David Friedman on Moral Luck

Although I don't share Robert Kane's metaphysical libertarianism, I do tend to be politically libertarian.  So I subscribe to David Friedman's weblog.  I only mention this because Friedman has written three posts so far on the subject of moral luck (one, two and three).  He has not cited any of the relevant literature, however (in particular, he has not cited Nagel's work; see the SEP article on moral luck).  Friedman distinguishes between two senses of moral responsibility, which remind me of Watson's distinction between self-disclosing and accounting moral responsibility (Watson, Gary, 1996,  "Two Faces of Responsibility." Philosophical Topics 24: 227-248).  Smilanksy's The Ethical Advantages of Hard Determinism makes a similar distinction between the "substantive" and "accountancy" parts of morality.  Like Smilansky, Friedman is concerned about egalitarianism (as discussed, for example, in Smilansky's On Free Will and Ultimate Injustice).  On his weblog, Friedman writes:

"The conclusion is radically egalitarian–more radically than most egalitarians would like, since it applies not only to the difference between rich people and poor people but to the difference between good people and bad people as well. Strip off everything external, everything a person is not himself responsible for--genes, wealth, upbringing, nature and nurture both--and it is hard to see what is left on which differences in desert could be based."

Gardeners, I would ask you the same question that Friedman asks: "...I think it is more interesting to try to deal with the egalitarian conclusion of the argument from moral desert on its own terms.  What, if anything, is wrong with it?"

Comments

[Eddy Nahmias]

Very briefly, this may be a place where personal identity and free will meet up. Notice:
"Strip off ... genes, wealth, upbringing, nature and nurture both--and it is hard to see what is left" ... of a person.

[Blake]

Eddy: What is missing is what a person chooses to do as opposed to what happens to a person -- if a person can be merely something that is acted upon by chance and doesn't have accountability for his/her own acts, then we have a complete description of what a "person" is by nuture and nature. One might believe such a thing, but it seems to me that no one can live a life as if it were true.

[Tamler Sommers]

Blake, you wrote...

"...then we have a complete description of what a "person" is by nuture and nature. One might believe such a thing, but it seems to me that no one can live a life as if it were true."

I'm curious: why does it seem that way to you? Why couldn't someone live according to the belief that a person is fully described by his or her heredity and experience?

[Blake]

Tamler: Good question (I know, that's why you asked it). If all that we are is fully explained by nurture and nature, then what we are does not include anything for which we are accountable in my view. We are what happened to us and not what we choose in an accountable sense. I'm an agent causal libertarian. I'm an incompatibilist. It seems to me that if we don't have free will of the kind that transcends merely what happened to us before now, then we have no basis for attributing accountability to us for our acts -- for we should blame and praise the stars and not one another.

One of the reasons for my position that I find compelling is that if all of my reasons and reasoning were based on happenstance and what happens to me then I don't see how I could even be rational -- my thoughts occur because of cause and effect or laws and prior states that aren't governed by rules of logic but by causal laws and events that just happen to me. Now I find such a view to be absurd (hence my libertarian leanings), but I don't believe that attempts to escape the deep meaning of accountability that cannot be had if determinism is true are at all successful.

So I don't see the view that everything I am and everything I do is just the upshot of what happened to me to date could lead me to believe that there is room for rational deliberation -- and the fact that I can't help but attempt to be rational and deliberate demonstrates, I believe, that it is pragmatically impossible to live as a hard determinist.

So I think that Smilansky is partially correct in his article "Free Will and Respect For Persons", that there is a very heavy price to be paid for rejecting libertarianism. However, I believe that the agent causal accounts of free will somewhat similar to those adopted by Reid, Tim O'Connor and Randolph Clarke are viable. However, even if there were no viable libertarian position to date, it seems to me hubris to announce that we can dispense with notions of moral accountability and self-worth tied up with libertarianism. Anyone who claimed that were not accountble for stealing my car because of their causal past (barring real conditions that prevent proper reasoning) ought to be stared down in contempt. The more reasonable position, due to this pragmatic necessity, is libertarian agnosticism that accepts that we may well not be in a cognitive position to know whether determinism is true or agent causality in fact obtains, but given our epistemic position we should not expect to be able to fully explain that which is in principle based upon not being fully explainable by reference to nurture & nature anyway.

