Return of GFP Reading Group

After a long absence, the GFP reading group  return to your screens. You have two weeks to read the following paper by Ish Haji,on Derk Pereboom's manipulation argument against compatibilism:

Download the_manipulation_argument.doc

Two weeks from now, Kristin Demetriou, a grad student at the University of Colorado (whose - so far unpublished - work Pereboom's 4 case argument is already getting citations) will post her comments on the paper. And then it will be your turn, dear reader.

Comments

[Paul Torek]

To my mind, the most important aspect of the dialectic has not been aired here yet. Haji reveals this aspect thus:

"Theorists who disagree that an agent, such as manipulated Beth, is not morally responsible despite the manipulation regard the manipulation as benign: this sort of manipulation does not undermine free action or responsibility."

Now, if putting the word "benign" into this theorist's mouth merely overlooked the fact that Beth, who is about to be manipulated, would think her fate anything but benign, then this terminology would merely be unfortunate. But the situation is much worse than that. For the harm that is about to be done to Beth is harm to her as an agent. Which is not to deny that post-operative Beth is still an agent, or even a responsible one. But she is a different agent.

This is not to state an absence of personal identity between pre-operative Beth and post-operative Beth. Personal identity has multiple aspects. Two that are prominent in the personal identity literature are (A) agency and (B) memory. Beth's memory is basically undisturbed, and together with the remaining fragments of her agency, that seems enough to make the best answer to the question, "Is this the same person?", Yes rather than No. But if we were to evaluate on the agency dimension alone, the best answer might be No, or even - and this is important - Indeterminate.

By discussing personal identity as if it were necessarily binary in nature, we gloss over important complexities that matter to the free will and responsibility of the agent(s) in question.

If Beth's husband considers responding to her new neglectful ways toward him by divorcing her, he realizes that in so doing he is imposing additional troubles on the woman he married. It was bad enough when the neuroscientists twisted her brain to undervalue relationships, and now she will also lose what remains of her most important relationship! Is that fair? No, it is not fair to old-Beth, yet old-Beth is just barely still around. And it may not be fair to the husband to expect him to stay.

Life is complex. Our arguments should respect and reflect that complexity.

[Joe Campbell]

Paul,

Do you need personal identity for moral responsibility? I don't think so. Suppose you harm me and because of that I deserve some monetary compensation. Suddenly, you go into a coma. I think I still deserve compensation from your estate. The fact that you are no longer the same person is insignificant. Nor would we be willing to say that in such a case your estate is no longer yours, since you are not the same person. I think that for legal and moral purposes, something less than personal identity is needed.

[Andrei Buckareff]

Joe,

I think you're right about legal responsibility, but it is less clear in the moral case. Even in the legal case it is not obvious. Consider standard cases of fission in the literature on personal identity. So suppose your corpus collosum is severed and each hemisphere of your cerebrum is put into a different body. Add to this that each cerebral continuant of you goes into a coma that renders each one mentally discontinuous with you. Do we hold them responsible just because they each have half of your cerebrum? It's just not obvious to me that they would be morally responsible--probably not even legally responsible (but court rulings on persons with Dissociative Identity Disorder suggest they may be held responsible in some states).

If something less than personal identity is necessary (e.g., mental continuity without identity), then I'm not sure we have any principled means of making responsibility judgments in vague cases that lie between your scenario and mine.

[Paul Torek]

Joe,

I think legal liability is too separate from moral responsibility to shed much light here. According to the doctrine of strict liability (which is a good thing), my company can be liable for your damages even if we went above and beyond the call of duty to guarantee our product's safety (but nevertheless missed a subtle flaw). Where causal responsibility and moral responsibility part ways, liability often tracks the former.

Contrast Beth's husband, let's call him Carlos, deciding to divorce. If he's a decent guy, he'll feel a big pang of conscience about it, much worse than he would if Beth had been morally responsible for her own values change and subsequent neglect of their relationship. If we vary the scenario so that Beth is causally but not morally responsible for the values change - say, she invited the neuroscientists to experiment on her, after being lied to about what they would do - Carlos's pang of conscience returns. It seems to depend on old-Beth's moral responsibility for her changed behavior. If she IS responsible, she betrayed him; if she is not, Carlos is to some extent betraying the Beth he married. But not the Beth whom he is now stuck with: she fully merits the divorce.

