Options and Challenges

Abstract

The chapter first summarizes various respects in which the responsibility and obligation dilemmas are relevantly similar and relevantly different. One similarity is that the luck objection underpins the indeterministic horns of both. A salient difference is that whereas some have thought that the responsibility dilemma’s deterministic horn is persuasive because responsibility requires ultimate origination, there is no such requirement for obligation. The chapter then lays out certain options as responses to the obligation dilemma. The principal alternatives include: (i) accepting both horns and, thus, embracing obligation skepticism; (ii) rejecting the indeterministic horn by rejecting the luck objection; and (iii) rejecting the deterministic horn on the assumption that obligation requires alternatives which determinism does not preclude. The chapter also comments briefly on the proposal that an analysis of specific ability should help with assessing the dilemma.