Macnamara's Map of Moral Responsibility

Philosophical Studies is definitely on a roll lately with cool papers relevant to the Garden: Patrick Todd's on manipulation arguments that I brought up in my last post, a newer one on Frankfurt-examples by Chris Franklin, and also one on the nature of holding responsible by Coleen Macnamara. (I can't resist pointing out that all three of these fine individuals are in the department at UC Riverside. The people affiliated with that department sure are smart!)

Although you should definitely read all of the above articles, here I just want to talk a bit about Coleen's paper, and then ask a question for all you readers out there.

In her paper, Macnamara gives "a topology of the terrain of holding others responsible" (p. 3), and it turns out to be quite complex and fascinating. She argues that accepting her map helps both to rectify certain confusions in the literature and to "clarify the scope and nature of our practices of holding responsible" (p. 3). A thumbnail sketch of her map, along with a question, appears below the fold:

Time to talk about your experience publishing

Sally Haslanger (MIT) wants to know about your experience publishing, regardless of your career stage (grad student, pre-tenure prof, post-tenure prof). Please help her out. As many of you may know, she's been (among many other things) trying to get the profession to think about the conditions under which we practice philosophy, hire new professors, and develop careers. So, the answers to this survey could be helpful in getting a snapshot of publication experiences in the profession. Original email message below.

(Two notes: I can report that the advice below is accurate: it is very useful to have your CV available when you do the survey. Also, this is an opportunity to help raise the visibility of Philosophy of Action/Agency. It isn't listed as an area of specialization, but you can write it in under "Other." Please do so, so Sally and others will say "Wow, I hadn't realized there were so many people working in Philosophy of Action" or "Wow, philosophers of action have lots of effective mentors" or what have you.)

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All professional philosophers are invited to participate in a survey on publishing in philosophy.  

It should take about 10 minutes.  It will be useful to have your CV handy as you fill it out.  Please go here to find it:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=TXA9uBYCaq4MtU_2bwLhLADQ_3d_3d
If all goes well, Sally Haslanger will report on the results at the December APA in the symposium on philosophy publishing (Wednesday December 30th, 11:15-1:15).
Thanks for your help.  Please spread the word.
*****

Funny Quips about Philosophy from Jerry Dworkin

I highly recommend Jerry Dworkin's "quips about philosophy", to which there is a link from Brian Leiter's blog (today--Nov 12): http:/leiterreports.typepad.com

As would be expected, they are very funny.  What are your favorites?

Tamler (one 'm') Sommers is the Gardener of the Moment

I just received my copy of A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind the Curtain, by Tamler Sommers. 

Go get your copy, and read some interviews he did with various Famous People, including Galen Strawson, Philip Zimbardo, Franz de Waal, Joshua Greene, Jonathan Haidt, Stephen Stich, and various other luminaries. 

Then, remark on his annoyingly excellent prose and keen sense of the Important Stuff. 

Some Assorted News

First, the Garden will be growing.  We've invited several new people to be contributors, so once the sorry administrator gets his act together, and everything is official, I'll introduce them.

Second, I want to make sure that Gardeners are familiar with Brains.  In case you don't know, Brains is a blog devoted the philosophy of mind, and it may be of great interest to many Gardeners, so please check it out.

Third, Edward Cokely has brought the following new journal to my attention, and some Gardeners might be interested in submitting their work.  Here is the call for papers:

Call for Papers: The new "Journal of Organizational Moral Psychology" (Nova Science publishers, quarterly, beginning 2010) publishes research in human moral cognition, judgment, and decision-making, including organizational ethical behavior and organizational moral psychology. The journal seeks articles that present original empirical research, theoretical development, reviews of the pertinent literature, and methodological advancements relevant to these areas.  Topics covered by the journal are multidisciplinary and include scholars from many fields including management, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, behavioral economics and others. We are interested in publishing articles that explore these topics as they apply to individuals, dyads, groups, and higher levels of analysis. We take the organization to be a construct covering a wide spectrum of social collectives; formal, informal, illegal or legal collaborations, in the private or public sector.

Two areas of emphasis in the journal that fit well with ongoing work in experimental philosophy are (1) Moral intuitions and (2) Philosophy/Psychology connections.

Editor: George W. Watson gwatson@siue.edu

Journal website: https://ojcs.siue.edu/ojs/index.php/jomp/login

And last (but by no means least in my heart), boo Yankees!

