Concept
2 readings
Moral responsibility
Concept · 2 readings
Moral responsibility asks what makes an action appropriately answerable to praise or blame. Causal influence, coercion, available alternatives and actual control raise distinct questions.
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2 readings · Title A–Z
Guided course · Module 13 · Lesson 83
Can responsibility survive causal explanation?
Hume, van Inwagen and Fischer disagree about the control that responsibility requires. The lesson separates three ideas their arguments rely on: causal determination, alternative possibilities and responsiveness to reasons.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 5 of 8
Who acts, and who answers for it?
If agent and action lack intrinsic nature, can anyone answer for what they do? The lesson follows chapter 17 on action and its results and weighs the charge that Madhyamaka is a form of nihilism.
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Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths
Follow Nāgārjuna’s arguments that nothing has an intrinsic nature of its own, from causes and motion to persons, the two truths and the charge that the argument undermines itself. Ask what the arguments leave standing: can things exist, change and matter without such a nature?