There are obviously deeper issues that require unpacking here -- but that is the basis for my view.

[Tom Clark]

I’m sympathetic to the egalitarianism implied by seeing that no one deserves their genetic or environmental good (or bad) fortune, which then determines who they are, how they behave, and the fortunes they accumulate (or not). Since “luck swallows everything,” there’s no ultimate-desert-based justification for social inequality, especially that which consigns many to poverty while others have astronomical resources at their disposal. But we’ll want to say that people have basic requirements for flourishing that deserve to be met. And since we wish to encourage certain sorts of behavior, people functionally deserve incentives and sanctions. Such limited naturalistic sorts of desert are based in personal and social needs and goals, including, possibly, the goal of a more equitable society that gains plausibility once we see that no one ultimately deserves to be rich or poor. Likewise, seeing that punishment is not deserved in the ultimate sense requires us to be consequentialists in its administration, and (if we are humanitarian) to use it only when non-punitive alternatives fail.

A few responses to Blake:

“It seems to me that if we don't have free will of the kind that transcends merely what happened to us before now, then we have no basis for attributing accountability to us for our acts -- for we should blame and praise the stars and not one another.”

There are plenty of good grounds for accountability even if we aren’t more than the causal products of environment and heredity, namely that we are rationally responsive to the prospect of rewards and sanctions. Our accountability practices are essential to guide good behavior, whatever sorts of agents we are.

“One of the reasons for my position that I find compelling is that if all of my reasons and reasoning were based on happenstance and what happens to me then I don't see how I could even be rational -- my thoughts occur because of cause and effect or laws and prior states that aren't governed by rules of logic but by causal laws and events that just happen to me.”

That you can’t see how rationality could be consistent with cause and effect doesn’t mean that it might not be. Rationality might be a special case of cause and effect in which, for instance, reasons are representations of if-then possibilities that help cause appropriate behavior, given one’s goals. And logic can of course be instantiated in and by deterministic systems, of which we might be instances.

“However, even if there were no viable libertarian position to date, it seems to me hubris to announce that we can dispense with notions of moral accountability and self-worth tied up with libertarianism. Anyone who claimed that were not accountable for stealing my car because of their causal past (barring real conditions that prevent proper reasoning) ought to be stared down in contempt.”

It would be hubris if no one had offered plausible alternatives to libertarianism. But plausible alternatives have been offered (e.g., Flanagan’s The Problem of the Soul, Pereboom’s Living Without Free Will, Waller’s Freedom Without Responsibility). If someone claims lack of accountability because of their causal past, they can and should be corrected on consequentialist grounds.

“…but given our epistemic position we should not expect to be able to fully explain that which is in principle based upon not being fully explainable by reference to nurture & nature anyway.”

This is a strong claim since it says that *in principle* nature and nurture can’t explain or ground moral accountability, rationality, self-worth etc. And therefore we are driven to the libertarian, agent causal alternative, even though there’s no solid account there either. But one wants to know what this principle is. Does it perhaps include the assumption that *real* moral accountability, rationality, self-worth, etc. are inconsistent with being fully caused creatures?

[Blake]

Tom: You suggest that perhaps reasoning is a special form of cause and effect. I would argue that you must suggest a basis for believing that there is a necessary connection between causal laws and rationality (after all, determinism is all about such necessary relations). However, it seems rather clear that such necessary relations simply don't obtain. If I fail to reason properly (as you now suggest), then the mere possibility of reason that goes wrong suggests that prior causes and reasoning don't necessarily issue in rationality. You really suggest that the causes and the stars just don't align for me to reason in a fully rational way. Even trying to be reasonable and logical you suggest that I fail -- but then what is the explanation for this failure from your perspective? Isn't it just that I didn't have the right causes informing my reasoning? How could I get the right causes for reasoning when they are not in my control?

