Ben Vilhauer
Assistant Professor
Department
of Philosophy
William
Paterson University of New Jersey
Office: 269 Atrium Building, (973) 720-2415
Email address: vilhauerb@wpunj.edu
Mailing address: 265 Atrium Building, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne NJ 07470
My main research areas are in free will and moral responsibility, ethics, and the history of modern philosophy. I have published several exegetically-oriented articles on Kant's theory of free will, and several articles on free will skepticism.
I teach classes on ethics, political philosophy, comparative philosophy, and the history of modern philosophy.
Recent Papers:
"Free Will and the Asymmetrical Justifiability
of Holding Morally Responsible", unpublished. abstract full text
"Free Will Skepticism and Personhood as a
Desert Base", forthcoming in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
abstract full
text
"Free Will and Reasonable Doubt", forthcoming
in the American Philosophical Quarterly. abstract full text
"The
Scope of Responsibility in Kant's Theory of Free Will", forthcoming in
The British Journal for the History of Philosophy. abstract full
text
"Incompatibilism
and Ontological Priority in Kant's Theory of Free Will", forthcoming
in Rethinking Kant, ed. Pablo Muchnik (Cambridge Scholars Press). abstract full
text
"Hard Determinism, Humeanism, and Virtue
Ethics", Southern Journal
of Philosophy,Vol. 46, No.
1, 2008, pp. 121-144. abstract full text
"Hard Determinism, Remorse, and Virtue
Ethics", Southern
Journal of Philosophy, Vol.
42, No. 4, 2004, pp. 547-564. abstract full text
"Can We Interpret Kant as a Compatibilist?", The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Vol.
12, No. 4, 2004, pp. 719-730. abstract full text
Comments
on both published and unpublished papers are received with gratitude.
Current
Research:
I am currently working on a book, which I've tentatively entitled Kantian Free Will Skepticism. Kant holds that we can only have free will if we are agent-causes with special causal powers, and that while it is possible that we are such agent-causes, there is no empirical evidence that we are. I argue that he is right about this, and that he can consistently hold that determinism is true and also that it is possible for us to have robust alternative possibilities of action. This is because in Kant's system it it is possible for an agent-cause to be metaphysically responsible for the deterministic causal laws governing her free choices. But Kant holds that the mere possibility that we are such agent-causes is enough to license us in believing that we have free will, at least when it comes to thinking about how we should act. I think that Kant is only partly right about this. The mere possibility that we have free will is probably enough to justify praise, at least in cases where there are no morally significant downsides to praising somebody (such as damaging the self-esteem of third parties who are excluded from praise). But the mere possibility is not enough to justify retribution, at least not when serious harm is at stake. People deserve the benefit of the doubt.
So,
Kant makes a mistake about the burden of proof in the free will debate. This means that the belief in free will
cannot be the kind of foundation for Kant's ethics that he wants it to be. But a substantial part of his ethics
can be preserved despite this.
Here is an example. Kant
thinks that, to regard ourselves as having moral reasons, we must believe that
we have free will. This is because
of the way he interprets the "can" in the "ought implies
can" principle. But I argue
that it is enough to support the "can" in the "ought implies
can" principle to believe that it is possible that we have free
will. It is not necessary to
believe that we actually have it.
Here is another example.
Many philosophers suppose that all claims about what we deserve are
based on claims about freely willed actions. Kant seems to be among these philosophers. If we accept this view, and we doubt
that anyone has free will, then we should doubt that anyone deserves
anything. But when we properly
analyze desert claims, we will see that some desert claims are not based on
claims about freely willed actions.
Some are based on the sheer fact of our personhood, and worries about
the metaphysics of free will do not undermine these desert claims. Personhood-based desert claims include
our claims to deserve respect, access to our rights, and to be treated equally
before the law. There is nothing
any person could conceivably do that would justify us in disregarding such
desert claims, so we cannot suppose that they are based on claims about freely
willed actions. We deserve to be
treated in these ways simply because we are persons. I argue that the categorical imperative can also be
formulated as such a desert claim: persons deserve not to be treated as mere
means, simply because they are persons.