• DOI:10.1215/00318108-2008-002
• Corpus ID: 170406030

Saying Good-bye to the Direct Argument the Right Way

@article{McKenna2008SayingGT,
  title={Saying Good-bye to the Direct Argument the Right Way},
  author={Michael McKenna},
  journal={The Philosophical Review},
  year={2008},
  volume={117},
  pages={349-383}
}

• Michael McKenna
• Published 1 July 2008
• Philosophy
• The Philosophical Review

In "The Incompatibility of Responsibility and Determinism," Peter van Inwagen (1980) introduced the alluring Direct Argument. The Direct Argument tells us that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism because, at a determined world, nonresponsibility for the facts of the past and the laws of nature results in nonresponsibility for what one does. The Direct Argument differs from other arguments for the same conclusion in that it does not attempt to show that determinism is incompatible with some feature perhaps necessary for moral responsibility, such as the ability to do otherwise. Rather, it fixes directly on moral responsibility and argues that, under the assumption of determinism, no one is morally responsible. How so? Nonresponsibility transfers across deterministic relations. If the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every truth about what one does, as the thesis of determinism would have it, and no one is even in part morally responsible for the past and the laws, then no one is even in part morally responsible for what one does.