Zygotes, God, and Santa Claus

I find Al Mele's Zygote Argument compelling.  (See the next to last chapter in his new book and also the paper we read in the GFP reading group not too long ago.)  That argument comprises the following story about a goddess named Diana and the subsequent numbered steps.

Diana creates a zygote Z in Mary. She combines Z’s atoms as she does because she wants a certain event E to occur thirty years later. From her knowledge of the state of the universe just prior to her creating Z and the laws of nature of her deterministic universe, she deduces that a zygote with precisely Z’s constitution located in Mary will develop into an ideally self-controlled agent who, in thirty years, will judge, on the basis of rational deliberation, that it is best to A and will A on the basis of that judgment, thereby bringing about E. If this agent, Ernie, has any unsheddable values at the time, they play no role in motivating his A-ing. Thirty years later, Ernie is a mentally healthy, ideally self-controlled person who regularly exercises his powers of self-control and has no relevant compelled or coercively produced attitudes. Furthermore, his beliefs are conducive to informed deliberation about all matters that concern him, and he is a reliable deliberator.

1. Because of the way his zygote was produced in his deterministic universe, Ernie is not a free agent and is not morally responsible for anything.

2. Concerning free action and moral responsibility of the beings into whom the zygotes develop, there is no significant difference between the way Ernie’s zygote comes to exist and the way any normal human zygote comes to exist in a deterministic universe.

3. So determinism precludes free action and moral responsibility.

I want to discuss premise (1).  I think the best way to explain the intution behind (1) is in terms of heaven-and-hell responsibility.  That is, suppose that Ernie dies and finds himself about to be judged by Diana (the goddess who created him).  Diana is deciding whether to send Ernie to hell, and decides that since E (the event Diana created Ernie to bring about) was so morally bad, Ernie should go to hell.  She's about to toss him into the fire when he pipes up -- "But wait!  Surely I don't deserve to go to hell.  After all, you created me *in order that* I would do E.  How can you possibly blame me for it?"  Ernie seems to have a point here.

But what I'm wondering, and I'm hoping you can help me out with, is whether the idea of heaven-and-hell responsibility is doing too much of the work here.  So what if we moved to another case, and this time consider another timely and supposedly omniscient person who hands out rewards and punishments based on merit: Santa Claus.  Now, in this case, Diana still created Ernie in order that he would perform E.  But forget the stuff about dying and facing judgment day.  Now let us suppose that Ernie gets a big fat chunk of coal in his stocking this Christmas because Santa wasn't too happy with the fact that Ernie did E.  If Ernie catches Santa putting coal into his stocking, does Ernie have a legitimate complaint?  Can he say, "But wait!  Surely I don't deserve this piece of coal in my stocking.  After all, Diana created me in order that I would do E.  How can you possibly blame me for it?"

So what I'm wondering is (a) whether people agree that the heaven-and-hell case is a good case to elicit intutions in favor of premise (1), (b) whether people think that the Santa case is just as good, and (c) if the answer to (b) is no, does this show that the intuitions elicited by the heaven-and-hell case are unjustified?

(And, just out of curiosity, what about another timely alteration of the case -- plug in God for Diana, Jesus for Ernie, and some significant event in Jesus' life for E.  (The woman's name is 'Mary', after all.)  What happens then?)

And by the way, happy holidays!

Comments

[Justin Capes]

Neal,

My intuitions are the same in both cases. Ernie deserves niether hell nor the coal. I suspect that if one has the intuition that Ernie is not free or morally responsible for what he has done, then that intuition is unlikely to fade if we make the proposed punishment less severe. But perhaps someone disagrees.

[Tamler Sommers]

In my experience, the heaven/hell example does more harm than good in getting at the notion of desert-entailing moral responsibility because of the extreme nature of the punishment (eternal torment). I remember Susan Wolf in a seminar saying something like "I don't think anyone deserves eternal suffering but that doesn't mean I don't believe in moral responsibility.'

My idea was to redefine hell so that it's just a kind of frustrating place to live (bad restaurants, no TiVo, forced viewings of Oliver Stone films and 'How to Make an American Quilt'), but I think your Santa claus scenario is much better--I may use it in my course next semester.

[Eddy Nahmias]

According to Tamler's description "Hell is a place on earth" (and most people live there).

