ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on Timothy O’Connor's provocative defense of incompatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility based on his agent-causal approach to freedom and moral responsibility. O’Connor presents various criticisms of the doctrine of semi-compatibilism: the thesis that even though causal determinism evidently rules out alternative possibilities, it does not rule out moral responsibility. The author discusses articulating the way in which Frankfurt-type cases challenge the notion that moral responsibility requires alternative possibilities. He explores the question of whether agent-causation has distinctive resources for responding to the Frankfurt-type cases in which it is alleged that an agent is morally responsible although he lacks alternative possibilities. The author considers whether the assumption of causal determinism does in fact call into question the contention that the agent is morally responsible. Finally, O’Connor considers what he calls the ‘strongly revisionary conclusion’ that some philosophers draw from the Gettier counter examples to the justified true belief (JTB) analysis of knowledge.
