Society for Philosophy and Psychology

Just a reminder that the 2005 meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology is June 9-12 at Wake Forest and the program is complete.  Most relevant to this blog, there is an invited session on The Psychology of Free Will with talks by psychologists Jonathan Schooler, Kathleen Vohs, & Azim Shariff (UBC) and Jordan Peterson (Toronto) and by philosophers Shaun Nichols (who is also giving an invited lecture) & Joshua Knobe.  Bob Kane is the session's commentator. 

Also of interest (I hope), I've put together a panel discussion on Mind and Brain in the Media to discuss the role the media plays in presenting research that influences people's conception of human nature, free will, etc. and hence affects important ethical and legal debates.  What role do (and should) academic philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists play in shaping the folk's conception of themselves?  Panel members include Owen Flanagan, Paul Bloom, Daniel Povinelli, and Dan Lloyd.  I'm still looking for a science journalist to join us--any ideas?

Hope to see you at the conference.

'Philosophy by Gallup Poll'

In light of a number of recent postings ('Is Incompatibilism Intuitive?' and 'The Intuition Wars, part 446'), I thought I'd reproduce the following discussion between Stephen T. Davis and D. Z. Phillips that I came across this morning.  The context is a discussion about religious language, but I trust you'll see the comparison (Note:  Who is speaking is less than clear.  I'm guessing that C=Phillips, and D=Davis, but I'm not exactly sure):

C:  But what makes you think you can do philosophy in that way?  If I knocked on a door in Claremont and asked the lady of the house what whe meant by 'thinking', whould I take her answer to settle the matter?  One cannot do philosophy by Gallup poll.

D:  Why not?  Wittgensteinians always claim to tell us what we really mean.  Why not ask Christiansn what they do mean?  If the majority says that they mean such-and-such, that settles the matter.  You can do this kind of philosophy by Gallup poll.

C:  No, you can't, because when reference is made to what people mean, the reference is to the role the words play in their lives, not the account they would give if asked.  Notoriously, in giving the account our words can lead us astray.  That is why Wittgensteing said that though a picutre, including a religious picture, is in the foreground, its actual application may be in the background.  The matter can only be resolved, if at all, through discussion of one's interlocutor.  It cannot be settled by Gallup poll.

(D. Z. Phillips, Religion and Friendly Fire, page 7.

If D is correct, then maybe the Garden should try to hire Carl Rove!

A graphic depiction

The title of my previous post was a reference to the marketing slogan of the terrible movie "Aliens vs. Predator." In response to my previous post, Kip Werking put together an image of Dennett as Alien and van Inwagen as Predator. I should note that in the movie the Predators (Incompatibilists) win. But maybe that's just another instance of a long line of endoskeletocentrist fiction, as my student Kirk Davis noted.

As far as I know, Dennett isn't really an Alien and van Inwagen really isn't a Predator and neither has starred in a bad movie, so this should be taken to imply that about either of these distinguished gentlemen. And besides, we needed some more pictures on this website. With apologies to Dennett and van Inwagen, here's the picture Kip sent me . . . (below the fold). Sorry I couldn't get the resolution better.   

Compatibilists vs. Incompatibilists: The Intuitions Wars, part 446: Whoever Wins, We All Lose?

Recently Shaun Nichols and Joshua Knobe have argued (in a paper available on the papers blog) that there are circumstances under which a majority of us have incompatibilist intuitions and circumstances under which a majority of us have compatibilist intuitions. If it turns out that we (i.e.,both philosophers and large segments of the non-philosophical population) really do have incompatibilist intuitions in some cases and compatibilist intuitions in others, who wins?

Nichols and Knobe generously note that given the data they are getting (compatibilism in cases structured one way, incompatibilism in cases structure another) “both [incompatibilists and compatibilists] are right.” But that doesn’t seem altogether right to me. It looks to me like there is no reason why an incompatibilist couldn’t admit that we have, in various occasions or contexts, compatibilist intuitions. We might imagine that an incompatibilist could admit that there are some cases where incompatibilist intuitions don’t come out at all. But as long as there is a significant range of cases where responsibility does require the satisfaction of some incompatibilist condition, then incompatibilists are right that we have to grapple with the various issues that face incompatibilism. Compatibilists can’t say the same sort of thing, in part because incompatibilists typically aren’t averse to compatibilist analyses (other than insisting that they need further supplementation). What seems to be most at stake, at least for people who want it to turn out that we’re responsible, is whether our story of responsibility is going to have to include incompatibilist elements. If it does, then incompatibilism “wins” in the sense that we all have to develop incompatibilist accounts (at least if you think that our positive accounts are beholden to commonsense intuitions). There are, of course, lots of qualifications to throw in here (imagine that I have here inserted an acknowledgments of your favorite methodology that makes this a more complicated issue- e.g., reflective equilibrium or paraphrasing conceptual analysis).

As much as I like incompatibilists (and some of my closest friends are incompatibilists . . . I don’t think incompatibilism is the clearest winner. So who really wins if we get split reactions on the intuitions?

