John Martin Fischer
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3597615 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | John Martin Fischer |
| NOMBRES | John Martin |
| APELLIDO | Fischer |
| FIRMA | FISCHER J M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of California, Riverside |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1685-4743 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 64 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 42 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 62 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1979 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
The Complex Tapestry of Free Will
This book is a comprehensive presentation of Robert Kane’s important views about free will and moral responsibility. Kane is a proponent of libertarianism about free will (and moral responsibility), the conjunction of two claims: (1) the incompatibility of causal determinism with free will/moral responsibility, and (2) our freedom and moral responsibility. Some incompatibilists, such as Carl Ginet and Peter van Inwagen (among others), focus prima…
Foreknowledge and causal determinism
I evaluate Patrick Todd's critique of the idea accepted by many, including (in contemporary philosophy) Nelson Pike and John Martin Fischer, that there can be non‐causal constraints on human actions (including basic actions). I suggest that Todd's critical reflections, although illuminating, are not persuasive. I defend non‐causal constraints in part by putting forward an interpretation of the intuitive idea of the fixity of the past following Ca…
Why Immortality Could Be Good
I revisit my article, “Why Immortality Is Not So Bad,” in which I argued that Bernard Williams’s thesis that immortality would necessarily be boring for any human being is false. Here I point out various ways in which Williams’s treatment of the issues has tilted and distorted the subsequent debates
An Actual-Sequence Theory of Moral Responsibility
Over the course of my career, I have sought to motivate and present a comprehensive actual-sequence theory of moral responsibility, according to which moral responsibility does not require access to alternative possibilities (“freedom to do otherwise”). Such a theory renders the defense of compatibilism easier. Indeed, I have argued that my approach implies the compatibility of both causal determinism and indeterminism with moral responsibility. …
Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life
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 …
Replies to Timmerman and Gorman
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 …
The Frankfurt-style cases
The Frankfurt-style Counterexamples (FSCs) to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) have been controversial. I sketch some of the major moves in the debates surrounding the FSCs, and I seek to provide an answer to a big challenge: the indeterministic horn of the ‘dilemma defense’. (Elsewhere I have addressed the deterministic horn.) Given indeterminism (at the relevant places), it is unclear how Black (the counterfactual intervener) ca…
On John Doris's Talking to Our Selves
Symposium on the Fixity of the Past
This paper evaluates a new argument for the fixity of the past, recently defended by Wesley H. Holliday in ‘Freedom and the Fixity of the Past’ (The Philosophical Review 121). The fixity of the past is a premise used to argue for incompatibilism, and one that many compatibilists deny. Holliday claims that his argument ends the stalemate between compatibilists and incompatibilists concerning this premise. It is argued that Holliday’s argument, whi…
Introduction to Philosophy
The Truth about Foreknowledge
In this paper we critically evaluate Trenton Merricks's recent attempt to provide a "new" way of defending compatibilism about divine foreknowledge and human freedom. We take issue with Merricks's claim that his approach is fundamentally different from Ockhamism. We also seek to highlight the implausibility of Merricks's rejection of the assumption of the fixity of the past, and we also develop a critique of the Merricks's crucial notion of "depe…
Frankfurt-Type Examples and SemiCompatibilism
This article provides an overview of arguments for and against Frankfurt-type examples over the past few decades. It considers various strategies by which critics of these examples have tried to rescue PAP, or variations of it, and also considers various responses to these critics. It notes that moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities, but also believes that freedom does imply alternative possibilities. The resulting view …
Omniscience, Freedom, and Dependence
Replies
The Truth About Freedom
In his recent essay in the Philosophical Review, “Truth and Freedom,” Trenton Merricks contends (among other things) that the basic argument for the incompatibility of God's foreknowledge and human freedom is question-begging. He relies on a “truism” to the effect that truth depends on the world and not the other way around. The present essay argues that mere invocation of this truism does not establish that the basic argument for incompatibilism…
