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.

Comments

[Rob]

"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."

I wonder whether to think that the reactive attitudes ought to be disregarded when engaging in responsibility assessment depends upon ignoring the natural history of human punitive practice in which (according to, for instance, Nietzsche [Genealogy, Second Treatise], William Ian Miller ["Humiliation," "Anatomy of Disgust," "The Mystery of Courage"], and similarly-minded students of the emotional economy of pre-state-formation honor cultures) responsibility assessment is essentially parasitical upon the reactive attitudes. If, as this natural history story goes, punitive responsibility assessment was determined by imperatives of social control -- to impose measure upon the retaliatory response of the injured party -- and this phase of our natural history continues to have some kind of constitutive operational influence up to the present, then I wonder if what should be encouraged is rather the refinement of reactive attitudes in responsibility assessment -- rather than an illusory disregard of them.

[Tamler Sommers]

Neil,

Great post. I don't have time for a complete response now, but I've just posted a paper that addresses this issue in some detail. The paper sketches out a theory of why the reactive attitudes would have been adaptive, and why the experience of robust moral responsibility would need to accompany the reactive attitudes for in order to solve commitment and coordination problems in hominids. (Comments welcome!)

I don't see this theory on its own as establishing incompatibilism or skepticism about moral responsibility. But when coupled with strong arguments against desert-entailing moral responsibility (e.g. G. Strawson and Pereboom) I think it helps to make the case. For it gives us what I hope is a plausible explanation for why we so strongly believe ourselves to be free and responsible in ways that we in fact are not.

Side note: Rob, I think Nietzsche is engaged in a similar project, but from a cultural rather than Darwinian perspective. And I get the sense that he's no fan of resentment and desert-entaling responsibility either. He thinks they can be explained away, not by evolutionary theory, but by the shift to slave morality.

[Kip Werking]

Neil, I agree. That was an excellent post. Not only to I share your sympathies towards free will skepticism, but I’m also growing convinced that, if one is looking for an error theory of free will, she or he should examine our evolutionary history.

Tamler’s recent paper suggests how such an illusion might evolve. Here is a list of the potential explanations that I’ve considered:

1. because it is less metabolically expensive than performing a more accurate utility calculus computation
2. through Error Management Theory
3. as a consequence of the Fundamental Attribution Error (these first three might all refer to the same phenomenon)
4. because it reinforces Reciprocal Altruism (Sommers’ suggestion, following Trivers)
5. because self-deceit helps convince others that we are free (my suggestion, following Trivers)

I think the first three suggestions might compliment each other. This combination might form the most likely and robust explanation for why we have a natural, but mistaken, bias towards believing that people have free will.

[Daniel Cohen]

Interesting post, Neil.

A worry I have with your account is that you seem to assume that facts about responsibility are necessarily retributive facts – i.e. facts that people sometimes really deserve punishment for wrongdoing. This just seems too strong to me – one may want to be a retributivist, but why does one have to be one if one believes that people may *really* be responsible?

An approach that seems better to me is to focus on the *beliefs* implicit in responsibility attribution, rather than our behaviour towards wrongdoers. And, a useful theoretical starting-point may be the reactive attitudes – one may ask what beliefs are implicitly expressed by such attitudes.

Now, ultimately, it may turn out that when we hold people responsible, we have beliefs that, inter alia, justify punishment. However, to debunk the practise, I think you need to debunk the beliefs that justify the practise; potential evolutionary explanations of our practises are neither here nor there, if our practises may be shown to rest on rational foundations. (By analogy, one may cook up a plausible story that shows mathematical reasoning to be adaptively advantageous; but this doesn’t show our mathematical reasoning to be irrational.)

[Neil]

Daniel,

I thought I was focusing on the beliefs implicit in the reactive attitudes. My suggestion is that the beliefs to which the RAs commit us to - that the agent is morally responsible - may in fact be triggered by cues that are independent of genuine moral responsibility. In that case, our judgments of moral responsibility would track certain surface features of agents - the degree to which they represent threats to us and resemble agents who can be influenced by rewards and punishment, for instance - but not the properties that we take them to be track.

Since I'm really a compatibilist, I actually have ulterior motives in making the suggestion. I'm puzzled by the view advanced by Scanlon, Adams and most recently Angela Smith, which is essentially that agents are responsible for their attitudes and the actions that express those attitudes, whether or not they can control these attitudes. I wonder if Scanlon, et al, are not responding to the surface features of agents, and building their theory of responsibility on this basis.

[Paul Torek]

Imagine someone who is convinced that a moral agent had excellent and sufficient rational and moral reasons to do X, but still asks, "but is X *really* the right thing to do?" I would say that this person is confused. There is no further "really right" question to be addressed.

I fear that Neil's argument will founder on a similar point regarding "really responsible":

"Not because agents in a deterministic world are really responsible. Presumably our emotions are not sensitive to such metaphysical issues."

