Al Mele's paper: a Garden Discussion

Comments on Al Mele, "Manipulation, Compatibilism, and Moral Responsibility"
Tim O'Connor

Prof. Mele provides us with an admirably clear presentation and analysis of several related arguments for the incompatibility of determinism with freedom and moral responsibility. Mele is undecided on the truth of incompatibilism, whereas I am an incompatibilist who has always found it difficult to feel any temptation towards compatibilism. Despite our differences, I find much to agree with in Mele's critical discussion of certain incompatibilist arguments. I will organize my remarks around four issues. I ask you to forebear my taking the liberty in this context of sometimes stating things in a quick, loose, and sloppy fashion. As one instance of such looseness, I will slide back and forth between talking of freedom and moral responsibility.


1. Mele's historical condition on responsibility

Mele argues that everyone (regardless of one's views on incompatibilism) should recognize an historical condition on freedom and moral responsibility for one's action at a given time. Imagine an agent who involuntarily undergoes a motivational overhaul such that he now performs action A as an expression of values that were "very recently produced in a way that bypassed his capacities for control over his mental life by value engineering." Mele argues that if we flesh out the situation in certain ways (see p.8 for a full and careful statement of the scenario Mele has in mind), then independent of our views concerning compatibilism, and even if all typical compatibilist conditions on freedom are meet, we have good reason to regard the action as nonautonomous, as not having been freely and responsibly performed. And he goes on to draw the conclusion that a plausible compatibilism will recognize an historical dimension to freedom, requiring that the values a free agent expresses in action must have been developed in a way that does not undercut ordinary means of exercising control over one's mental life.

I agree with all of this. And if this is correct, then an argument for incompatibilism that assume that there is no relevant difference between just-prior-to-action manipulation scenarios and non-manipulative deterministic scenarios should be unpersuasive. Still, there might be reason to poke at certain details in Mele's discussion here. Notice that the sufficient condition he provides (p.8) for an agent's being unresponsible for A-ing owing to recent manipulation (NFM) involves his being unable to do otherwise on a compatibilist reading. This is a stronger form of inability than an incompatibilist one (as compatibilist ability is less demanding than incompatibilist ability). Why restrict NFM in this way? Granted, NFM lays down a sufficient condition, not a necessary one, but it still seems a gratuitous weakening of the condition. Suppose manipulation that leaves me strongly desiring to A (contrary to what I would have desired previously) and with no countervailing desire, and so I unhesitatingly A. Surely the compatibilist can agree no less than the incompatibilist that in this case, even if I am able to do otherwise in a compatibilist sense (but not in the plain incompatibilist sense, I act unfreely.

O.k., now suppose that metaphysical freedom in fact requires indeterminism and that the way my action unfolds post-manipulation corresponds to the indeterminist account that best captures the notion of freedom, at least apart from a plausible historical condition on freedom. (I suggest you consult a volume entitled PERSONS AND CAUSES for helpful clues on what this might involve.) On these assumptions, it's tempting to say that while the agent's freedom is diminished, it is not lacking altogether.  (Note on p.7 Mele's passing use of the qualifier, "unfree -- to a significant extent.") For possible significance of this last point, I turn to issue 2.


2. Mele's criticism of Pereboom's manipulation argument to the best explanation for incompatibilism

Pereboom defends a manipulation argument that does not depend on a "no difference" premise, but instead on a "best explanation" premise. The best explanation of the intuition that an agent is not responsible in certain manipulation cases is that "his action results from a deterministic causal process that traces back to factors beyond his control" (quoted on p.19). Mele suggest that we can test this judgment by considering cases of manipulation that are nondeterministic. He then suggests that we imagine cases where the manipulation leaves open exactly two causally possible outcomes: either the A-ing of the original scenario or the incapacitation of the agent. Suppose the agent in facts A-s. Mele notes that we judge the agent not be responsible here, even though the action was not determined. The conclusion drawn is that the no-responsibility intuition in the deterministic scenarios is more likely driven by the presence of manipulation, and not by the deterministic nature of the scenario.