[Kristin Demetriou (Mickelson)]

Paul,

Your suggestion that "same person" does not necessarily mean "same agent" is an interesting one. However, I'm wondering which dialectic you have in mind when you say that this issue is "the most important aspect of the dialectic".

It seems that you might be thinking of just the dialectic set up by the Ann/Beth cases, and are suggesting that there is a soft-line reply to be had. So what do you think of McKenna's position that a soft-line reply cannot be the final word on a credible manipulation argument?

And what about all of the manipulation arguments where there are no worries about shifts in personal identity or agency? For example, each Plum seems to be the same agent and person over time. Even more clearly, 'creation manipulation' victims, like the one found in Mele's zygote argument, seem to have continuity of both personal identity and agency over their lifetimes. Could you say a bit more about how these types of arguments fit into your view of "the dialectic"?

[Paul Torek]

Sorry, by "this dialectic" I just meant the Ann/Beth cases. And maybe some of the early Plum cases. I suspect this pattern of discontinuity-of-agency will be common in the cases in which it is hardest to deny that something less than benign for FW/responsibility has happened to the agent. I.e., the cases which most invite a soft-line reply.

I have nothing to add to your and Haji's analysis of McKenna. But maybe I can put some spin on it, and if I distort your view, let me know. The 4-case argument and/or manipulation style scenarios can be developed to pressure a view from either side, so to speak. Cases can be developed which force a soft-line reply, and cases can be developed which force a hard-line reply. One has to be prepared to handle either type.

I disagree about Plum 1 and Plum 2; both of these characters suffer significant dislocations in their agency. Plum 2 receives one big whammy, much like Beth. Plum 1 receives regular insults, but Haji hasn't told much about what Plum 2's character is like when the neuroscientists aren't pressing their button. So it's hard to say how much his agency is damaged.

Plum 3 probably has a fully intact agency. But then, I think a hard-line response is very plausible for Plum 3.

Creation-manipulated people have intact agency. But if I recall the zygote argument correctly, the zygote person is even more closely controlled than, say, an amputee's artificial limb. Just as the amputee extends her sense of self into that limb, the designer might reasonably so view the designee. In a personal identity complication that would make Parfit proud, what we've created is a scenario with a person inside a larger person.

There's more to say about that, but it's past my bedtime.

[Kristin Demetriou (Mickelson)]

I agree that the Ann/Beth cases, and others, invite worries about personal identity. Actually, I think that personal identity issues might be at the very heart of the disagreement between libertarians and compatibilists…but that’s another matter.

What I am wondering is what generates the personhood/agency identity worry with Plum1 and Plum2. That is, from their beginnings they have been subjected to seamless state-by-state manipulation, so whatever person/agent might have naturally arisen in the absence of the manipulation, *that* person/agent never came into existence. Thus, it seems that there was no *change* in personhood/agency that could support a soft-line reply based on such considerations. Am I missing something?

Also, it seems that you agree with Haji & I that there are distinct manipulation arguments, that these can produce different dialectics, and that a soft-line reply might be the final response in some cases. So, I’m wondering what you make of McKenna’s argument against soft-line replies. Do you like Haji’s critique? Mine? Or, maybe you have your own?

[Paul Torek]

Kristin,

In the Plum1 case, it seems that there is no change in his personhood. The neuroscientists push their button so often that his life story looks pretty consistent. This overview IS missing something, however: what Parfit calls connectedness, insofar as it pertains to agency, is much below normal. Only some of Plum1's intentions carry over into action. If he forms an intention during a non-egoistic phase, it will likely go out the window when the scientists push their button. If he forms an intention during an egoistic phase, it will likely go out the window when the scientists let go of the button.

If the inconsistency is bad enough, the question becomes whether Plum1 even IS an agent. The danger is not only that there may be too many agents there, but that there may be too few. Is Plum1 aware of the inconsistency? Does he have moments of "what was I thinking, there I go being horribly selfish again, I have got to figure out why I do that and make it stop!"? If yes, then there may be "too many" Plum1's. But if no, then there may be "too few". What kind of agent is it who doesn't even notice that he alternates between two very different ways of evaluating action plans? Is this creature even self-conscious?