But being *really responsible* is first and foremost a moral issue, not a metaphysical issue. Thus it inherits the practically-oriented nature of morality. But then, we are *really* responsible iff the best moral and rational reasons direct us to hold each other responsible. And it is highly plausible that they do.

Indeed, the very same story of how the disposition to punish transgressors may be adaptive, is even more persuasive when adduced as an argument for the mutual beneficiality of retaining the practice. It certainly looks as if a community of rational beings can publicly endorse the practice - to wit, it looks as if the practice is just.

I don't want the argument of the previous paragraph to overshadow my main point, however. Again: it is moral reasoning which ultimately supports or refutes claims of responsibility. To whatever extent a practical reason / theoretical reason distinction is appropriate, claims of responsibility belong on the "practical" side.

[Tamler Sommers]

Daniel, you wrote:

"However, to debunk the practise, I think you need to debunk the beliefs that justify the practise; potential evolutionary explanations of our practises are neither here nor there, if our practises may be shown to rest on rational foundations. (By analogy, one may cook up a plausible story that shows mathematical reasoning to be adaptively advantageous; but this doesn’t show our mathematical reasoning to be irrational.)"

That's true, but all that shows is that genetic arguments aren't always successful. Some are, some aren't. Having a plausible story about the adaptive advantages of certain beliefs or feelings does not ON ITS OWN show that those beliefs or feelings are irrational. But if you have that plausible story AND independent reasons to think that the feelings and beliefs are irrational, then you're on your way towards a debunking explanation. In other words, if we combine a plausible evolutionary (or Nietzsche-style sociological) story for why we might experience ourselves to be morally responsibility WITH independent arguments against the existence of robust moral responsibility (like G Strawson's, Pereboom's, (or your own!), then I think we've made a good case for a...a...what's the term again...oh right, an error theory.

[Daniel Cohen]

I'm pretty happy with that view, Tamler - a debunking argument may involve, on the one hand, an a priori component (showing responsibility to be impossible), and on the other hand, a 'genetic' explanation of the origin of our irrational beliefs. I'm pretty happy, however, to rely primarily on the first stage of the argument. If our beliefs can be shown, a priori, to be incoherent, then I'm not too concerned further to reinforce the argument with an explanation of our irrationality. (There must be *some* explanation, after all, but the details of the explanation shouldn’t ultimately affect the big conclusion - that no one is in fact responsible.)

Neil, I thought your argument (perhaps question-beggingly) assumes that responsibility judgements are essentially retributivist because you talk about the 'function' of the reactive attitudes as being to motivate us to punish wrongdoers. I think the jury is still out on that claim, and so would prefer to proceed by investigating the underlying beliefs expressed by the reactive attitudes. (Maybe we believe that wrongdoers have properties that justify punishing them, but I don’t think that conclusion can be assumed independently of an account of what the reactive emotions express.)

[Neil]

Daniel, I'm trying to keep two issues seperate. One is what cues some of the reactive attitudes track. I'm claiming that since we are evolved beings, and our emotions evolved to enhance our fitness, some of the emotional basis of the attitudes will be triggered by merely surface properties of agents: are they a risk to us? The kind of risk which justifies anger? The other issue is what characteristics of agents and their actions justify finding them really responsible (pace Paul, I'm claiming that there is such a thing as being really responsible - that is, the judgment that S is responsible for X commits us to certain beliefs about S and his abilities, and S's relationship to X). I think the reactive attitudes are complex, made up of emotions and more cognitive elements. Some of the elements of these attitudes evolved to perform a fitness-enhancing function. But it is a mistake to think that we're stuck with whatever function they evolved to perform.

[Rob]

"But it is a mistake to think that we're stuck with whatever function they evolved to perform."

So, Neil, are you foreclosing the very possiblity that we might in fact be stuck with the (evolutionally-acquired) functions of (at least some crucially relevant) reactive attitudes -- or, are you merely pointing out as a prima facie matter that we shouldn't assume that we are so stuck?

[Neil]

I don't want to suggest that we might not be stick with somethings. Indeed, we *are* stuck with somethings (in the sense that the only way we're going to get rid of them is by evolution, and that takes time). It might be that our deontological reasoning in social contexts, as revealed by Wason selection tasks, is something we're stuck with. More banally, we're stuck with a taste for sweet things, I suspect. But the reactive attitudes are complex, made up elements some of which are innate, some of which are highly sensitive to culture and learning. So I doubt that, in general, we are stuck with any particular reactive attitudes. However, it may be that there is a spectrum of such attitudes, and that some are closer to the innate end and others more sensitive to culture, learning, and pressures of rational consistency. We need to get into the messy details to know for sure.

[Paul Torek]

I don't deny that there is such a thing as being really responsible. I'm a moral cognitivist: I think that some moral claims, including some responsibility claims, are true or false. But the morality of responsibility practices is the horse, and the metaphysics of responsibility is the cart.