Investigation of Frankfurt's Argument on Moral Responsibility


  •  Tavakkol Koohi Giglou    
  •  Javad Danesh    
  •  Habib Asadi    

Abstract

The common thought of Christian and Moslem philosophers considers moral responsibility of a person as dependent on his or her ability to choose from several options. However, Harry Frankfurt in his famous paper " alternate possibilities and moral responsibility" challenges freedom condition for moral responsibility with implicit reasons and makes use of several examples to show that it is completely possible for a person to be considered as morally responsible despite failure to access any kind of alternate possible. However, there are two reasons presented by Frankfurt that contrary to his claims show that presence of alternate possibilities or at least imagination for presence of alternatives is the base for responsibility or difficulty of moralactor and if sometimes anactor is regarded as responsible despite absence of alternate possible, this is resulted from his or her "ignorance" of the matter and also the impact of his "intention" in doing action. One of the main defects of theories which deal with moral responsibility conditions is ignoring the intention and purpose of moralactor. This is while ethics domain includes internal actions like intention and will of moral actor as well as apparent actions.


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