My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility

by John Martin Fischer

This is a selection of essays on moral responsibility that represent the major components of John Martin Fischer's overall approach to freedom of the will and moral responsibility. The collection exhibits the overall structure of Fischer's view and shows how the various elements fit together to form a comprehensive framework for analyzing free will and moral responsibility.
The topics include deliberation and practical reasoning, freedom of the will, freedom of action, various notions of control, and moral accountability. The essays seek to provide a foundation for our practices of holding each other (and ourselves) morally and legally accountable for our behavior. A crucial move is the distinction between two kinds of control. According to Fischer, "regulative control" involves freedom to choose and do otherwise ("alternative possibilities"), whereas "guidance control" does not. Fischer contends that guidance control is all the freedom we need to be morally responsible agents. Further, he contends that such control is fully compatible with causal determinism. Additionally, Fischer argues that we do not need genuine access to alternative possibilities in order for there to be a legitimate point to practical reasoning.
Fischer's overall framework contains an argument for the contention that guidance control, and not regulative control, is associated with moral responsibility, a sketch of a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility (that ties together responsibility for actions, omissions, consequences, and character), and an account of the value of moral responsibility. On this account, the value of exhibiting freedom (of the relevant sort) and thus being morally responsible for one's behavior is a species of the value of artistic self-expression.

Genres: Philosophy

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Kramer Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Way is a compilation of Fischer's essays elucidating and defending his (and Mark Ravizza's) guidance control theory of moral responsibility, which states (roughly) that agents are morally responsible for actions that are derived from a moderately reasons-responsive mechanism that they endorse as their own. Almost all of Fischer's essays were accessible, despite my having only a minor background in theories of moral responsibility. Fischer did a good job defending his theory from criticism, although sometimes his defences seemed lacking. Overall, My Way is an informative and interesting look at one of the more popular contemporary theories of moral responsibility.