Degrees of Freedom

In my dissertation I advanced an idea I want to return to now, so I'm soliciting input. I won't go into too much detail here, but the rough idea is that free will should be seen as a degree concept, not an all-or-nothing concept. Both an agent's possession of free will and an agent's opportunity to exercise free will on a particular occassion come in various degrees, which correspond to numerous factors, especially the degree to which the agent possesses and has the opportunity to exercise certain cognitive capacities. This way of seeing things has numerous advantages, including (1) allowing free will and threats to free will to be examined empirically, (2) reducing the impetus to look for strict necessary and sufficient accounts of free will, and (3) tying ascriptions of free will more naturally to ascriptions of responsibility, which clearly come in degrees.

For instance, see "Too Immature for the Death Penalty?" which includes this passage:
"In other words, teenagers cannot be held fully responsible for their actions because all the wiring to allow adult decision making isn't completed yet. As Stephen K. Harper, a professor of juvenile justice at the University of Miami School of Law, puts it, ''Adolescents are far less culpable than we knew.''
The briefs in the Simmons case are based on research that shows that the human brain, once thought to be fully wired by about age 12, continues to grow and mature into the early or mid-20's. And the last part to mature is the frontal lobes, or prefrontal cortex, responsible for all the hallmarks of adult behavior -- impulse control, the regulation of emotions and moral reasoning."

The three cognitive capacities discussed at the end seem to be clearly tied to ascriptions of culpability, they seem to be capacities that should be tied to the concept of free will, and they seem to be possessed and exercised to varying degrees.

Obviously, these ideas are compatibilist in spirit, though of course the cognitive capacities in question will be relevant to libertarian accounts to the extent that such accounts require such capacities in addition to indeterminism or agent causation.

Comments

[Mark Smeltzer]

Although you didn't provide an argument per say, I agree with your thesis (that freedom and responsibility come in degrees). I think accounts like Fischer's are committed to this idea as well.

But I disagree Fischer regarding the subjective element in his account. I believe that a degreed account of freedom and responsibility may be able to adequately resolve problem cases without incorporating a subjective/volitional element as Fischer has done in his account -- however, putting forth such an account would require a thorough consideration of the epistemic side of responsibility and the conditions that give rise to responsibility.

[Neil]

In his survey article in Ethics, Fischer notes that there is an independent debate about autonomy, which has so many parallels and overlaps with the MR literature it would be better regarded as an aspect of the same debate. It is, I think, uncontroversial that autonomy comes in degrees, so it ought to follow that so does responsibility. I also think the evolutionary story told by (eg) Dennett, in which the capacities which underlie compatibilist free will gradually develop suggest the same conclusion. In my view, we shouldn't see free will as a property of all and only human beings: better to say that some humans have it to a higher degree than others, and that it is not entirely absent from some of the other primates.

[Robert Allen]

I don’t buy it. A will is either completely free or it is not free at all. If I were to tie the will to the PFC, as you suggest, then I would say that the will of an adolescent is not yet free, though it is closer to being free than it was during the earlier stages of its development. (In the same way, a slave who is allowed to practice a religion is no freer than a slave forbidden to practice one, though the former is closer to being free than the latter.) Such a view also affords “an empirical examination of FW and threats to it; the notion of degrees of FW is, thus, inessential to an empirical understanding of the concept. Responsibility for actions does not “clearly come in degrees” either; it is responsibility for outcomes that does. E.g., two firemen, each one of whom is fully responsible for his respective part in a rescue, may not be equally responsible for the victim being rescued, as one carried her down 20 flights of stairs and the other “only” 10.

[chrstian]

One might think free will does not vary in degree, but that dispositions to act do. Hence, a person can be more responsible or deserving of blame for performing some act in virtue of the greater degree that they are disposed to perform it. This view would accomodate the intution that responsibility comes in degrees and free will does not. It isn't clear to me, though, how to draw a line between the will, on the one hand, and character dispositions, on the other.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Well, in Strawsonian lingo responsibility is being an apt candidate for the reactive attitudes. On this understanding of responsibility, how much of certain attitudes one deserves to receive is another question altogether.

I think Eddy was talking about degrees of responsibility such that there would be degrees of aptness in an agent's candidacy for the reactive attitudes. This suggestion precedes the matter of character dispositions, and their role in how *much* of certain attitudes these apt candidates receive.

I would suggest a simple arithmatic could explain the relation:

The amount of attitude that A deserves from B for event X = (Percent that A was responsible for event X) x (Percent that A's character corresponds to event X) x (B's attitude regarding events of type X or events B finds similar to X)

Of course, I doubt it is that simple. This equation is just meant to illustrate the idea.

[christian]

I'm not sure I undertand yet. I suggested a way in which responsiblity can come in degrees, it varies in proportion to the degree someone is disposed to perform certain actions. If we undertand responsibility as aptness for reactive attitudes, then this aptness can come in degrees for the same reason; a person is more of an apt candidate for reactive attitudes the greater the degree they are disposed to perform certain actions.