So it seems clear that rationality isn't just a form of determinism because it must involve something more than just the causes that issue in an outcome produced by using reasons. Laws of cause and effect are not laws of logic -- they are relations between events. I cannot see any reason at all to suppose that events must be so related as to to give rise to a rational process. Much less are neural states and genetic inheritance and the way I was brought up governed by the rules of sound reasoning. If my argument is invalid, the problem is not in me but in the stars that determined that I would somehow reason poorly. But isn't that pretty convincing evidence that my basic premise is correct?

As you may have guessed, I'm not a consequentialist -- at least not with respect to ethical theories (tho I lean that way in social justice theories). Further, it seems to me that basic notions of human rights, self-worth and deep accountability (where I really deserve what I get) must be given up without libertarian free will. I agree with Smilansky and Pereboom that something of value can be salvaged on such a deterministic view, but not nearly the value that we seek (at least that I seek). Such a view cannot value persons as a Thou or ends in themselves as opposed to the outcome of events and as mere objects and things in a system of the "moral" calculus.

Finally, when I say that in principal libertarian actions cannot be fully explained by nature and nurture it is a tautology -- isn't it? I didn't mean to imply that nature and nurture cannot ground the shallow values that you speak of (tho I was not clear enough since I was just giving a borad brush explanation). But the value of people is like the value of mere things on such a view. Rationality has the value of a calculator (which operates by deterministic logic and in that shallow sense embodies a form of rationality) and we can be accountable (in the shallow sense that we can give causal inputs to get the desired rehabilitation -- tho where anyone gets the right to do that given consequentialist ethics remains a mystery to me).

What I claim is that libertarianism assumes that there is no sufficient explanation in prior causes (tho I don't rule out teleological causes and imagnination or ends directed reasoning). Since there is no such sufficient explanation, the search for one that leaves out the basic causal powers of the agent is logically determined to fail if we are talking about libertarian free will. I know that agent causal powers are mysterious -- but then every form of causal explanation is a mystery to me (and I'm not alone in that). When you say that I do what I do because of prior causes, in fact that is no explanation but just a big black box of causes. When I say that we have agent causal powers there is the big black box of agent causation. All causal explanations seem mysterious -- so aren't these views at least on par?

[Tom Clark]

Blake,

I don’t want to go off the topic of moral desert too far or too long to debate about rationality, especially since we’re so far apart on it. Your assumption seems to be that rationality, unless it has an guaranteed footing in something acausal, can’t ever be considered reliable, whereas I find that assumption to be empirically unwarranted. We see very successful proto-rationality in animals and primates and computers, all presumably without benefit of libertarian agency, and there’s good evidence that we too are deterministic creatures (and any indeterminacy would decrease, not increase our rational grasp of the world). But rationality is of course fallible, and the reasons for that *are* causal and often not under our control – faulty tracking of the world by perceptual and cognitive systems, glitches in logical processing, etc. And of course logical rules are mechanistic, grinding out their conclusions inexorably from premises. You’re not free to pick and choose your logic, or your evidence for that matter, but are *compelled* by them, if you’re rational.

Likewise, we won’t agree about persons, who on your view must have something extra-causal to escape being mere objects. All I can say is that for me and other naturalistic determinists, persons are excruciatingly valuable; they are ends in themselves worthy of the deepest moral consideration. So it's false to say that “such a view cannot value persons as a Thou or ends in themselves” since I’m a living counter-example.

And we won’t agree about the relative mystery of agent causation vs. causation generally. Causation is simply constant conjunction of events, and we see tons of it in the world, and make good use of it in prediction and control. No mysterious black box here at all, just reliable induction based on explicit law-like regularities at any number of levels that we can apply in naturalizing human agency. But how does the libertarian agent get to cause things without it or its choices being fully caused in turn? Now that’s a mystery.

[Clark Goble]

Blake: It seems to me that if we don't have free will of the kind that transcends merely what happened to us before now, then we have no basis for attributing accountability to us for our acts -- for we should blame and praise the stars and not one another.

