文档介绍：Problems of Philosophy
Prof. Sally Haslanger
November 14, 2001
Moral Luck
One of the important themes in the freewill debate is the idea that freedom is necessary for moral responsibility. In effect,
if hard determinism is the correct view, then we should not hold ourselves or others morally responsible. Libertarians, in
particular, seem to hold that in order to be responsible for an act, we must be its "sole author." Here is the principle at
issue:
Control Principle: You are only responsible for what you have control over.
If you steal an axe from my garage and use it to break into a gas station, there's no point in holding me responsible, I didn't
have any control over what you did with the axe, I didn't know about it. At most I could be blamed for leaving the axe out
there in plain view where anyone could grab it. (But one might askÖwasn't it in my control to hide the axe away? Aren't I
partly responsible?) Or suppose I had locked the garage door and you had broken it down with your car; nothing that was
within my control could have prevented that, so surely in that case I'm not responsible,
There does then seem to be a strong intuitive correlation between control and responsibility. But now notice an important
consequence of the control principle. A handy word for what I don't have control over is what happens as a matter of luck.
So: