The Transfer of Non-Responsibility

John Martin Fischer

I consider various versions of a principle which transfers non-responsibility from one thing to another. The simplest version is Transfer NR: If an agent is not morally responsible for p, and the agent is not morally responsible for p's leading to q, then the agent is not morally responsible for q. I contend that Transfer NR is invalid, and that it cannot be revised in such a way as to yield an acceptable principle that issues in incompatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility.