ABSTRACT
Our focus is on the relationship between moral responsibility (hereafter ‘responsibility’) and freedom (sometimes called ‘free will’). We open with remarks about the general conceptual relationship between responsibility and freedom. We then explore, as a case study, a prominent account of responsibility with special focus on what this accounts says or implies, if anything, about freedom. We close with discussion of the relation between responsibility and freedom if it turns out that there are multiple notions of responsibility.
Both freedom and responsibility are contested notions. There are many different theories or accounts of responsibility and many different theories or accounts of freedom. The different accounts seem to be in competition with one another. Whether such competition is real or illusory, however, is itself a contested matter. Perhaps there is one legitimate notion of responsibility with many different proposed accounts of it. Or perhaps there are multiple legitimate notions of responsibility. The same is true of the apparently competing accounts of freedom.
