Argument from the Authority of my 2 1/2 year old Daughter

As many here know, I’m a huge fan of Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment,” but I’ve never really been convinced by the argument. Why should my proneness to experiencing an attitude connected to moral responsibility make me think that the belief in moral responsibility is immune from rational criticism? Just a few weeks ago, however, as I was watching Toy Story 2 with my daughter Eliza, I felt the force of Strawson’s argument for maybe the first time. For those who don’t know the movie, a toy store owner (henceforth “the Chicken Man”) steals Woody, the toy cowboy voiced by Tom Hanks, from a yard sale just as Woody is saving broken penguin squeaky toy from the 25 cents box. The Chicken Man intends to sell Woody to a Japanese toy museum for a large amount of money. He's about to put Woody on an airplane and make his fortune when Buzz Lightyear, Mr. Potatohead, a slinky dog, and a dinosaur voiced by the playwright Wallace Shawn rescue Woody at the last minute.

Now (bear with me) the Chicken Man’s running TV gimmick throughout the movie is to dress up like a chicken and say ‘come to Al’s Toy Barn—everything for a buck buck buck.” At the end of the movie, we see him on TV and he’s doing his schtick but now he’s crying because his diabolical plan was ruined: “Everything for a [sob] buck [sob] buck [sob] buck.

Like most toddlers, my daughter is very attuned to the emotional states of others. When we watch movies, she’ll say to me repeatedly “Nemo’s Daddy sad.” “Cindarella sad.” “Gromit’s sad.” And it really bothers her. She’ll look at me, tilt her head, and ask ‘soon happy?’ Usually I can say “yes, soon happy” because we haven’t started to watch 70s film with dark endings yet. (I’m waiting until she turns six before we watch Chinatown.)

This time, when we see the commercial and the chicken man is sobbing, my daughter says (as usual):

“He’s sad.”

But then, after a two second pause, she adds:

“I’m glad he’s sad.”

The first thing that struck me was that retributive emotions run pretty deep. Eliza, not even three, already thinks: ‘it’s good when bad people are sad.’ And I can almost guarantee she wasn’t performing a utilitarian calculation when she expressed that sentiment.

More troubling for me, I thought she was right! Yet I’m committed to the view that no one deserves blame because everything is swallowed up by moral luck. So then I tried to think: OK, this chicken man had bad constitutive luck, circumstantial luck, wasn’t ultimately responsible for... but then I realized: I don’t care! I’m glad he’s sad too. I don’t care what kind of bad moral luck he’s had. I don’t care that the chicken man wasn’t causa sui, or had bad constitutive luck, or that his act may have been determined, or that he was not ultimately responsible for any of the factors leading to his character or action. Eliza's right! The Chicken Man deserves to be sad, period. All the theories in the world haven’t made an impression like she did that evening.

I’m not exactly sure what to make of this story. I can’t say it marks the end of my skepticism about moral responsibility. But I feel like it’s philosophically important somehow. (Or maybe not.)

Comments

[Dan Speak]

"From the mouth of babes..."

Eliza sounds very cool (and smart)!

I don't know what to make of the story, either. But I like it a lot. And I especially appreciate your willingness to wonder about the philosophical implications of it.

["Q" the Enchanter]

"I thought she was right! Yet I’m committed to the view that no one deserves blame..."

If Nature were a consequentialist, she could have done little better than to imbue her humans with practically indefeasible retributive impulses. (Chicken Man isn't likely to reform himself if his vicious behavior is rewarded with saintly patience by understanding, empathetic free will skeptics.) And so, seemingly, she has. Despite my robust skepticism about free will, then, I seriously doubt I will ever be utterly free of resentment. But I compromise, and vow to wage peace with this seeming antinomy.

[Tamler Sommers]

Dan, thanks. You're absolutely right--she's very cool and impossibly smart. And I'm serious about feeling the true force of Strawson's argument for the first time when it happened. What does some metaphysical theory have to do with being glad that the chicken man is sad? Her feeling did seem to "neither call for, nor permit, an external 'rational' justification."

'Q,'

I had the same approach, and still do mostly. Just because nature endowed us with certain retributive attitudes, that doesn't mean we have to believe that our retributive judgments are TRUE. On the contrary, we can use our awareness of these attitudes, and of the reasons we have them, as a means of resistance. But now I can sort of see what Strawson meant when he said that this might be 'overintellectualizing the facts.' Maybe moral responsibility isn't the kind of thing we need to find a rational basis for.

On the other hand, I don't give up so easily! It's take at least one more Pixar movie to make me a full-blooded Strawsonian.

[Neil]

Assume - plausibly - that deontic judgments are the product of a brain module. Then informational encapsulation (recalcitrance of outputs to agential beliefs) is just what you'd expect. In that case I'm not sure that they have even prima facie evidential weight.

[Manuel Vargas]

What Dan said.

My prediction is that at age three or four, though, she'll turn into a fan of unmoved mover explanations. In her teens she'll cast a surly eye on those beliefs and declare that she doesn't have truck with free will and moral responsibility. Then, one day, she'll have a child of her own and after a great conversation with that kid she'll start wondering if the problem is just her kooky beliefs, and if she might be able to revise them in some interesting way. At that point, hopefully, ponytails will be very trendy. ;-)

[Peter Brian Barry]

Congratulations, Tamler, on raising a budding Strawsonian compatibilist. My suspicion is that your own skepticism about free will and moral responsibility might survive your daughter's critique. Much depends upon how to understand her utterance "I'm glad he's sad." If her assertion is simply a report of her affective responses, then there's no trouble for the free will skeptic father. After all, its not like free will skeptics have to deny that people can be sad or happy. And its not like she claimed that "He should be sad" or "He deserves to be unhappy" or something like that. If she's not making a retributive judgment at all, whither the problem?

[Tamler Sommers]

Manuel, I see--so free will skepticism is just a phase, like being into Ayn Rand or "On the Road." Is that how the world sees us? I liked it better when I thought people viewed the position as bleak and pernicious, about to usher in an nightmarish Orwellian future.

Neil, when you write:

"Assume - plausibly - that deontic judgments are the product of a brain module. Then informational encapsulation (recalcitrance of outputs to agential beliefs) is just what you'd expect. In that case I'm not sure that they have even prima facie evidential weight."

...Do you see this as an objection to Strawson? If so, I think it's misguided. Strawson is not claiming that our retributive judgments or atttitudes provide evidence for the existence of moral responsibility. He's saying, I think, that moral responsibility just IS the expression of those judgments and attitudes. (Isn't that what Watson calls the 'non-cognitivist' aspect of his view?) Like most non-cognitivist positions, it might seem crazy at first, a clear failure to capture the meaning of our moral judgments, but it becomes more plausible after repeated viewings of computer animated family films.