But perhaps you are thinking of a variant of the Plum1 story which is different from the way I read it. Do you have in mind that the neuroscientists just hold the button down forever, never letting up on it?

I think there's an obvious personhood/agency identity worry with Plum2. He's just like Beth in the Ann/Beth case.

I do agree with you and Haji that there are distinct manipulation arguments, and that a soft-line reply fits some cases. The kernel of truth in McKenna’s argument as I see it, is that a hard-line reply must be available to deal with other cases, and those cases will be forthcoming if the proponent of something like the 4-case argument is paying attention. But then, that's pretty much what Haji said, if I read correctly.

[Paul Torek]

I should add that, if Plum1 does have moments of "what was I thinking, there I go being horribly selfish again, I have got to figure out why I do that and make it stop!"? then he probably also has moments of "There I go being horribly conventional again, I have got to stop that and just look out for #1!" In which case, each phase of Plum1's personality swing cycle is coming close to disowning the other.

[Kristin Demetriou (Mickelson)]

Hi Paul,

You've asked: "Do you have in mind that the neuroscientists just hold the button down forever, never letting up on it?" Well, no…but I do think we disagree about how one should interpret Pereboom's manipulation cases.

From the way you talk about the manipulation, it seems that you’re imagining that one instant of button-pressing is associated with each instance of manipulation in Case 1—which is pretty much what’s going on in the Ann-Beth case, except that it would happen more than once in the lifetime of Plum1. However, this doesn’t seem to capture the type of manipulation Pereboom is describing.

According to Pereboom, the "neuroscientists 'locally' manipulate [Plum1]...directly producing his every state from moment to moment". So, each instance of local manipulation in Case 1 involves a series of button-pressings, for only in this way could the neuroscientists exert the direct state-by-state and moment-to-moment control that Pereboom describes. Now, I think you’re right that a serious problem with agency arises during these button-pressing sessions, but since there are many ways to disrupt agency, I think it’s important to see what *these* manipulators are actually doing to Plum1 so that we get the right diagnosis of how *this* type of manipulation undermines agency.

In Case 2, finding the “right” interpretation gets trickier. On its own, there would be many ways of interpreting the case, but in light of Pereboom’s own commentary on the similarities between Case 1 and Case 2, I think the range of viable interpretations is quite limited…which we could discuss if you’d like. In short, though, I don’t find Case 2 to be of the same general kind as Ann/Beth either.

Mainly, though, I want to argue that we should show fidelity to Pereboom’s description of the manipulation in interpreting and judging *his* argument, lest our attempt to respond to the 4-CA end up being a response to a different manipulation argument. If one is inspired to develop other interesting types of manipulation cases for a new manipulation argument based on the cases Pereboom describes, that’s cool, of course. But for the philosopher looking to respond to the *4-CA*, I think more care needs to be taken to distinguish this argument from nearby but distinct manipulation arguments that imply the same conclusion. Letting the lines between manipulation arguments bleed together, I think, is the major reason that it has been so hard for compatibilists to make clear progress against the MA.

[Kristin Demetriou (Mickelson)]

Paul,

I just realized that you were right to point out that I was thinking about more of a constantly-pressing-the-button type of interpretation when I wrote that earlier post and that this isn't the right way to see the manipulation. I went away thinking about your comments and lost track of what I had in mind earlier by the time I replied. So, sorry about that and thanks for waking me up...

I think I got back on track with my last post. Seems like we're mostly in agreement, except about some of the finer details.

[Paul Torek]

Kristin,

thanks for supplying that description of the Plum1 case. I didn't get to read Pereboom's original argument - is there a version online? If not, it may take me a few days to get into the right library to read it.

Under the new description, I'm pretty convinced that Plum1 suffers the "too few agents" problem. He fails to have any agential identity over time. His intentions at one time have no more causality for his actions at a later time, than the words on one page of a novel cause the character's actions on the next page.

You've got me hooked now, so I will have to find the Pereboom and then we can discuss it.

