This is made in philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy bites is available at www

philosophy bites.com. Philosophy bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.

Moral responsibility presupposes free will.

We don't think a person is praiseworthy or blameworthy unless they've performed and act freely.

To be free, we tend to assume that a person must have certain reasoning capacities.

We don't hold young children or the mentally ill free and so we don't hold them culpable.

Some people say that in the world governed by physical laws we can't have free will and there

can't be genuine moral responsibility.

Gideon Rosen of Princeton University is a skeptic about moral responsibility, but he's not that

sort of a skeptic.

He thinks that if, when we act, we're ignorant in various ways, for example

ignorant of the facts, then we should be morally excused, let off the hook. The problem is,

it's never totally clear whether or not we are relevantly ignorant

fully informed about philosophy bites Professor Rosen agreed to explain more

Gideon Rosen welcome to to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you so much, it's a pleasure to be here.

The topic we're going to consider today is moral responsibility.

What is that?

Suppose a bear breaks into your house and destroys your furniture.

You're upset.

You're angry in a sense, but when you think it's a bear,

...