But I wonder whether Mele gives the right kind of indeterministic test-case scenario. Why not consider a case where it is causally open to the agent to undertake two or more different courses of action, with the manipulation consisting in the fact that the motivational package driving the consideration of these options constitutes a complete change-over from what was the case previously. In this scenario, we might be inclined to credit the agent with some (albeit highly diminished) degree of responsibility for the choice he makes. And if this is correct, this might lend support to a more modest conclusion than Pereboom's, viz., that the best explanation of our intuition in his deterministic manipulation scenarios is that it is to some degree undergirded by the presence of both determinism and manipulation.


3. Mele's discussion of an 'original design' argument for incompatibilism

Mele thinks a better incompatibilist argument is of an 'original design' sort. We imagine the value engineering to occur not fairly immediately before the target action, but at the time of the creation of the agent. Imagine Diana in a deterministic universe creating a zygote in a precise way in order to bring about the mature individual Ernie's A-ing thirty years later. Here Diana employs impressive computational powers in relation to her equally impressive knowledge of the laws of nature and the state of the universe just prior to her creating the zygote, so as to deduce what it will take to achive the desired result. First premise: Ernie is not responsible for his action, owing to the value engineering. Now compare this case to an otherwise identical situation involving an agent Bernie's A-ing, where Bernie comes about in the usual way, absent any designer intending any of his actions. The second premise of the argument is that there is no freedom-relevant difference between Ernie and Bernie. From these two premises, the appropriate conclusion is drawn.

Mele is uncertain whether this is a good argument, with his uncertainty centered on the first premise. He suggest that the ideal adjudicators between the conflicting intuitions had by compatibilists and incompatibilists are "reflective agnostics" (such as…himself!). And his hunch is that what will determine the judgments on this premise for such arbiters is the degree to which they have doubts about the compatibility of freedom and moral responsibility with any form of indeterminist agency. The thought is that most reflective agnostics will assume that freedom and responsibility are possible, so if they are not possible under (significant) indeterminism, then they must be under determinism, but then the argument in question must be unsound, and premise 1 is the one to go.

I agree that an antecedent judgment about the prospects for indeterministic free agency will skew the judgments of many reflective agnostics about Mele's premise 1. Here I'll simply note that I am not persuaded that it is reasonable to allow the former judgment to drive the latter one.

Mele further suggests (p.28 and n.22) that verdicts about premise 1 may vary depending on what event it is that Ernie is designed to produce. (Compare cases involving Ernie killing his aunt with ones in which he donates money to charity.) If Mele is right about this, and premise 2 is quite strong, then I suggest that the fact that judgments may waver depending on what kind of event our designer intends may reflect doubts about compatibilism in the face of its consequences. Well, that claim is very quick, but to keep things short, I will simply toss it out and move on.


4. The bearing of Humeanism wrt laws of nature on incompatibilism

Mele invites us to think hard about whether Humeanism about laws of nature and causation should affect the strength of the compatibilist position (29-30). He contends that Humeanism would undermine the thought experiment concerning the origin of Ernie's zygote. Here I think he falls into error, owing to his focusing on only certain of the relevant consequences of Humeanism for freedom. He notes that, since on the Humean view, laws of nature are determined by the totality of (allegedly non-causal) local matters of fact, what the laws of nature are may be partly owing to the way Ernie acts. The laws are not logically prior truths that, together with Diana's action, guarantee his action. All the facts that are fixed by events prior to Ernie's actions do not ensure what he will do, since future facts, including Ernie's action, are needed to fix what the laws of nature are. (If this sounds crazy, that's largely because it is. And I don't have space to do the spelling out that makes it just a little less crazy-sounding.)

So, all that would seem good for Ernie and his freedom. But consider this: if Humeanism is correct, it's not merely the case that the past history (including Diana's designing intentions and action) leading up to Ernie's action at time t leave it open what the laws are, and so also whether Ernie will A at t. It is also open at time t itself (the time of the action) and for a long time thereafter whether, properly speaking, Ernie has even so much as acted at t (let alone acted freely)! Whether the events involving Ernie constitute an action depends on whether there are appropriate causal connections at play. If the future were to unfold in accordance with very different fundamental patterns than those that held sway hitherto (or with no interesting patterns at all) -- and nothing up to and including what occurs at t will ensure that they won't -- then the event that might at the time have looked like an action will turn out not to have been any kind of an action at all.