[Tamler Sommers]

Peter,

Right, but my worry was that I agreed with her. I shared her sentiment and the Basic Argument, much as I love it, did nothing to undermine my gladness. So then, when I thought "She's right to be glad--the chicken man deserves to be sad," maybe what I meant was "I'm glad too and no theory or metaphysical thesis can talk me out of my feeling that it's appropriate to be glad, and there's nothing more to moral responsibility than that." A more complicated affective response than my daughter, yes. But wouldn't that be a vindication of Strawson's theory?

[Neil]

I do think it's an objection. Surely we are entitled to a prima facie conviction that the outputs of folk psychological modules have equivalent evidential value. It's much harder to buy the non-cognitive story while being generally sceptical about modular outputs (I admit, though, that I might see things differently if I had an iota of sympathy for the non-cognitivist view).

[Joe]

Tamler: Should a six-year-old be watching ‘Chinatown’?

Q: Acceptance of moral responsibility is not always a bad thing, contra what you say. I think that holding ourselves morally responsible for at least some of the things we do is a good thing. Unfortunately, we tend to get carried away with it, which is a bad thing.

Peter: Doesn't it depend on exactly what "I'm glad he's sad" commits one to? The underlying belief seems to convey a judgment about the agent, however slight.

Tamler: Strawson does not think that "moral responsibility just IS the expression of those judgments and attitudes," despite what Watson says.

The REAL question is: Must I now offer a concession to the free will skeptic?

[Cihan Baran]

While we are on the subject, let me ask everyone: What do you think of Thomas Nagel's response to Strawson's arguments?

Here is how I interpret him. Let me follow on Tamler's comments:

"But now I can sort of see what Strawson meant when he said that this might be 'overintellectualizing the facts.' Maybe moral responsibility isn't the kind of thing we need to find a rational basis for."

I don't think philosophers "overintellectualize the facts" when they claim that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism. Rather such "rational reflexes" seem to be built into our everyday practices.

Now, suppose that at the end of the movie, we were to see an evil magician that's been, due to his magical abilities, controlling the Chicken Man all throughout the movie and driving Chicken Man to evil deeds. Now having learned that Chicken Man was just a puppet for someone else, would we still blame him? Would Tamler's little daughter still feel glad that the Chicken Man is sad? I think we would still be moved by the Chicken Man's plight but we wouldn't blame him. Our reaction would be that of sympathy as opposed to resentment.

Skeptical worries about free will are generalizations of these built-in rational attitudes we have when it comes to blameworthiness/praiseworthiness. Nagel, in fact, draws a parallel between skepticism about the external world and skeptical worries about free will: Just as the former is a generalization of our recognition of perceptual illusions, the latter is a generalization of our recognition of responsibility mitigating factors.

I think Strawson's argument would be much stronger if judgments of moral responsibility were purely emotive or were not prone to rational revision in light of new evidence. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case.

[Tamler Sommers]

Joe,

"Should a six-year-old be watching ‘Chinatown’?"

Maybe not. I'll start with "Taxi Driver."

"Strawson does not think that "moral responsibility just IS the expression of those judgments and attitudes," despite what Watson says."

Yes he does. But seriously, one way to interpret Strawson (and I need to read Wallace again on this) is that the feeling of resentment plus the FEELING that resentment is appropriate in a particular case consitutues blameworthiness. (In other words, "I'm glad the chicken-man is sad, and that feels appropriate.) The 'appropriateness' is just a second-order non-cognitivist endorsement of the first order feeling. I know from the paper of yours I just read that you disagree, but why? Can't this be incorporated into the naturalistic interpretation you favor? Or do you think Strawson is defending the cognitivist view that moral responsibility is a real property can be reduced to natural facts?

Cihan,

What do you think about that interpretation? Our retributive feelings are open to revision but not rational revision. If I learn that the Chicken Man was being manipulated I would feel much less resentful, and I would feel that resentment is not as appropriate. This is just a natural reaction to learning some new facts. On the other hand, learning that the dog in "A Close Shave" is actually a cyberdog doesn't diminish the satisfaction of seeing him crunched up in his own sheep-mincing machine. For some reason, that retributive reaction still feels appropriate even though the sheep-killing dog turns out to be a robot. And when I say 'he deserved his fate' I'm just expressing my satisfaction and my feeling that the satisfaction was appropriate. What part of moral responsibility does this fail to capture?

(I don't necessarily buy this view, but I find it A LOT more plausible than I used to. So I'm trying to give it my best shot...)

[Kip Werking]

I'm sometimes tempted away from my free will denial ways. But never tempted by the notion that bad people *deserve* to suffer (in a backward looking sense). Bad people are sick; I wish I could fix them. Too often, making them suffer is the least worst option for either fixing them or protecting society. Punishment is analogous to chemotherapy---a necessary evil. There is no doubt in my mind, or my heart, about this and I don't think my ethical view here will ever change---even if the retributive impulses inside all of us find natural expression at a surprisingly early age. To think otherwise is to commit too much, I think, the naturalistic fallacy.

What I doubt is whether the conceptual analysis that G. Strawson, Smilansky, Pereboom, Honderich and others give for free will is too simple, and pat, and convenient, to be right---whether the term "free will" is far thornier and vaguer than anyone, especially skeptics, is willing to admit. The definitions Pereboom and G. Strawson, etc., use are simple, and make an elegant point about the human condition, but do they *really* capture the meaning of "free will" as used by ordinary people?

For example, if "free will" tracks upon the powers we think humans have when they make moral decisions, the psychology literature shows that these beliefs are riddled with biases and inconsistencies. My suspicion is that the content of "free will" should be similarly messy, and therefore the simple and elegant definitions of Strawson and Pereboom, etc., cannot be the full story.

[Cihan Baran]

Tamler,

You write that:"If I learn that the Chicken Man was being manipulated I would feel much less resentful, and I would feel that resentment is not as appropriate."

My worry is this. Suppose an argument convinced you that determinism and manipulation were similar in relevant respects. In light of the above comment, shouldn't this lead you to "feel resentment is not as appropriate" in general? What Nagel is getting at (and convincingly in my opinion) is that worries about determinism are connected to our common sense worries about moral responsibility and hence, do not constitute an overintellectualization.

However, I am beginning to think, as you note in the later part of your comments, that there is an irrational aspect to blame/praise. For instance, my old computer used to crash for no reason and I hated and blamed it. I knew that this was not rational but who cares? It's a computer - it doesn't care if you blame and hate it. Just let it all out! And I still hate and blame that computer.

