.   Utilitarianism is the view that in order to determine if an action is good or bad, we must look at the consequences of the act.  Specifically, we must ask whether we can expect the action to give us utility.  Utility is very similar to happiness.  A thing has utility if it causes us more happiness and pleasure than pain and sadness.  In short, utility is net happiness (the happiness left over after we take away all the unhappiness).  Mill's utilitarianism is not an egocentric or self-centered view.  One must not just look at the consequences for oneself; one must also consider the consequences for other people.  Utilitarianism thus requires that we have expectations about the consequences of our behaviors.  Although we may not know the consequence until we act, we must consider the consequences that we do expect to happen.  In short, what makes an action moral is to maximize net expectable utility.  Actions are good if they tend to promote the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

One objection to utilitarianism might be that it excludes the happiness or utility of animals from being relevant to moral considerations.  Someone might think that it is not enough that an action promotes the good of human beings.  Someone might think that we must also consider whether an action promotes utility for animals.

Greatest Happiness Principle: The greatest end or goal is to achieve the absence of pain and to maximize the quality and quantity of our happiness.  We perform all actions in order to achieve this goal (this is a descriptive claim about what motivates our action).

Mill thinks that actions are right if they promote happiness and that actions are wrong if they promote pain or the lack of happiness (this is a normative claim that asserts that what is moral is what promotes happiness; Mill derives a moral normative claim from his psychological descriptive claim).  In other words, if an action multiplies happiness then that action is good.

Happiness is used as a technical term in Mill.  Happiness means pleasure.  Mill talks about two kinds of pleasure, or enjoyment.  Sometimes, he is talking about a kind of mental state, such as being happy or thinking that chocolate cake tastes really good.  Other times, he talks about actions or activities that are likely to produce such pleasant mental states.  Sven call pleasures that are mental states "subjective pleasures" and he calls pleasures that are activities or actions "objective pleasures".

Happiness is measured in two ways: quality (how good of a pleasure is it) and quantity (how much pleasure is there).  Quantity is measured by how many people experience the good.  We can also measure quantity by how long a pleasure lasts or how many time the pleasure is experienced.  Quality can be measured in two ways.  First, we can use a democratic method of determining which pleasures are better; the more people who think a pleasure is desirable, the better the pleasure is.  For example, if more people think that eating ice cream is more desirable than eating bananas, then eating ice cream is a higher (better) good.  Second, Mill thinks that pleasures that involve using our minds and our rational thinking are higher (better) than pleasures that only involve sensation.  For example, using our reasoning skills to solve a math problem is a higher pleasure than eating ice cream.

Mill's Utilitarianism is a Universalism.  This just means that we must consider the happiness of all people.  This means that it is not enough just to consider consequences for our friends, families and neighbors.  Rather, we must consider the consequences for all humans.  Moreover, we must give equal weight to the utility (net happiness) of all people.  This universalistic dimension of Mill's utilitarianism is indicative of the social justice issues that concerned Mill.

Mill thought that social reform could be motivated by utilitarianism.  In the time in which he lived, he noted that happiness was not possible for everyone because the education systems and other social institutions were terrible.  He wanted to create political change that could make happiness possible for even the lowest classes of people.  He thought that disease could be eliminated through sanitation and education.  Mill also thought that poverty could be eliminated by private charity and public welfare.  He also thought that the higher pleasures of the mind should be encouraged by social institutions such as education.

We can sum up Mill's view in four main theses:

Consequentialism: whether an action is right or wrong is determined by the consequences of that action.
Hedonism: we do seek and should seek happiness.  Utility is net happiness (the happiness that is left over after we subtract out our pains).
Maximalism: a good or right action produces the highest number of good consequences and the fewest number of bad consequences.
Universalism: we must give equal weight to the consequences for all people.

