G. E. Moore

“ They will say that, in order that an action may be really either right or wrong, it is absolutely essential that the agent should have been really able to act differently, able in some sense quite other than that of merely being able, if he had chosen. ”

“ Is it ever true that a man could have done anything else, except what he actually did do? And, first of all, I think I had better explain exactly how this question seems to me to be related to the question of Free Will. ”

“ It is impossible to exaggerate the frequency of the occasions on which we all of us make a distinction between two things, neither of which did happen,—a distinction which we express by saying, that whereas the one could have happened, the other could not. ”

“ But those who hold the view we are considering will be liable to reply that this is by no means sufficient: that to say that it is sufficient, is entirely to misconceive the nature of right and wrong. ”

“ Many people seem, in fact, to conclude directly from the first of these two propositions, that we can never be justified in praising or blaming a man for anything that he does, or indeed for making any distinction between what is right or wrong, on the one hand, and what is lucky or unfortunate on the other. ”

“ On the contrary, reasons of exactly the same sort and exactly as strong as those which lead us to suppose that everything has a cause, lead to the conclusion that if we choose one course, the result will always be different in some respect from what it would have been, if we had chosen another ”

“ And I think there is no doubt it is often true that we should have chosen to do a particular thing if we had chosen to make the choice; and that this is a very important sense in which it is often in our power to make a choice. There certainly is such a thing as making an effort to induce ourselves to choose a particular course ”

“ For this reason, anybody who asserts, without qualification, “Nothing ever could have happened, except what actually did happen,” is making an assertion which is quite unjustifiable, and which he himself cannot help constantly contradicting. ”

“ And this fact is certainly of practical importance, because many people are apt much too easily to assume that it is quite certain that they will not make a given choice, which they know they ought to make, if it were possible ”

“ They conclude, for instance, that there is never any reason to treat or to regard the voluntary commission of a crime in any different way from that in which we treat or regard the involuntary catching of a disease. The man who committed the crime could not, they say, have helped committing it any more than the other man could have helped catching the disease ”