What conclusion should we draw from this strange, even grotesque state of affairs, on which whether you or me (never mind Ernie) have ever performed so much as a single action is still an open matter, and will remain open long after our deaths? I suggest this: if all this is so, then however the radically contingent, 'loose and separate' events of the future fall out, whether validating certain events as actions or not, then for any one of them, it surely wasn't up to me just then -- something I made to be the case at that very time -- that I did what I did (if indeed I did anything at all). The very dependency of the facts of agency on the entire world history, in the Humean scheme of things, itself supplies grave grounds for doubt about the possibility of freedom and responsibility in anything but the most pathetically deflationary sense. My compatibilist friends, maintain some minimal standards, please! Whatever exactly freedom and responsibility consist in, surely they can't be grounded in so radically external a way as that.

Reminder: Read Mele's paper

Hi all-

Just a reminder to do your reading for our Second Ever Garden of Forking Paths Online Reading Group of Extraordinary Distinction. Soon, we'll be kicking off discussion of Al Mele's paper "Manipulation, Compatibilism, and Moral Responsibility." Paper is available here.

Blaming Slaveowners

I'm in the process of reading Carlos Moya's new book Moral Responsibility: The Ways of Scepticism (reviewed here by Matt Talbert).  In the last chapter, he attempts to show that moral responsibility is compatible with indeterminism, and thus give support to a libertarian position.  In the process, he talks about slaveowners and compares our intuitive judgments about the blameworthiness of slaveowners, depending on what century they lived in.  I think this is an interesting question, so I put it to you.

Grant that purchasing a slave is morally wrong.  Now consider someone living in Ancient Greece who purchases a slave.  There's some intuitive pull to saying that even though this person may have done something morally wrong, he is not blameworthy.  On the other hand, consider someone who purchases a slave in 18th century America.  There's some intutive pull to saying that this person has done something morally wrong, and is blameworthy.  How do we explain this difference?

There are a few ways we can go.  Do we want to say that the Ancient Greek slaveowner is not blameworthy because he is not morally responsible?  But then, which condition on responsibility might he fail to meet?  Or do we want to say that the Ancient Greek slaveowner is responsible, but this is one case where someone can be morally responsible for a morally wrong action without being blameworthy?  But then, what mitigates his blameworthiness?  Or do we want to say that despite the fact that purchasing a slave today is wrong, purchasing slaves in Ancient Greece was not morally wrong?

What do you think?

Holton on Choice

Alan White brought to our attention the fact that Philosophers' Imprint has just published a new article that may be of interest to Gardeners:

Richard Holton, "The Act of Choice"

Enjoy!

Responsibility vs. Blameworthiness

Let's suppose that to be morally responsible is to be an apt target for the reactive attitudes.

And let's suppose that to be blameworthy/praiseworthy is to be such that the reactive attitudes are justifiably applied to you.

Nearly everyone agrees (I think) that an agent can be morally responsible without being praiseworthy or blameworthy.  That is, in our terms above, an agent can be the sort of object to which reactive attitudes are appropriately applied without it being the case that any reactive attitude is justifiably applied to the agent in a particular circumstance.  But what people disagree about (I think) is what gets you from moral responsibility to blameworthiness/praiseworthiness.  So what is it?

Pereboom thinks (I think) that if you are morally responsible for a morally wrong action, then you are therefore blameworthy for it, and if you are morally responsible for a morally right action, then you are therefore praiseworthy for it.  On his view, the only actions that an agent can be morally responsible for without being praiseworthy/blameworthy are morally neutral actions.