I mean, maybe I am a particularly irrational individual but suppose that this sort of thing is fairly common - just for the sake of argument and I have certainly seen people who hated their cars with a passion. Now, could this irrational aspect to attribution of moral responsibility justify our attitudes?

Also, note that if you choose to have an attitude like this, your attitude has what Nagel calls "a flavor of irony." (Just read his essay "The Absurd" in Mortal Questions.) You know that attributions of praise/blame can't ultimately be justified but you choose to uphold them anyway.

Or maybe I am just confusing plain old hatred with blame?

[Tamler Sommers]

Cihan,

I have tons of sympathy with your first point: yes, I think that there's no relevant difference (with regard to blameworthiness) between manipulation scenarios and real life. And that has convinced me that resentment is irrational or inappropriate. I've always found skeptical arguments compelling because I think that if some form of scientific naturalism is true, the criteria for genuine blameworthiness can't be met. But the question still remains: have I been overintellectualizing the facts?

As you say, sometimes we just don't care about whether something is determined or mechanical or lacks the capacity to be causa sui--we blame the thing or person anyway. It's begging the question against Strawson, however, to call these assignments of blame 'irrational.' To say that you need to show first that assignments of moral responsibility are the type of thing that can be rational or irrational.

Here's an analogy. Imagine that I'm a cognitivist about taste. I think it's an objective fact that certain foods are delicious and certain foods are disgusting. Now imagine I told a similar story to yours. I said: "often, when I first try something, say pistachio ice-cream, and don't like it, someone will show how actually it's very similar to something I do like, say butter pecan, and then I'll taste it again and realize my ealier distaste was inappropriate or irrational--that pistachio ice cream is actually delicious."

"Lately, however, I'm beginning to think that there may be an irrational aspect to taste. The other day I had some soup and thought it was disgusting. My wife explained that the soup was no different than some other type of food that I like, and had all the ingredients that I think are good, but still--I didn't care, I tasted the soup again and hated it. I still hate it. It's still disgusting. So maybe due to some evolutionary or cultural bias, we're just doomed to be irrational, doomed to be incapable of identifying something that's really tasty when we see it."

I assume your reaction would be: 'no, you have it all wrong. Taste isn't objective. When we say that something is tasty, we're just reporting a subjective feeling we experience when we eat it. That feeling isn't subject to rational criticism, although of course you're right that learning new facts about a food can actually alter our subjective reaction to it.

I'm not sure how good an analogy this is, but I take it that Strawson is trying to make the same point. You're overthinking things when you try to lay out a necessary condition for accurate assignments of blame in the same way that you'd be overthinking things to lay out a necessary condition for accurate assignments of tastiness. What we can do is give some general conditions that seem to produce feelings of resentment (leading to judgments of blame), just as we can give some general conditions that tend to elicit experiences of tastiness. It would be absurd to say that if all butter turns out to be 'I can't believe it's not butter,' then our judgments about the deliciousness of "buttered" toast are irrational. You're making a similar mistake if you think that the truth of determinism would make our judgments of blame irrational.

I better stop there. I can feel myself getting sucked into the black hole of philosophy of language. Abort!

[Cihan Baran]

Hey Tamler,

Thanks for your detailed reply. In fact, I was also thinking about the taste/food analogy when I was thinking about your post.

I guess I was misusing the word "irrational". In the way I use it, the pleasure you derive from ice-cream is also "irrational" in this sense, since you don't need any reason for such a reaction. Perhaps a better word would be "extra-rational" or "supra-rational"; I am intending to mean "beyond the scope of rational criticism/revision".

Here is why I have some but not decisive sympathy for your points. Sometimes ascriptions of blame/praise seem to be "extra-rational" as when we 'blame' a car or some mechanical device. Sometimes, they seem to be open to rational revision, as when we understand the suspect, accused bitterly so far, didn't really commit the crime.

There is a further complication. I think that there is a purely emotive content of ascriptions of blame/praise that is wholly independent of the cognitive content. And it might be this emotive content that can be kept in light of naturalism. (And this is where issues of metaethics -philosophy of language?- come in.)

[Joe]

Tamler,

I was a little too quick in my comment about Strawson, trying to be funny. The interpretation that you offer is certainly the standard view. I just think that it is wrong. Here is the argument I give in the paper that you note (though I’m never this direct).

Strawson is a naturalist of some kind. According to Strawson's naturalism, arguments for or against the free will thesis are idle. But if the reductionist interpretation of Strawson is correct, then he has a pretty quick argument for the free will thesis; the argument is not idle. (I can provide more detail if needed.) In short, one can't be both a naturalist and a reductionist, Strawson knew this and his naturalism is pervasive -- he gives analogous responses to a variety of philosophical problems -- so he is not a reductionist.

[Proteus]

First, I think that your point is primarily psychological, not philosophical: you're not questioning a theory as much as you are ignoring them all and reacting to the scenario at hand.

I suspect that there are two motivations for this:

1) Your conception of the Chicken Man as not responsible for his ("bad") actions is purely intellectualized. Since you haven't actually seen the causes which have led him to act in this manner, you can very easily discard this intellectualization for something with which you are much more emotionally familiar: blame. Contrastingly, if you had shadowed him throughout the scenes of his history which have led to these actions, you might find the idea of blaming him detestable.

2) Blame is such a deeply integrated conclusion of our mental processes of justification that we feel comfortable falling into it, much like a heroin addict feels at home when she takes her first hit after a long stint in rehab.

[hagop]

Meh... I'm not too surprised by Tamler's post. I could see his skepticism starting to crack when the Sox came back to beat the Yankees and then take the Series a few years back. The writing was on the wall..... ;)

[John Barnes]

I'm not surprised Eliza was glad the Chicken Man was sad. Just as I'm guessing she was...maybe sad is the wrong word, perhaps anxious, upset, maybe even angry...when the Chicken Man was glad when he grabbed Woody and envisioned the money he could bring in. As I think Robert Kane would say, when the Chicken Man broke the moral sphere (determined or otherwise), he gave up his rights to my respect. Of course, this view assumes I include toys in my moral sphere....mmmmmm...but since I have young grandchildren, of course I do!

[Saul Smilansky]

Tamler,

Cool story. I suspect things will only become worse for you. Eliza will gradually become what looks very much like a responsible moral agent (and you will be proud), and she will expect you to be one. If you promise her to do something with her, and then cancel, she will want an explanation. If its a very good (compatibilist) one, she will forgive you, but if you say "I just felt like blogging in the Garden instead, and I am ultimately not responsible for my crummy motivation set", she will treat you like Chicken Man. And then quite soon you will want HER to accept responsibility (beforehand, and even afterwards), and then you are lost. One simply cannot live as a hard determinist. You will also see that you cannot in the end accept the Strawsonian line in it's extreme form, for the doubts about justification will continue, and will strike you as appropriate; and in any case the conscious Strawsonian rationale will not be strong enough in the face of the loss of confidence in our reactions and practice. I can see you not wanting Eliza to know about your deep doubts about free will and moral responsibility: this will threaten her responsible behavior, her pride at her attainments, and any lingering respect for you (and you will care very much about all that). So, before you know it, you will have sunk as low as Illusionism.

