On Revising our Folk Concepts

Our own beloved Manuel Vargas has been pushing a revisionist line regarding freedom and moral responsibility. In short, (and he can correct me if I misrepresent his view) revisionism is the view that our ordinary folk concepts of freedom and responsibility are hopelessly jacked up. There's really no hope of untangling the various threads in a way that can be both internally coherent and consistent with the empirical data. So we ought to stop trying. Instead, we ought to admit defeat, abandon the project of salvaging the folks concepts, and get to work on a revised story of responsibility.

Recently I admitted to Manuel that I think his project is a good one and that I wish him well in his efforts. But, I claimed, this is because I am inclined to see revisionism as a kind of fall-back position. If the traditional efforts to salvage the folk concepts ultimately fail, it will be good to know that smart people have been working on what can take their place. Still, I'm not a revisionist. I'm not yet prepared to admit defeat. I still hold out hope. (There's a way in which my position here is like the "flip-flopping" van Inwagen countenances and about which John Fischer has complained).

But here's my worry. It's not clear to me what would count as sufficient pressure to force revision. Manuel's sensitive reply has been to give me his best sheepish grin and ask what more pressure one could want than 2500 years of failed philosophical efforts to make the folk concepts clear. This isn't a bad point. Makes me wonder if I've backed myself into a corner.

To get myself out of this corner, I want to think more about the kinds of pressures that can force us to revise our folk concepts. As I'm seeing it, there is a dynamic tension between the "evidence" that the concepts can't be legitimized and the value of maintaining the concept. When a particular folk concept has little riding on it, then the amount of evidence needed to dislodge it is less, and vice versa. So, there are two questions I'd like to explore. First, what counts as evidence for the failure of a concept. Second, what values hang on the preservation of the folks concepts. Manuel, obviously, thinks there is enough evidence but this is largely because he also thinks that less hangs on the concepts than I do. I think it would help to make our answers to these questions as explicit as possible.

Here's what might help. Suppose we could amass a list of circumstances in which there is some pressure on a folk concept and in which some revisionsist conception is in the offing. In some of these cases, the folk concept will have prevailed. In others, we will have made the switch to the revised concept. And, in some others, it will still be up for grabs. I'd like to get some of these cases out in the open. Then, perhaps, we might see more clearly what drives the preservation of folk concepts and what supplies sufficient pressure for revision.

cases that come to mind:
Scientific revolutions
consciousness
epistemological skepticism (Have we revised our concept of knowledge?)
People used to blame and punish animals under the law (having trials and executions, etc.).

What else comes to mind?

Comments

[Manuel]

The only thing clarification I would add is that I think we CAN salvage lots of our responsibility-characteristic thinking and practices- we just can't salvage everything, and some of what we can salvage (praising and blaming, for example.) may have a different basis than what we ordinarily suppose. So, yeah, give up trying to rescue all the intuitions and instead focus on justifying our differential treatment of one another, without presupposing an implausible metaphysics of agency.

[Campbell Brown]

Why do you regard revisionism as merely a "fallback" position?

Why can't the revisionist say the following? "Look at my neat theory of responsibility. Sure, it doesn't capture every aspect of the folk notion of responsibility. But see how elegant, parsimonious, and ontologically modest it is! I concede that it may be possible to devise some other theory that does a better job of capturing the folk notion, but only at the cost of sacrificing these other explanatory virtues."

I would suggest that congruence with folk notions is just one of many criteria by which we may adjudicate between theories of responsibility. To assume that revisionism is merely a fallback is to assign incredibly great weight to that one criterion. But why must we do that? Given a choice between a lean revisionist theory and a bloated nonrevisionist one, I think my money would be on the former.

[Dan Speak]

Campbell,

Yes, I suppose that is the question. And I agree that getting fit with the folk concept is only one kind of consideration. I also agree that elegance, parsimony, and ontological modesty are (all things being equal) good things. Again, I think it is crucial to see what turns on retaining or abandoning the folk concept. Revisionism's status as a fall-back position for me comes (I think) from the sense that more is lost in the switch to the revised concept than the revisionist thinks. So there is still reason to hold out for more.

Let's see if this distinction helps: what if we designate one set of considerations as the "truth-relevant" ones and another as the "value-relevant" ones. I initially put the point in terms of "evidence" but that bugged me then and bugs me more now after your post... because I'm not sure that elegance and ontological modesty are evidential but I see them as falling together with evidence under truth-relevant considerations. Value-relevant considerations will be things like providing for a distinctive kind of human dignity, grounding certain deep kinds of moral assessment, generating a perspective more likely to encourage moral development, etc. So my reason for not becoming a revisionist here and now is that I don't yet think that the truth relevant considerations in favor of revisionism outweigh the value-relevant considerations in favor of retaining the folk concept. At least, that's what I want to say. I'd like to get some further examples of cases of conceptual revision so that I can see in another context how this tension between the two kinds of considerations plays out.

One metaphor that strikes me is the one Nagel uses at the end of "Absurd" paper. Remember, he compares our worries about absurdity to our worries about skepticism. In the end, he says something like, "Of course we all go back to our lives after worrying about these things. But our lives are now tinged with irony. They have a different flavor. Like a husband who has been betrayed by his wife but must take her back. Things go back to normal, but the relationship has lost something". I think that I feel something like this about becoming a revisionist. So best of luck to all you revisionists. I have a contingent interest in the success of your project. But I'm gonna keep working at a vindication of the folk concept. Does something strike you as wrong with this approach?