I'm confused about "This suggestion precedes the matter of character dispositions, and their role in how *much* of certain attitudes these apt candidates receive."

That is, I don't understand 'precedes' and I am not sure how quantity of reactive attitudes fits in?

[Mark Smeltzer]

Aptness, in the previously established sense, has to do with the metaphysics of agency; in a word, freedom. We agree that freedom can come in degrees. So, when examining any given case X we can say that agent A was either fully free, very free, mostly free, not very free, barely free, etc., etc. with respect to X.

Great.

That still doesn't tell us how much praise or blame that A deserves for X, just that A was free to a certain point with respect to X.

I think that's where character comes in -- I believe that's what you're talking about, no? Suppose we have a really virtuous person who freely screws up royally (morally speaking) in one instance, should we react to this person the same way that we would react to a notoriously vile person who's character corresponds to the grossly immoral acts they freely commit?

I think you'd agree that the answer is no because of the lack of correspondence in the first case. That doesn't mean we should let that person off easy, just that we would be more disposed to forgiving them and to help them see the gravity of the moral mistake they made. In the second case we'd be more inclined to say, "Lock 'em up and throw away the key," and for good reason: the second person's character strongly corresponds to immoral actions they've freely committed.

So, this should lead us to think that there is a straight forward way to "draw the line" (as you put it when you said, "It isn't clear to me, though, how to draw a line between the will, on the one hand, and character dispositions, on the other").

I see the two, character and will, as related variables in a larger equation (as previously noted).

[Mark Smeltzer]

On a side note: the distinction discussed above has far reaching implications in the punitive sphere as well. Punishments can be administered non-retributively by limiting the consideration to whether an agent acted freely when breaking certain laws. The amount of punishment the agent deserves would be directly proportional to how free the agent’s actions were without taking into consideration the agent’s character, and thus the punitive sentences issued on these lines wouldn't be based upon retributive concerns. In other words, the same punishment should be given to the virtuous person who freely steals for the first time as the vile person who freely steals for the first time.

That is one kind of desert. Call it “punitive desert”. Now, we can contrast that against the kind of desert that warrants the attitudes of love, hate, and the rest in between – call this “attitudinal desert”.

There is a long standing practice that says we deserve revenge or retribution when people wrong us, which is a failure to recognize this distinction. The distinction grounds the basis for our reactive attitudes on character expression, and legal desert on free action. But, the old retributive view tried to do it the other way around: grounding the basis for punishment upon those reactive attitudes, thus emphasizing the role of vengeance and retribution within the punitive sphere.

If we honor that distinction, it will have implications like this: when a virtuous person freely steals something for the first time, they (perhaps) deserve our pity, but when a vile person steals something for the first time, they (perhaps) deserve our scorn (both are examples of attitudinal desert) – even still, they both ought to be punished equally according to the legal precedent, which is (perhaps) a fine and a period of community service (an example of punitive desert).

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Are we quantifying over agents or acts? It sounds odd to say that an act was semi-free. However, it makes perfect sense to say that an agent's overall capacity to exercise free will develops gradually. The freer the agent the more choices she can make freely. That is to say, the range of cases in which she could have done otherwise increases.

A toddler can choose freely between milk and apple juice, but not between a reasoned reply and a temper tantrum. A teenager can choose between homework and video games, but maybe not between violence and non-violence in a highly charged emotional setting.

[Mark Smeltzer]

"Are we quantifying over agents or acts?"

I suppose the issue could be addressed from either perspective, depending on the context of the discussion.

An agent would be more/less free insofar as it is more/less responsible for an action. An action would be more/less free insofaras the agent is more/less responsibility for it. Again, these seem to be directly related variables, so it doesn't seem odd to me to talk about the degree of freeness of a particular action of an agent. Its the difference between looking at the agent through the act, and looking at the act through the agent. I don't think one is right, and the other wrong; both are valid perspectives, and either may be expressed in terms of the other.

Also keep in mind that this is looking at the issue according to specific moments in time, but by extending the sample range we can easily make sense of the idea of an agent generally being more/less free, or an agent's actions generally being more/less free; in order to support the idea of an agent's overall capacity for free action in certain contexts.

[Eddy Nahmias]

I can't respond to all the interesting issues that have been raised above, but let me briefly explain that it seems intuitive (and accurate) to me to say (1) that particular agents (and types of agents) *possess* free will to varying degrees--i.e., possess the cognitive capacities required to act autonomously (e.g., the ability to consciously reflect on one's reasons for action, etc.)--and (2) that on particular occassions an agent has varying degrees of freedom to *exercise* those capacities (to exercise her free will)--e.g., she may be under emotional duress or cognitive limitations or external constraints, any of which limit the extent to which she would normally be able to consider what she really wanted to do or had the best reasons to do, etc. Are my intuitions misguided (my "analysis" inaccurate)? If so, why?