Kip,

A small point, but I don't think that we should just assume that "Bad people are sick". That's far too moralistic. Morality, and us as a society perhaps, have an interest that people not be bad. But it's too quick to think that it is against their own self-interest not to be bad (selfish, unduly aggresive, not respecting other's rights, etc). White colar crime is a quick example - you can get rich quickly, and chances of getting caught are slim. But even bad, violent criminals may be leading a pretty good life, for them, full of energy and excitement. Of course many bad people are also mentally ill, but it's too easy to think that that's the rule.

[Kip Werking]

Saul,

Thanks for raising this fascinating (to me) issue.

Your argument seems to be something like:

1. Bad people often have an interest in being bad
2. Therefore such bad people are not sick

I don't think this works because I think one can regard whatever-it-is-about-white-collar-criminals'-brains-that-makes-them-criminals as a symptom of illness, broadly construed, and furthermore, one can treat it. The fact that it is in their self-interest to do bad things does not convince me otherwise---it does not even begin to convince me otherwise. There is much more to illness than rationality. Illness can infect the appetitive, as well as the cognitive, part of the brain.

One could argue that many people with appetitive disorders still act rationally: the alcoholic who has another drink, the paedophile who molests a child, the psychopath who stabs his neighbor because the neighbor's TV was annoyingly loud. Suppose no adverse consequences befall these persons: none of them are caught and they are all happier after their bad act than before. They are all, arguably, rational. But there is still an important sense in which they are are all victims of a disease.

Suppose society has a moral pill. This pill does nothing more than render a white-collar-criminals brain into the brain of a non-white-collar-criminal---changing absolutely nothing else about the person (e.g. his favorite color is still blue, he still likes to travel to Asia, and speaks fluent German, and loves film noir, etc.) One advantage of saying that white collar crime is a disease, or symptom of disease, is that it becomes very natural to give white collar criminals this pill now. They had an illness, so they receive medicine, and then they get better.

On your proposal, in which white collar crime is not regarded as a crime, I think it is much more awkward to justifying giving the person the moral pill. In fact, I'm not sure what you would do in that situation.

Now, some caveats (and these just off the top of my head):

1. I am using "illness" in a broad sense. It is one that I think is justified, because all of the distinctions one might hold between conventional illness and illness in this sense don't seem to hold up. For example, on this broad definition, it might be that everyone is ill in some sense, because we are all morally imperfect. But I don't see what it is about diseases that prevents it from being the case that everyone has one.
2. But, if it turns out that this definition is unjustified, I am happy to use terms like disease* instead. What matters to me is that the similarities between disease and disease*, to the extent they are similar, be recognized and influence our moral and legal practices.
3. I'm not here making any judgments about what is bad or immoral. I'm saying that, if we could solve that problem, and decide what it bad or immoral, then we could also come to regard these bad or immoral acts as symptoms of disease*.
4. Society need not cure all diseases. When I get a cold, SWAT teams don't rush in to force chicken noodle soup down my throat. Similarly, if society comes to regard activities like drinking alcohol, in the privacy of one's home, to be a symptom of disease*, that doesn't mean it must also pass the 18th Amendment, or force drinkers to go to AA meetings---much less submit to the Ludovico Technique. But we do forcefully quarantine the victims of diseases like Ebola, and we should do the same for victims of other diseases (or diseases*), like a tendency towards serial killing.

I've written a first draft of a new paper on this subject of a "medicalized society" and you can find it here:

http://people.wm.edu/~ktwerk/punishment.pdf

[Roman Altshuler]

Wow, Kip! That last post was a little scary--despite caveat # 4, it's hard to see what comes before as falling far short of advocating the Ludovico Technique. At least, the analogy between disease and disease* seems a bit too strong in your account. The ancient distinction between illness of the body and illness of the soul just doesn't seem like it can be done away with so easily.

I agree with what I take to be one of your main points: that treating criminals as, in some sense, ill, rather than as subjects of just retribution, is far more humane, particularly in light of our general lack of moral certainty. But this is a point about the morality of various aspects of punitive justice. To what extent should it be a point about our reactive attitudes in general?

Suppose that we did, in fact, have certain and unquestionable knowledge of moral right and wrong. And suppose that there were a moral pill: anyone who took it would always do what is morally right, or at least never intentionally do what is not morally right. On your account, it makes sense under these circumstances to give this pill to every member of society, just as a vaccine. (You mention that "society need not cure all diseases." Sure. By how does this mitigate the foregoing? Certainly it NEED not, but wouldn't it be great if, when you had a cold, society sent over a gentleman in a white lab coat to make the cold go away?) In fact, we do have a pill like this, which works reasonably well: it's called proper upbringing.

The major difference between an actual pill and proper ubringing seems to be that the former simply cuts anything like free agency out of the picture, whereas the latter creates the conditions for a proper exercise of free agency. Of course a determined skeptic about free will can deny that there is a distinction between these two sorts of vaccine at all; but that there seems to be a distinction--even if a rather unclear one--seems to be one of the strongest arguments for compatibilism.

Suppose you do give everyone the red pill, thus making sure that, in fact, there is no such thing as freedom. One question that appears is whether the morality that the pill-takers follow is actually a morality in any real sense. In this case it seems to pretty clearly not be a moral behavior, but only a following out of a pill-induced programming. This is question-begging, of course: one can reply that morality just is a matter of how we feel about certain kinds of behavior. But the assumption that allows for this entire scenario is that we are giving people a pill to make them act according to a previously established certain morality. If this morality is just a matter of our feelings, that isn't strong enough to justify giving out this pill.

I'm probably being somewhat unclear here, but I think the role morality plays in the morality pill scenario, tied to the immorality as literal illness sceneario, is important. The kind of morality that could be strong enough to justify giving everyone a pill that will make them follow it also seems like the kind of morality that only applies to free agents, rather than just sick ones.

[Saul Smilansky]

Kip,

There are complex issues here, but my point was merely conceptual. You can of course argue against the idea that people can ever deserve punishment, and opt for a "problem control" approach. But "health" or a similar metaphor just sounds to me to be philosophically misleading. Whose "health" are we talking about? Until that magic pill comes through, you too will want to lock up people, but typically this will not be for their own well-being (it will be bad FOR THEM to be caught by the Kip-police and put in a Kip-prison, even granting that this will be better than our current prisons).

