Why reading defenses of hard determinism makes people morally worse.

"A study suggests that when people are encouraged to believe their behavior is predetermined — by genes or by environment — they may be more likely to cheat."

Details here.

Comments

[Tamler Sommers]

I'm putting a bounty on this meme, someone needs to step up and stop it from spreading. I've had that article and others like it forwarded to me about 18 times, some from people I haven't spoken to in years. I'm at the point where I'm praying to get emails from exiled Nigerian Princes. We've discussed the problems with the study already, how people may be reacting to the reductionism in the passage (thanks, Eddy), or how the study says absolutely nothing about the long-term effects of denying free will (more long-term than the first fifteen minutes), or how unclear it is that the people are reacting to hard determinism in non-caricatured form, etc. Now it's time to take action! The study itself is fine, interesting, a nice first step for the coming dialectic, but the press coverage goes beyond overinterpretation. Two rounds of beers at the next big free will conference for the person or people who bring me the head of this meme.

[tnadelhoffer]

Tamler,

I am presently working on a series of new studies with Lauren Brewer--a grad student in Baumeister's lab at FSU--in an effort to show that the results of the Vohs and Schooler studies may have less to do with disbelief in free will than with ego depletion more generally--but it will be a while before we have any data to analyze or present. In one study, we will challenge participants pro-American beliefs--by using an extended quote from a famous authority (such as Chomsky)--and then we will check to see whether having one's pro-American beliefs challenged (or mocked) increases one's propensity to cheat. If so, this would suggest that perhaps the results in the Vohs and Schooler studies aren't being driven by anything unique about belief in free will. Perhaps people are simply more likely to cheat after reading Crick-style quotes because reading something that challenges (or even mocks) one's cherished beliefs depletes one's self-control (via glucose depletion) which in turn weakens one's ability to trump the self-interested baseline desire to cheat. Explaining this in more detail is a task for another day--but for now I just wanted you to know that we are already stalking the meme you seek! If and when we have its head, you'll be the first to know (if for no other reason than I can't pass up free beer).

In the meantime, we are also working on a new free will scale that we believe corrects for the shortcomings of the Paulus scale that was used by Vohs and Schooler. We should have a draft copy soon. I will post a copy here for the Gardeners to examine once it's ready for mass consumption.

[Kip Werking]

Some comments:

1. I would note that Baumeister has a new article in Perspectives on Psychological Science called "Free Will". According to the abstract (former students such as myself no longer have access to these things), Baumeister seems to defend a sort of compatibilism.

2. Baumeister authored or coauthored multiple papers on the topic of evil, and the biases associated with human thinking about evil, that I think explain much of why people think they (or others) are free-er than they actually are.

3. Tamler's reaction to the studies mentioned in the post above surprised me. He seems to be invested in the studies' conclusion being wrong or overly broad. Personally, I don't much care whether the conclusion is right or wrong, because it has no effect on whether fw exists. For example, it might that:

(a) Free will doesn't exist
(b) Recognizing this truth results in horrible consequences for everyone
(c) We recognize this
(d) Therefore horrible consequences obtain

However, (b) and (d) might be perfectly true without disturbing (a) in the slightest.

Of course, Tamler knows this. But it is common, and seductive, to conflate (b) and ~(a). One who defends even moderately skeptical views about fw shouldn't even hint that the truth of that skeptical thesis hinges upon good or bad consequences. In fact, the strong and deliberate rejection of wishful thinking seems to explain, in part, why those view who hold skeptical views do so. Remember that, regardless of whether people cheat more or less, the non-existence of free will itself is regarded by most to be a crushing blow to our self image and self worth. Hence Smilansky's "Bad News" about free will, etc.

Personally, I share the suspicion of Tamler and others that the studies are flawed. For example, just making people feel bad about anything can probably incline them towards cheating. People are amazingly vulnerable to subtle manipulation.

Not only that, but I share with Tamler (I'm sure) his conviction that skepticism about free will's existence is not only safe, but actually *morally beneficial*, and produces a sympathy and compassion and ability to forgive that orthodox views on free will cannot (for reasons too complex and subtle to relate in a blog comment). Such skepticism is morally beneficial for the same reasons that Einstein suggested:

"A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through. Hence science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

4. While I'm posting news about free will: I also recommend that other Gardener's check out Paul Russell's new papers and the book "Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life".

[Saul Smilansky]

Two points:

First, we must take care in distinguishing between the general set of cognitive assumptions and emotive background that are in place, and the specific influence of any possible marginal change. People normally see themselves and others as responsible, and react in the light of such assumptions. Given that, some marginal input about determinism (and so on) might have a beneficial result, mitigating how judgmental people are and increasing sympathy. But this proves nothing about the more fundamental question, of whether we can at all live (let alone live decently) without the basic paradigm of responsibility. It seems to me that morality and personal life are fundamentally about responsibility, and therefore I have argued that a threat here, to the basic assumptions, would be very dangerous.

Second, I am not sure, Kip, why the Einstein quote helps (who he anyway?). "Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death": true, and man (and woman) are probably not in such a poor way. But the question, rather, is whether "Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward BEFORE death". And here a positive answer seems inevitable, doesn't it? He who thinks otherwise would then need to abolish sanctions and rewards as incentives. And of course we are not talking only about actual (positive and negative) incentives but about internal ones, insofar as they assume responsibility. So, again, the threat posed, I claim, by a significant decline of belief in libertarian free will has nothing to do with the supernatural.

[Tamler Sommers]

Kip,

There's nothing inconsistent about (1) caring about the implications of free will skepticism, and (2) believing that the implications have no bearing on the truth of free will skepticism.

I don't see how discussing (1) even "hints" at denying (2).

(Although, to be honest, I am in fact wavering about (2), but for reasons that are metaethical in nature...)

[Kip Werking]

Tamler,

Right. As I said in my comment, you already knew everything I was saying. So perhaps my reminder was misplaced.

[peterj]

As for the study in progress in the second comment above, surely cheating behavior is multiply determined; showing that cheating is also caused by ego-depletion wouldn't mean NoFreeWill-cheating is necessarily mediated by ego-depletion. You may well already be planning on testing this more thoroughly, but it does seem necessary to address to correctness of Vohs et al.

In general, I think the more interesting conclusion from such studies would be that NoFreeWill beliefs cause ego-depletion, rather than whether they cause cheating, directly or indirectly.

[Kip Werking]

Saul,

This is a fascinating paragraph:

"Second, I am not sure, Kip, why the Einstein quote helps (who he anyway?). "Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death": true, and man (and woman) are probably not in such a poor way. But the question, rather, is whether "Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward BEFORE death". And here a positive answer seems inevitable, doesn't it? He who thinks otherwise would then need to abolish sanctions and rewards as incentives. And of course we are not talking only about actual (positive and negative) incentives but about internal ones, insofar as they assume responsibility. So, again, the threat posed, I claim, by a significant decline of belief in libertarian free will has nothing to do with the supernatural."

I quoted Einstein in support of the claim that skepticism about free will can be morally beneficial (let's call this P1) (Einstein said: "Hence science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary."). Reading this again, I see that it doesn't quite support P1. Einstein is saying that no-free-will doesn't hurt, which is not quite the same thing as saying it helps. Still I think he would agree with my original proposition.

For example, Einstein also wrote:

"Schopenhauer's saying, "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants," has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life's hardships, my own and others', and an unfailing well-spring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people all to seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in particular, gives humor its due."

Which supports my original claim more clearly. And this seems to be something you've supported yourself, in your book and in papers like Egalitarianism, Free Will, and Ultimate Injustice.

Now, your paragraph above seems to take issue with the Einstein quote and/or P1, and instead asserts that: "the threat posed, I claim, by a significant decline of belief in libertarian free will has nothing to do with the supernatural." (P2). It's not clear to me that P2 and P1 are in conflict. I'm not sure whether I agree with P2, b/c I am not sure what "supernatural" means. It seems to be a word that people throw around without having a precise definition, because every time I try to imagine something supernatural, I end up with something natural, but rare or surprising or previously unknown or difficult to understand. If angels existed, it's not at all clear to me why they would be "supernatural" instead of natural. So I'm not sure if I agree with P2, but in any case I do agree with P1, and I suspect you do too. Am I right?