Do people think it matters to the assessment of intuitions about this case (and other manipulation cases) that there is another agent available to "take the blame"--to transfer responsibility for the misdeed to? I understand that people *argue* that this should not matter to assessing the manipulated agent's responsibility, for instance, by saying the manipulator could be replaced by a dumb machine or a series of random natural events, but I'm worried here about the intuition-pumping that's being done.

Put more precisely, the worry is this:
1) Manipulation arguments describes a case about Manny the Manipulated in such a way to pump the intuition that he is not free (this is done easily since paradigm cases of manipulation always involve people being clearly unfree--they don't satisfy most compatibilist conditions either).
2) Stipulate that Manny satisfies all compatibilist conditions (at this point people get a bit confused because these cases are so different from paradigmatic cases of manipulation, at least on reflection).
3) Someone offers a compatibilist responses, "OK but there's still another agent manipulating Manny and that's crucial" (people may not be clear why it's crucial, but maybe because we have another agent who seems to be *more* obviously responsible than Manny to tranfer the blame to), and then you bring in the impersonal computer or random natural events and say, what's the difference?

Now, I think there are important differences, though they are hard to elucidate. But regardless of whether there are, I worry that the intuition pumping relies a lot on (a) paradigmatic cases of manipulation destroying even compatibilist types of freedom and (b) giving us another agent to blame who seems more blameworthy because they know more about what is going on and how to ensure the bad event happens.

Anyway, that's one reason why I'm much less willing to accept 1 right off the bat.

[Kevin]

Neal,

My intuitions differ between the heaven/hell case and the Santa case. The heaven/hell case is one that involves justice. But Santa doesn't owe presents to anyone--he's being supererogatory. And I'm inclined to think that inequality among the recipients of one's supererogation isn't an issue of justice at all. So Ernie doesn't have a complaint about getting just the coal--if Santa had given Ernie what he (Santa) owed him (Ernie), it would have been nothing. So Ernie should be happy he got something at all. Santa didn't owe him jack.

But I'm guessing this isn't the kind of explanation for the difference in intuitions that you were looking for.

[RICHARD DOUBLE]

What would the world have to be like for there to be a correct answer to question 1?

[Neal]

Kevin,

You clearly had a deprived childhood if you grew up thinking that Santa didn't owe you any presents!

Seriously, though, you make a good point about the Santa case. But I was thinking that the dialogue between Ernie and Santa would go like this:

Ernie: Hey, why are you giving me coal?
Santa: You deserve it for doing E.
Ernie: No I don't! I was created to do E by Diana!
Santa: Oh, well in that case...

Richard,

Which question are you referring to? If you mean the question I labelled (a), then I was just asking whether people reading this blog feel the intuition pull of the heaven/hell case. Sorry if I didn't put it that simply.

[Alan]

One empirical fact (if I may offer it thus) concerns chaotic (deterministic) complexity and quantum (indeterministic) influence. Many of the deductions of this post presume isolated systems of a deterministic nature. But empirically speaking no such deterministic systems are isolated from their environment, deterministic (the weather, say) or not (radioactive influences). Any such transtemporal deterministic system evaluated by the metaphysical properties of the ongoing system per se still can be influenced by the environment, whether chaotically deterministically or by quantum theory indeterministically. The question of ultimate agency of any such isolated system is thus compromised by morally neutral factors outside it, as Mele concludes, but ultimately neutral still. But this does not preclude compatibilist questions of responsibility as they pertain to non-ultimate prescriptions of relative responsibility as these can be more practically assigned to the zygotic system as it evolves as as an identifiable moral entity. The practical question is whether one can point to an entity that did something wrong that anyone evaluates in a more universal way.

Perhaps moral evaluation is always the particular evaluated by some universal. And that is itself consistent with first-order evaluation of individuals against kinds of those same individuals, and second-order evaluation of those kinds against higher-order types. So incompatibilist individuals that choose are cast by incompatibilism against the kind of those that cannot incompatibilistically choose--deterministic individuals--and those that compatibilistically choose are cast against those that are against the type that cannot compatibilistically choose--those who do not fit the general description of such choosers. But these are distinct types of assessment, parallel to first- and second-order descriptions. Maybe this is a logical-type indication of the general nature of incompatilism against compatibilism.

[David Clark]

My apologies in advance for interrupting the discussion with non-specialist questions. I hope I don't lower the signal-to-noise ratio too much here; if I do, please skip the post.