Put differently, I think that it is crucial that we clearly distinguish between (a) a person who is mentally sick and thus stabs people; (b) a person who prefers crime to hard work; and (c) a person who protests against the government. All three may be operating against the law (the Soviet Union regularly incarcerated in mental institutions human rights activists), but clearly the third, and plausibly the second, are not "ill".

On the substantive issue I have as you know big doubts as to whether in a broad way there is a better (pragmatically, morally, humanely) game than the Community of Responsibility based upon the paradaigm of free will, moral responsibility, and desert. But that's a big issue, and the conceptual point is independant of one's view on it.

[Kip Werking]

Saul,

You're right: there are two distinct issues here (descriptive and prescriptive), and I shouldn't conflate them. I dove into the prescriptive issue because people have such serious concerns about civil liberties, etc., that it might bias their thinking about the descriptive issue.

You wrote:

"But "health" or a similar metaphor just sounds to me to be philosophically misleading. Whose "health" are we talking about? Until that magic pill comes through, you too will want to lock up people, but typically this will not be for their own well-being[]"

I suspect I am misreading you here. But I certainly do not think that (i) the question of whether someone has a disease depends, in any way, upon (ii) whether we have a cure for that disease yet. Cancer victims who suffered through bloodletting in the Dark Ages still had cancer. And I argue that we are currently in a Behavior Therapy Dark Ages, in which we cannot cure thiefs, rapists, and murderers---yet. But that does not show that they don't have a disease.

Perhaps, instead, your argument is hinging, not on the present state of our medical technology, but on the fact that the interventions I talk about will "typically [] not be for [the patient's] own well-being." Here, I just don't agree with your premise. You elaborate:

"it will be bad FOR THEM to be caught by the Kip-police and put in a Kip-prison, even granting that this will be better than our current prisons)."

But in the medicalized society I describe, there will be doctors, not police, and hospital, not prisons. To call a doctor a Kip-police-man, and to call a hospital a Kip-prison, is misleading. It makes the medicalized society sound more sinister and Orwellian than I intend it.

I make this semantic point because I think it will help you understand why I disagree with you when you say it won't be "good for the patient" to be treated in the medicalized society. If I cure a rapist, thief, or murderer of their symptoms, I think it will be good for society---but I *also* think it will be good for the patient.

Remember, I am putting thorny issues about *which* symptoms we should cure to the side. It may be that you don't think white collar crime should be a disease, and it may be that even if you think it is a disease, it shouldn't be cured. Fine. The medicalized society I've described can account for both of these possibilities. But, once we have (magically) solved these issues of ethics and paternalism, and decided that some crime is a symptom of disease, and so bad that it should be treated, then I think such treatment would be good for society *and* for the patient.

You argue that the political protester and the rational criminal might not be ill. First of all, I wouldn't want a political protester to ever be regarded as sick or even criminal. We agree on that so it's a misleading example. Regarding the rational criminal: I can only repeat my earlier points: if we end up treating self-interested criminals, who you allege are perfectly healthy, in the same way we treat other sick people (e.g. we give them a pill and then they get "better"), then it is awkward at best to say they were perfectly healthy.

Finally, we've been discussing the "moral pill" type of medicalized society. But it is important to note that there are at least two other ways in which a society might medicalize: it might gain the ability to predict human behavior so well that it can largely anticipate and prevent crime before it happens (e.g. Minority Report) or society might gain the ability to have such control over one's heredity and environment that is can "rig" them and set people on a certain life trajectory of good behavior. For example, according to the latter scenario, people might be genetically (and/or environmentally) designed, from scratch, to be perfectly moral. If such a person doesn't commit a murder, where as normal people do commit murders, then the sense in which normal people have a "disease" is clear---a genetic disease.

I doubt these comments will persuade you or many others. It is not a popular view. I appreciate your responses and I don't want to beat a dead horse. But I did want to address some of the points you made in your last comment.

[Mark]

Kip,

If your pill is meant to address the latter kinds of criminality that Saul mentioned, which stem from preferring one's one values over society's values, it would have to have something to do with re-ordering an agent's preferences and values. Assuming we could in principle supplant a person's moral paradigm in that way, whose moral paradigm would we supplant it with?

Moreover, what's to stop people from using that technology for nefarious purposes?

Power hungry individuals would use the technology to reprogram their adversaries into zealous followers (not mindless drones). Sexual deviants would use it to reprogram those who would otherwise reject them into their passionate lovers. Crime lords would use it to get others to carry out their dirty work.

[Kip Werking]

Mark,

You ask:

"Assuming we could in principle supplant a person's moral paradigm in that way, whose moral paradigm would we supplant it with?"

I'm not arguing for any given moral paradigm here. I'm just saying: "Suppose we could, magically, decide what moral paradigm a person should have, instead of the one they have now, then we could regard that person as sick and treat them, instead of punishing them." For example, we can probably agree that if a person thinks killing innocent people is a good thing, then we should change that aspect of their values/preferences.

Consider this analogy: in the American South, people once regarded slavery as moral and acceptable. Then society came to reject slavery and find it morally repugnant. It was even willing to use force, to coerce this abolitionist viewpoint onto others. When I talk about a medicalized society, I am considering the use of coercion in a similar way to the coercion used to free slaves.

You raise a second point: "Moreover, what's to stop people from using that technology for nefarious purposes?"

There is no guarantee that this technology, or any other technology, will never be used for nefarious purposes. All technologies, including the knives in my kitchen, can be used for evil as well as good. Society is usually still willing to develop and use such technologies, and do the best it can to prevent them from being used for bad purposes.

[Mark]

Kip,

Given the potential for nefarious use, shouldn't that be reason enough to prevent people from developing this technology? Knives, guns, and even bombs don't compare to the potential harm this technology could do.

It's also funny that you mention freeing slaves as the model for what you're advocating since many slaves were freed by illegal means.

Moreover, your schema for "sick" is flawed, which seems to be something like this: if we can induce a change in person P such that P sheds property X and gains property Y, that X was only true of P because P was sick. That are just too many counterexamples to this schema to even bother.

You could modify that schema and say that X must be a certain type of property... for example, X is a property that society S finds to be detestable. However, this new schema is subject to roughly the same counterexamples: Imagine a society that found persons with anything other than blond hair and blues eyes to be detestable, but persons with dyed hair or colored contacts were perfectly acceptable. People with brown hair who refuse to dye it are not sick.