[Saul Smilansky]

Kip,

My point about the supernatural was refering to Einstein's about the influence of the fear of punishment (or the promise of reward) in the next world. All I meant was that I didn't see how that quote helps those who think that the spread of knowledge about FW would be good, because, even if we agree with E about the NEXT world, our issue is, after all, about THIS one. But clearly as your other quotation shows E thought that spreading knowledge about (the lack of) FW would be beneficial. I disagree, by and large. Partly I think E might be falling into the trap I pointed out in my post above, i.e. taking everything for granted and just thinking about the marginal improvement that might emerge. But surely if people changed their beliefs about free will and moral responsibility in a big way, we would not have just small, possibly beneficial changes (less guilt, less oppressive sense of responsibility, more detachment and humor) but also BIG changes which in FREE WILL AND ILLUSION and other placers I've argued would be far from beneficial.

Also, Einstein was a very unusual character, so his introspective thoughts seem to me particularly dubious if we want to think about what might be good for most, more normal people.

If we speak as philosophers then sure, I also believe that we should balance the limited but partly valid compatibilist insights by some hard determinist ones. Philosophically I am a compatibility-dualist. But when it comes to the question of whether we should go all out for spreading knowledge about the free will problem, I am much more skeptical, and indeed mostly go for Illusionism.

[Mark Smeltzer]

When people act, they are not worried about whether they are free. At the time of action, that is a non-issue. We are all capable of acting, arguments for the non-reality of FW be damned. Therefore, people will act in ways they always do: they consider their value systems and weigh the available options, with as much care as the inertia of the moment will allow.

The question is whether people's value systems would be adversely affected by the non-reality of FW. I don't have anything reason to think so unless people tend to intuit nihilism from the non-reality of free will. That inference would certainly cause their value systems to become radically altered. If so, then that is the problem that people like Smilansky should be worried about.

However, here's a real mind bender that I have yet to make any progress on: are people like Smilansky worried that people will incorrectly make the leap from non-FW to nihilism? If that's the problem, then thorough and proper education should mitigate the worry telling people the "truth" about non-FW.

However, Smilansky is opposed to teaching non-FW at large. This puts him in an awkward position: he either thinks that non-FW does entail nihilism, or he thinks that the problem of "safely" educating people about non-FW is overwhelmingly difficult.

If Smilansky thinks that non-FW entails nihilism, why does he make the argument that things would be worse if the masses were educated? In nihilism is true, then nothing matters, and thus that worry is baseless.

So, does that mean Smilansky is worried about the problem of safe education? Regardless of whether non-FW is true, can't we come up with ways of exposing ordinary people to the FW debates without causing them to make the leap to nihilism if they happen to find the arguments for non-FW more convincing?

I know that the FW debate cuts across many layers of philosophy, but this particular issue really does seem like it is being forced into the FW debate when is really better suited to be part of another conversation about ethics (and perhaps professional responsibility) in general.

[Saul Smilansky]

Mark,

You make many points, and it would take too long to address them all in a detailed way. So I'll just point out some ways in which I could respond (and have responded, in my writings):

1. A change in people's value system is all we need to worry about: first, I don't see why that's so. Surely our reactive attitudes could be affected, including our self-reactions. Second, our value system seems to be a pretty big and influencial thing.

2. Within our value systems, the worry is nihilism: again, this seems to me too quick. Take a case of a libertarian who lost her faith, and becomes a compatibilist. There would arguably be a big decline in what I have called the "depth" of evaluation of various things in the compatibilist, but compatibilists are not nihilists. Similarly, I have argued in detail that the loss of confidence in the current FW paradigm might make way for more crude, pragmatic consequencialist ways of thinking. That would be a danger (and most people think that the utilitarian account of why we blame is dubious) even though utilitarians are hardly nihilists. So nihilism is a worry, but it is hardly the only one.

3. But if nihilism is true, then why worry?: well, I am not a nihilist. I am a compatibility dualist, which means that I even think that compatibilism captures some of the truth. But I am not sure that in practice people would adequately follow the (required) compatibilist constraints and distinctions, if they saw that there is no libertarian FW. And even my non-compatibilist part is not nihilist (most hard determinists are not).

4. "Can't we come up with ways of exposing ordinary people to the FW debates without causing them to make the leap to nihilism if they happen to find the arguments for non-FW more convincing?": well (in addition to the fact that it's not only about nihilism) - I have my doubts. The idea of moral responsibility based upon control is central to our morality, notion of justice, self-respect, and attitudes towards others. Many philosophers don't seem to accept the compatibilist substitutes, so why should we think that the common folk easily will? (Just to make one point.) I, in fact, think that compatibility dualism is the correct position on the compatibility question: how easy would it be to get people to accept this complex view? Worrying seems to me natural, here.

5. "This particular issue really does seem like it is being forced into the FW debate when is really better suited to be part of another conversation about ethics": well, you would need to get rid of a lot. P.F. Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment" (1962) is one of the crucial works of our field, or at least many of us would feel so. (Paul Russell and Michael McKenna are supposed to be bringing out a large collection full of papers drawing from this seminal piece any minute now.) Illusionism, in one way, is simply the argument that P.F. was too complacent. (I've argued for this in detail in my paper "Free Will: From Nature to Illusion".) As I said in the debate about van Inwagen's views about the direction of the debate, a while ago, it seems better to let everyone remain under the big free will tent.

So, my views are more complicated, and less vulnerable, then they might seem.

[Tom Clark]

I've done what I can to bring Tamler the head of this meme (to Houston, congrats!) in a paper at http://www.naturalism.org/demoralization.htm . I argue that the dangerous idea isn't that we don't have LFW, but that in not having ultimate control we lose local control and so can't be held responsible. Vohs and Schooler seem actually to believe this, so convincing them otherwise would be one small step toward meme-reduction, otherwise their research and papers will continue to reinforce it.

[Ken Batts]

Cheating is not always bad. Seems to me history if full of beneficial cheating: deceiving those in possession of illegitimate authority. Famous examples of lying, cheating and stealing are the American, French and Russian revolutions, as well as my lying to my fourth grade teacher about the dog eating my homework. Forget the czar, Kings George and Louis: Mrs. Thomas was scary, dangerous and deserved every lie I could throw at her. Knowledge of my lack of free will might have made me feel less guilty, which would have been a good thing; my critical analysis of schools and schooling in the U.S. might have started a few decades earlier.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Saul,

I've read your books (and papers) on FW, and am well aware of your views about Fundamental Dualism, etc.

What I'm not tracking with is feeling the impetus of your claims that educating people about the FW debate is bad.

Part of this comes from the fact that I talk to people on a regular basis about (what I consider to be) the ludicrous and untenable notion of Libertarian Free Will (LFW), and recognizing the force of the arguments they often have to pick between compatibilism and non-realism. I've never had the experience of anyone committing suicide, dropping out of school, becoming a drug addict, robbing a bank, breaking up with their girlfriend, or any other such ill, as a result of one of those conversations.

I haven't done any fancy surveys and I don't have any charts or graphs. I'm not really interested in that stuff. What I do have is a set of overwhelmingly positive experiences where people tend to soften their more harsh moral judgements in response (to what I argue) are very legitimate moral concerns.

Chief among these concerns, in my estimation, is the inability to have direct knowledge of another person's character (or even of one's own character). I argue (maybe one day in print form) that it takes observation, time, and thoughtful analysis to arrive at indirect knowledge of others (and of the self). This argument undercuts the LFW distinction, and I think it may even do enough work to make LFW conceptually irrelevant even if we did possess it.

So, I guess I'm looking for some validation here. Is it the case that there are methods that will tend to educate people about the FW debate without causing them to reject their value systems and/or radically change their outlook on life toward the negative; or is it that I have just been lucky in my preliminary encounters?

Perhaps you do have some horror stories that seem to warrant your beliefs. If so, perhaps the method you employ is to blame? Or, if these worries are purely conceptual, what sort of evidence would you consider to be a valid falsification of your hypothesis?

[Ken Batts]

In the fifteen minutes after a small boy has been told there is no Santa Claus, I predict he'll be very likely to hit his little sister, kick the dog, say a bad word, or break mommy's expensive vase. One could study just how likely and draw somber conclusions similar to the Vohs/Schooler studies regarding the effects of learning of Santa Claus' non-existence in the very short run, but the overall effect on the boy's life couldn't really be known until many years later, say when he's thirty, and his life/morals/sociability compared to thirty-year-olds who still believe in Santa Claus.

