Genuine moral agency entails necessary consequences. Choice is always choice of something. In John Stuart Mill’s classic treatment of the subject, human liberty requires the freedom “of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow.” Those consequences may look like punishment or reward from our perspective, but they were chosen. That is how freedom operates, ideally at least. Consequences are chosen at the time actions are freely committed. To choose to indulge a desire is to choose its fruit—bitter or sweet—assuming, and this is a crucial caveat—that “men are instructed
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