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The relationship between free will and moral responsibility essay
Free will,determinism and responsibility
Free will and moral responsibility essay
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Choices: we all make them daily. Every decision that we make and every action we take has a consequence. At times, our expected consequences and the actual outcome of our decision can differ, from minimal to the extreme. Thomas Nagel wrote on the moral aspects of assigning blame or praise on the actions or consequence of an agent, even if the agent was not in full control over the action or consequence. This theory is known as moral luck. Nagel attempts to assign luck into some objects in determining the outcomes of actions. I disagree with his interjection of luck into the discussion, as I do not believe in chance. Nagel discusses the issue of luck in a moral assessment in the way things turn out. Negligence can range from slightly blameworthy …show more content…
Taking into account the agent must have control over the factors that are morally relevant to their actions and can’t abandon the judgments we make in particular cases that do take factors outside an agents control into account. This idea still allows some factors to be subject to the forces of luck. This finding makes holding someone morally accountable for their actions unwarranted which is and unwanted outcome. Nagel believed the solution would be found by better understanding free will. There will always be variables in everyone’s situations. So when you make a decision you hope it turns out the way you expect it to. I believe people have a free will to do good or bad with the time they have on the earth, whether they want to make good moral decisions or bad immoral decisions. Being a good moral person does not always produce favorable circumstances. We all go through bad times that test our physical and mental being. The choices we make when responding to the test, making us stronger and wiser. Nagel offered three examples for excusal from moral judgment. They are physical force, involuntary movement, and ignorance of the facts. He proposed through these concepts that a person be excused from moral judgment. If applied, these three instances would be out of an agent’s physical control making them not liable for any consequences. I agree that if someone is put in a place against their will by physical force, and
Well there is always the fate aspect in everything that occurs in our lives but majority of the outcomes created from the individuals own decisions. It is up to the individual to determine what can occur, if they do one thing then something will be the outcome. A side from that, there is always the possibility of being at the wrong place at the wrong time which can have an affect of on the outcomes of life.
In this essay, I have defined Nagel’s thesis as the view that death is harmful on the ground that life is a good and death is the corresponding deprivation of this good. I have addressed the no positive harms, no subject, and asymmetry objections. I have also provided Nagel’s rebuttal to these objections. Finally, I have evaluated and re-explained Nagel’s persuasive response to the asymmetry objection.
in every choice we make and our outcomes depend on our choices. Not too long ago, our preacher
We make important choices everyday that can affect our futures. Whether it is deciding what to eat for lunch or deciding what college to go to, these decisions can affect our lives in many ways. Choice is the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. By making a smart choice, your health and welfare can be much better but if you make a bad choice, you future can be different than what you intended it to be. Whether it is a mild choice or a major one, choices can affect the way your life unfolds in the future. In the book, The Red Kayak by Priscilla Cummings, the main character Brady Parks is faced with a major dilemma. He has to make a decision to either turn in is friends for murder or to live
As Ishmael ponders while writing his editorial, he realizes that because it is a matter of the heart these choices “had a will and would remain forever mysterious.” Ishmael understood this, too: “that accidents ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart” (460). Work Cited Guterson, David. A.
...ch causes the boy to get hurt, is he still morally responsible? Sometimes humans know something is going to happen if no one intervenes. According to Peter Singer, if that something is bad and one can stop it with little to no cost of oneself, then it is reasonable that one ought to stop it and is blameworthy if one fails to stop it if they do not have an adequate excuse. Because Phil knows something bad is going to happen if he does not intervene and he can stop it with no cost to himself, Phil is blameworthy of letting the child fall. Phil still has free will because his desire was to not help the child and yet he is still blameworthy of not saving the child from the fall.
... leads to chaos. Yet factoring in luck fails to punish those who are immoral but have good luck, while punishing only those who have bad luck. I maintain that a satisfactory answer to this question is impossible because, as I stated earlier, the issue of moral guilt in relation to luck is based heavily upon the idea of free will versus determinism, a problem which is fundamentally troublesome. With no clear way to decide the issue of free will vs. determinism, it is equally unclear how we should decide the issue of moral guilt. Should luck play a part in the assessment of a person's character? As I asserted at the start of this discussion, I believe that such a determination is logically implausible.
He emphasizes that such principle is prior to any calculations of the possible outcomes that may occur if the rule is broken.(136) In other words, it is morally wrong to break the rule no matter how good the consequences will be. He then presents the principle in the form of how countries should act in a war: aggression that are directed toward someone can only be justified by something about that person that merits not only the aggression itself but also the type of aggression being used. Without the justification of something about that person, the aggression then will lose the characteristic of personal interaction, which is one of the essential qualities that a war has, and, as Nagel mentioned, will become “purely bureaucratic
In my opinion, Nagel's opinion regarding moral structure in war is a little too narrow-minded. When relating actions in war to absolutist restrictions expressed by Nagel, it is easy to identify many controversies within our moral paradigm. Such positions would not hold ground in issues like the middle-eastern conflict because, with constant attacks from both sides, it is very difficult to assess the right and the wrong by simply evaluating one particular action that country has taken in war. In this particular case, I believe that an assassination and air strike are clear actions for the overall good, however by absolutist terms, Nagel would have a difficult time seeing this counterattack as morally justifiable.
The conclusion presented by Nagel is that the theory of obligation can explain special features of public morality. Also those individuals can take steps to restrict certain choices. Nagel also concluded that the institutional structure shields indi...
Nagel suggests that Death can be the greatest of all losses or not be a great loss at all depending on the position we take. The deprivation of life would make it the greatest of all losses when he states, “on the one hand it can be said that life is all we have and the loss of it is the greatest loss we can sustain” (Nagel, 769). But Nagel shifts his position by also stating that “on the other hand it may be objected that death deprives this supposed loss of its subjects, and that if we realize that that is not an unimaginable condition…we will see that it can have no value whatever, positive or negative” (Nagel, 769). He suggests that if death is the end of a life, it would not be a great loss, but just the removal o...
Thomas Nagel begins his collection of essays with a most intriguing discussion about death. Death being one of the most obviously important subjects of contemplation, Nagel takes an interesting approach as he tries to define the truth as to whether death is, or is not, a harm for that individual. Nagel does a brilliant job in attacking this issue from all sides and viewpoints, and it only makes sense that he does it this way in order to make his own observations more credible.
Mullender, R & Speirs, A (2000) Negligence, Psychiatric Injury, and the Altruism Principle, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 20,4, 645
Nagel looks at life from two perspectives—internal and external. In his opinion, life is only meaningful from an internal subjective standpoint in which we can explain the reasons behind what we do in life. For instance, we can say that we go to school to get smarter, or we apply for jobs to earn more money for the family. In this way, we can attribute meaning to most of the everyday events that occur in our lives. Nagel categorizes this as meaning within a life because we internally and subjectively assign meaning to the activities in our lives. H...
tween choice and circumstance, or between brute luck and option luck, is not always easy to