Responsibility and the emotions

In their revised paper, posted on this very site, Nichols and Knobe argue for a claim that harmonises the emprical findings on (in)compatibilist intuitions so far: people have both compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions. More precisely, they have an incompatibilist theory of moral responsibility, and will therefore answer theoretical questions about blame (and praise? this hasn't been tested) in an incompatibilist manner. But when they are presented with examples that engage their emotions, they respond in a more compatibilist manner, blaming those who do wrong, even if they know that their actions were determined.

Now, the interesting question (for me) is how we should resolve these conflicting intuitions. Should we go modus ponens or tollens? It is a commonplace that strong emotions can distort our judgments, so there is some reason to go with the theory, and reject the compatibilist intuition, but philosophers increasingly recognize (inspired in part by the work of scientists like Damasio) that emotions can also be an essential ingredient in accurate cognizing. So there is some pressure to reject or modify our theory in the light of the emotion.

Nichols and Knobe cite evidence that emotions can sometimes distort attributions of responsibility. We judge people as more responsible when our negative emotions are aroused, even when our emotions are aroused by an unrelated event. But (as they recognize) evidence for a dissociation between justified assessments and the emotion is not evidence that the emotions will not usually play a role in guiding assessment properly; just because you can induce an illusion does not show that the faculty you're fooling is unreliable (call the belief that it does Wegner's fallacy).

Here is a very quick and, as it stands, inadequate, argument for the view that we should regard the relevant emotions as distorting, rather than enabling, our judgments here. Begin by asking what emotions are for. Plausibly, we evolved to feel affect because it enhanced our inclusive fitness. Sometimes having the capacity for the right emotions will lead to better outcomes than not having it. For instance, it is often irrational to punish transgressions, because the cost of enforcing the punishment is high (transgressors are often strong; they've grown fat on ill-gotten gains). So if we assess the costs and benefits of punishing cooly, we will refrain from punishing. But having the disposition to punish transgressors might be adaptive. If transgressors know that we will punish them, whatever the costs, they might refrain from transgressing in the first place. The emotion of anger bridges the gap, motivating us to punish when a cooler analysis would counsel us to cut our losses.

Now, why do we have compatibilist responses to wrongdoing, from this evolutionary perspective? Not  because agents in a deterministic world are really responsible. Presumably our emotions are not sensitive to such metaphysical issues. Instead, our emotions are sensitive to whatever enhances our inclusive fitness in the long run. We can expect to feel indignation and resentment toward agents who require collective control because they threaten our fitness-relevant interests. Presumably, it is only necessary that these agents share the surface properties of rational beings for our emotions to be triggered. And we find just this in the way doctors react to psychopaths: because they seem bad rather than mad, even psychiatrists who hold a theory according to which psychopaths cannot be blamed find themselves resenting them.

Since the reactive attitudes will be triggered by merely surface properties of agents, then, they cannot be regarded as reliable guides to responsibility. We therefore ought to disregard them when we engage in assessing responsibility.

Discussion of Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will in the Latest BBS

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27 (2004), 649-92, contains a precis by Daniel Wegner of The Illusion of Conscious Will along with comments by neuroscientists, philosophers, and psychologists (and, of course, a reply by Wegner to his commentators).  Unfortunately, philosophers are underrepresented among the respondents to Wegner.  I believe this issue is currently only available online (at http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/bladerunner?REQUNIQ=1112884278&REQSESS=728392&117000REQEVENT=&REQINT1=287679&REQAUTH=0 ). My guess is that the print copy should be out soon. 

Explaining Away Responsibility

Thanks to Neal for posting Explaining away responsibility: Effects of scientific explanation on perceived culpability", by John Monterosso, Edward B. Royzman, and Barry Schwartz.  It’s quite relevant to the “Is Incompatibilism Intuitive?” debate.  Here’s the abstract:

College students and suburban residents completed questionnaires designed to examine the tendency of scientific explanations of undesirable behaviors to mitigate perceived culpability. In vignettes relating behaviors to an explanatory antecedent, we manipulated the uniformity of the behavior given the antecedent; the responsiveness of the behavior to deterrence; and the explanatory antecedent-type offered—physiological (e.g., a chemical imbalance) or experiential (e.g., abusive parents). Physiological explanations had a greater tendency to exonerate actors than did experiential explanations. The effects of uniformity and deterrence were smaller, and the latter only had a significant effect on judgment when physiological rather than experiential antecedents were specified. Physiologically explained behavior was more likely to be characterized as “automatic,” and willpower and character were less likely to be cited as relevant to the behavior. Physiological explanations of undesirable behavior may mitigate blame by inviting non-teleological causal attributions.

The results seem to support compatibilism as the intuitive view, since the subjects exonerated the agents only when the actions were caused in a certain way.  Of course, that certain way was “physiologically” which arguably causes every act, whether the subjects know it or not.   Indeed, the follow-up interviews suggest that the subjects are basing their assignments of responsibility on a dualist view of human agency.  (Eddy, this might be right up your alley.)   Those of us who aren’t dualists, then, could argue that the assignments of blame and culpability are based on an error, namely the error of thinking that some acts are not the result of physiological processes.   