[Saul Smilansky]

Mark,

Thanks for your comments. I agree that it would mostly be good if people took more care before judging others, and were more skeptical when they think about others and their characters. "It's more complicated than that" is my a priori attitude to most things, and my work both on free will and on moral paradoxes brings this out. But I don't think that that's the level at which Illusionism comes into play. The questions are on a bigger scale: can we live without accepting responsibility for our actions?What would be the effects on social practices, of giving up the free will paradigm? What would be the effect of such a radical revision on our sense of self-respect and on our perception of value and meaning in life? Would people "buy" compatibilism as a substitute to the common belief in LFW? And so on.

What is the method for deciding whether my worries are reasonable? Well, I guess the usual method, an evaluation of stories. A utilitarian might tell a story about how if we begun to blame and punish people based only on utilitarian criteria (rather than because we thought they deserved blame or punishment) this would improve things; I will respond by explaining why I think that this would make things worse and why respect for persons depends on the free will paradigm. A radical hard determinist might tell a story about how wonderful things would be if only people ceased believing in free will; I will counter by doubting whether things can work out (on the social, legal or personal level) without the free will assumption, and why an attempt at any major change would be dangerous. A compatibilist can come forth and claim that we don't need belief in libertarian free will in order to keep all the good things; I would then present reasons for doubting whether people will remain sufficiently confident in our social institutions, or in their sense of personal value, were they to internalize the absence of LFW. A (P.F.) Strawsonian can tell a different story, why we don't need to worry about any of this (as our reactive attitudes will keep everything unchanged in any case); I will respond by explaining why such confidence might well be too complacent. And so on. I have examined such utilitarian/hard determinist/compatibilist/Strawsonian stories in some detail before, and there is plenty of room for more work of this sort for others to do in the future, taking up the most general questions or conducting more specific case studies. An empirical test may help us here and there, but basically I believe that there is no other way than the armchair telling of stories. Which is what makes philosophy so important.

[Tom Clark]

Saul,

Your armchair stories in defense of illusionism are predictions about what will happen should disbelief in LFW take hold. But it isn’t clear that they’re plausible absent real-world evidence, hence the importance of looking at data - anecdotal, survey, experimental, etc. Of course the psychological and behavioral responses to learning we don’t have LFW depend a good deal on other beliefs, for instance about whether LFW is necessary or not to hold each other responsible. These beliefs are things that can be taught. You’re predicting (I think) that people can’t successfully assimilate the truth about LFW, that is, behave morally, feel life is worth living, etc. *no matter what* they’re taught. But that’s doubtful. Free will skeptics and compatibilists, including yourself, find that there are very good reasons to be moral, feel that life worth is living, etc. without LFW, which is why they don’t run amok or get demoralized. On what basis are you so sure, in your armchair, about the impossibility that the rest of humanity could manage this, given the proper education?

The big question about illusionism isn’t, as you put it, “can we live without accepting responsibility for our actions?” but whether we can live without accepting *ultimate* responsibility for our actions. My prediction, based on the behavior of free will skeptics and compatibilists, is that *if* people are given all the truthful information relevant to the question – and it ain’t rocket science – we can.

[Tamler Sommers]

I want to echo Ken and Tom's excellent points. I think the Santa Claus analogy works in this sense. There's no reason to think that our behavior 15 minutes after hearing that a cherished belief is false has any bearing whatsoever on how we'll act after further reaction. Has there been a single study that documents such a correlation? If not, then all we have to do is make sure people don't find out there's no free will 15 minutes before they submit their tax return.

And I agree with Tom's response to Saul: While stories are important, there needs to be something else to adjudicate between competing plausible stories. Saul, we've discussed this before, and you bring it up in your book, but I'm sure someone could tell a great story about how losing faith in God would be devastating to our moral lives. And someone like Russell could tell a great story about how we don't need God to lead moral and meaningful lives. How do we determine who's right? Well, look at the lives of committed atheists. (Committed reflective long-time atheists, not religious people 15 minutes after they read "The God Delusion.") If the atheists seem to be doing OK, that would favor the Russell story, no?

[Tamler Sommers]

Correction: that should be "There's no reason to think that our behavior 15 minutes after hearing that a cherished belief is false has any bearing whatsoever on how we'll act after further REFLECTION."

[Saul Smilansky]

Hey you guys,

If I give you Santa Claus and God (i.e. admit we can live without them), will you grant me libertarian free will?

I do love my armchair (it's not just a metaphor, this) but I didn't mean to imply that we aren't permitted to use out-of-armchair knowledge. In poking holes in each others stories of course we are permitted to site experiments, other empirical psychological data, history, or Tamler's daughter. But no one has a privileged position, and until you all agree with me we will just have to keep going. Seriously, and to take a more concrete example, I do site (as you know) quite a bit of history: a lot of my case against P.F. Strawson is based on history: specifically, on the evidence that there have been and indeed there still are societies which think nothing about the idea of people being harmed for things which were in no sense within their control (say, being killed because a relative did something wrong, or because Jews allegedly had something to do with the murder of Jesus by the Romans many hundreds of years ago). So the idea that wrongful choice and action is a condition for the infliction of harsh treatment is a great moral achievement, and not something that can be taken for granted (as I claim that P.F. Strawson does). This sort of story, with much greater elaboration, shows, I think, why Strawson's optimistic Humeanism isn't plausible. And I have other stories as to why other positions are no less problematic. Of course our stories have arguments in them, must try to establish their assumptions, and all that; I do my best.

And of course my own story is not beyond criticism, but that's life. One advantage Illusionism has (and I think I've written this before in the Garden) is that it is conservative. We KNOW that THIS can work - people believing in LFW, holding themselves and each other responsible, blaming and punishing only under certain circumstances, and so on. I am not denying that a price (moral, personal) is involved, but we know it works, and the great benefits that follow (respect for persons, autonomy, a system of justice whereby one's choices will pretty much decide how one is treated, and so on). Similarly on the personal level: a sense of achievement and self-respect based upon our free actions, moral depth based upon a real acceptance of responsibility, robust appreciation and praise based upon voluntary factors, and so forth. So there is a sense in which I can sit pretty on my behind on that same armchair, and just say "convince me how something radically different, that's never been tried before, can work, too".

A second point, is that you guys don't agree about anything yourselves. The happy radically revisionist hard determinist story is COMPLETELY at odds with the optimistic compatibilist story about how we can teach people to make do with the compatibilist substitutes and not much will change. Both the prescriptive blueprint of what the ideal society OUGHT to look like, and the mechanism that is supposed to make things work well IN PRACTICE, are as opposed as can be. And the utilitarian, or the P.F. Strawsonian, also tell radically inconsistent stories from one another, and from the two previous alternatives. It cannot ALL be true. This radical divergence and disagreement also seems to me to greatly increase the skepticism about any one of the optimistic scenarios, and to make a conservative Illusionism more convincing.

[Ken Batts]

"We KNOW that THIS can work - people believing in LFW, holding themselves and each other responsible, blaming and punishing only under certain circumstances, and so on."

What a relief! And here I thought things in the world, like people blaming each other, trying to punish each other, to the point of international conflicts, waging war, committing genocide and such, weren't really working that well at all! I guess I'm just being Mr. Gloomy...

Ken

[Ken Batts]

Isn't it a sort of personal exceptionalism to claim that realizing we have no LFW will have a different effect on others than it's had on us? I'm assuming those who claim that relinquishing the LFW illusion will lead to a moral downslide among the populace have not experienced that same downslide themselves.

I'm not saying that claims of exceptionalism are necessarily never justified, but they're certainly not always justified, and have been used to rationalize injustices of all kinds, so the justification for the claim of the philosopher's personal exception to the rule needs to be explored.

[Saul Smilansky]

Ken,

On your first comment: so you think that waging war and committing genocide basically result from people's believing in moral responsibility? Or that utilitarians (who do not believe in desert) would not use punishment for the sake of deterrence?

On your second comment: this argument against my free will Illusionism was discussed in some detail in previous posts (where I made a number of points, such as that there ARE in fact reasons why people who go in for professional philosophy might handle knowledge more safely; or that there are doubts how far the problematic knowledge IS being internalized even by hard determinists - thanks to illusion). But just to make a sort of a new point (related to my previous comment) - think how dubious optimism is, considering that the reasons for optimism are so different: compatibilists are optimists because they think that we can re-ground the old beliefs, reactions and practices on a compatibilist basis (and people will buy it); hard determinists think that the compatibilist compromises won't catch and that we will have radical changes but that this would be wonderful; while P.F. Strawsonians think that nothing can really change anyway and that's the reason why we need not worry. Clearly they cannot all be right (but they can all be wrong, and I have argued in detail that they are).

