Show Archives

My first book, Responsibility & Luck: A Defense of Praise and Blame, is available for purchase in paperback, as well as for Kindle and Nook.

Does the pervasive influence of luck in life mean that people cannot be held responsible for their choices? Do people lack the control required to justify moral praise and blame? In his famous article "Moral Luck," philosopher Thomas Nagel casts doubt on our ordinary moral judgments of persons. He claims that we intuitively accept that moral responsibility requires control, yet we praise and blame people for their actions, the outcomes of those actions, and their characters – even though shaped by forces beyond their control, i.e., by luck. This is the "problem of moral luck."

In Responsibility & Luck, I argue that this attack on moral judgment rests on a faulty view of control, as well as other errors. By developing Aristotle's theory of moral responsibility, I explain the sources and limits of a person's responsibility for what he does, what he produces, and who he is. Ultimately, I show that moral judgments are not undermined by luck. In addition, this book explores the nature of moral agency and free will, the purpose of moral judgment, causation in tort and criminal law, the process of character development, and more.

Responsibility & Luck is scholarly but accessible to active-minded people interested in philosophy. You can preview the book by reading Chapter One and Chapter Three as PDFs – or by listening to my reading of Chapter One.

• In last Sunday's show, you stated that psychological egoism has a relationship to determinism. The relationship isn't obvious to me. As I interpreted the explanation of psychological egoism it seems that you are faced with options about how to behave and you deliberate, choose one, and whichever one you chose was the one you wanted. It's not clear to me how that is determinism.
• What do you think of the current mess in Washington?
• Was Ted Cruz's filibuster counterproductive?
• Is it moral for an extreme introvert to derive pleasure from having internet friends, providing that they aren't otherwise hermits? How do you morally have internet only friends?
• Who is your favorite character from an Ayn Rand novel and why?
• Was Dominique crazy?
• When do you think its egoistic to stand up for oneself in response to a snide, sarcastic boss versus just ignoring him?
• You are incredibly optimistic about our society as a whole. Philosophically, does that mean you disapprove of Preppers?
• Is comparing our own times to "Atlas Shrugged" misleading, in that "Atlas Shrugged" eventually descends into civilization's self-destruction and descent into civil war?
• What should happen for you to consider emigrating?
• Are parents overprotective of their kids these days? Or given how much worse the culture is compared to 20 years ago, are things actually more dangerous for kids?
• Do you think children should be forced to socialize with other children if they don't want to?
• Would you watch a survival show that pitted socialists and libertarians against each other? How big a group would be necessarily to show a difference in their ideas?
• Is the force involved in fraud partly the withholding someone else's property?
• Of Ayn Rand's nonfiction, I find The Romantic Manifesto the most difficult. How can I read it without the temptation to throw it at the wall? What am I not getting?
• Aren't you part of "the Objectivist movement" just by advocating what you think is compatible with it? What about Objectivist Answers and Free Objectivist Books?
• Do you think the negative reactions to Miley Cyrus twerking is a function of a puritanical suppression of female sexuality or an appropriate condemnation of self-degradation or something else?
• You said that Obama is not a nihilist, but is an egalitarian. However, Dr. Peikoff argues in his book (as far as I understand) that egalitarianism is a form of nihilism in politics. Do you disagree?

Listen or Download

Comments

Conclusion (56:12)