But others disagree.  For instance, Fischer thinks that more is needed.  Take his resopnse to Pereboom's 4-case manipulation argument.  Fischer has responded by saying that although the agent is morally responsible in all four cases, the agent is not blameworthy in all four cases.  He stops short of actually telling us where the cut-off for blameworthiness comes, but he does say that it's clear to him that in case 1, the agent is not blameworthy, whereas in case 4 (the deterministic case), the agent is blameworthy.  I wonder what other conditions for blameworthiness Fischer has in mind here?

And in general, I wonder what people think about the relationship between these two notions -- responsibility and blameworthiness.  In some discussions of moral responsibility, you'll hear an incompatibilist say that to be morally responsible is to be truly deserving of praise or blame.  But this sounds a lot closer to what I called 'blameworthiness/praiseworthiness' above.  Could it be that when Fischer judges the agent in case 1 not to be blameworthy, he is actually agreeing with the incompatibilist, but they are just using different words (one saying 'blameworthy'; the other saying 'morally responsible')?  I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but I feel like it's important to be clear about the relationship between these two concepts.  Any thoughts?

Free will and prescriptive claims

In this post I would like to call attention to a phenomenon that interests me: the lack of prescriptive claims in free willist philosophy.

To begin, consider Shaun Nichols’ division of the free will problem into three different projects: a descriptive project, a substantive project, and a prescriptive project.  The descriptive project involves determining “the character of folk intuitions surrounding agency and responsibility”; the substantive project just asks whether these intuitions are correct; and the prescriptive project asks how we should revise our moral and responsibility practices in light of these other conclusions.  I think Nichols’ distinction is very insightful and I’m embarrassed to say that I have not kept these three projects distinct in my own thinking/writing on the free will problem.

As I’ve noted before, some philosophers have addressed this last intersection between ethics and the free will problem: Michael Slote, Richard Double, Derk Pereboom, and Saul Smilansky (if you know of any others, I would be interested to know who they are).  Furthermore, all of these philosophers approach this prescriptive project from a more skeptical perspective.  One conclusion about this follows: compatibilists and libertarians have not much addressed the ethical consequences of their views.  This, at least, is my own impression of free willist views: they argue that freedom exists but rarely address what would happen if didn’t exist.

This suggests a fascinating possibility: orthodox views do not address the ethical question because it is irrelevant.  Compatibilists and libertarians would act the same towards wrongdoers whether they had free will or not.  The other possibility is that compatibilists and libertarians would act differently towards wrongdoers if they did not have free will.  But, in answer to this question of how they would act differently, I (perhaps through no fault but my own) only hear silence.  So I would put the question to free willists: what does free will secure for you, in the context of our moral responsibility practices, which non-realism about free will cannot, other than the ability to know/believe/say “free will exists”?

Can Moral Responsibility Skeptics Feel Schadenfreude?

For years I’ve found the culture critic Lee Siegel to be completely insufferable—a whiney pretentious abusive humorless hack.  Read this letter to Jon Stewart (who I don’t even like that much) and you’ll see what I mean.  Last weekend Siegel was suspended from his post as senior editor of The New Republic for “sock-puppetry,” meaning that he posted comments on his own article under an assumed name.  Here are a couple of posts from 'sprezzatura' (i.e. Siegel himself.). 

“How angry people get when a powerful critic says he doesn't like their favorite show! Like little babies. Such fragile egos. Siegel accuses Stewart of a "pandering puerility" and he gets an onslaught of puerile responses from the insecure herd of independent minds. I'm well within Stewart's target group, and I think he's about as funny as a wet towel in a locker room. Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be.”

“I'm a huge fan of Siegel, been reading him since he started writing for TNR almost ten years ago. (Full disclosure: I'm an editor at a magazine in NYC and he's written for me too.) I watch the goings-on and have to scratch my head. The people who hate him the most are all in their twenties and early thirties. There's this awful suck-up named Ezra Klein--his "writing" is sweaty with panting obsequious ambition--who keeps distorting everything Siegel writes--the only way this no-talent can get him. And I ask myself: why is it the young guys who go after Siegel? Must be because he writes the way young guys should be writing: angry, independent, not afraid of offending powerful people. They on the other hand write like aging careerists: timid, ingratiating, careful not to offend people who are powerful. They hate him because they want to write like him but can't. Maybe if they'd let themselves go and write truthfully, they'd get Leon Wieseltier to notice them too.”