Motive vs. Intention. On the one hand,  Mill thinks that our motive is irrelevant to whether an action is good or bad.  Even if we want to do good, our action can still be morally bad if the consequences are bad.  While the motive is unimportant to determine moral worth of actions, Mill thinks that intention is important to determine moral worth of an action.  Motives may be used to determine if a person himself or herself has moral value, but the action is only good or bad if the consequences are good or bad.  On the other hand, intention is relevant to the morality of an action.  Intention is what a person wants to do by an action.  In other words, an intention is just what consequences a person is trying to achieve by his or her actions.  A motive is a feeling about why I want to do something whereas an intention is the consequences that I hope to bring about by my action.  For example, if I bring in ice cream for all my friends, my intention is to provide my friends with ice cream,  This intention is relevant.  However, my motive is irrelevant; it does not matter if my motive is to make my friends happy or if my motive is to manipulate my friends by buying them ice cream.

Kingdom of Ends

A good will is not a means to an end.  It is an end in itself.  Humans, insofar as we are defined by our good will (good practical reason), are also ends in ourselves.  A human is not to be used as a means to an end.  Kant imagines a kingdom of ends, where humans agree to abide by common law.  Because each person can legislate universal law by using his or her practical reason, each person is able to hold power over herself and others in a mutually consenting manner.  This power to legislate universal morality is what Kant calls the autonomy of the will.

Perfect and Imperfect Duties, Hypothetical and Categorical Imperatives

An imperative is the form that a command takes.  Imperatives are a grammatical category of statements.  Examples of imperatives include, "Please don't smoke here.", "Stop being racist.", and "Always act in such a way that your personal rule can be made a universal law."  This last imperative is the categorical imperative.  To say it is categorical just means to say that it is necessary and universal.  We can contrast categorical imperatives with hypothetical imperatives.  A hypothetical imperative is one that we need not follow necessarily and universally.  We only have a hypothetical duty if there is some other goal we have in mind.  For example, if a rational person wants to be happy, then they probably like being benefited by others (rather than have people interrupt their way of life or be harmful towards them).  Kant thinks there is an imperfect duty to benefit others if we want to be happy.  There is not a categorical imperative to perform this action because it pasts the test of the categorical imperative (it is logically possible to universalize a law that says not to benefit other people).  But if we want to be happy, then it seems like the same reasons that we are made happy will also apply to other people.  It is rationally consistent to benefit others if you like to be benefited by others.

There is also a hypothetical imperative to cultivate your own talents and skills.  Hypothetical imperatives lead to imperfect duties.  To say that we have a hypothetical imperative to cultivate our talents just means that we have an imperfect duty to cultivate our talents.  Imperfect duties are neither necessary nor universal.  Perfect duties, however, are necessary and universal.

Just as there are two imperfect duties that Kant talks about, there are also two perfect duties that Kant talks about.  First, there is a perfect duty to preserve your life.  In other words, the categorical imperative would forbid suicide.  If you want to kill yourself because you think it is good for you, then your will is self-contradictory because if you are dead, NOTHING is good for you.  In order for something to be good for you, then you must be alive.  Second, there is a perfect duty to keep promises/never to lie.

The Categorical Imperative: A Test for Maxims

The categorical imperative is not so much a rule about what to do but a rule about how to do it.  In other words, the categorical imperative provides us the form, or structure, of moral judgments.  According to Kant, an action is only good if the personal rule according to which you perform that action can be make a universal law.  In other words, you should only act in a way such that your personal maxim can become a universal law.

The categorical imperative is categorical insofar as it is how we should act at all times.  Contrast this with a hypothetical duty, which we only have if we have some other goal.  Kant thinks that the categorical imperative shows that we have a perfect duty to keep promises and to preserve our own lives.  In other words, you always have a duty not to break promises and not to kill yourself.  Let's see how the categorical imperative shows that we have a perfect duty to do these things.

In order to see if we have a perfect duty to preserve our own lives, we can ask if we could ever universalize a rule according to which we would kill ourselves.  For example, "It is ok to kill myself because it is good for me."  Kant says that it is contradictory to make such a law universal.  If I kill myself, then there is NO good for me.  There can be nothing good for me when I am dead because I am no longer alive to have things be good or bad for me.  Likewise, if everyone were allowed to kill themselves because it is 'good for them', then we would have a similar problem.  There could be no 'good' for anyone if there is nobody to have things be good for them!  Since we cannot universalize a law that condones suicide, then we have a perfect duty to avoid doing that thing.

The same can be said for promise-breaking.  To make a promise is to commit to do something.  You make this commitment to another person, who accepts your promise as evidence of your commitment.  Now if we tried to universalize "It is ok to break promises", then this would mean that nobody must follow through with their commitments.  If people felt like they could break commitments whenever they wanted, then nobody would believe anybody when they make promises.  So making a promise becomes impossible in itself, since making a promise requires that somebody believes my promise and takes my promise as evidence of my commitment.

In the case of breaking promises and committing suicide, rules that support this behavior become logically impossible if the law is universalized.  In the case of benefiting others and cultivating talents, the case is different.  Laws such as "I will not help other people" or "I will not cultivate my own talents" can be followed universally.  The universal application of the law does not preclude the possibility of its fulfillment.  So it passes the first test of the categorical imperative.  We can universalize the rule.  But would a rational person want to live in such a world?  It seems like so long as a  person wants, say either good things for himself or wants to be benefited by the skills and kindness of others, that it is rationally consistent to also do such things himself.  So while we do not have a perfect duty to help others and cultivate our own talent, we have an imperfect duty to cultivate our own talents and to help others.  In other words, there is a hypothetical imperative to perform these actions insofar as we should do these things to meet some goal we have (e.g., happiness).
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Kant Vocab

Your will is your practical reason. In other words, your will is what allows you to identify what is good in terms of certain goals (23).

An imperative is the form that commands take. The representation of an objective principle insofar as it demands the will be a certain way is called a command of reason. The form of a command is the imperative (24).

Hypothetical imperatives are commands that must be followed in order to reach some goal (25). Hypothetical imperatives are commands to perform actions as a means to an end.

A categorical imperative is a command that must always be followed because the action is good in itself. In other words, a categorical imperative is a command to perform an action that is good as an end (ibid).

A perfect duty is a universally necessary duty (30).

Imperfect duties are duties that we must sometimes perform (ibid).

Properly speaking, Kant says that true 'duty' is always categorical (33).

There are three practical principles of the will. First, the ground of all duties lies objectively in the form of universality. Second, the end of all rational beings is rational beings. In other words, rational beings are ends in themselves. Third, the will of every rational being is a will that legislates universal law (autonomy of the will).

Acting from Duty vs. Merely Acting in Accord with Duty

Kant says that actions only have positive moral value if they are done from duty and not merely in accord with duty. One example that Kant talks about is a shopkeeper who does not overcharge his customers. We can say that this person has a duty to charge a fair price to all customers. Now, if the shopkeeper only does this because he doesn't want to lose business, then he is acting in accord with duty but not out of duty. He is only acting out of duty (or from duty) if he charges a fair price because he knows it is the right thing to do.

Here is another example. You have a duty to preserve your own life. In other words, you have a duty to keep yourself alive. The person who loves life and continues to live because they love life is acting in accord with duty but not out of duty. However, the person who hates life and only continues to live because it is the right thing to do is acting from duty. The person who continues to live because they want to is not doing anything morally good (they are not doing anything bad, either). But the person who continues to live even though they don't want to but because they know it is the right thing to do is doing something morally good.

Kant: The Good Will, Maxims and the Categorical Imperative

The basis of Kant's ethics is a good will.  The good will is the only thing that is good without qualification.  It is also the highest good.  It is good not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.  Compare this with intelligence.  Being smart is good for lots of reasons; it can help to achieve many ends.  But being smart can also be used for bad goals, such as robbing a bank or assassinating someone and getting away with it.  Unlike intelligence, the good will is always good.  It is good not because it brings about some consequences but because it wills correctly.  Actions are good actions if they are actions of a good will.