Short Conference as University of Sydney Law Faculty

Hi Everyone

There will be a short conference at the University of Sydney Law School on the following theme:

Responsibilty: A Matter of Degree?

It involves some Garden inspired discussion but unfortunately I think it is being held a long way from most Gardeners.

Here is the link to the site:

http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/law/457.html?eventid=4870

Allan

From Elimination to Mitigation

Many of you will be interested in a paper by Patrick Todd that was just published online with Philosophical Studies, "A New Approach to Manipulation Arguments". The paper is short and sweet, and makes an intriguing point: proponents of manipulation arguments against compatibilism need only maintain that the manipulated agent's blameworthiness is mitigated, not necessarily eliminated.

It's a quick read, so you should read what Todd has to say for yourselves, but here's the basic idea. Although many compatibilists are attracted to a hard-line response to Pereboom's 4-case argument -- namely, that Plum is blameworthy even when manipulated -- this response is actually even harder than has previously been noted. Why? Simply because the compatibilist must say not only that Plum is still blameworthy when manipulated, but that the manipulation in no way even diminishes Plum's blameworthiness. The compatibilist must say this, Todd argues, because to allow mitigation in response to manipulation is to take the first fragile steps down a slippery slope that ends with compatibilism's demise. To allow mitigation is to commit oneself to finding a distinction between manipulation and determinism (if one is a compatibilist), but what about the manipulation setup could possibly mitigate blameworthiness which wouldn't also mitigate blameworthiness in a simple deterministic world? The bottom line, Todd argues, is that the compatibilist has to be even more hard-core than we used to think. And she was already pretty darn hard-core.

A couple of my own thoughts are below the fold.

Is mere design disturbing? Should it be?

Consider the following situation.

Suppose a cosmic being sets up the initial conditions and/or laws of a deterministic world so that your entire life is predetermined.  The being knows exactly what you will do, before you do it, before you are born, and sets everything up so that you do exactly that.  The being could be God, but need not be divine.  A very powerful alien or computer would suffice.

Consider further: the being could even tell you he designed your life story.  He could say “I defined every detail of your life!  There’s nothing you can do that I didn’t predict.”  The being could write down, on a card, a prediction of what you will do, every five minutes, and then, after five minutes go by, show you the card.  And the being would always be right.  Each and every card would perfectly predict your life story.  The being could even write all of them before you are born.  This could really aggravate you, and there would be nothing you could do to stop him.

To me, the above could not be more violent to free will.

Ways to Deny the Existence of Free Will

A while back, I posted about two general strategies for trying to show that free will exists.  Here, I want to suggest that there are also two general strategies for trying to show that free will doesn't exist and get your input on them.

Before I get to that, however, I want to say that there won't be anything parallel to the indirect approach for showing the existence of free will.  In essence, the indirect approach argued (i) that free will is necessary for some other thing x, and (ii) that x exists.  But if we're focusing on the non-existence of free will, saying that free will is necessary for x and then showing that x doens't exist won't establish that free will doesn't exist.  Perhaps the closest thing to an indirect argument for the non-existence of free will would be to argue that free will is sufficient for some other thing x and then argue that x doesn't exist.  But I'm not aware of anyone who makes this kind of argument.

If this is right, then it looks like all arguments for the non-existence of free will will be 'direct'.  But there are two different ways that one could directly argue for the non-existence of free will, which I shall call contingent denials and categorical denials.  A contingent denial will be a view which holds that while it is possible that free will exists, it is a contingent truth that free will doesn't exist.  Categorical denials will be stronger: free will does not exist because it is impossible for free will to exist.  Pereboom is an example of a contigent denier, while impossibilists like Galen Strawson will be categorical deniers.  

What do you think about this way of demarcating views which deny the existence of free will?

The Consequence Argument

Why do some philosophers take the Consequence Argument (CA) seriously, whereas others do not?  This does not correlate (perfectly) with whether a philosopher is a compatibilist (either a traditional compatibilist or a semicompatibilist), incompatibilist, or skeptic.  Also, it does not seem to me that it is a matter of whether a philosopher is primarily interested in "metaphysics" or "ethics".  After all, all of us writing about moral responsibility are concerned with the appropriate conditions for praise, blame, reactive attitudes, punishment, and so forth. 

Some philosophers simply ignore the CA or shunt it quickly to the side, whereas others take it as something that must be dealt with, one way or another.  Why the difference?  Also, is it ok simply to ignore or dismiss the CA?