None of the questions around moral responsibility here seem to address the questions around the validity of the 'moral' term. We don't, after all, deliberate over moral values and then act. Instead, we do whatever maximizes our emotional return, then label whatever action we took as the 'moral' one, generating whatever rhetorical tools are necessary to get us through the process. Whoever among us does so most effectively becomes more confident, and less self-questioning, both traits which are powerful assets in efforts to reproduce.

It seems to me that moral skepticism offers a way to cut through much of the confusion over the questions that appear in this blog. In this analysis, Ernie is of course "morally justified" - from his own perspective - to protest his punishment, since protesting serves his emotional needs (to avoid punishment), and portraying his protest as "moral" would be more ego-reinforcing, and possibly more effective, than portraying it as merely self-interested. Similarly, Diana is "morally justified" to punish him (again, from HER perspective), since Diana is a more effective god if she isn't constantly distracted by self-doubt.

If 'moral language' is merely rhetorical weaponry, and 'moral deliberation' is just emotional self-justification, perhaps 'moral responsibility' is just "punishment with a good cover story". Maybe the debate should focus on the advisibility of punishment, and on issues of pragmatic rhetorical and semantic warfare.

As an aside, is there a term for those who approach the Free Will/Moral Responsibility debate from a moral skeptic position?

Thanks for your time.

[French atheist]

I have no special knowledge in philosophy, but sometimes happen to browse throught this blog. Take my opinion as the opinion of a total non-specialist.

I am quite astounded by the religious beliefs implicitly included in this story. It sounds like a fairy tale, not a philosophically meaning metaphor ; it has nothing to do with the reality of this world.

Why suppose that Ernie has been « created » by an intelligent creature, and not, say, by a bridge or a window ?

Why suppose Diana has to choose between sending Ernie to "heaven" or "hell" and not to "a soccer match" or a "rock concert" ?

This story is founded on Christian mythology, and has absolutely no relevance on the Real World, where people sometimes visit a Rolling Stones concert, and never a Hell.

[French atheist]

By the way, and while I am posting my non-specialist observations, I take profit to be here to ask for bibliographical advice.

I have never understood a word about the theories of « free will ». In my intuitive view of the world I live in, there is absolutely nothing that looks like « free will » and which gives me a status different from the status of this book on the shelf on my left.

I generally stumble on the expression « the laws of nature » in the definitions of « free will ». As you used it in your text, could you give me some bibliographical directions to what « laws of nature » mean.

Another question : why is the arrow of time so central in all these philosophical musings ? Why do so many people dissert about « are my actions on Tuesday predetermined by my state on Monday » and so few about « are my actions on Tuesday postdetermined by my state on Wednesday » ? Why never any reflexion about free will towards the past ?

(And of course ignore my two comments if they seem pure mad rambles to specialists).

[Cihan Baran]

>> I hope I don't lower the signal-to-noise ratio too much here; if I do, please skip the post.

Haha, are you also an electrical engineer? Shannon's Law anyone?

Anyway, here is my "non-specialist" take on the issue.

Ever since I have read some of the compatibilist literature, my intuitions have gone quite awry. I don't know if I am the only person but I don't find premise 1 all that convincing.

I am quite convinced by Frankfurt's compatibilism ("Freedom of the Will and The Concept of A Person") and I view this argument through the lenses of Frankfurt's conceptual framework. To me, it seems as if Ernie identifies with his A-ing and he wants to want to A (since we are told that his actions are self-controlled). In Susan Wolf's words, "the deep self" of Ernie wants to A. And I don't think that it matters how this "deep self" develops.

Based on this, I feel that Ernie is morally responsible for his A-ing and if it weren't for the Goddess, he would still be A-ing and the intervention of the goddess is not all that important. So I reject premise 1.

I find my intuitions on the free will issue to be really confused though. Maybe, I am just so easily won by compatibilist arguments.  

[Tamler Sommers]

Cihan,

It doesn't bother you that it's not Ernie's fault that he has the deep self that he has?

[Patricia Greenspan]

Is getting coal a punishment? Maybe on an expressive theory of punishment. Mainly what's involved here is *not* getting an expected (even if not required) *reward*. It might be *ok* to give Ernie a gift anyway, if mercy is allowable, but it's not as though he deserves one. But the substitution of coal inflicts no suffering, except perhaps to the extent that it involves an element of malicious trickery. My point is just that the contrast to hell seems to rest on more than a difference in degree.