[Eddy Nahmias]

The revisionism issue is fascinating. The basic question, as I see it, is: If a theory of free will does not include libertarian (or even agent causal) elements, is that theory (a) eliminativist, (b) revisionist (and to what extent) or (c) not revisionist of our folk intuitions and practices about freedom and moral responsibility?

I can't imagine answering this question without finding out what our folk intuitions and practices actually are. Since I don't think philosophers can answer this question by considering their own theory-tarnished intuitions (which inevitably conflict, even about basic premises--Beta--and thought experiments--e.g. Frankfurt cases), it seems we must do some empirical research to discover the answer. Psychologists, sociologists, linguists, and anthropologists are best situated to do such work, but I have found only a few relevant papers (some of which badly misunderstand the philosophical debate). So, philosophers may have to start doing such work.

Some graduate students (Thomas Nadelhoffer, Jason Turner, and Stephen Morris) and I have done some of this research (as has Shaun Nichols). I'll post some results soon, but in the meantime, interested parties may want to check out a new blog on experimental philosophy (such 'empirically informed phiosophy' has a more established track record in action theory, with a bit in epistemology and ethics): http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/

There are lots of interesting metaphilosophical questions here too, such as the questions about how to balance the value of accounting for folk intuitions with parsimony, simplicity, etc. (discussed above) and about what to do with conflicting intuitions (or paradigms), if they are in fact uncovered by the research. And of course, there will be debates about whether and why intuitions (especially uniformed folk intuitions) should matter to our sophisticated free will debate at all. I'd love to hear what people think about this project and the questions it raises.

[Shai]

The article about incompatibilism on Nahmias site reminds me of some work about dispositional and situational biases, suggesting asians are more likely to focus on situational factors when making attributions than americans who suffer more from dispositional bias.

This may or may not suggest that the folk concepts, although more limited in range than scholarly thought about agency, not as uniform across time, cultures, individuals, or situations, as the phrase "folk concepts" in philosophical use seems to imply. The popularity of evolutionary psychology has of late encouraged an averaging out into human universals*, an operating assumption which may be detrimental if it turns out there is more variety in folk concepts about agency and causality than is often assumed.

Nahmias says:

"Psychologists, sociologists, linguists, and anthropologists are best situated to do such work, but I have found only a few relevant papers (some of which badly misunderstand the philosophical debate). So, philosophers may have to start doing such work. "

Which I completely agree with, but would add that it goes both ways*. A lot of the philosophical work referring to empirical psychology receives no attention from psychologists in either peer review or scholarly discussion and both lose out.

* (think e.g. Tooby, Cosmides on "cheater detection")
* for example, philosopher John Doris situationism ( http://ndpr.icaap.org/content/archives/2003/8/blum-doris.html ) is chiefly derived from three cases: the Milgram Experiment, Isen and Levin (1972), and Darley and Batson (1973) none of which is experimentally adequate support for the strong version of his conclusion.

[Shai]

But then as an undergrad and amateur I'm apparently far behind the curve having only recently taken intro social cognition. I've been reading Joshua Knobe's interesting papers, which I think suggests more of a theorist-experimentalist interaction. I wonder if his thesis advisor is Gilbert Harman.

I suppose one isn't properly introduced to the blogosphere until faced with the realization that you'll have to suffer fools like me from time to time. :-)

[Manuel]

Dan- I think one place to look for examples of the sort you are interested in might be the new LaPorte book NATURAL KINDS AND CONCEPTUAL CHANGE. I haven't read it, but it was recently reviewed in the NDPR.

Eddy- I think I've pushed this line with you before, but beyond a natural and often reasonable disposition to conceptual conservatism, I suspect that part of the reason why people care about folk intuitions even in high-end philosophical debates is simply the concern that if you don't, you are talking about the same thing any more. That is, the background picture seems to be something like commonsense thinking partly or wholly determines the meaning of at least non-natural kind terms. Elsewhere I've argued that these problems can be satisfactorily dealt with in a revisionist theory of responsibility, but if there are lots of domains where this can't be satisfactorily dealt with, it may fund a general resistance to theories that end up giving up on intuitions. I agree with John Fischer that we can't get by without intuitions at some level- though I am perhaps more inclined to think that at particular times we can regard particular sets of them with skepticism or outright dismissal.

[John Fischer]

Dan:
It is clear that Manuel is in some sense "our own", or that we want to take credit for him. But is it obvious that he is BELOVED?

[Dan Speak]

John makes an excellent point about Manuel's status as "beloved". I mistakenly attributed my own love of Manuel to all of us at GFP.

(There it is. I've brought it out into the open. I love Manuel Vargas! So what!? Is that so wrong?! Do you find me repulsive?)

[Chris Grau]

I've just submitted my comments on Manuel's paper "On the Importance of History for Responsible Agency" to the Papers on Agency blog, if anyone is interested. (Feedback would be greatly appreciated!)

Though the comments were written in response to a significantly shorter version of Manuel's paper (presented at the Pacific APA), I think most of the points still apply to the longer version that is forthcoming in Philosophical Studies.

I can sum up my approach with a twist on one of Campell Brown's comments: given a choice between a lean revisionist theory and a bloated nonrevisionist one, I think my money would be on the *latter*.