Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism 11Unless otherwise indicated, we will write in terms of free action and of acting
freely when discussing free will. To address Frankfurt’s and Kane’s concern that
indeed there is something lost in failing to distinguish between free action and
free will, we offer two considerations. First, Frankfurt and Kane are correct that
there is a familiar notion of free action that applies to some non- human animals
and amounts to no more than being able to move one’s body as one wishes, the
way a dog runs free once let off a leash. But since we mean to account for free
will in terms of the strongest sense of control required for moral responsibility,
we can claim that this sort of freedom is not strong enough to do justice to the
sort of free action that we are interested in capturing. Second, when examining
the details of the will as, for instance, Kane (1996) understands it, a key ingredi-
ent—indeed, on his view the key ingredient—is the ability to decide in con-
ditions of uncertainty when one is not sure what to do, or which values should be
endorsed. But on a sufficiently permissive view of what actions are, decisions
are actions—they are mental actions. Then it seems that the difference between
a view like Kane’s and one that denies the existence of the will becomes very
small, especially if we treat freedom of decision as the especially important cases
of free action, those that capture what is most distinctive in exercises of free
will.
As a general point, nearly all philosophers involved in the free will debate
take decisions, especially in morally loaded contexts, to be the most salient and
interesting cases to fix upon when offering a theory of freedom. And the cases
most emphasized involve decisions preceded by conscious deliberation. This is
so regardless of how the philosopher defines the term “free will,” and regardless
of whether she is committed to the existence of the will.^3
1.3. Moral Responsibility
We turn next to the topic of moral responsibility. Getting clear on moral respon-
sibility’s nature is important to all those working on the topic of free will, not
just those who favor the definition of free will we endorse. It is an important
question whether and how free will is related to moral responsibility, independ-
ently of one’s terminological commitments. For example, suppose, as van
Inwagen or Ginet would see it, and contrary to our own prescription, free will
should be defined in terms of the ability to do otherwise and without any mention
of the conditions on moral responsibility. It remains an important philosophical
question for them if and how free will is related to moral responsibility. It is for
this reason that they too discuss their views about free will in contexts where
what is at issue is whether someone is morally responsible for how she acts.
So, how are we to understand moral responsibility? To begin, judgments of
moral responsibility should be distinguished from the wider class of ethical or
moral judgments. Morality, broadly construed, encompasses judgments of moral
obligation, moral permission, and moral prohibition; judgments of right and
wrong, of virtue and vice, and of good and bad. Moral responsibility concerns a
person’s responsibility for actions in these categories. It is one thing to settle