[RICHARD DOUBLE]

NEAL,

BY '1' I MEAN THE FIRST PREMISE I YOUR SUMMARY OF AL MELE'S ARGUMENT. [SECOND PARAGRAAPH]

[RICHARD DOUBLE]

DAVID CLARK,

I LOVE YOUR TERM 'RHETORICAL WEAPONTRY.'

THE TERM(S) I USE TO ARTICULATE YOUR VIEW IS (ARE) 'FREE WILL/MORAL ESPONSIBILITY SUBJECTIVISM.'

[Justin Capes]

Neal,

So was your original question whether the severity of the punishment affects our intuitions about whether Ernie is morally responsible or was it specifically about the heaven and hell case? If the former, then it seems we can ask the same questions by changing the example. It seems to me that a few people find the examples troubling. They either don't believe in heaven or hell, or they don't think anyone deserves hell, if such there be; or, in Kevin's case, think that in giving out gifts (whether it be a new Mercedes or coal) Santa Clause is performing a supererogatory act.

So what if we let 'A' be shooting the prime minister and 'B' be the death of the prime minister. Ernie was designed by Diana to shoot the prime minister which, in turn, results in the death of the prime minister. Do our intuitions change if the punishment is the death penalty or if it is two weeks community service?

[Cihan Baran]

Hey Tamler,

Yes, I also thought about that and I remembered Susan Wolf's paper. In the paper, Susan Wolf (ugh, I don't have access to paper right now), I think, gives the example of someone who was abused as a child and develops a mean, evil personality as a result, claiming that this person does not have the "sane" deep self. The case of the zygote might be something similar.

This obviously invites the question how and when one would have the "sane" deep self. Now I am not so sure about what the difference between someone who develops her personality in a "normal and deterministic" universe and someone who develops in this "deterministic and zygote-Ernietic" way. However, if the incompatibilist's claim is that all deterministic ways of developing a personality are equivalent - I think that's false. On the other hand, Mele's paper shows that the other extreme compatibilist claim - the history of one's values is irrelevant as long as one satisfies certain conditions - is wrong.

[Tamler Sommers]

Cihan,

"However, if the incompatibilist's claim is that all deterministic ways of developing a personality are equivalent - I think that's false."

But that's not really the incompatibilist's claim. Obviously, there are a vast number of different ways of developing a personality. The incompatibilist's claim is that all deterministic ways of developing a personality share one common feature: that ultimately it cannot not IN ANY WAY be our fault (or to our credit) that we have the personality we have. Does that seem false to you?

[Cihan Baran]

Hello,

I am not entirely sure. Think about the classical Frankfurt case. Jones is determined to shoot Smith, but I don't think that determination really matters.

Similarly, we may be determined to develop the personality that we do, but I don't think that matters, as long as that personality is the reflection of our "deep selves".

I guess the point I am trying to make is this. Parallel to Frankfurt cases, as long as we would have developed the personalities we currently have in a universe where we would have libertarian free will (if such thing is intelligible), I think we are responsible for the way we are. In other words, whether we have libertarian free will or live in a deterministic world doesn't really matter because we end up with the same personalities.

However, I am not so sure whether such an analogy can be drawn. I don't know if it makes sense to ask the question how I would have been if I had had libertarian free will, whereas in the classical Frankfurt case, it makes sense to ask what Jones would do if he wasn't determined to shoot Smith.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tamler,

Does it bother you that I have never blamed/praised anyone for becoming-the-type-of-person-who-would-X, yet I routinely praise/blame people for being-the-type-of-person-who-X's?

The type of praising/blaming I actually engage makes no assumptions about where a person's character comes from, only that it is in fact their character.

The category of cases that involve types of character tainting (e.g. abused children, brain washing, etc.), are sufficient to outright excuse praise/blame on epistemic grounds (only): given the person's history, we cannot know merely from the fact that the person X'ed whether it is a genuine expression of the person's character. In other words, given the historical context surrounding the person, we have good reason to remain agnostic regarding the actual quality of the person's character.

From here it is a relatively simple matter to move toward "hard" compatibilism by arguing that (1) there is a clear manner in which *all* of the historical manipulation cases can be dealt with in the manner described above, and (2) that the agent in the Zygote argument has genuine freedom and/or responsibility (e.g. sufficient to fulfill the concept of praise/blame noted above) on that basis that its actual character is being expressed.