[Derk Pereboom]

John Fischer, Al Mele, and Lynne Baker have also wondered whether Plum in Case 1 meet certain minimal conditions of agency because, for example, that he is too disconnected from reality, or that he himself lacks ordinary agential control. In the forthcoming article that Ish Haji’s paper in the other post is about, Michael McKenna suggests a way of countering this kind of move: “Let us instead assume that Team Plum [the team of manipulators] operates by providing a very weird causal prosthetic, a causal foundation of Plum’s control (i.e., a foundation different from the foundation provided by typical neural realizers found in normal agents).” We might suppose that many of Plum’s mental states are realized in the usual neural way, but some are partially realized by the activities of the manipulators. Or else -- and this is how I prefer to set up the case -- the manipulators can, and sometimes do, locally manipulate Plum’s neural states, his mental states are realized in the ordinary way by his neural states, and since the psychological results of this manipulation cohere with Plum’s non-manipulated motivation and action, the upshot is an agent with an internally coherent character. Also, I specify in the set-up of Case 1 that Plum “is as much like an ordinary person as is possible given this history” (in Living Without Free Will). Since it is compatible with this history that Plum have, for example, the ordinary sort of control we have over our environment, the assumption that he lacks this control isn’t justified. More generally, this specification rules out Plum’s psychology being unusual when it is possible, given the conditions of the set-up, that it is not.

My claim is that there is no good reason to believe that in Case 1 the manipulators cannot, from moment to moment, induce those very neural states had by an ordinary agent, who develops over time in an ordinary ethically reflective and reasons-responsive way. As a result, Plum’s memories about past considerations will inform and causally influence his current deliberations. He will also be causally linked to the external world in the proper way. So, for example, as McKenna argues, “if a bus is careening out of control ready to hop up on the sidewalk and crush him, he is able to respond to those facts and leap from danger.” So I say that if your intuition is that Plum in Case 1 is not morally responsible, we will have a counterexample to the most prominent compatibilisms, since it won’t be possible to avoid this conclusion by claiming that Plum fails to satisfy some more basic condition on agency.

[Kristin Demetriou (Mickelson)]

Derk,

I have some worries about your reply... here are two:

1. In an attempt to dismiss concerns about Plum’s agency, you appeal to McKenna’s ‘causal prosthetic’ interpretation of Case 1. I agree that Plum is an agent on this interpretation. However, when I clearly imagine *this* as the official interpretation, I have the same reaction as McKenna: I get the intuition that Plum is morally responsible for killing Ms. White and so your argument no longer gets any traction with me.

(Well, actually, I think McKenna’s interpretation is still underdescribed, and on one of the two ways of reading his interpretation I do get the intuition--but on this reading, Plum demonstrably lacks the causal integration required to be an agent and so is of no use to you.)

So, as I see it, there is a strange tension in your appeal to the interpretation that McKenna uses to *reject* your argument as a way of *supporting* the plausibility of your argument. In order to answer the worry that Plum is not morally responsible because Plum is not an agent, it’s not enough to find *some* interpretation of the manipulation on which Plum is an agent—you must provide an interpretation of the manipulation on which Plum is an agent AND compatibilists still doubt his moral responsibility.

It would be great to hear from other compatibilists about their reactions to McKenna’s interpretation of the case!

2. Given the details you provide in describing Case 1, there is presumably a finite number of viable interpretations of the causal relations that might hold (1) between the neuroscientists and Plum’s neural states and (2) between Plum’s neural states over time. If so, I see no reason that intuitive responses should be given except to *specific* interpretations of the manipulation. I think the time has passed in which rhetorically powerful but metaphysically unsupported stipulations should be expected to have any sway over compatibilists…it’s time to cash the promissory notes.

As I implied at the end of my comments on Haji’s piece, this makes the challenge of the 4-CA that of finding and responding to each metaphysically viable interpretation of Case 1, (it would be nice if a proponent of the 4-CA would help illuminate these interpretations, but I think compatibilists should happily accept the burden). McKenna has started us out by identifying one such interpretation. As I’ve already pointed out, I agree that it supports the claim that Plum is an agent—unfortunately, it also dissolves the intuition that Plum is not morally responsible and thus supports a hard-line reply to the 4-CA.