[Ken Batts]

Saul: Not at all. People's inability to see all parties in conflicts as fully caused (which might bring at least a degree of understanding/compassion for each other, which might in turn help them resolve their issues) increases their rage, their tribal fury, their thirst for retribution, and causes them to commit immoral acts. How many times have we heard from the Palestinians that the Israelis could have acted differently, could have done this or that, and the same from the Israelis about the Palestinians? It is never true that one side could have done other than they did, unless we believe in LFW, and it's hard to see how the FW illusion helps them or other warring peoples deal with each other. The two sides in that and other conflicts will be stuck judging each other too harshly, and acting accordingly, until they can accept that each side is fully caused and merits a degree of compassion for their suffering. This could be to the parties' mutual advantage; the more deeply each side understands the other, the more likely they will be to be able to control/influence the situation, hopefully benevolently. For example, to the extent greater access to information and education often brings to a population a lower birthrate, higher standard of living and decreased religiosity, promoting and even paying for secular education for one's enemy's children might pay off!

I missed your explanation of how philosophers might be able to handle the truth better than others, my apologies, I'll look for it. I'm a hard compatibilist, though I'm not sure if I'd call myself an optimist, it just seems that the belief in Free Will, like the belief in gods, isn't working and it may be time to try something else, like for example the truth, it's worked before! It seems highly optimistic to say that what we have now (Free Will Illusion) is working, I don't see the evidence, perhaps you live in a more functional part of the world than I do. In the US, our prisons are full, our kids are undereducated, ignorant of world affairs,at war, our rich are getting richer, poor getting poorer, etc. It seems related to the firm cultural belief that we are disconnected from each other and from nature; the rich owe nothing to the poor, the law-abiding owe no compassion to the lawbreakers, the addicts shouldn't expect any understanding from the general populace, etc.

[Saul Smilansky]

Ken,

I suspect that we broadly agree about what a good society would look like. And I can see the merits of a measure of skepticism about "free will", in two distinct forms: first, recognition of the frequent limitations in the degree of compatibilist free will, which should indeed often lead to compassion (and can serve as mitigating circumstances in our moral and legal evaluations). Second, the insights we gain when we take the ultimate, hard determinist perspective, which again can lead to compassion. And I also agree that the lack of recognition of those two matters is a source of much complacency and of being too quickly judgemental about the shorthcomings of others. BUT, I don't see how the good personal or social life would benefit by throwing away the ideas of moral responsibility based upon (compatibilist) control. As you say, many of the wealthy are all too happy to abdicate any responsibility for the plight of the poor, but surely, then, they need to become more aware of their responsibility. Nor do I see how the empowerment of the disadvantaged (poor people, minorities, women) themselves can proceed without people in such groups taking responsibility for their lives and for helping others like them. Becoming more autonomous, reflective, self-controlled and independent IS becoming more able to take responsibility. Likewise, I want Israelis to take more responsibility for past wrongs and not irresponsibly develop settelments in those areas that one day can be a part of a Palestinian state, and for the Palestinians to take responsibility for stopping their actions of terrorism and decide to accomodate Israel's existence. Surely we all want world leaders to take responsibility for the ways we harm the environment, and form a responsible policy to deal with the way we use our resources or with climate change. We even want our children to do such things, on a small scale, which is why we teach them to throw bottles in the recycle bin - hoping that they decide to be environmentally responsible adults. And so on. So, I really don't see how saying that no one can ever be responsible for anything can be the right way to make this a better world.

[Ken Batts]

Saul: Agreed, the worlds we want sound similar. I think if the rich/priveleged/educated saw that the poor/underpriveleged/uneducated were not ultimately responsible for their plight they'd be less likely to ignore their suffering. Likewise if the disadvantaged could see more of the many causes (including internalized ones) of their plight (rather than attributing their situation to the amorphous concept of free will, their own and/or that of the well-off), they'd be more likely to be able to address the causes. Doing so would include understanding better the consequences of their own actions and working to improve them. As long as God and Free Will stand in their way, the actual, natural causes and cures of their situation will remain hidden.

As social animals we have the urge to seek each other's approval, to respond to what others want from us. In short a moral urge, which, for better and worse, is highly manipulable. If we could change the criteria for attaining that approval away from those based on some magical medieval view of human behavior to more realistic, humanistic, ones we might end up with a population able to respond to each other in healthy ways.

Moral standards will remain, they reflect the world we want, and, as with other desires, we spend a great deal of energy trying to satisfy them. None of this need lead to excessive leniency or coddling; there are and should be consequences for bad behavior, people are, in a strong practical sense, responsible for their actions, in the sense that they must bear the consequences of them. Sometimes "throwing away the key" is necessary, not for retributive reasons but for public safety, etc. I can't see why a view of morality based on consequences, isn't enough to encourage people to behave well toward each other. We kick people out of the poker game for breaking the rules, whether they could help it or not.

[Tamler Sommers]

Saul,

I'm not sure I understand your new point--that optimism is dubvious because of all different reasons people give for it. First, the claim doesn't seem to follow. People give different reasons for optimism about a life without religious belief but that doesn't make the atheist's optmism more dubious. Second, surely I could turn that around, right? John Searle thinks that without a belief in LFW he'll have trouble ordering french fries at a diner. Van Inwagen claims we won't be able to say that stealing books is "shoddy." You think people will too often dissociate themselves from past actions. Look at all those different reasons for pessimism. Does that in and of itself make pessimism more dubious?

[Ken Batts]

The answer to Searle's worries seems so obvious: hunger. If he's ever experienced it, he'd know it will make quick work of whatever angst he's feeling over determinism. After their FW illusion crumbles, people will still have needs and desires, including moral ones, not in the least dependent on the illusion of free will. I'm proof: I haven't believed in free will for years and have no trouble ordering french fries (sometimes I wish I did...)

[Saul Smilansky]

Ken,

I agree with much of what you are saying, but I am not sure that I fully understand your position. You write "people are, in a strong practical sense, responsible for their actions, in the sense that they must bear the consequences of them". This can be taken as support for compatibilist FW, in which case our dispute is much smaller than it seemed at first, and you do not reject free will and moral responsibility. Alternatively, you might be interpreted as speaking in utilitarian terms, or even advising that we apply strict liability. If it's the second interpretation that's correct, then that seems to me very problematic. The idea that criminals "must bear the consequences" of their actions does not seem consistent with your earlier views. And it lays the ground for a regime that is even less sympathetic and compassionate than the one currently in place.

It seems to me that someone with your initial sympathies should opt for a compassionate and sophisticated compatibilist view, tempered by a realization of the implications of the absence of libertarian free will. Such a position can enable you to hold the rich, powerful and complacent responsible for making the plight of others worse; can present a reasonable target of self-control and acceptance of responsibility potentialy for everyone, but in a way that lies in some proportion to ones actual circumstances in life; and can apply mitigating considerations to the blame and punishment of the less fortunate (and excusing conditions in the more extreme situations). Going for a strictly pragmatic/utilitarian grounding for punishment and other social practices and reactions, by contrast, is not the humane direction - but just the opposite.

[Saul Smilansky]

Tamler,

There is of course nothing wrong with having different reasons for optimism or pessimism, in itself. The more reasons pointing in the same direction the better, in fact, if they seem plausible. But my point was that the optimistic stories or arguments lie in CONTRADICTION to each other. It cannot be true both that nothing can really change (a la P.F. Strawson) AND that we can have radical change (for the good), as the happy hard determinists claim. Similarly (if less strongly), there is at least a great deal of tension between compatibilist views according to which we could always just explain to the folks that the old FW paradigm is perfectly valid, but that the old fashioned libertarian grounding for it isn't necessary - and the existence of hard determinists, who according to those compatibilists were supposed "to get it" and not exist. (We can call the later The Argument From the Existence of Tamlers.)

[Ken Batts]

Saul: I don't see the problem with society deciding on and implementing consequences for dangerous or destructive people, any more than I see a problem with it deciding to react protectively, constructively to storms, viruses or dogs. The goal are clear: health, safety, deterrence, etc. Codifying and applying consequences of harmful behavior is in principle doable, just as one can make up rules for a card game and enforce them.

