Luck Again

I have long been convinced of the soundness of the luck argument against standard accounts of libertarianism (the qualification ‘standard’ is necessary; I believe that libertarianisms that are no more subject to luck than the best compatibilisms are possible, but I don’t want to get into that argument right now). The luck argument, as I understand it, targets moral responsibility: if an agent Xs, where X-ing is bad, and they are lucky to X, inasmuch as had luck played out differently, they would have performed some action incompatible with X (or not action at all), then they are not responsible for X-ing.

The question I am currently grappling with is why are standard libertarianisms subject to an unacceptable degree or kind of luck: that is, what condition or conditions on moral responsibility are not satisfied by an agent who is subject to responsibility-undermining luck? The way in which I set out the luck argument above is influenced by (or perhaps influences) the condition on moral responsibility I am tempted by. Call it the contrastive principle. It is intended as a necessary condition:

An agent is morally responsible for X-ing only if the event of his X-ing is the (non-deviant) upshot of his decision to X rather than Y, where X-ing and Y-ing have conflicting moral valences. An agent can satisfy the contrastive principle either directly – by deciding to X rather than Y – or indirectly; by being strongly disposed on the current occasion to X because of past occasions on which he directly satisfied the contrastive principle.

The above is probably a little obscure, so let me say just a little bit more. Moral valences are polarities; the moral valence of an act is its goodness or badness. Thus, an agent satisfies the contrastive principle directly by choosing a bad action rather than a good one, or vice-versa (actually, I think moral responsibility unlike moral goodness tracks subjective judgments; so really it is by choosing an action that he takes to be bad rather than good that an agent satisfies the principle). I want the contrastive principle to be satisfiable by agents in Frankfurt-style cases (despite my doubts about such cases). The intuitive idea is that we blame agents for choosing the bad rather than the good, and vice-versa for praise.

I have a feeling that the contrastive principle has problems. At the moment, its only a vague feeling. Want to help turn it into a conviction?

Comments

[Kip]

The problem with libertarianism is the same as the problem with compatibilism (to the extent they are problematic): they allow that, ultimately, everything about our behavior could be the result or upshot of things outside of our control.

Libertarianism adds some bells and whistles to compatibilist free will, so that tracing some things back to "things outside my control" sometimes stops earlier than in compatibilism. For example, a libertarian can trace the decision to eat chocolate ice cream back to the libertarian choice made 2 minutes ago, whereas the compatibilist could trace it back to the Big Bang. But the problem is the same: why did my libertarian choice go that way? Why did the Big Bang go that way?

From that perspective, the "contrastive"ness of the explanation adds little (or nothing). It is not that we want contrastive explanations, so much as we want full explanations.

A libertarian like Kane might say: "Well, I made a libertarian choice to give money to charity." For support, they'll add that "and you can't say that my choice was complete luck, because I previously had a fondness for charities." Which gives a gloss of free will.

But, of course, Kane hasn't really escaped from the everything-is-ultimately-out-of-our-control problem described above. You can't escape from it; it's logically necessary. And if you make your objection clear, he'll finally say "well, to get out of that problem, you would have to have logically impossible free will, and nobody is unreasonable enough to want that."

So, I don't think the problem is that Kane lacks a contrastive explanation. It is, more generally, that he cannot - and nobody can - escape from the problem of constitutive luck: that everything is ultimately out of control, if you trace things back far enough.

Note that, in my opinion, the least worst option for libertarians and compatibilists, to avoid the luck objection, is to adopt a brittle notion of personal identity.

[Arthur]

I've been interested in the free will "problem" for quite a while on a relatively superficial level. To me it is just a very straightforward matter of fact that hard determinism is true, not soft determinism (compatibilism) or libertarianism. This doesn't mean I would advocate immoral behaviour (a problematic term I know) or "doing nothing". At least you should do nothing in the right way, that is, adopt the witness attitude when and as far as one can.

Now let me say something about being held responsible for choosing the bad rather than the good. The problem I see with this is that it is (ultimately) impossible: Someone who chooses the bad rather than the good thinks that it is good to choose the bad. In order to choose the bad over the good, you must first decide that the bad is better than the good. Thus, from your point of view, you aren't choosing the bad over the good. No, you're choosing the good from your point of view, which most others may consider to be bad, but not possibly the one who chooses it.

Apart from that, all objections to hard determinism dissolve in light of the fact that you aren't your own cause. I think free will is just a notion which is practial for everyday life but really not true and the possible cause of stress if believed in too much, which happens easily.

[Neil Levy]

Kip,

I have deliberately left the relation between contrastive explanations and the contrastive principle open. It seems that actions can be contrastively explained without satisfying the contrastive principle. For instance, in explaining why I broke my promise we can cite features of the causal history of my promise-breaking which make it more likely than my keeping my word. But my action might not satisfy the contrastive principle, perhaps because the only options between which I deliberated were all bad. Whether the reverse is true - whether satisfaction of the contrastive principle entails the availability of contrastive explanations - I'm not sure, though I suspect not.

[Justin A. Capes]

Neil,

You formulate your principle in terms of actions being (non-deviant) upshots of decisions. But decisions are actions too. Are they subject to responsibility undermining luck? And if so, does a similar principle apply to decisions. If so, what is it?

Also, what about cases like this: Suppose I've never saved anyone's life before, nor have I ever had the opportunity. Then yesterday I happened across a drowning child. I did not deliberate about whether to jump in a save her (there's no time). Nor, let us imagine, did I decide to save her. Rather, I simply react immediately to the situation: I acquired an intention to rescue her and this intention led (non-deviantly) to my rescuing her. Can I be responsible? Well, my action, by hypothesis, is not the upshot of a decision, nor was I disposed to attempt the rescue on the basis of prior decisions to rescue people in danger. Yet it seems to me that I can be responsible for rescuing the child.

[R. Clarke]

"The luck argument, as I understand it, targets moral responsibility: if an agent Xs, where X-ing is bad, and they are lucky to X, inasmuch as had luck played out differently, they would have performed some action incompatible with X (or not action at all), then they are not responsible for X-ing."

Suppose Jesse shoots the sheriff. The bullet cartridge that fires is defective, but improbably it fires anyway. This seems to be a case of luck (bad luck for the sheriff, perhaps good luck for Jesse). But the luck seems irrelevant to whether Jesse is to blame for shooting the sheriff.

"An agent is morally responsible for X-ing only if the event of his X-ing is the (non-deviant) upshot of his decision to X rather than Y, where X-ing and Y-ing have conflicting moral valences. An agent can satisfy the contrastive principle either directly – by deciding to X rather than Y – or indirectly."

Like Justin, I find it implausible to restrict direct responsibility to decisions (or to actions resulting from decisions; not sure which you meant).

By "deciding to X rather than Y," do you mean making a decision with contrastive content? Or do you mean deciding to X rather than deciding to Y? These are different things. I'm not sure how common decisions with contrastive content are.

Finally, the contrast might be just another bad thing, e.g., Jesse might only have considered whether to shoot the sheriff or to cut his throat. Should that get Jesse off the hook?

[Paul Torek]

I like R. Clarke's implicit answer to Justin's criticism. That is, take the contrast to be
{deciding to X} rather than {deciding to Y}
instead of
deciding to {X rather than Y}.
But perhaps Justin's case also shows that "deciding to X" should be replaced by "acting to X or deciding to X". We might need to add "nondeviantly acting" to deal with nefarious neurosurgeons et al.

One thing I like about the contrastive principle is that it's congenial to moral luck. For example, we can still say that Jesse is guilty of a worse crime when the bullet does fire.

[Neil Levy]

Justin: perhaps it is better to formulate the contrastive principle in terms of the acquisition of an intention (or intention-in-action) whether actionally acquired or not.

Randy's case also suggests that the locus of responsibility should be earlier in the causal chain. My intuition - and I take it is shared by Randy - is that Jesse is responsible for shooting the sheriff, though he was lucky in shooting the sheriff. This forced a reformulation of the luck argument such that it incorporates the contrastive principle): if an agent decides to X, but was lucky in deciding to X inasmuch as it was a matter of luck that they decided to X rather than Y.... Now we have something more closely analogous to a Kane case.

By "deciding to X rather than Y", I don't mean a decision with a contrastive content. I mean a decision to X, rather than Y: that is the agent decides (or acquires the intention) to X while taking Y as being open to them. Y must have a different moral valence to X: deliberating between shooting the sheriff and stabbing the sheriff doesn't satisfy the contrastive principle. The agent need not have explicitly entertained an action with a contrasting moral valence; nevertheless, they need to have (implicitly) regarded it as open to them (if it is a volitional necessity for them, then the action is not the locus of direct moral responsibility).

[Justin Coates]

Neil,

Y must have a different moral valence to X: deliberating between shooting the sheriff and stabbing the sheriff doesn't satisfy the contrastive principle.

I'd like to hear more about "moral valence." While I agree that the deontic considerations surrounding shooting vs. stabbing are of the same moral valance, I seriously doubt they are of the same evaluative status. For instance, a serial killer who stabs all his victims to death seems to be worse than one who kills all of his victims by shooting them in the head.

Since you've defined "moral valences" by their goodness and badness, it's not clear to me why deliberating between shooting the sheriff and stabbing the sheriff wouldn't have different moral valences. Couldn't an agent satisfy the contrastive principle by choosing the bad over the worse?

[Neil Levy]

Exactly right, Justin. What they can't deserve is blameworthiness (rather than praiseworthiness); they can deserve more blame rather than less.