Do you mean this in a psychological or a logical sense? That is do you feel we would be psychologically unable to blame and praise? Or simply unable to do so in a rationally justified way?

It seems those are very different issues.

As Tom I think made eloquently clear, the psychological claim is empirically false since compatibilists and determinists don't seem to have difficulty assigning blame and praise.

I bring this up just since I find that in many of these discussions that it isn't clear whether we're talking reason or psyche. Often in discussions with Libertarians (although not necessarily you) it seems there is a fear that if Libertarianism wasn't true it would lead to problems best seen under the psyche rubric.

I find that less than compelling.

But even if we can't rationally assign blame and praise that still doesn't mean that something isn't blameworthy or praiseworthy. Just that we can't provide the reasons that it is. Yet someone who is a moral realist might simply say they just are independent of our ability to reason about it.

[Clark Goble]

Just to add to that last comment, by moral realist I don't mean a Platonic sense. Clearly the consequentialists can appeal to a kind of realism, for instance. You're not a consequentialist but it seems that your reasoning would entail that praiseworthiness be inherently knowable in a fashion that I don't think most ethical theories necessarily require. (Which isn't to say we might not know or be justified in knowing them - but one can always suggest a level of induction that might go beyond what you are comfortable with)

[James Gibson]

Tom wrote: "Likewise, we won’t agree about persons, who on your view must have something extra-causal to escape being mere objects. All I can say is that for me and other naturalistic determinists, persons are excruciatingly valuable; they are ends in themselves worthy of the deepest moral consideration. So it's false to say that “such a view cannot value persons as a Thou or ends in themselves” since I’m a living counter-example."

While I am in large disagreement with both yourself and Blake on several issues, I this misses his point. On his view, if I've got it right, there is something disturbingly shallow about a view that treats us as biological processors. Accordingly, he thinks that while there is some value to human persons if the world turns out to be deterministic, it isn't the type of value we *really* want. Maybe he has in mind something akin to Charles Taylor's distinction between a weak and strong evaluator (c.f. Responsibility for Self, in Watson's first edition of Free Will). So, I take it that he is not objecting that there are no persons that affirm both theses: (i) some mechanistic account of rationality due to determinism is true, and (ii) that persons are considered to be deeply valuable. In that case, he'd be wrong. Rather, the more charitable read is that he believes the person who affirms (i) has no principled or justified basis to also affirm (ii). On this read, whether there are in fact such persons who affirm (i) and (ii) is irrelevant. The trouble is coming up with the arguments for this.

[Blake]

James and Clark have both charitably clarified what I had in mind. I take Tom at his word that at least he deeply values people as ends in themselves and also that he is a naturalistic determinist. So there are in fact people like Tom who are both naturalistic determinists and who value people deeply. My view (for which I haven't argued) is that such a position is inconsistent.

I think that we all begin with deeply felt moral convictions that persons are utlimately valuable in some sense (tho some of us talk ourselves out of them). Such a view is expressed in Kant's second categorical imperative that we ought never to treat persons as mere means but always also as ends in themselves. "People are not mere things" is another. Yet if we are (in James's wonderful phrase) merely biological processors, then the difference between persons and things is not in kind, but degree of complexity of things.

What I question is whether the person who adopts naturalistic determinism can consistently do so hold that persons are ends in themselves -- especially one who adopts a consequentialist ethic like Tom (and I am not settled on this, but I doubt that naturalistic determinism can sustain a deontic ethic of the type Kant proposed). In a consequentialist system what is ultimately valuable is not individuals, but the greatest good in terms of consequences -- and if the value of an individual conflicts with this greatest good then the value of the individual must be sacrificed to the consequentialist outcome.

I would also argue that people cannot be seen as deeply responsible for what they are or actions that follow from what they are if determinism is true. We cannot consistently hold that they ought to be praised and blamed for what they do, or rewarded or punished retribitively. I take it that this is the upshot of the Consequence Argument.