I've read about the theoretical problems of utilitarian/consequentialist justice, but are there practical problems? And,if so, aren't they, like other real world complexities, something which can be dealt with as are other real world complexities? All systems of justice are complicated, need the complications involved in utilitarianism/consequentialism be worse than those of Kantian systems of justice? I don't see why a thoughtful group of humanistic people couldn't come up with a system of consequences which would be less cruel than a group of people who have pretended to themselves that the criminals to whom they mete out sentences could have done otherwise. I think the illusion will blind them to mercy and result in cruelty.

[Saul Smilansky]

Ken,

It seems to me that you are either going to follow distinctions that track quite closely to compatibilist free will (even if you call it something else), or end up with a nasty social order, with much less respect for persons than (even) our current one. The analogy you make with the way we react to dogs is telling. The dog analogy has been made by reactionaries like myself before; I can remember a paper by C.D. Broad, and there is of course Herbert Morris's "Persons and Punishment" which begins with the quote "We have no right to treat a man like a dog".

The problem will begin much before the construction of the system of "justice": I have no idea how a "no-free will" position can be a basis for educating children, for instance. Are you going to try to teach your children to become responsible? How? By applying strict liability you will only breed fear, a sense of injustice, and resentment. Will you, then, never blame them? If you do, you cannot tell them (what you really believe, as a utilitarian) that blame is never really deserved, but is just a way to manipulate them into acting the way you want them to. And you (and they) are going to have infinite trouble in living according to the most elementary standards of commonsense decency. When you set your children a task, which they fail to do, it will never do for them to come and say "but daddy, we did *our best*". For to you, as a hard determinist, there is no distinction between someone who is lacking in motivation or just trying to test your reaction while he cannot be bothered, and someone who has made every effort but psychologically found it impossible: WE ALWAYS, by definition, do "our best". Whatever we do, is the only thing that could have been done, after all (on your account). This is just in a nutshell, but you can see where I am going. It is not an accident that there isn't any psychologically plausible (humane) account that bypasses the old free will-moral responsibility-desert paradigm, let alone a more or less decent society that operates like that.

[Ken Batts]

I don't see how deluding kids into believing that they could have done other than they did could be a good thing, much less necessary for them to understand morality, what behaviors are healthy/socially acceptable, and for what practical reasons, what behavior will earn them approval, disapproval,
etc.

It's psychologically very taxing, confusing, for people to try to make sense of the world when they are ignorant of a core aspect of human behavior: that it's fully caused. So they continue to make up shoddy explanations, God, Free Will, etc. which keep them from that fundamental truth about why people do what they do. I know dozens of people who have no belief in free will and they are an exceptionally gentle, moral, upright bunch.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Ken,

How does one "earn approval" in a world without FW? What is the proper object of that approval?

[Tom Clark]

Saul,

You wrote: “We KNOW that THIS can work - people believing in LFW, holding themselves and each other responsible, blaming and punishing only under certain circumstances, and so on.”

Taking up Ken’s point, I don’t see what necessary role believing in LFW plays in our responsibility practices, and therefore why illusionism is necessary. We don’t have to suppose people (kids for instance) *ultimately* deserve praise or blame to make rewards and sanctions justly contingent on their behavior, which is what holding them responsible entails. We only have to suppose (correctly) that this is how people learn to behave properly. What works? Simply holding each other responsible, as humanely as possible. So LFW goes the way of Santa Claus and god, and good riddance.

Mark,

I can’t speak for Ken, but it seems to me the proper object of approval is the person who acted in a way such that approval is merited. We don’t need the LFW assumption to ground that sort of merit. The (good) behavior itself is meritorious, praiseworthy, and thus is itself sufficient reason to accord approval to the person.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tom,

Interesting. Does this view of merit contain an analogous means for the assignment of disapproval?

Moreover, what sorts of treatments would approval and disapproval warrant? Is there any emotional component to the application of merit?

[Tom Clark]

Mark,

Yes of course, bad behavior merits disapproval since we want to discourage it. I won't attempt to specify what treatments are warranted by approval and disapproval since there are too many variables, but only suggest that there's a proportionality principle involved, plus a humanitarian principle of minimizing suffering (that I would endorse anyway). Re emotion: I'd say we're reactively disposed, as a matter of biology and culture, to approve or disapprove, constantly and enthusiastically. The natural function of the reactive attitudes or moral sentiments is precisely to help shape each other's behavior, and they hardly need support by belief in LFW to motivate us. Just ask Tamler's daughter.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tom,

What prevents you from identifying the view you just described with semicompatibilism?

Or to put the question another way, do you believe it is possible for one person to treat another person unfairly? If so, what prevents you from saying that people deserve to be treated in fairness?

(Incidentally, semicompatibilists would agree with you that FW is not necessary to support the proper application of reactive attitudes in response to moral appraisals of both others and of ourselves.)

[Jim Farmelant]

Over the past several hundred years science has delivered several major blows to traditional conceptions concerning the nature of the universe, the nature of man, and of man's place in the universe.

The work of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, taught us that man is not at the center of the universe. The work of Charles Darwin taught us that we are animals, who like all other living things, have become what we are through evolution by natural selection. We are not the products of special creation. Likewise modern psychology in the work of such people as Freud, Pavlov, Skinner etc. implies that our behavior is causally necessitated in its entirety.

Each time science has struck such a blow, critics have complained that this undermining of traditional religious and philosophical ideas about ourselves and our world was threatening the moral order. Even today, religious fundamentalists (and even some non-fundamentalists) still complain that Darwinism by denying special creation, opens the door to moral nihilism. Not surprisingly, we are being told that widespread acceptance of NFW will likewise threaten us with moral nihilism, despite the fact that determinists, including both compatibilists and hard determinists, find it possible to rationalize our social practices concerning responsibility without invoking Free Will. I think it must be admitted that there is some grounds to these complaints. Each time science has struck a blow against traditional beliefs, people, at least for a time, were left feeling disoriented, and yet people eventually adjusted while being able to enjoy the fruits that scientific advancement had made possible. I don't see any reason why the same should not also turn out to be true for NFW. That doesn't mean that there might not be problems in the short run. As stalwart a determinist as B.F. Skinner admitted as much: pointing out in his memoirs that every time he taught his undergraduate course on behavioral anlysis at Harvard, there would always be a few students who would find themselves availing themselves of the mental health services at the university. In his Beyond Freedom & Dignity, Skinner argued that in the short run, the loss of belief in free will, in what he called "autonomous man," might have some negative consequences, in as much as many of the social practice by which we reward or punish people for their behaviors are tied up with belief in Free Will. Nevertheless, Skinner thought that the benefits of society that would come with the abandonment of belief in Free Will, would clearly outweigh the costs. These benefits consisting of our enhance ability at redesigning our social practices so that people's behaviors can be improved.

[Tom Clark]

Mark,

I certainly think people deserve to be treated fairly, but as you know I part company with compatibilists about desert and thus about what counts as fair treatment, so I’m not a compatibilist or semi-compatibilist. Compatibilists, semi- and otherwise, think it is perfectly fair to punish an offender whether or not it results in any personal or social good, because they think he fundamentally, non-consequentially deserves it. This notion of desert entirely discounts the behavior-shaping function of social sanctions, even though the compatibilist notion of moral agenthood is explicitly tied to forward-looking capacities for guidance control and reason-responsiveness. This is the scandal of compatibilism: that compatibilists endorse a notion of non-consequentialist desert that as far as I can see can only be justified on a libertarian, essentially supernaturalist construal of moral agenthood (see my review of Four Views on Free Will at http://www.naturalism.org/fourviews.htm). In my view, the proper expression of reactive attitudes is that they should be constrained by the humane and practical requirement that deliberately inflicted harms should accomplish some good that can’t be accomplished in any other way. Compatibilists don’t hold that view, and by keeping the myth of LFW alive, illusionists help to block the possibility of ever achieving it.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tom,

Do people deserve (in a non-forward looking, non-consequential sense) to be treated fairly?

Here's a standard case: an intergalactic megalomaniac is threatening to blow up our planet if we do not torture poor, unlucky Tom for the megalomaniac's sick pleasure. Surely, torturing Tom has all the standard consequential benefits you're talking about: encourages people to think about sacrificing personal gain for the greater good, achieves a consequentially better outcome (viz., the planet gets to keep living), etc.

Based on these factors, do you have a principled way to support the commonsense intuition that, despite the situation, Tom does not deserve to be tortured?

If you do, again I have to ask, what separates you from a semicompatiblist? If not, how do you intend to reconcile the obvious gap from the commonsense intuition?

