Philosophy Commons^™

In Defense Of The Direct Argument For Incompatibilism, Paul Roger Turner

Doctoral Dissertations

Is moral responsibility compatible with the truth of causal determinism? One of the most influential arguments that moral responsibility is incompatible with causal determinism is the so-called ‘Direct Argument,’ developed by Peter van Inwagen in his An Essay on Free Will. Informally put, the Direct Argument goes as follows:

If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But we are not responsible for what went on before we were born, and neither are we responsible for what the laws of nature are. Therefore, we are not …