But how do we tell if an action is an action of a good will?  Well, we text the maxim, or the personal rule according to which a person was acting.  Another name for a maxim is a principle of volition.  The idea is this.  For every action, there is some personal rule that a person is following.  In order to test if this maxim is good, we must use a certain kind of test for this rule.

The test we use is the Categorical Imperative.  The categorical imperative states that one should only act according to rules that can be made into universal law.  For some rules, it is logically impossible to make them a universal law.  For example, if you wanted to make "It is ok to tell a lie whenever you want" a universal rule, this would be logically impossible.  Lying means telling someone falsehoods under the pretense that they are truths.  In other words, lying means telling someone something false under the assumption that they will believe your words anyway.  If everyone lied whenever they wanted to, then nobody would ever believe anyone.  Lying would be impossible because lying requires that the person to whom you are lying believes your lies.

Here is another example.  Say I am in a hurry at Starbucks and I want to cut in line.  So I act according to the maxim, "It is ok to cut in line when I want".  If this rule became a universal law and everyone cut in line whenever they wanted, then lines would cease to exist.  If the rule became universalized, then it would become logically impossible to follow that rule.  The point is not just that it would be an impractical rule to be universalized.  Rather, it would be logically impossible to universalize this rule because if everyone followed it, then following it would become impossible!

Strawson: What is at Stake?

Strawson provides the basic argument, which is meant to show that true moral responsibility is impossible.  In short, because we are not responsible for how we are, we are not responsible for what we do.  He thinks that any compatibalist notion of moral responsibility will be too weak.

But why should we care if I cannot be in control of every single thing about myself?  Why does it matter if there are some things that I do or some ways that I am that I do not control?  Well, Strawson reminds us of the notion of heaven and hell.  Hell is a place of eternal punishment.  Heaven is a place of eternal reward.  If we are not completely responsible for who we are or what we do, then it seems like no person will ever really deserve heaven or hell!  In order to be deserving of either eternal punishment or eternal rewards, it seems like there must be absolute moral responsibility for actions.  And as Strawson points out, absolute responsibility for what we do depends on absolute responsibility for who we are.  Since we don't control everything about ourselves (where we were born, what family morals we were brought up with, etc.), we cannot be truly responsible in a way that makes us deserve either heaven or hell.

3 Responses to the Basic Argument

Strawson talks about three basic kinds of responses to the Basic Argument.

1.  The compatibalist response will be to say that moral responsibility does not require that a person is completely in control of how they are.  In other words, one can say that moral responsibility is compatible with my inability to completely shape who I am.  Strawson responds to this by saying that such responsibility is not 'true' moral responsibility.

2.  The libertarian will simply deny that what I do is determined by who I am.  Some actions are indeterministic, according to Kane.  Strawson replies that in such a case, the indeterministic nature of my actions only makes them more random.  This randomness also seems to conflict with the notion that I am morally responsible.

An alternate libertarian objection would be simply to deny that determinism is true.

3.  The phenomenological response will be so say that it feels like there is some self, S, that can act independently from all the contingent facts about myself.  In other words, no matter what my pre-existing personality, character and motivations are, my 'self' can still choose to act independently of these facts.  Strawson responds by saying that in reality, this 'self' is dependent upon your character, personality and existing motivational structures.

Shame vs Guilt

Shame is a feeling we have about the judgments of other people. Guilt is a feeling that accompanies a judgment about ourselves. We can feel shameful for the acts of others, but guilt is a feeling we have about our own acts. For example, I can feel ashamed about my brother if he goes to jail for a crime. I do not feel responsible for his actions, but I feel shame for them. Or I can even feel shame about my own actions even if I do not think I have done something wrong. Say I voted for Ron Paul in a recent election. I may think that I did the right thing, but I may realize that others think I acted incorrectly. I may feel ashamed about my actions even if I do not feel guilty. Guilt is the emotion that is connected with moral responsibility because guilt is a feeling about the wrongness of my own actions.