[Tamler Sommers]

Mark,

Does it bother me? Not at all. You're not morally responsible for being the type of person who fails to see why people aren't morally responsible. In all seriousness, I'm open to the possibility that we have different intuitions about this question and that they aren't going to be reconciled. If you can look at the zygote argument and comfortably claim that the agent deserves hell or coal, then maybe we just have fundamentally different notions about what constitutes just reward and punishment. I can't understand why you're not bothered by the fact that the agent is clearly not at fault for having his (actual) character, and therefore that it is unfair to punish or blame him for acts that result from this character. It seems you can't understand my lack of understanding. I guess it all comes down to TNR. (At times I think the entire MR debate can be boiled down to whether or not we endorse the TNR principle.)

I'm also open to the possibility that further discourse and argument will one day resolve the issue to our satisfaction. I honestly think it's an open question.

Cihan, I'm not sure Frankfurt case is related to my question to you because of its focus on alternate possibilities. I'm trying to press the 'source incompatibilist' line with you, hoping to figure out if you think that determinism (or indeterminism for that matter) entails that we are not deserving of praise or blame for having the character and dispositions that we have. Although I recognize that you're employing the Frakfurt analogy so that it can apply to source considerations. Kevin Timpe, Joe Campbell, and Bob Kane have some interesting stuff on that approach that you might want to check out.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tamler,

My method for settling the "conflicting" intuitions is via analogy. When I see a beautiful piece of art, I do not question whether the work had a part in making itself beautiful, I simply recognize that it is beautiful. In virtue of being beautiful, it deserves to be treated as beautiful. Likewise, when I see a piece of art that is monsterous or groteseque, I do not question whether the work had a part in making itself thus, I simply recognize its vile nature. In virtue of its vile nature, it deserves to be treated as vile.

I cannot fathom how the case of assessing the moral quality of a person in order to determine how the person deserves to be treated differs to the degree that warrants the additional principle that TNR discredits: that an agent must have a part in its own constitution in order to be held morally responsible. According to the analogy, this additional principle is simply unnecessary.

My contention is rather simple: we don't hold people responsible for having a certain character, we hold people responsible according to the character they actually have. The latter does not suffer from the same logical incoherence as the former (arguably) does.

[Tamler Sommers]

Ok, this will (hopefully) be the last bit of procrastination before I dive into all the papers I need to grade.

You write: "When I see a beautiful piece of art, I do not question whether the work had a part in making itself beautiful, I simply recognize that it is beautiful. In virtue of being beautiful, it deserves to be treated as beautiful. Likewise, when I see a piece of art that is monsterous or groteseque, I do not question whether the work had a part in making itself thus, I simply recognize its vile nature. In virtue of its vile nature, it deserves to be treated as vile."

This is the problem with arguments from analogy. To me, your claim that beautiful art could deserve anything sounds either (a) insane, or (b) like you're employing an unrecognizable concept of desert. Imagine your vile painting could feel pain. Would you think it deserved to suffer because of how vile it was? Do you think that pit-bulls who have been bred and trained to attack other dogs and humans deserve to suffer for their vicious characters?

Incidentally, I use the art analogy too as a means of combatting the pessimism about MR skepticism. Since for me, it's obvious that paintings don't deserve anything, I use them as examples of how we can appreciate, love, value something without attributing moral responsibility to it.

[Cihan Baran]

"I'm trying to press the 'source incompatibilist' line with you..."

Okay, so then my point/analogy more explicitly is this:

If I would have the same character/personality as I now do in a possible world where I would be the ultimate source of my actions, then it doesn't matter that I have my current personality in a world where I am not the ultimate source of my actions. Because even if I were the ultimate source of my actions, I would still have the same personality. (The resemblance to Frankfurt-style cases is that Jones would still shoot even if he wasn't determined to do so.)

More concisely:
Maybe I didn't "make myself" but just assume that if I could "have made" myself, I still would have "made myself" the same. Then it doesn't matter that I didn't "make myself".

Hope it makes more sense this way - it certainly does to me...
Happy holidays!

[John]

French Atheist,

For the philosophical conversation to proceed, you need to accept some assumptions. For this post, you need to accept the possible/hypothetical situation of their being a being more powerful than us. Whether or not you believe that to be true, it is possible. If it isn't, then you are positing something to the effect of I absolutely know that there are now pink rocks in the universe. Or, I absolutely know that there are no absolutes. Another thing, Neal didn't use a bridge or a window because bridges and windows don't make things. There are atheists that contribute to this site, but they will allow assumptions with which they disagree for heuristic/hypothetical models so that the philosophical conversation can progress.