So, before we go into all this discussion about medicalized societies, it would be better to nail down exactly what you mean by "sick", and how exactly the people in a society would benefit from medicalization given the risks of nefarious reprogramming.

[Kip Werking]

Mark,

I doubt I'll persuade you of something like my view. But I will post a few comments to your remarks. You ask:

"Given the potential for nefarious use, shouldn't that be reason enough to prevent people from developing this technology?"

There are many points here.

1. The potential for good use is great too. It is not clear whether the potential for evil is greater than the potential for good. Without that premise, it is not clear that we have even a prima facie reason to prevent the development of such technologies.
2. Many technologies have the potential for great evil. Consider, for example, the hydrogen bomb. Would you have opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb? It is not clear how dangerous, and how unhelpful, a technology needs to be before you oppose it.
3. All of the above is a little irrelevant, because it is virtually impossible to prevent society from developing any technology it considers itself capable of developing. You can oppose it, if you like, but you are not likely to have much success.

You also wrote:

"It's also funny that you mention freeing slaves as the model for what you're advocating since many slaves were freed by illegal means."

And:

"You could modify that schema and say that X must be a certain type of property... for example, X is a property that society S finds to be detestable."

But I am not hinging my moral paradigm on society's, or any one else's, beliefs. I entirely agree that entire nations can be wrong about whether X is bad or evil---this is what the example about slavery is intended to show. Now that you understand how I am not hinging the morality of anything, upon the beliefs of society or anyone else, maybe you will find the example about slavery less amusing.

Finally, you ask what I mean by "sick"? Entire philosophy articles and conferences have been dedicated to this question. I don't pretend to be able to do better than they have. And I suspect that philosophers' overconfidence, when defining terms or doing conceptual analysis, is what causes much or most philosophical heartache. When I use the word "sick" I intend to capture what most people mean when they use that word---whatever it is. Dictionary.com defines "illness" this way:

"unhealthy condition; poor health; indisposition; sickness"

That sounds pretty good to me. Dictionary.com also defines "health" as follows:

"the general condition of the body or mind with reference to soundness and vigor"

That sounds pretty good too.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Kip,

Since the dictionary definitions you quoted clearly do not connote a person's moral quality, how are you planning to use the dictionary to support your view that rapists and murders count as sick?

Since you already denounced the possibility that analytic philosophy can help, I'm very curious whether you'll suggest rewriting the dictionary to suit your purpose.

[Kip Werking]

Mark,

I don't see anything in those definitions that would exclude overtly moral qualities, like the quality of being a murderer. For example, it seems that whatever-it-is-about-a-person's-brain-that-causes-them-to-murder could be relevant to the "general condition of the body or mind with reference to soundness and vigor." Why would you think otherwise?

[Mark]

Kip,

As Saul pointed out earlier, criminals CAN rationally choose a life of criminality due to any combination of hedonistic, egoistic, dogmatic, and/or idealistic motivations. The broader definition you quoted, which captures genuine psychological illness, does not capture this distinct aspect of criminality.

So again, you're back to the glaring lack of conceptual support for the most basic tenet of your position.

You're free to talk about how those who impose normative systems upon a group may be motivated to invent a mechanism that would allow them to supplant the preferential systems of the group's members with a system that promotes accord with the norms. You're also free to say that those imposing the norms may label agents with mitigating preferences as "sick" for marketing and control reasons. However, you've given us NO reason what-so-ever to think that all criminals who resist a ruling regime actually ARE sick.

Didn't Hitler try something similar to this? Sure, he didn't have a magic pill, but through a process of consistently killing off those who opposed him, eventually he should have been able to achieve a state of broad approval and endorsement of his regime amongst his remaining subjects (however few they may have been). I'm sure he would have loved to have had a magic pill though! It certainly would have made things easier for him.

Surely you see the evil in this suggestion... Your *assumption* that this technology would be beneficial is purely wishful thinking.

[Kip Werking]

Mark,

We just disagree about whether the definition I quoted would include criminal behavior, even behavior "rationally" chosen "due to any combination of hedonistic, egoistic, dogmatic, and/or idealistic motivations." For example, if a person has such a strong appetite for sadistic pleasure that he rationally chooses to torture an innocent person, one could say that the person does not have a sound mind.

Regarding your concern about bad consequences (which is distinct and independent from your concern about conceptual analysis), I agree that Hitler would have loved to have had a (im)moral pill. He also would have loved to have had knives, guns, planes, tanks, buildings, the atom bomb, and any number of other technologies. So, no, I don't see agree with the Luddite-ish points you are expressing here. But I've already made this point earlier.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Kip,

Your inconsistent relativism seems to be getting the better of you...

First, you say that you can't say anything about what "good" is, or what societies ought to value, then you say that sadistic persons have unsound minds due to their unappealing preferences. Second, you say that you can't say anything about a conceptual analysis of illess or sickness as relates to your philosophical project, but you seem to reject the basis that Hilter's regime would have had for calling Judiazers "sick" since you suggest that his position is immoral (I certainly hope you believe that his regime was immoral!).

So, are you a consistent relativist that is *only* trying give us a descriptive account of what people are likely to do given a broad range of motivations? Or are you trying to give us an account of what societies ought to do given certain objective norms, packaged in very deflated (i.e. ambiguous and misleading) terminology? Or are you a radical who flaunts hypocrisy (like, *ahem*, Dennet) by doing both?

Finally, regarding the doomsday scenario I have in mind, your own consequentialist position says that people are motivated by forward looking reasons. As such, if they perceive a benefit would be derived by coercing people to adopt their own personal viewpoint (who wouldn't???) and this preference-altering technology were feasable, it follows without question that a war of epic proportions would errupt as the world's inhabitants fight for control, using their resources to utilize the technology to convert loyal followers. At very best, it could result in a stalemate if the sides are equally weighted, but your bald assumption that things would turn out well is entirely unsupported, if not completely at odds with the rest of your philosophy. Honestly, anyone who's studied history in the slightest would be hard pressed to make such an assertion.

[Kip Werking]

Mark,

I feel like we're going in circles and I am also worried that our conversation is cluttering the blog without engaging the other Gardeners. So I would invite you to continue this discussion over email. My address is listed on my website, which you can find on the list of contributors to the right.

[Cihan Baran]

"Didn't Hitler try something similar to this? Sure, he didn't have a magic pill...."

All I can say is Godwin's Law!!!

Now a question to Kip:

Kip, your idea of medicalized society reminds me of a thought experiment of Robert Nozick's - the experience machine. So, suppose in a future technologically advanced society, you could plug people in to the experience machine and suppose some people said no.

Would you coerce these people to be plugged to the experience machine? What exactly are the differences between the experience machine and your magic pill?