[Tom Clark]

Mark,

Since by hypothesis I haven’t behaved in a way that needs to be addressed by undergoing suffering (or any non-punitive intervention), a fortiori I don’t deserve to be tortured on a consequentialist account, even though there might be good consequences from torturing me. This lines up with commonsense: deserving punishment is contingent on wrongdoing. What separates me from compatibilists is that I don’t believe that inflicting harms on a wrong-doer is justifiable without the prospect of some sort of beneficial outcome (that can’t be achieved in any other way), whereas compatibilists think no such outcome need follow for the harm to be justifiable, which I think is a scandal.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tom,

Okay, that bit makes sense. Let's consider two inverted versions of the previous case:

Overseer) An incredibly powerful, unstoppable, intergalactic megalomaniac imposes his rule over our planet and nominates frail, thwart-able Tom as his overseer. Tom, an otherwise nice person, has been given instructions to carry out the maniac's instructions with the penalty of failure being the eradication of the planet. So, Tom commits otherwise heinous acts in the name of saving the planet. Tom is just a normal person and could be detained and therefore punished for his crimes.

Overseer*) Same as Overseer, except that Tom is an evil SOB, and the power he is given serves as an enabling factor that allows him to act without fear of retribution; fear which otherwise would have prevented him from acting on his evil impulses.

In Overseer, commonsense suggests that Tom does not deserve punishment for his crimes against humanity. Your prior comments suggest that your view easily accommodates this intuition.

In Overseer*, however, commonsense suggests Tom deserves punishment even though he should not be punished since only extreme harm would come of it. Can your view accommodate this?

The differences in these intuitions suggests a distinction between questions about (mere) desert and questions about the (potentially forward-looking) moral status of hypothetically actionable alternatives.

(My suggestion is that the difference in the intuitions regarding Overseer and Overseer* is best explained by character tracing: Tom's actions in Overseer reflect badly upon the megalomaniac but not upon Tom, whereas Tom's actions in Overseer* reflect badly on both Tom and the megalomaniac.)

[Saul Smilansky]

Tom,

I am having trouble understanding what your Naturalism is. I think that this connects to Mark's points as well. Ken, and you yourself, sometimes talk about it as a radically revisionist attempt to change and rationalize our attitudes and practices, along utilitarian lines, by ditching all the primitive talk about free will, blameworthiness and desert. In other words, as a form of hard determinism. But when I pressed Ken as to how one would then go on living as this New Person, you fell back on the reactive attitudes. Yet (unless I am missing some further argument) I don't see how you CAN do this. P.F. Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment" is a conservative work, and a defence of compatibilism. Resentment, indignation, gratitude and so on are reactive responses to what are perceived as the free choices and actions of others. When I understand that what I thought of as your free action was in fact not that (you didn't step on me but were pushed, or you were acting through some inner irrational compulsion not within your control) then I see that you do not deserve resentment etc. In other words, the basis is the old compatibilist distinctions. (Now there is a further question what role LFW has in underlying this, and whether as I claim P.F. is too optimistic in believing that the disappearance of belief in LFW won't matter, and so on, but this is a different matter.)

So, is Naturalism a radically revisionist utilitarian hard determinism, or a compatibilism?

Your latest comments don't help us here. You don't like the idea of people thinking that others may deserve punishment when this serves no other good purpose. But how exactly is that connected to the reactive attitudes? Do you think that typically people would not blame, or feel indignation, or resent Hitler, and think therefore that it is good in itself if he suffers a little bit? So again, the reactive attitudes do not seem to go where you want them to.

Moreover, there is nothing in compatibilism that precludes a view according to which punishment is required to serve a utilitarian aim if it is to be justified in the first place. That is H.L.A. Hart's two-tier system, that the General Justifying Aim of THE INSTITUTION of punishment needs to be utilitarian. Then there is a second question, of WHO MAY be punished (he curiously calls it the question of the "distribution" of punishment), and here there are strict compatibilist constraints. In other words, we punish because it does good (independently of desert), but are constrained to punish only the guilty (and in proportion to their guilt), for it would be unjust to punish anyone who has not made it permissible to punish her through her free actions. But what I still don't see is how (or indeed why) YOU want to keep those compatibilist constraints, if and when it would be better not to follow them. Unless you believe in compatibilist blameworthiness and desert yourself, which then contradicts all the talk about radical utilitarian hard determinist revisionism.

[Tom Clark]

Mark,

In the first case, I’m acting under duress, hence not culpable, in the second I’m acting according to my nasty wishes, hence culpable – the standard compatibilist (and commonsensical) criteria for assessing responsibility apply. But nasty Tom, like good Tom, must be left unthwarted because of the very much worse consequences of intervening. Sadly, such is life under megalomaniacs. I think your character tracing rationale works well, since it holds agents responsible for their voluntary, traceable-to-character contribution to action, which might be modifiable by appropriate interventions. Even character change might be an appropriate goal of intervention, constrained of course by respect for human rights, see http://www.naturalism.org/medicalization.htm .

[Tom Clark]

Saul,

I don’t ditch *all* talk of blameworthiness and desert, since there are naturalized consequentialist versions of these concepts that track the usual compatibilist criteria for moral responsibility. It’s just that these terms are so saturated with libertarian and retributivist connotations I try to circumlocute them as much as possible. Hard determinists and hard incompatibilists need not, and usually do not, let go of all senses of responsibility; they simply suggest we reform our responsibility practices to reflect the absence of LFW. To my way of thinking, which follows Derk Pereboom’s, such reform would rule out retribution, and that’s pretty radical.

Reactive attitudes are naturally evolved, socially functional emotions and behavioral dispositions that serve to keep bad behavior in check. That they do so doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also keep *them* in check when they stop serving any good consequential end, which is often the case. We do that by requiring that there be some good outcome that results from their harm-inducing expression that can’t be achieved in any other way. So in admitting the role of reactive attitudes, I’m not committed to being a Strawsonian conservative.

As you point out, reactive attitudes track the causes of behavior, such that when we see that behavior occurred under duress, we stop feeling resentment. Thus reactive attitudes also track the compatibilist criteria for assigning responsibility. Likewise, when people stop believing in LFW, they see that agents and their choices are entirely the results of contributory causes that the agent didn’t choose, which has the effect of keeping retributive emotions in check (what I call the mitigation response, see http://www.naturalism.org/criminal.htm#AgainstRetribution). Of course, this doesn’t mean that Hitler and his ilk stop being legitimate targets of consequentialist interventions – they aren’t let off the hook. So, our reactive dispositions properly track the most proximate cause of wrong-doing (the wrong-doer), but are themselves properly kept in check in by the science-based, naturalistic insight about the fully caused origins of character and behavior. What’s not to like?

You’re of course right that compatibilists need not eschew, and often embrace, consequentialist rationales for punishment, but I never said they didn’t. My query for compatibilists – those who are also retributivists – is to explain how the compatibilist conception of moral agenthood justifies retribution, the idea that no good consequence need result from the infliction of harms. I accept, and vigorously champion, compatibilist constraints on punishment (it’s only just to punish wrong-doers who acted voluntarily, sanely and not under duress) because punishing the innocent, or otherwise intruding on their liberty, violates a fundamental human desire: to be treated as an end in oneself, not as instrumental to anyone else’s purposes. I wouldn’t want to live in a society in which I could at any time be dragged off the street to have my organs used to save five people. But to say that deontological respect for persons should be at the top of our value hierarchy is perfectly consistent with being a consequentialist about punishment.

Since I’ve made a good faith, if inevitably inadequate, attempt to answer your questions (and I welcome further critique), perhaps you could address the ones I’ve posed previously: What do you see is the necessary role of belief in LFW in our responsibility practices? And can you suggest how the compatibilist conception of moral agenthood might justify retribution?

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tom,

Compatibilism cannot justify retributivism. Why? Because it isn't part of compatibilism.

There are a great many compatibilists who would be interested in justifying retributivism, however, and they would turn to metaethical arguments for that purpose. Many of those would invoke arguments for deontology and suggest that since deontological values are not forward-looking, deontology provides the ethical basis for retributivism.

So, if retributivism is the only complaint you've got "against" compatibilism, I hereby discharge this worry and declare you a compatibilist. Joining this rabble bunch, you'll find that some of us are staunchly devoted to retributivism and some are not (which should be sufficient evidence itself against your primary worry).