So, will there be any interpretation(s) which, to the satisfaction of the compatibilist, Plum is an agent but not morally responsible? Or, will a closer investigation end up supporting the common compatibilist hunch that the troublesome intuition is only generated when assuming an interpretation on which Plum’s agency is undermined? Only a survey of all the specific interpretations can reveal the answer.

If the compatibilists articulate each of the possible interpretations of Case 1—such that the proponent of the 4-CA cannot identify any *missing* interpretation—then any compatibilist who can provide either a hard-line or soft-line response to each will have a solution to the 4-CA. Of course, any compatibilist who cannot do this must admit defeat...

[Paul Torek]

At the risk of repeating points just made by Kristin --

There remain several questions about whether, or to what extent, Plum1's intentions carry over into action, his deliberations cause his intentions, and so on. At one extreme, the manipulators collectively form a causal prosthetic, guaranteeing that Plum1 does precisely what he would have done had he been a normal human being. Here, Plum1's psychological connectedness and continuity qua agent is perfect: he does X precisely because he intended X, and so on. But here, many including myself have the intuition is that Plum1 is responsible.

At the other extreme, Plum1's psychological connectedness and continuity qua agent is completely absent. The manipulators directly produce each psychological state and Plum1's previous psychological states have nothing to do with it. The manipulators take care to produce a plausible, coherent sequence of psychological states and actions, but if Plum's state at time t+dt corresponds to what it would have been had it been caused in the normal way by his state at t, this is completely coincidental. Here, I have the intuition that Plum1 is not responsible, but also, that Plum1 does not even constitute an agent.

Just mixing these two extremes, in alternating sequences of manipulated and unmanipulated life, won't help, as far as I can see. To the extent that Plum1's agential continuity sometimes stretches all the way from imagining courses of action, through weighing reasons and reflecting on what kind of agent that would make him, all the way to action, to that same extent Plum1's responsibility creeps back in.

Which is not to say there is no way to tell the tale such that Plum is both a genuine agent, yet too manipulated to be responsible. Of course there is (and compatibilist theories generally recognize cases in which an agent is not responsible). But to get there, we need to specify some details along a different dimension than those discussed above.

[Kip Werking]

Perhaps I'm horribly confused but if, as some here seem to suggest, Plum1 is not an agent (whatever that is---it strikes me as a philosophical term of art without any precise definition, not unlike the term "free will"), then doesn't this just reinforce the premise that Plum1 is not morally responsible? I think Pereboom's point is that Plum1 is not morally responsible, so I'm not sure what the relevance is of Plum1 being an agent or not.

Perhaps the suggestion is that being-an-agent tracks onto being-morally-responsible, precisely or roughly, and therefore at the point P (wherever it is between) between Plum1 and Plum4, where Plum becomes an agent, then Plum also becomes morally responsible. But that's a different argument, and I would be interested to know what point that is (compatibilists can't seem to agree), etc.

[Kristin Demetriou]

Kip,

Right, I'm assuming that if Plum1 is not an agent, then he's not morally responsible. So how could Plum1's lack of agency be a *problem* for the 4-CA?

Well, I believe that agency is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for freedom and moral responsibility--and I find it noteworthy that Pereboom stipulates that Plum1 *IS* an agent.

So, if Plum4 satisfies my preferred account of agency but Plum1 does not, then I can point to a principled difference between Plum1 and Plum4 which allows me to defend the claim that Plum4 IS morally responsible even though Plum1 is NOT.

This would constitute a soft-line reply to the 4-CA.

I'm not sure what you meant by "that's a different argument". It looks like you might be thinking that if the compatibilist doesn't accept Pereboom's diagnosis, then the compatibilist is dealing with a different argument...but I'd say that the compatibilist who gives the reply above is just saying that Pereboom's *original* argument, despite its initial plausibility, doesn't succeed.
I'd like to hear more about your view of the dialectic.