My point is that it seems as if you are committed to forcing the criminals to take the magic pill - since they are "sick". Well from a free will denialist perspective - I am just being very tentative -, people who reject the experience machine might also be "sick". Are you also going to forcibly plug them in?

(I am not opposing or defending your views - in fact, I am undecided. I am just curious about your answer to this question.)

There is a point to be addressed here. I think there are other things that determinism rules out - not just moral responsibility - what Robert Kane calls objective worth.

But I am too lazy to spell it out in full here.

Cheers

[Kip Werking]

Cihan,

As I've mentioned earlier in this thread, society need not regard all differences in values/behavior to be symptoms of disease, and furthermore, even if it regards some value/behavior as a symptom of disease, it need not necessarily coerce therapy or rehabilition on a person with that value/behavior.

I have strong (political!) libertarian sympathies and would personally endorse something like the harm principle to identify when society should coercively cure/treat/rehabilitate sick persons. This is largely, but not entirely, what guides liberal democracies today on when to use government force: if someone is doing something bad in the privacy of their own home, without hurting anyone, then usually the government does not intervene (e.g. reading pornography). But once someone does something bad that affects someone else, like killing innocent people, then we feel justified in intervening. The principle can be difficult to apply in principle (academics can find trouble cases on the border) but I would appeal to something like the harm principle in practice.

At the end of Kane's The Significance of Free Will, he appeals to the same political libertarian ideals to complement his own metaphysical libertarian view. He furthermore cites these ideals in arguing against something like the medicalized view I describe here.

Note that Pereboom's example of quarantining offers a good alternative to curing/treating/rehabilitating now, in the Behavior Technology Dark Ages (when moral pills do yet exist). It will also offer a good alternative in the future; instead of coercing these things upon criminals, we might give them a choice: be bannished from society or undergo this minimal intervention to remove your criminal tendencies. I suspect most criminals would prefer to receive the treatment rather than suffer the quarantine.

Note also that there is no obvious reason to think that a person who refuses to enter the experience machine would pose any threat or danger to others, and so, on the view I am sketching here, there would be no reason to coerce a cure or therapy upon the person, even if we regard the person as somethink like sick (and I am not even sure I would want to say that much).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle

[Cihan Baran]

Kip,

I admit that my question was not very clear, so let me try to do a better job this time.

First, Here is something that I don't understand about your and Perebroom's view. You write:

"It will also offer a good alternative in the future; instead of coercing these things upon criminals, we might give them a choice: be bannished from society or undergo this minimal intervention to remove your criminal tendencies."

But if there is no free will, you *can't* give people a *choice*. Isn't that the whole point of free will non-realism? That there is no *choice*?

So if you claim that people can't have DEMR or aren't free in any significant sense, why should people's choices have any importance? What provides immunity to people's choices if they are not free? If the fact that I choose to lead a life of crime, drugs and rock'n'roll is just a fact like "the temperature on 6th of May, 1972 in Istanbul was 26 Celsius degrees", why not intervene?

I think there is a strong burden on you to explain how political libertarianism is compatible with free will denialism. Robert Nozick, like Kane, was both a metaphysical and a political libertarian. I think political libertarianism in a sense requires metaphysical libertarianism because you need robust freedom to justify why we should intervene only for matters of security.

Here is why I mention the experience machine. What motivated Nozick to reject the experience machine was the fact that individuals wanted to make themselves, exercise their freedom in reality. The simulation of an experience machine would take that freedom away - and that was what is bothersome. But take the freedom away - there should be nothing disturbing about the experience machine. (In fact I was expecting you to say, "yeah that's a good idea".)

Now, you write "Note also that there is no obvious reason to think that a person who refuses to enter the experience machine would pose any threat or danger to others..." Maybe so. But if you hook everyone to the experience machine, you guarantee that there will be no suffering, there will be no crime - in fact there will not be any pain. This would be disturbing if you were taking away people's freedom but since people are not free, then there shouldn't be anything disturbing about it. Also note that you are maximizing the total pleasure. And since pain and pleasure are to be respectively avoided and sought regardless of freedom and moral responsibility, I don't see why you don't like this option.

Compare this with the case of the magic pill - you give people the magic pill only after the damage has been done. I don't see why you should risk it.

Imagine a different scenario. Anyone who wants to live in this future society must take the magic pill otherwise they are banished. Do you find this case objectionable? If so, why?

Here is where I misunderstood you (I think): I thought your views about a medicalized society were motivated by your free will denialism and that you didn't feel any hesitancy about bypassing people's (criminals) agency, since there wasn't any free agency. On second thought, I think they are more motivated by some form of utilitarianism and that you would propose the same thing even if you believed that there were moral responsibility and freedom.

And yeah I link to wikipedia more than I should.

[Cihan Baran]

"But take the freedom away - there should be nothing disturbing about the experience machine."

Ugh, I meant, "But if there is no freedom anyway, there should be nothing disturbing about the experience machine."

[Mark Smeltzer]

Cihan,

Quoting from the article on Godwin's law:

However, Godwin’s Law can itself also be abused, as a distraction or diversion, that fallaciously miscasts an opponent’s argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate.

Careful! ;)

[Kip Werking]

Cihan,

You raise a bunch of different points and it could take me a while to answer all of them. I'll do my best.

1. There is no inconsistency between my "let the criminal choose" position and my reservations about the existence of free will, because I do not deny the existence of choices. If anything, I deny the existence of free choices, where free choice refers to some metaphysically extravagant thing.

2. You ask:

"So if you claim that people can't have DEMR or aren't free in any significant sense, why should people's choices have any importance? What provides immunity to people's choices if they are not free? If the fact that I choose to lead a life of crime, drugs and rock'n'roll is just a fact like "the temperature on 6th of May, 1972 in Istanbul was 26 Celsius degrees", why not intervene?"

This is really a question about ethics, not about the existence of free will. Skeptics (or anti-realists) about objective moral truths, like myself (and Mackie and Joshua Greene, amongst others) would agree that there is no ultimate reason "crime, drugs and rock'n'roll", or any other thing, is "right" or "wrong", in the moral sense. It is, at least in one important way, a matter of taste.

But, even if we cannot rationally justify such actions, in this strict sense, we can still act on our matters of taste. Non-realists like Mackie and Greene wouldn't say that the murder and torture of innocent people is objectively wrong---but they would probably fight to the death opposing the murders of themselves and those they love.