Further, Tom is of course correct that I don't get to pick and choose my logical rules just because I believe that determinism and rationality are incompatible. However, that too is a misunderstanding. What I claim is not that logic is up for grabs, but that it makes no sense for a determinist to hold people to rationality because whether they are or not is not within their control (and he agrees with me apparently). I also agree that logical systems tend to be deterministic (tho probability and quantum theories need not be), but there are several systems of logic and geometry -- and which system we adopt is not a mere deterministic outcome but a matter of evaluation.

Further, it isn't true that all naturalistic determinists believe that we can ethically value people as ends in themselves. That is simply an empirical fact. Nor is it true that causation is merely constant conjunction. The vast majority of theorists regarding theories of causation have recognized that such a description is inadequate and rendered virtually unworkable because considering all of the events and causes relevant to assess any causal effect in conjunction with a cause leads to an endless string of modifiers. So it is better to adopt Carl Hoeffer's view that determinism is merely the view that given the way things are at a time T, the way things go thereafter is matter of natural law. But then determinism becomes an article of faith and not an explanation of individual actions.

Finally, it seems to me that a naturalistic view could accomodate agent causation if a theory of emergence involving downward causation is plausible. There is a lot of work to be done in this area, but it seems to me that such a view is not merely plausible but required to explain the evolution of life and emergence of properties of mind from physical states.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Blake,

I don't think Tom would suggest that anyone be "held" to rationality. His view is much more pervasive then that. I believe the following analogy can be used to describe the pervasiveness of his consequentialist view:

Those who take on the role of Gardener have the self-imposed responsibility of weeding out the negative influences from Garden.

Different Gardeners have different objectives -- some are growing roses, some are growing daisies, and some are growing weeds; some are sewing order and some are sewing chaos. In the end, whatever conflicts with each Gardener's goals are frowned upon and whatever compliments each Gardener’s goals are smiled upon. Each Gardener fights for the preservation and flourishing of his Garden according to these preferences.

We are all Gardeners and we are all part of someone else's Garden. That's just the way it is.

If that view of the universe is correct, then it is powerful enough to swallow even the emergentist view you described. So, if that is the view you hold, you may have more in common with Tom than you realize, though you may have very different opinions on what constitutes a good garden.

Regardless, this is a view I yearn to weed out.

[Tom Clark]

James, Blake:

Quite right, I missed Blake’s point that he can’t see how the conclusion that people should be treated as ends in themselves can be justified if we are merely “biological processors.” Feeling strongly that we should be treated as ends in ourselves doesn’t count as an argument that we should be.

Since most of us have this conviction pretheoretically, it must come not from argument, but from motivational predispositions. Quite naturally we want to be treated as ends in ourselves, not as instrumental to another’s purposes (ask any 2 year old). The basic moral proposition is indeed the categorical imperative: to assert the normative claim of each person’s right to autonomy. I grant yours, you grant mine, in reciprocal fashion, and so we more or less get along.

We don’t need to be more than complex biological processors to want to be treated as valuable ends in ourselves, but do we have to be more than that to *justify* such treatment? To think so is to suppose that there’s got to be something outside the desire for autonomy to underwrite it, and that something is of course Kantian personhood that transcends causality and makes us *intrinsically* valuable, independent of our desires. But I don’t see that one of our most basic desires needs underwriting, nor do I see any evidence for Kantian personhood. The normative force of the categorical imperative flows quite naturally from each person’s desire for autonomy, the reciprocal recognition of which is a necessary condition for human flourishing.

I think Blake is wrong to conflate consequentialism with utilitarianism, since the desire for autonomy constitutes a bedrock driving value which prompts us to protect an individual’s autonomy right in ways that might conflict with achieving the greatest good for the greatest number. And what’s traditionally been construed as categorically deontological can be reconstrued as consequentialist by the same logic: the desire to be treated as ends in ourselves is a basic, universal desideratum that can be satisfied by bringing about certain consequences, for instance by creating a pluralist democratic society. (I explore this at http://www.naturalism.org/morse.htm )

And yes, retributivism goes by the boards by my lights, and a good thing, too (see the above link and other essays at http://www.naturalism.org/criminal.htm ). Dropping the idea that there’s an abstract, non-desire based Kantian deontological duty to punish independent of consequences is actually *more* respectful of autonomy rights. Not that determinism has to be true for any of this, only that its falsity wouldn’t confer any coherent freedom or power or value to the libertarian agent. Naturalistic emergentist accounts of consciousness, rationality and other mental functions are in the works, and whether or not indeterminism plays a role or not is an empirical question.