Strawson: The Basic Argument

Strawson presents what he calls The Basic Argument, which is supposed to show that moral responsibility is impossible.  The argument goes like this:

1.  You do what you do because you are the way you are.

2.  To be truly morally responsible for what you do, you must be responsible for the way you are.

3.  Since you can't be responsible for the way you are, you can't be truly responsible for what you do.

4.  To be truly responsible for the way you are, you must have intentionally brought it about, which is impossible.

5.  If you intentionally brought about how you are, you must have first had a certain nature that allowed you to intentionally choose to be a certain way.

6.  In order to be truly responsible for how you are, then you must be responsible for the 'certain nature' that allowed you to choose.

7.  If you could intentionally bring about a certain nature, then you must have already had a prior nature that allowed you to choose the 'certain nature' that allows you to choose the way you are...

The problem is that if you try to explain your behavior in terms of your own choices, you must also appeal to a capacity for choice that must be present before your choices are made.  For each choice, there must be the ability to make that choice.  So if you want to explain behavior in terms of choice, you always must introduce a capacity for choice-making.  Doing so leads to an infinite regress.

The main point is that humans are not causa sui.  In other terms, human are not the ultimate causes of themselves.  It seems like true moral responsibility requires that we are causa sui.  Because we are not the ultimate causes of ourselves, we cannot be truly morally responsible.

Van Inwagen vs. Frankfurt

Frankfurt attempts to argue for compatibalism.  He wants to show that moral responsibility and determinism are compatible.  In order to do this, he shows that a classic incompatibalist thesis, PAP, is false.  PAP is the principle that states that you are morally responsible for an action only if you could have done otherwise.  Frankfurt provides thought experiments that are meant to show that there will be times that a person is morally responsible even if he or she could not have done otherwise than they did.

Van Inwagen wants to defend incompatibalism.  He thinks that there is a principle better than PAP that is not vulnerable to the kind of counterexamples that Frankfurt provides.  Van Inwagen's new incompatbalist principle is PPP: you are morally responsible for a something only if you could have prevented that thing from happening.

Remember Jones and Black.  Jones has decided to assassinate the president, and Black has put a device in Jones' brain that will make him kill the president even if he decides not to go through with it.  This is supposed to show that PAP is false, since if the reason why Jones does what he does is because he wants to (and not because he is forced to), then we would hold him morally responsible even if he could not have acted otherwise.  But when we apply PPP to this case, the tension seems to be resolved.  Jones could not prevent himself from killing the president,  so he is not morally responsible for this action.  This is supposed to be a principle that is not disproven by a case like Jones and Black.

According to PPP, moral responsibility requires the possibility to prevent states of affairs from obtaining.  So if determinism is true, then there are no states of affairs that can be prevented.  So there is no state of affairs for which anyone is responsible.

Frankurt responds that to talk about the ability to prevent things as a condition for moral responsibility (as states in PPP) is to stop talking about free will.  Frankfurt says that free will only has to do with what actions I perform with my body---the consequences that arise as a result of my actions are irrelevant to my free will.

Personal Reaction vs. Evaluation

PERSONAL REACTION simply states feelings, preferences	EVALUATION gives reasons for beliefs
I think Locke is wrong about personal identity.	…because personality traits are more important for defining a person than memories are.
Parfit is right about survival being more important than identity.	…because identity is a strict mathematical concept. It does not make sense to apply the concept of strict numerical identity to persons because persons are not the kinds of things that tend to have strict numerical identity.
I agree with Frankfurt about moral responsibility.	…because sometimes you do not have the ability to do otherwise, but this is not why you do what you do. If the reason why you perform an action is because you want to, then you are morally responsible.
I feel like Van Inwagen successfully defends Incompatibalism.	…because if determinism were true, then there would be no state of affairs that you could prevent. And if you can’t prevent something from happening, you can’t be morally responsible for it. Moral responsibility for something requires the possibility of preventing that thing from happening.