[Kip Werking]

Kristin,

I see your point now, and I apologize for not reviewing these materials more carefully (I don't have as much time as I used to). BTW I've scanned over your paper again, and it impresses me greatly. Here are some points:

1. It seems to me that your point "Plum1 is not an agent" could be rephrased as "according to my preferred account of freedom and moral responsibility, Plum4 satisfies all of these conditions and Plum1 does not. In particular, Plum1 lacks X, Y and Z, which I together consider 'being-an-agent'".

My confusion was based on my ignorance of X, Y and Z---the details of your account of agency and why they make the relevant difference between Plum1 and PlumX (wherever you draw the line; I don't know). I'm looking for the details because I suspect that they won't stand up to the scrutiny of my jaundiced eye ("That! You think *that* makes him morally responsible? Well you must have a pretty impoverished idea of moral responsibility..." But I'm getting carried away.)

2. Ultimately, my concern is that you and Pereboom draw the metes and bounds of moral responsibility differently---and nothing about the 4-case argument will help you decide what those metes and bounds are. He will always say "the line stops here", and you will always say "the lines over here, instead." I don't see how Plum can help you solve that dispute.

In particular, the controversy over the truth of beta-like principles like O does not seem solvable by thought experiment. The two paragraphs beginning on line 13, p. 29 doesn't begin, as far as I can tell, to undermine O, because they rely upon the assumptions that certain agents (Roselle, God, non-indoctrinated children) are free, assumptions which strike me as question-begging. As your paper states near the end: "But, again, this reading of Principle 0 merely begs the question against the compatibilist."

I suspect that the only way to resolve this dispute is not to go back and forth over thought experiments, but to do empirical research about how people use the terms "free will" and "moral responsibility", and confront the possibility that these terms don't have precise-enough definitions to decide the questions we are asking about them.

3. Your third concern with O is actually very interesting, and deserves a thorough response. You write:

"It is, thus, difficult to see why anyone, agent-causalists included, would demand that our having complete control over our decisions is a requirement of responsibility for these decisions; or, alternatively, why anyone would claim that our lacking control over, for instance, some agent-external condition, such as being born, that is necessary for our being responsible for our behavior suffices to undermine responsibility for this behavior."

My answer: the absurdities involved in agents actually possessing O requires a thoughtful consideration that most people do not give to these issues. I think most people have an attitude towards free will not unlike those people at the library who check out 20 books they can't possible read in two weeks---more is always better, err on the side of more control, more freedom, more responsibility. When it comes to free will, people are greedy. This is how I put this point in my unpublished paper You Are The Cards That Are Dealt You (which addresses Fischer's almost objection):

"The answer to Fischer’s objection is not to deny that the consequences of this conception of free will are preposterous. ... Rather the preposterous consequences of a given concept do not suffice to show that the concept is not widely used—but common usage is the ultimate arbiter of a term’s meaning. Similarly, people may, in ordinary responsibility practices, widely use a demanding concept of free will because they fail to appreciate its preposterous consequences. It would be surprising if, despite the cognitive biases which afflict humans in so many areas of life, we were nevertheless perfectly rational in making attributions of moral responsibility. Perhaps we are born metaphysical megalomaniacs."

4. This is an idea that I'm growing increasingly fond of: how much does the lack of agreement between compatibilists regarding cases like Plum2, etc., count against that view? No-free-willers like Pereboom and G. Strawson maintain a beautifully simple consistency regarding such cases: no matter what you throw at them, they can tell you whether the person has free will or not (the answer is no, with the caveat that Pereboom entertains the concept of agent causation). Compatibilists don't have this luxury. They twist and turn, trying to categorize trouble cases, and draw distinctions which may strike even charitable eyes as a little contrived. Does this count against compatibilism in even the slightest?

[Kristin Demetriou]

Hi Kip,

Sorry, but the paper you're responding to isn't mine--it's Ish Haji's. My job was to provide critical commentary on Haji's paper.

As it happens, I address some of the issues you bring up here in my comments, and I am especially critical of Haji's views on Principle O. So, if you have time, you may want to check out my comments--they are posted at the beginning of the thread "GFP Reading Group: Haji's 'The Manipulation Argument'".

[Kip Werking]

Kristin,

I apologize. I'm not sure how I got your two confused.

I'll be sure to check out the other thread.

KTW