For instance, included in the odd bunch is the Illusionist-Saul (but not the Hard-determinist-Saul), the Saul that actually argues for things like praise, blame and punishment, however that Saul claims to be a consequentialist and thus is not going to be a fan of retributivism either. Other compatiblists, like John Fischer, do not make strict metaethical commitments and do not speak to the question of the "distribution" of punishment (and thus take no formal stance on the question of how and when to punish).

I'm sure you'd be able to find a place amongst this motley crew.

[Tom Clark]

Mark,

Since the concepts of freedom, responsibility and moral agency are closely intertwined, and are routinely brought to bear in justifying our responsibility practices, it seems to me that these concepts relate directly to justifications for punishment, which case my request for retributivist compatibilists to explain themselves about retribution is reasonable. After all, a perennial debate here at GFP is whether or not we are *robustly* morally responsible, and whether only LFW makes RMR possible, and therefore makes us deeply, deontologically deserving of punishment, that is, whether or not it has positive character-changing or behavior-guiding outcomes.

In Four Views on Free Will, pp. 81-2, Fischer says (his emphasis): “[A] semicompatibilist need not give up the idea that individuals robustly deserve punishment for their behavior, whereas on other occasions they robustly deserve moral commendation and reward. That is, a semicompatibilist need not etiolate or reconfigure the widespread and natural idea that individuals morally deserve to be treated harshly in certain circumstances, and kindly in others… Semicompatibilism…is conservative in that it need not in any way call for revisions in the concept of responsibility or our actual responsibility practices… In my view, we care deeply about being robustly free and morally responsible, and it is not straightforward to reconfigure our ideas or practices so that we eliminate residual retributive components in our attitudes to ourselves and others. Certainly, it is not easy to do so without a sense of loss. Semicompatibilism keeps a robust and traditional notion of moral responsibility.”

Fischer, like many philosophers, supposes there’s a direct link between concepts of moral agency, responsibility and desert, and the justifications for punishment, and he believes that his view needn’t involve the loss of retribution. I don’t see why it doesn’t (he doesn’t defend this claim in Four Views). This contrasts of course with Derk Pereboom’s view, in which his conception of responsibility requires we drop retribution. About desert he says “The desert issue here is basic in the sense that the agent, to be morally responsible, would deserve the blame or credit just because she has performed the action… and not by virtue of consequentialist considerations.” (Four Views p. 86). About responsibility practices he says “If hard incompatibilism is true, a retributivist justification for criminal punishment is unavailable, for it assumes that the criminal deserves pain or deprivation just for committing the crime, while hard incompatibilism denies this claim. And retributivism is one of the most naturally compelling ways for justifying criminal punishment.” (p 115)

So my question still stands. Why does Fischer (and I suspect Vargas) not agree with Pereboom about retribution? What is it about compatibilism, and even mild revisionism, neither of which accept LFW, that permits punishment without regard to achieving any positive outcome?

[Saul Smilansky]

Tom,

Thanks for your comments. Reacting to your detailed reply to my doubts, examining the connection between compatibilism and retribution, and explaining why I think we need belief in LFW, are each distinct and big tasks. Perhaps I will save space by trying to say something about all three together.

Punishment is in some ways a diversion here: for various reasons, such as that it involves harming people in the name of society and (more cynically) is very expensive, it needs a particularly high standard of justification, which arguably must include the thought that the practice itself makes the world better in some broadly utilitarian way. Hence non-utilitarians like Hart who are deeply concerned about justice and desert as such also require a strong utilitarian justification for punishment.

The big test is the smaller "retributivism" of daily beliefs, practices and reactions, with their inherent deontological desert-based grounding: does naturalism accept it, or not. If it does not, then we need a story how things are to function. If it does, although you do not really believe in desert, then it seems to me that you are in the territory of Williams's "Government House utilitarianism", where you let people continue in their deontological-desert ways, although you yourself think that its nonsense, because this serves the greater good. This, incidentally, would lend itself to a form of utilitarian Illusionism, which is not quite the form I favor, but again hardly what you have declared for.

I will explain why (and excuse the great simplification). Most people think that people are really blameworthy if they intentionally do wrong (and lack the other compatibilist excuses), because they could have done otherwise. Not that it is useful to blame them, but that they deserve it, because in fact they could have chosen not to do wrong, but chose to do it. Hence people should feel guilt, and may be resented, and deserve to be despised, and perhaps should never be forgiven, and so on. In other words, they Ought have, because they really Could. Similarly for reward of the more interesting, moralized forms: you had the choice to do otherwise, but didn't, and did the praiseworthy deed, so you deserve to be rewarded. This belief in an ability to do otherwise underlies our reactive attitudes and social practices, which are dominated by belief in (backward-looking) desert. But since you do not really believe in this sort of desert, then as far as I can see you either need to provide some substitute, or bluff in the utilitarian manner.

This post is getting to be too long, but here's one reply as to why I think belief in libertarian free will is very important. The story of the previous paragraph can find some grounding in conventional compatibilism, which ALSO believes in backward-looking desert because of some compatibilist interpretation of ability to do otherwise. But I fear that if people realized and would begin to internalize the absence of LFW, they wouldn't be satisfied with the compatibilist compromise. They would be disturbed, for example, by the thought that in fact there is only one thing that one could have done, given the way one was formed, by forces ultimately beyond one's control - the thing one in fact did. Now compatibilists will want to dispute this, but YOU, again, are not in a good position to do so, for you ALREADY don't see the compatibilist basis for desert as robust (otherwise you wouldn't be so worried about the need for the blaming and praising to do good in the world for, after all, in the real compatibilist story it is deserved). This is all very sketchy, but I hope that you can see how things come together for me.

[Tom Clark]

Saul,

Many thanks for your thoughts. You ask whether my view accepts the smaller retributivism of daily practices and their (apparent) desert-based, deontological grounding, and if not, how things can function. My bet, based on the good behavior of lots of hard determinists, hard incompatibilists, and other varieties of free will skeptics, is that we can function perfectly well without any sort of deontological retributivism, whether based in LFW or compatibilism. We simply don’t need that concept to hold each other responsible successfully. You, me, many at the Garden who aren’t retributivists, and the supporters of the Center for Naturalism are an existence proof of this, and you’ve given us no reason to suppose that the folk can’t be educated to be like us.

About utilitarian illusionism: Our reactive attitudes will always have a deontological feel to them, but when it comes to the retributive impulse, we don’t have to perpetuate the memes of libertarian agency and non-consequentialist desert – the impulse has plenty of force on its own, indeed all too much. Rather, we should temper it with the understanding of our fully caused nature, and act on it only when no non-punitive response does the trick. Such ethical, humanitarian consequentialism serves the greater and local good in ways that we can be completely explicit about when justifying our responsibility practices to the folk – no illusionism necessary. I want to emphasize that this isn’t utilitarianism since (as I pointed out in an earlier post) it’s constrained by the paramount value of respecting each person’s right to be treated as an end in themselves.

I don’t think, as do you, that the belief that we could have done otherwise underlies our reactive attitudes and social practices, but rather the reverse: we are naturally, pre-reflectively, from a very early age, inclined to be retributive (ask Tamler’s daughter). As Josh Greene has argued (see his online pdf The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul) the expression of the retributive impulse gets rationalized and justified, with some heavy lifting by philosophers, by the myth that people could have done otherwise in the exact situation (libertarians), or that even if they couldn’t they still somehow deserve retribution (some compatibilists). This is too bad, given rampant retributive excesses at personal, social and international levels.

Re your perennial fear, it’s of course an empirical question about how disturbed people might be by the naturalistic understanding of ourselves. It will no doubt vary from person to person – some may take it hard for awhile, for others it will be relatively easy (see http://www.naturalism.org/therapy.htm). But people won’t become terminally demoralized so long as we make clear the sufficient consequentialist underpinnings of our responsibility practices, and educate them about the humane and empowering implications of giving up belief in LFW - part of the mission of the Center for Naturalism. The Vohs and Schooler study notwithstanding, the preponderance of the evidence thus far suggests that we can all grow up and flourish without illusionism.

[Ken Batts]

Mark asked how one earns approval in a world without FW. I don't see how approval intersects with free will. I earn approval from my friends by treating them well. Not sure where the difficulty is. If the question is how can I choose to earn this approval, the answer is that I am caused to, by my determinants. I think we are born to desire the approval of others, which makes it easy to teach children by giving and withholding approval.