At this point, critics accuse moral skeptics of being hypocritical (just as Van Inwagen accuses non-realists about free will of being hypocritical). But this seems to be true only if something like the following principle is true: everything a person does must be something the person feels is the right and moral thing to do. I don't think this principle is true. Skeptics have the ability to do whatever they want, rationally or irrationally, without justifying their actions. They can just "go with the flow". That's what I do. Greene and Cohen describe a similar point in their article about free will:

"Finally, there is the worry that to reject free will is to render all of life pointless: why would you bother with anything if it has all long since been determined? The answer is that you will bother because you are a human, and that is what humans do. Even if you decide, as part of a little intellectual exercise, that you are going to sit around and do nothing because you have concluded that you have no free will, you are eventually going to get up and make yourself a sandwich. And if you do not, you have got bigger problems than philosophy can fix."

3. You say:

"I think political libertarianism in a sense requires metaphysical libertarianism because you need robust freedom to justify why we should intervene only for matters of security."

While I find this idea very intuitive---and seductive---I ultimately reject it. Other Gardeners have challenged me on similar points, too, and I abandoned it when I realized I couldn't answer their objections. Free will denialism is a descriptive claim. Political libertarianism is a prescriptive claim. But as anyone familiar with Hume's law knows, it is arguably impossible to jump from descriptive claims to prescriptive claims. You may also be interested in my GFP post "Free Will and Prescriptive Claims":

http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2006/09/free_will_and_p.html

4. Regarding the Experience Machine. I was only somewhat familiar with Nozick's thought experiment but I educated myself at Wikipedia (I've been told I link to Wikipedia too much too). You're right that I have no problems with jumping into the Experience Machine. But to say that I would jump into it is *very* different than saying I would push someone else into it.

"But if you hook everyone to the experience machine, you guarantee that there will be no suffering, there will be no crime - in fact there will not be any pain. This would be disturbing if you were taking away people's freedom but since people are not free, then there shouldn't be anything disturbing about it. Also note that you are maximizing the total pleasure. And since pain and pleasure are to be respectively avoided and sought regardless of freedom and moral responsibility, I don't see why you don't like this option."

I'm not a utilitarian in the classical sense. I'm more of an ethical egoist (but ultimately a moral skeptic). A utilitarian would be willing to paternalistically throw people into the machine to maximize utility. I would not do that. I don't care if people rationally choose to remain in less-than-maximally-happy states. So be it. They can do whatever they like as long as they leave me alone.

5. You write:

"Compare this with the case of the magic pill - you give people the magic pill only after the damage has been done. I don't see why you should risk it."

Society might not risk it. I would appeal to the Harm Principle to justify not just intervention after-the-fact but also prevention before-the-fact. If you see a Nazi plane flying over New York and the pilot has its trigger on the drop-the-atom-bomb button, you don't wait until the Nazi pilot has pressed the button to intervene. Similarly, if some criminals (who have something like a disease on my view) are sufficiently disposed towards certain bad acts, society would be justified in curing/treating/rehabilitating them *before* they strike. I discussed this possibility earlier in this thread when I mentioned Minority Report.

6. Similarly, you ask:

"Imagine a different scenario. Anyone who wants to live in this future society must take the magic pill otherwise they are banished. Do you find this case objectionable? If so, why?"

My initial reaction is that it would depend on the pill. Suppose the pill does this: it identifies tendencies-towards-serial-killing in human brains and removes just those tendencies without changing anything else about the person. We can imagine, again, that the person retains the same passions, loves, tastes, memories, etc. (excluding the passion for killing!). It seems to me that such a minimal intervention could be more than justified. Interventions which do more might be more problematic (bc of concerns about civil liberties).

7. Finally, you write:

"Here is where I misunderstood you (I think): I thought your views about a medicalized society were motivated by your free will denialism and that you didn't feel any hesitancy about bypassing people's (criminals) agency, since there wasn't any free agency. On second thought, I think they are more motivated by some form of utilitarianism and that you would propose the same thing even if you believed that there were moral responsibility and freedom."

Well, if people have free will, then a moral pill wouldn't *work*. Free will, I think, is something like an immunity to the arbitrariness of one's environment, both past and present, and the ability of the self to create and fashion its own life story---almost out of thin air. So a person can say "it doesn't matter if I have gene X, I have free will" and a person can say "it doesn't matter if I was raised in childhood environment Y, I have free will". It wasn't my genes, it wasn't my brain, it wasn't my childhood, it was *me*. But if the person is so unhinged from these environmental factors, then s/he would also be unhinged from the effects of a moral pill.

[Cihan Baran]

Hey Kip,

It's always a pleasure to get these in-depth, well-written responses from you. Nevertheless, I don't want to reply in great detail. You write:

"Free will denialism is a descriptive claim. Political libertarianism is a prescriptive claim. But as anyone familiar with Hume's law knows, it is arguably impossible to jump from descriptive claims to prescriptive claims."

I agree that there is certainly a gap between "is" claims and "ought" claims. However, I don't think this means that descriptive claims don't play any role in moral discourse. Let me give a few examples.

Consider the abortion debate. So much of the abortion debate revolves around the question whether "fetuses are human beings". Now, this is a "descriptive" claim but it certainly has moral implications.

Or consider the claims "plants don't have any experience of suffering." This is an empirical claim about the world but should we be convinced of its falsity (i.e. convinced that plants do suffer), this would have moral implications. One moral implication could be greater limitations on walking on the grass, for instance.

In a similar vein, the descriptive claims of the free will debate or meta-ethical theories will have implications for substantive prescriptive claims. Why shouldn't one such consequence be the ruling out of political libertarianism, since humans lack the sort of freedom presupposed by this theory? I am just saying.

"At this point, critics accuse moral skeptics of being hypocritical (just as Van Inwagen accuses non-realists about free will of being hypocritical)."

While I wouldn't accuse you or other moral skeptics of being hypocritical (that just seems like an ad hominem attack with no good justification), I certainly think that there is something right that the accuser is trying to get at.

I mean, consider a traditional, external-world skeptic (EWS). If this person were to live just like all of us while holding that there can be no knowledge of the external world, would that be hypocritical? Is the EWS committed to a life like Pyhrro's? I don't think so. This person's theoretical beliefs may not mesh well with the daily life, but that hardly commits him to a Pyhrronic life.

I think something similar would hold for the free will non-realist and moral skeptic.

Also, I think what the accuser of hypocrisy is getting right is the sort of clash between the objective conception of ourselves and the subjective conception of ourselves (the kind that Nagel describes in The View from Nowhere).

One hesitancy I would have about your views is that you said that you had "strong" political views. If you just think that normative ethical discourse is a matter of taste, how can you hold "strong" political views? That, to me, seems like being a "strong" fan of Evanescence or Golden State Warriors or strawberry ice-cream. I can understand why you want to "go with the flow" but having "strong" views seems to be more than just "going with the flow".