(Can you imagine doing this?  The closest I could even come is giving myself a red chili pepper on ratemyprofessor.com.  Right now I only have one student review, and it was clearly a guy, since I wasn't given a chili pepper.)  Anyway, Franklin Foer of The New Republic discovered this and fired him.   The story went public and Siegel is now a laughing stock.  When I heard about this, I was giddy with schadenfreude.   If I had thought about it for a week, I couldn’t have imagined a more appropriate fate for this guy.  Talk about getting your just deserts!  But then I remembered: I don’t believe in just-deserts.  So I asked myself: am I being inconsistent with my skepticism about moral responsibility?  After all, it’s not Siegel’s fault that he’s an pompous pr---.  He doesn’t deserve blame for that, and so why should I be so happy to hear about his disgrace? So I ask the Garden: Is there a way to reconcile schadenfreude with skepticism about moral responsibility, or is this just another area, like sports, where skeptics have to set aside philosophical beliefs and do the Hume backgammon thing?

Everybody's free

. . . to join the second edition of the landmark GFP Online Reading Group.

Continuing our tradition of excellence in group blogging, the next paper we will read and discuss in our customarily death-defying and erudite way will be:

Al Mele, "Manipulation, Compatibilism, and Moral Responsibility" available here.

Initial remarks will be provided by everyone's favorite agent cause and Philosophy Ping-Pong World Champion, Tim O'Connor.

Initial comments will be posted somewhere around September 27th.
You will post your comments soon thereafter.

So, flex your neck, loosen fingers, and get to reading and comment-formulating.

Thanks to everyone who has participated so far, and admonishments to join it to those of you who are still lurking.

Sosa on Moral Responsibility

Ernie Sosa has a new paper on experimental philosophy. Among other topics, he discusses some of the recent experimental work on moral responsibility.

In essence, he argues that the English word 'responsible' is ambiguous -- with one sense corresponding roughly to the concept of attributibility, the other corresponding roughly to the concept of accountability. Sosa then suggests that some of the surprising recent results can be understood in terms of certain factors pushing subjects more toward one or another of the two possible interpretations.

Are Libertarians Armchair Physicists?

A criticism often levelled against libertarians is that they are doing armchair physics.  Take Ted Sider's slogan for libertarians I mentioned earlier here at the blog: "I know from my armchair that physics is incomplete!"  But is this criticism fair?

Libertarians do say that determinism is false.  That much is clear.  But what isn't clear is whether determinism, in this context, is the sort of thesis that could be shown true or false by physics.  When libertarians deny that we live in a deterministic world, their formulation of determinism typically involves notions like the past, the laws of nature, causation, and logical entailment.  Are these notions that would show up in formulations of determinism given by physicists?  Could there really be empirical data to support claims about a logical entailment between two states of the world, given the laws of nature?  In other words, is the sort of determinism denied by libertarians a philosophical (rather than a scientific) thesis?  And if so, is it really fair to call libertarians armchair physicists?

In raising this question, I have in mind a parallel from the philosophy of time.  A criticism often levelled against presentists (those who believe, roughly, that only present objects exist) is that their view is inconsistent with the pronouncement we get from the special theory of relativity that there is no notion of absolute simultanaeity.  But in his article, "A Defense of Presentism", Ned Markosian responds to this charge by pointing out that there are two different ways of understanding the special theory of relativity.  If we understand the theory robustly enough so that it includes the claim that there is no such notion of absolute simultanaeity, then we have reason to think that version is false, since this is a philosophically rich interpretation that goes beyond what the data strictly warrant.  On the other hand, if we understand the theory so that it doesn't include the claim that there is no such notion of absolute simultanaeity, then we have reason to think this version is true, but it doesn't pose a threat to presentism anymore.

Is something similar happening with the attack on libertarianism?  Could it be that any interpretation of the empirical data that includes the claim that determinism (in the philosopher's sense) is true is going too far beyond what the data actually warrant?