[Saul Smilansky]

Tom,

I certainly understand your position much better now, I didn't see how you think that things are supposed to work, and (I think) that now I do. I don't share what seems to me to be your very optimistic view that things CAN work as you think they can, but that's criticism and not (as before) lack of understanding on my part. Broadly, as I said before my problem with your system is that it is schizophrenic: you count on our "beastly" desert-related and retributive emotions to underlie our social and personal lives, but the philosophy all goes in the opposite (utilitarian, forward-looking, anti-desert) direction. So, on the descriptive level, the two are pulling in opposite ways, and cannot be stable without a very large dose of illusion and deception. From a normative perspective you similarly seem to celebrate the natural way we function and at the same time take a paternalistic/manipulative view of it, for in reality you see it as totally mistaken (because the free will and desert distinctions, and the moral and indeed personal judgments that follow from them, are to you false - as well as morally terrible). And as I pointed out before (in my reply to Ken), once we would get down to describing real lives, the structure would collapse upon its contradictions.

You make two further points. The first is about people's rights as opposed to the pull of utilitarianism. Again, I don't see how you can help yourself to most of the desirable deontological goodies, within a utilitarian framework. The idea of desert functiones as a crucial constraint upon the constant urge to run things efficiently. But since to you no one really deserves anything, the distinction between those who do and those who don't cannot be real, and hence cannot serve as the great moral constraint. We must increase happiness, or limit suffering, or whatever, and there cannot be any intrinsic importance about the free will and desert distinctions. Now of course it might be that some consequentialist story can account in its own pragmatic terms for the good of maintaining certain limitations, but that cannot be because of the intrinsic moral importance of free will and desert (or their absence in a particular situation). Nor - without deception - can such a framework use what you think are mere superstitions in order to limit itself.

The second point you make is about the purported proof that things can work as you say, because after all those of us who are in the know do not seem to be running wild. But again, this assumes a great deal about the way people internalize the understanding of the free will doubts, and I have yet to see proof of such a high degree of internalization. My experience of myself and others is that, on the one hand, it is very difficult to really follow the relevant beliefs: one continues with the same sort of reactions of pride and resentment and feeling that one deserves more and others should feel remorse (and so on); all those things that one's beliefs show to be unsupported or at least very shallow. This is resistance, denial, wishful thinking, self-deception, or whatever (let's call it "illusion" for short), but it is not what you suppose it to be. And, on the other hand, to the extent that the beliefs do begin to have a big effect, it is mostly very negative, causing dissociation from one's past achievements, harming one's sense of self-respect, and affecting one's appreciation of the efforts and emotions of others and one's gratitude and love for them (which is why it is natural to avoid all this and sink back into comfortable illusion). If one is not emotionally shallow, I don't see how that could NOT happen, except for the role of self-illusion: after all, people (including oneself) are seen to have been operating as they were molded, without real control, and without really deserving any credit for all the strivings and sacrifices. I love my fully deterministic car and am in a sense grateful to it, and perhaps it "deserves" to have its oil regularly changed, but all this is not in the sense that I feel towards people close to me - and gettting those distinct paradigms closer together (as surely we must, if we are hard determinists) scares me. And of course we were all socialized to take seriously the ideas that we are responsible beings, whose value depends on what we come to deserve through our actions; we were not brought up as hard determinist utilitarians. Now, if you tell me about some rare saint who has done the trick then I want to hear more, but I don't have proof that he or she cannot exist (one hears tales about holy people in India who seem very different from most of us). But I certainly don't think that you can base your case on the way most of us function.

[Tom Clark]

Saul,

I think we’ve long since gotten to the point of repeating ourselves, but here goes. First, I don’t think my position is, as you put it, schizophrenic, but simply takes into account both immediate and reflective responses. Reactive attitudes are not “beastly,” they are simply natural. Nor do I see them as “mistaken,” rather I see them as functional, but needing restraint. The judgments about right and wrong we reach on their basis are often correct. It’s the idea of libertarian desert that’s mistaken. Seeing this exerts a beneficial pull against the unfettered expression of the retributive impulse, which feeds on the myth of the self-caused self. There’s nothing schizoid here, just the ordinary top-down restraint cognition can sometimes exert on emotion, in service to achieving the kind of society we want.

My position isn’t, as you say, paternalistic, rather quite the opposite: unlike you, I want to tell people the naturalistic truth about themselves so that they have the opportunity to become full-fledged adults, with all the advantages of understanding their full causal story. It’s illusionism that’s paternalistic, protecting people from a truth that you are certain they can’t handle. Nor is there any self-contradiction in my position that, when considering real lives, would cause it to collapse, or that requires deception. We continue to make moral judgments and hold each other responsible – just without the libertarian overlay.

Re rights and utilitarianism: A utilitarian framework presupposes goods to be maximized, and these goods derive from human needs and desires, for instance to flourish as an end in oneself. So the deontological proposition that people should be treated as ends in themselves is a primary good that figures in a consequentialist calculus. For instance, as you suggest, it constrains the maximization of other goods such as efficiency.

As I’ve said before, I don’t jettison *all* conceptions of desert, just the libertarian, supernatural conception. Everyone, by virtue of their basic desire to be treated as an end in themselves, deserves to be treated that way. This is the basic moral proposition of equal autonomy rights fundamental to our society. But this doesn’t commit me to supposing that offenders deserve to be (should be) punished *whether or not any good outcome is achieved*. They consequentially “deserve” it – they should be punished – just to the extent that only the infliction of suffering can achieve ends that we deem beneficial, such as behavior change. Again, I don’t see why any deception is necessary in promulgating such a system, based as it is on uncontroversial values of minimizing suffering, achieving good outcomes, and respecting autonomy.

Regarding the internalization of not having LFW, there will of course always be some dissonance between our reactive attitudes and our reflectively endorsed responsibility practices in the light of not having LFW, and the amount will vary from person to person (you feel it a lot, I perhaps not as much). We will continue to have first blushes of pride and resentment, which sometimes point us in behaviorally useful directions (their important natural function), but those responses are kept in check, and thus the dissonance will be reduced, by seeing we’re not ultimately self-caused. This is how it’s worked for me and others I know who have given up belief in LFW.

Thus far, I haven’t seen *at all* the sort of very negative effects you predict free will skepticism will have on valuing one’s achievements, self-respect, appreciation of the efforts of others, or love of others, etc. These sorts of valuing don’t depend in the least on the rather high-level, abstract belief that people are ultimately self-caused, but are generated by our responses to people themselves, their character and their actions. So there’s nothing scary or demoralizing about learning that one’s true love was fully determined to be a delightful person, or that one is fully determined to make the effort to achieve great things. Love wants a delightful character, it doesn’t care about ultimate self-origination. Gratitude and respect want a great achievement, not ultimate self-origination. Our valuing is inspired by what we find valuable, not the fiction of the self-caused self. So living without belief in LFW isn’t all that difficult or precarious, and it’s certainly not a matter of being a saint – just ask my wife.

[Tom Clark]

Just want to add that Tamler (note the cap) weighs in on illusionism and the Vohs & Schooler study over at the Psychology Today blogs, one of which is the recently inaugurated Experiments in Philosophy. It's being run by "a band [fog] of philosophers" including Joshua Knobe.

[Saul Smilansky]

Tom,

I agree that we have begun to repeat ourselves (well, who ARE we supposed to repeat?); but I think we have made some progress in mutual understanding. Thanks for the discussion.

A pity that Saul abandons the battle just after being given a wonderful present by Tom.

Tom's problem is that he can't see the contradiction between
'We will continue to have the first blush of pride and resentment'

and

'So far I haven't seen at all the sort of very negative effects you predict free will skepticism will have on valuing one's achievements, self respect, appreciation of the efforts of others'.

It seems to me that Tom can't make his mind up about whether free will skepticism will have major impacts on the world or not, or if he does he only acknowledges the 'positive'.

Tom states that people's sense of self respect etc doesn't depend on the abstract idea that we are ultimately self caused. Trivially there is truth in this as an acknowledgement of the extent to which non philosophers tend not to have fuly worked through positions on free will and moral responsibility. It says nothing about what will happen if free will skepticism takes hold and people only see themselves as entitled to the 'first blushes' of pride.

Two more points. If free will skepticism doesn't have the effects that Saul implies in terms of reducing the depth of positive emotions, why we are we to assume that it will have the effects that Tom wishes to see in terms of reducing shame and guilt? Can you really have praise without blame?
Is human culture really capable of such double think in the long term?

I also find myself disturbed by the evangelism of some of o