The Physiognomy of Responsibility
The Frankfurt Cases
The Frankfurt cases have been thought by some philosophers to show that moral responsibility does not require genuine metaphysical access to alternative possibilities. But various philosophers have rejected this putative “lesson” of the cases, and they have put forward a powerful “Dilemma Defense.” In the last decade or so, many philosophers have been persuaded by the Dilemma Defense that the Frankfurt cases do not show what Frankfurt (and others…
Precis of My Way
Replies
The large work of small schools
As we engage our students in social studies topics—whether at the college level or the secondary level—we are charged with promoting habits of mind and thought that produce our country's citizens. If we are doing our jobs, we are insistent about finding ways to connect the democracy in our classrooms with the democracy in our culture, and thus impact the effectiveness of both. In the following auto-ethnographic case study, we map five years of on…
The Importance of Frankfurt-Style Argument
I reply to the challenges to Frankfurt‐style compatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility presented in Daniel Speak's paper ‘The Impertinence of Frankfurt‐Style Argument’. I seek to show how Speak's critiques rest on an ‘all‐or‐nothing’ attitude in various ways, and I attempt to defend the importance of Frankfurt‐style argumentation in defence of compatibilism
Four Views on Free Will (Great Debates in Philosophy)
Free Will and Moral Responsibility
This chapter lays out some of the main views about issues that lie at the intersection of questions about “agency” and ethics: free will, moral responsibility, deliberation, practical reasoning, and the presuppositions of moral judgments. It contends that the doctrine of causal determinism is compatible with a kind of free will that is sufficiently robust to ground moral responsibility. Further, it suggests that there would still be a point to de…
Responsibility and Control
Replies
The Physiognomy of Responsibility
Omniscience, Freedom, and Dependence
Reactive Attitudes, Reactivity, and Omissions
Regarding a recent book of mine, John Fischer wrote (1999, p. 139): am faced with the difficult task of doing a critical notice of a book, with almost all of which I agree! I face a similar task here. Fischer and Ravizza's Responsibility and Control is an excellent book. It develops, in admirable detail, an attractive compatibilist position on moral responsibility in a trio of related spheres-actions, consequences, and omissions-and it presents p…
The Direct Argument for Incompatibilism
Freedom and Foreknowledge
The Frankfurt Cases
The Frankfurt cases have been thought by some philosophers to show that moral responsibility does not require genuine metaphysical access to alternative possibilities. But various philosophers have rejected this putative “lesson” of the cases, and they have put forward a powerful “Dilemma Defense.” In the last decade or so, many philosophers have been persuaded by the Dilemma Defense that the Frankfurt cases do not show what Frankfurt (and others…
Metaphilosophy and Free Will
Richard Double looks at the contending schools of thought on the problem of will and seeks the source of the current impasse. He argues that the will problem is intractable because will theorists are separated by metaphilosophical differences in the way they view the philosophical enterprise itself. Double begins by distinguishing the principal contemporary metaphilosophies. He goes on to apply these metaphilosophies to the will problem and to th…
Replies
Precis of Responsibility and Control
The leading idea of our theory of moral responsibility is that responsibility is associated with control. But we contend that there are two distinct kinds of control. Regulative control involves alternative possibilities: it is a kind of dual power of free action. In contrast, guidance control does not, by its nature, involve alternative possibilities. Whereas typically it might be thought that regulative and guidance control go together, the Fra…
Van Inwagen on Free Will
Journal Article Van Inwagen on Free Will Get access John Martin Fischer John Martin Fischer Yale University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 36, Issue 143, April 1986, Pages 252–260, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219772 Published: 01 April 1986
Replies
The Significance of Free Will by Robert Kane
Fischer and Ravizza on Moral Responsibility and History
There is much of significance in John Fischer and Mark Ravizza's thoughtful book. I will, however, focus primarily on their interesting and suggestive claim that responsibility is an essentially historical notion: someone's being morally responsible requires that past be a certain way. (207) But first some preliminaries. Fischer and Ravizza argue that of moral responsibility (13) consists in An agent has guidance control of an action when the act…
Contribution on Martha Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire
Martha Nussbaum's study of Hellenistic philosophy, The Therapy of Desire, is a significant intellectual accomplishment. It is an exploration of idea of a and compassionate philosophy-a philosophy that exists for the sake of human beings, in order to address their deepest needs, confront their most urgent perplexities, and bring them from to some greater measure of flourishing... (p. 3). Nussbaum develops what she calls medical of philosophy, whic…
Free will and the modal principle
When the Will Is Free
Incompatibilists usually direct their attention to the following worry: if the thesis of causal determinism is true, then none of us is free to do other than what he actually does. But although causal determinism poses the most frequently discussed threat to freedom for incompatibilists, it may not be their only source of worry, at least not for those incompatibilists who also accept the common intuition that most of us, most of the time, are fre…
Quinn on Doing and Allowing
Jn Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, Warren Quinn undertakes a discussion of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing (DDA).1 He aims to find the formulation of the distinction between doing and allowing that best fits our intuitions, and a theoretical rationale for thinking the distinction morally significant. Quinn sets out the distinction between doing and allowing by considering two Rescue cases. In Rescue I…
On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia)
Luis de Molina was a leading figure in the remarkable sixteenth-century revival of Scholasticism on the Iberian peninsula
Lehrer's new move
Reason and Action
Freedom and Foreknowledge
Practical Ethics
The Intentionality of Human Action
Ockhamism
Power Necessity
Hard-Type Soft Facts
There is a quite general argument which purports to establish that God's foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom to do otherwise.' The argument proceeds from the claim that the past is fixed-out of our control-to the conclusion that if a certain sort of God exists, then no human is ever free to do otherwise. One way of resisting the argument is Ockhamism. The Ockhamist distinguishes between two sorts of facts about the past: genuine, non…
Van Inwagen on Free Will
Journal Article Van Inwagen on Free Will Get access John Martin Fischer John Martin Fischer Yale University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 36, Issue 143, April 1986, Pages 252–260, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219772 Published: 01 April 1986
An Essay on Free Will
Harm to Self
The Morality of Freedom
Freedom from Necessity
Soft Facts And Harsh Realities
(I). In a number of papers I have sought to discuss and cast some doubt on a certain strategy of response to an argument that purports to show that God's foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom. This argument proceeds from the alleged ‘fixity of the past’ to the conclusion that God's foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom. William Lane Craig has (rather vigorously) criticized my approach to these issues. Here I should like to r…
Shapshot Ockhamism
Critical Notice
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When the Will Is Free
Incompatibilists usually direct their attention to the following worry: if the thesis of causal determinism is true, then none of us is free to do other than what he actually does. But although causal determinism poses the most frequently discussed threat to freedom for incompatibilists, it may not be their only source of worry, at least not for those incompatibilists who also accept the common intuition that most of us, most of the time, are fre…
Quinn on Doing and Allowing
Jn Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, Warren Quinn undertakes a discussion of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing (DDA).1 He aims to find the formulation of the distinction between doing and allowing that best fits our intuitions, and a theoretical rationale for thinking the distinction morally significant. Quinn sets out the distinction between doing and allowing by considering two Rescue cases. In Rescue I…
The Non-Reality of Free Will
On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia)
Luis de Molina was a leading figure in the remarkable sixteenth-century revival of Scholasticism on the Iberian peninsula
The Metaphysics of Death
This collection of seventeen essays deals with the metaphysical, as opposed to the moral issues pertaining to death. For example, the authors investigate (among other things) the issue of what makes death a bad thing for an individual, if indeed death is a bad thing. This issue is more basic and abstract than such moral questions as the particular conditions under which euthanasia is justified, if it is ever justified. Though there are important …
Confrontations with the Reaper
Perspectives on Moral Responsibility
Alternative Possibilities
Libertarianism and Avoid Ability
Philosophy (54 obras) · Epistemology (48 obras) · Free Will and Agency (27 obras) · Contemporary philosophy (20 obras) · Sociology (20 obras) · Philosophy (19 obras) · War, Ethics, and Justification (18 obras) · Psychology (17 obras) · Moral responsibility (14 obras) · General interest (13 obras)