[Robert Allen]

Mark,

Since I don't believe that responsibility comes in degrees, I don't believe that FW does either.

Lindsay,

Predicating FW on the ability to do oherwise won't do, given Frankfurt cases. Morevover, since I would not praise/blame a toddler for anything she does, I would not think of her as having a free will. I would correct a toddler, if I thought that she needed correcting, but for her own good, not because she deserved to be reproached.

Eddy,

Your intuitions are correct; however the conclusion that you wish to draw doesn't follow from them. All that follows is that it an agent's will may be free at some times but not others. If one of her "cognitive capacities ..." is not yet fully developed, her will is not yet free. If, having fully developed all of those capacities, one of them becomes impaired, then her will is no longer free. I should add that, on this view, it may be hard to say exactly when a person's will becomes free and whether or not a person's will remained free on a particular occasion.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Robert,

And yet you do believe that the capacities that support free action develop over time? I can see how one might want to define free action in such a way that it requires a dividing line; on the one side of which agents are considered responsible, and on the other they are not.

I'm actually fine with that idea. What doesn't follow from that is that once an agent reaches that point developmentally that all of its actions will simply be either free or not (even if there is no harm done to its capacities for free action). However, it is again possible to draw another line in the sand here and say that on one side of the line an action is considered free, but on the other side it is not.

The difference between our positions is whether we draw those two lines (and if so, how). I may agree with you about the importance of the first line. Even still, all I am suggesting that an agent's degree of responsibility for an action is directly proportional to the degree of freedom the agent exhibited in performing the action. That is a metaphysical claim, and it seem necessarily true – even if it should turn of if the degrees must be all or nothing, the relation would still hold.

However, even if we can’t draw those lines metaphysically, that would not prevent us from doing so on the practical level since we wouldn't have a reliable way of discerning exactly how much metaphysical freedom was exhibited by an agent at a particular moment. In order to determine whether the agent was responsible in a particular case, we could only make an educated guess based upon our general knowledge of the agent in question as to whether the agent ought to be considered generally responsible for its actions and whether there weren't any extraordinary, freedom undermining factors that played a role in the case.

[Robert Allen]

Mark,

Either the agent can or cannot exercise all of the capacities that make up the will. There are no "degrees of freedom." If one of those capacities is impaired- say, her power to deliberate- then she simply does not have a free will. It makes sense to think of someone as (say) pitching less effectively than usual; it does not make sense to think of someone as willing freely, though less freely than usual. My opposition to your view also stems from my belief that a free will is something that is granted to a person by his/her Creator, for whom moral responsibility is an all or nothing matter. From your epistemological point, it does not follow that responsibility comes in degrees, only that there may be circumstances in which we have to withhold judgments of responsibility. Even your formulation of the point suggests as much: you speak of (perhaps undetectable) "freedom undermining factors" making an agent not "generally responsible," instead of less than fully responsible.

[christian]

Robert,

Although I am unconvinced that free will comes in degrees, I am inclined to think responsibility does. What do you think of this case:

Two brothers, one five and the other nine, together put the housecat in the dryer. Father comes home and pulls the cat out, and gives a lecture, a more severe one to the older brother.

I am inclined to say the severity of the lecture, maybe punishment, should correspond to the degree of responsibility of the boys. The older boy is more responsible for the bad thing that happened to the cat because he is, in some sense, in a better position to do the right thing. If we assume that the boys contribution to the poor cats's tossing is causally equal, they both share equally in causing the cat to toss, what else is there to ground the intuitive assessment that one boy is more responsible than the other?

So, is this inference correct:

(1) If x and y cause z (where z is a consequence of x and y acting together) and x and y are agents aware that z is a consequence of their jointly acting and x is in a better position to prevent z's obtaining than y, then x is more responsible for z's obtaining than y.

Inference: If (1) is possibly true, then it is possible that responsibility comes in degrees.

[Robert Allen]

I say in my first post on this subject that responsibility for "outcomes" comes in degrees. Each boy is as much responsible for his part as the other; but the older one committed a greater wrong, because 'he knew better'. Hence, he is more responsible for the outcome of what they did. Just like the first fireman in my case above, he did more to accomplish it, having had to overcome a compunction that the younger boy did not have. BTW, the old man should have given his elder son more than a severe lecture.

[Tamler Sommers]

I've reformed. I'm a new man. One more win and you can have all the free will and moral responsibility you want. You can have them in degrees, you can have the whole thing. You can have the reactive attitudes, higher-order volitions, just-deserts, acts in accordance with reason...everything. I'll throw in agent-causation too. But I get one more win.

PS What do you call 25 guys watching the World Series?

The Yankees.

[Manuel]

So I guess we're down one "no free will" guy and up one agent causationist? Tamler, this has got to put a wrench into that dissertation!

[Tamler Sommers]

Not really--I'm just going to put a squiggly line in front of it.