Mark:

I’m happy to leave your view unweeded since if you can convince me that my view should be weeded, then I’ll stand corrected (not that you fairly described my view, as I hope the remarks above make clear).

[Blake]

Tom: Your point that we can simply do away with our predispositional judgments of blame and reward, or of administering punishments and giving rewards when we don't truly deserve them, isn't so easily defeasible on my view. I take it that you do in fact sometimes blame and praise? However, I'll read your links and respond thereafter.

I tend to agree that your own desire for autonomy can underwrite your own demand for autonomy;, what I don't see is how it can underwrite any demand that I treat you autonomously. Why sould I regard you as autonomous if I become convinced by some argument that in reality neither you nor I are autonmous (say via a strong argument that determinism is true)? It seems to me that the notion that we are merely biological processors that spit out causal results that are not within our control undermines the entire endeavor to demand that I regard you as autonomous -- and in that sense I am also entitled to regard you as irrational because autonomy is essential to rationality.

[Blake]

Tom: After having read your links, it is pellucidly clear that on your consequentialist view persons are not considered as ends in themselves; rather, you suggest that we must treat others as if they were ends in themselves to achieve a teleological purpose, i.e., to get along and not have fear of having basic rights abridged. However, there are several issues that arise.

First, you don't (and I suspect cannot) provide a basis for deriving such basic rights from the maxim "we have a duty to get along by treating each other as if we were autonomous ends in ourselves." (This is also the maxim driving Mark's gardener analogy). Yet getting along is not a supreme value. If a regime is treating people as mere things because they believe it is in society's best interests (as the Nazis thought they were doing with the Jews and homosexuals) then we ought to not get along. We ought to oppose any such goal (by any means necessary) because it is contrary to inherent human value and basic rights.

In the end, the basis for treating each other as if we were not mere biological processors, but as ends in ourselves, is really the fear of others treating us as if we have merely instrumental value. But if we are merely biological processors (which is surely entailed by determinism), then we in fact have only instrumental value because that is what we are -- instruments processing prior causes to bring about ends that are not within our control as to whether we desire them. So it seems that your goal of having us treat each other as if we were ends in ourselves is better accomplished by adopting a metaphysic that entails that we are ends in ourselves rather than mere biological processors.

It thus seems to me that genuine interpersonal relationships of true friendships, where we value each other as ends in ourselves, are not consistently possible on your view. It seems that genuine friendship requires us to value a friend as an intrinsic good. Yet if consequentalism is true, we must be ready to abandon the friendship (because obligated to do so) because we cannot commit to the friendship for its own sake. Rather, we must be prepared to abandon the friendship whenever it ceases to promote society's best interest.

Now I'm sure that consequentialist ethics are not without some resources to respond. Perhaps friendship is such a good to society that committing to friendship for its own sake is a good so great that any society that lacked true friendship would thereby be impoverished. Yet the very assertion: "commit to friendship for its own sake because it leads to the greatest societal good" is self-contradictory. There is no such thing as "genuine friendship" that masks its true motives and pretends to be committed to friendship for its own sake when it is really for the sake of something else -- in this case because friendships are good for society. The friendship only has instrumental value and thus is not true friendship at all.

Now I don't mean to assert that you don't have or are not a real friend just because you adopt a consequentialist ethic. But such genuine friendship is in spite of your consequentialist and not in virtue of it.

[David Friedman]

"He has not cited any of the relevant literature, however"

I haven't read very much of it, aside from Smith. I got interested in the puzzle when writing a law review article it was relevant to. (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Payne/Payne.html)

I think I read a little of the modern literature at that point, but mostly I was interested in thinking the question through for myself. I find philosophers only occasionally interesting.