In other words, I think both compatibilists and the incompatibilists can use these results to their advantage.

Why Should Compatibilists Care About Being Causa Sui?

Why Should Compatibilists Care About Being Causa-Sui?

In The Transfer of Non-Responsibility, John Fischer criticizes a principle that may be essential to incompatibilism. One can find something like this principle, which Fischer calls the Transfer of Non-Responsibility (TNR), in Van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument, Manuel Vargas’s work on “tracing,” Derk Pereboom’s four-step argument (which traces antecedent factors back to those beyond an agent’s control), and Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument.  Fischer notes that Thomas Nagel’s view in Moral Luck relies upon something like the Transfer of Non-Responsibility.  Likewise, Robert Kane built something like TNR into his definition of Ultimate Responsibility—although I think he altered it sufficiently so that it does not defeat his libertarian project.

Most of this work involves the compatibility question.  But there are exceptions.  Strawson’s Basic Argument, for example, is silent about determinism.  This is so because it includes the notion, not that moral responsibility requires determinism (Hume’s argument), but rather that indeterminism cannot help.  One can combine this notion with the Consequence Argument or the four-step argument (while denying that agent-causation can help or denying that it is actual) to see that TNR lies at the heart of this ancient dispute about free will.

I’m not sure I entirely understand Fischer’s paper, but he seems content to show that TNR fails in at least some cases, such as Erosion (does he also agree that TNR succeeds in other cases, such as Snake Bite?).  This allows him to show that the proponents of TNR have failed to established incompatibilism—and that the world remains safe for semi-compatibilism.

To keep this post short, I will not paste the Snake Bite and Erosion examples here (one can find them in Fischer’s paper).  Suffice it to say that Erosion attacks TNR in the same way that Frankfurt Examples attack the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: by considering cases of overdetermination and appealing to folk or unexamined notions of moral responsibility.

While grappling with these issues, Fischer suggests that Saul Smilansky’s view may provide some insight: “One possibility is that there are significant problems for both compatibilism and incompatibilism, as Saul Smilansky has recently contended.”  As one whose sympathies lie more with free will skeptics and hard compatibilists such as Honderich, Strawson, and Smilansky, I want to argue that Fischer’s intuition here is correct and suggest why.

My reaction to Erosion is not unlike Kane’s reaction to Frankfurt examples: Erosion seems to me to rely upon intuitions that the skeptic does not have and cannot be expected to have.  Fischer’s argument relies upon the claim that Betty is “(intuitively) morally responsible for bringing it about that there is an avalanche that crushes the enemy base.”  But neither Pereboom, Strawson, nor myself (and, in at least one sense, neither Honderich nor Smilansky) would say that Betty is morally responsible here.  Our point is not so much that Betty, the agent in Erosion, must not be morally responsible for her actions—skeptics do not have a monopoly on the definition of moral responsibility—but rather that if TNR does not establish her innocence in Erosion, it does no work in Snake Bite either (or in the other examples cited to support TNR).

The problem is that concerns about (what Honderich calls) origination and (what Strawson and Smilansky call) being-causa-sui are as problematic in cases which involve overdetermination as they are in those which do not (“single-path” cases).  Betty is just as much not-causa-sui in Erosion as she would be without overdetermination.  The same is true of Frankfurt Examples, and this helps explain why they have failed to persuade incompatibilists.

Furthermore, it is not the case that concerns about origination or being-causa-sui are unrelated to concerns about TNR.  Rather, these worries about “ultimacy” are intimately related to that principle.  For example, TNR is built into Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument for the impossibility of free will.  By applying TNR, one traces back antecedent factors until one reaches what Saul Smilansky calls “the given.”  It is this discovery of the given that forces one to realize that people cannot be causa-sui.  So, to ignore concerns about origination or being-causa-sui is to ignore at least one reason for the importance of TNR. 

At this point, however, we are in danger of reaching what Fischer calls a “Dialectical Stalemate.”  The problem seems to be, not that one side is mistakenly applying the definition of moral responsibility but rather, that there is no such one definition.  Some potential definitions demand origination while others do not.  If skeptics can consider Erosion and declare Betty innocent while semi-compatibilists declare her guilty, how can one side persuade the other to use their definition?  More precisely, why should compatibilists care about being-causa-sui?

Gardeners: What is your reaction to Erosion?  And why should being-causa-sui be relevant to morally responsibility?  Or, if being-causa-sui is irrelevant to moral responsibility, why is it irrelevant?

Gardeners Take Note

The 2006 INPC (Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference) will be on the theme of "Action and Moral Responsibility."  Committed speakers include Randy Clarke, John Fischer, Al Mele, Michael Moore, Derk Perboom, Paul Russell, Peter van Inwagen, David Widerker.  The call for papers will likely not come out until August, but certainly keep your eyes open for it.