Concluding Reflections

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter assimilates the primary conclusions of the book. First, there are strong reasons to believe that obligation requires freedom to do otherwise: nothing can be obligatory for one unless one could have done otherwise. Owing to conceptual links between obligation and responsibility, with certain caveats, there is good reason to think that responsibility, too, requires alternate possibilities. Thus, again with apt qualifications, the freedom requirements of obligation and responsibility are symmetric. Second, semicompatibilism regarding responsibility (or obligation) is the thesis that even if determinism is incompatible with freedom to do otherwise, it is compatible with responsibility (or obligation). Given the first conclusion, both these sorts of semicompatibilism are suspect. Third, many concur that whereas one may now no longer have an obligation that one previously had, one cannot now fail to be blameworthy for something for which one was formerly to blame. This immutability thesis about blameworthiness is shown to be false. Both obligation and blameworthiness can change, in the relevant fashion, with the passage of time. Fourth, and finally, while how one acquires ones values may significantly influence whether one is responsible for much of one’s conduct, obligation is not “historical” in this way. The overall conclusion is that obligation is more similar to responsibility in various respects than many believe.