From Elimination to Mitigation

Many of you will be interested in a paper by Patrick Todd that was just published online with Philosophical Studies, "A New Approach to Manipulation Arguments". The paper is short and sweet, and makes an intriguing point: proponents of manipulation arguments against compatibilism need only maintain that the manipulated agent's blameworthiness is mitigated, not necessarily eliminated.

It's a quick read, so you should read what Todd has to say for yourselves, but here's the basic idea. Although many compatibilists are attracted to a hard-line response to Pereboom's 4-case argument -- namely, that Plum is blameworthy even when manipulated -- this response is actually even harder than has previously been noted. Why? Simply because the compatibilist must say not only that Plum is still blameworthy when manipulated, but that the manipulation in no way even diminishes Plum's blameworthiness. The compatibilist must say this, Todd argues, because to allow mitigation in response to manipulation is to take the first fragile steps down a slippery slope that ends with compatibilism's demise. To allow mitigation is to commit oneself to finding a distinction between manipulation and determinism (if one is a compatibilist), but what about the manipulation setup could possibly mitigate blameworthiness which wouldn't also mitigate blameworthiness in a simple deterministic world? The bottom line, Todd argues, is that the compatibilist has to be even more hard-core than we used to think. And she was already pretty darn hard-core.

A couple of my own thoughts are below the fold.

First, I wonder whether any compatibilists would be happy to say that the truth of determinism does mitigate blameworthiness. Here are two ways the compatibilist might be able to make that bullet a bit easier to bite.

a) To accept the slogan "determinism mitigates blameworthiness" is just to accept that agents in deterministic worlds are slightly less blameworthy than agents in suitably indeterministic worlds. This could mean either that we should blame the agents in our world less if we were to find out that we live in a deterministic world or simply that we should blame agents more if we were to find out that we live in a suitably indeterministic world. That is, mitigation is always relative to some standard, and as far as I can tell, you could be a consistent compatibilist and believe that most of the blame we dole out in the actual world is perfectly justified -- it's just that we would be justified in doling out even more if it turned out that people were "indeterministic initiators" (Mele 2006).

b) To accept the slogan "determinism mitigates blameworthiness" isn't to accept the slogan "determinism mitigates moral responsibility". That is, you could be a compatibilist who thinks that acting from one's own moderately reasons-responsive mechanism (for example) is sufficient to get you into the MR game (which is an all-or-nothing game), but it takes more than that to be blameworthy (or, what might come to the same thing, to be justifiably held responsible).

Second, I wonder whether our intuitions about mitigated blameworthiness in the case of Plum (if indeed we do have them) track facts about us more than facts about Plum. That is, it's one thing to say, as Todd does, that Plum's blameworthiness is clearly mitigated when he's manipulated, but it's quite another to say that the mitigation intuitions are due to Plum's not satisfying some control condition on blameworthiness. Perhaps finding out about Plum's circumstances makes us seriously entertain, for the first time, the possibility that we are all just victims of similar sorts of manipulation, which makes us feel less entitled to feel so resentful toward Plum. (Considering the Matrix hypothesis might have a similar effect on us with respect to attributions of knowledge: not that we think people know less than they used to -- the Matrix hypothesis is outrageous, after all -- just that we feel less entitled to assert that they do. Maybe that's not the best analogy, but I'm sure there's something analogous in epistemology.)

Comments

[Kip]

What a brilliant article, touching on themes that we just talked about in the previous GFP thread.

I think the best compatibilist response is something I call the "Phew" argument:

1. Moral responsibility / blameworthiness ("MRB" - I'll consider these interchangeable here) admits of degrees.
2. However, in ordinary language, to say that someone has MRB is just to say that they've achieved a certain threshold of MRB.
3. That threshold is less than the maximum level. On a scale of 1 to 10, you only need a 7 to reasonably say that someone is MRB.
4. Because of folk psychology, moral illusions, cognitive biases, and the biases of Western culture, we tend to think that people have MRB of level 10.
5. When we, as compatibilists, consider manipulation cases, we realize that we don't have as much MRB as we thought we had. We thought we had 10, but we only have 7.
6. 7 is still enough for us to have MRB, and therefore to still be compatibilists.

This is what I call the "Phew!" response (I talked about the argument previously in 2007 here and here). Because it is like the compatibilist is saying "Phew!" "Phew! We just barely dodged that bullet! In fact, we got our hair cut! But we just barely scraped by enough MRB to still reasonable say that have MRB, even though it is significantly less than we thought we had.

Here's what I really like, and dislike, about the Phew! argument:

LIKES: It's a concession. It acknowledges that incompatibilists are not crazy to think that there is a natural intuition in favor of TNR/beta principles and incompatibilism. It acknowledges that we tend to think of freedom and responsibility in robust, almost magical ways that don't cleanly correspond to a more scientific/mechanic view of the world. And it makes room for all of the errors, biases and moral illusions that psychology uncontroversially shows afflict our judgement and attributions.

DISLIKES: It seems to be revisionist---too revisionist. The most important reason is that (1) the compatibilist idea of MRB involving some lower threshold is made in view of an enlightened, scientific understanding of our mechanical nature but (2) whatever the concept of MRB is that we use was not informed by this enlightened, scientific understanding. The concept of MRB we use today evolved, over centuries (or millions of years) according to our pre-scientific, unenlightened understanding of the world--with all of the errors, biases and moral illusions that those entail. I find it very unlikely that this unenlightened idea MRB would track onto the compatibilist's cleaner, revised notion of MRB. I think it's more appropriate to just admit that, considering all of the errors, distortions and moral illusions that afflict our brains, the commonplace notion of MRB simply doesn't refer to anything in the real world as we now understand it.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Kip,

Here's something that I find funny... a few threads back we were debating whether compatibilists could consistently maintain that social conditions could mitigiate blameworthiness (I was on the side that said yes, and you were on the side that said no), and now you say that: "[b]ecause of folk psychology, moral illusions, cognitive biases, and the biases of Western culture, we tend to think that people have MRB of level 10," and "[w]hen we, as compatibilists, consider manipulation cases, we realize that we don't have as much MRB as we thought we had. We thought we had 10, but we only have 7" -- as if those are brand new ideas and that compatibilists do not already embrace them.

As far as I am aware compatibilists have always been in favor of *at least* that much revisionism. Compatibilism, by its very nature, speaks against the idea that we are the ultimate arbitrators of our own fates and speaks favorably of the idea that we have to consider the context that the agent was acting in and look for factors that would impede an agent's ability to act responsibily.

Not a single compatibilist comes to mind who has argued in favor of people having level 10 MRB (as you have framed it) as the norm. However, you seem to think that this is a concession (rather than a mantra) for compatiblists to accept a maxim of a level 7 MRB. So, the obvious question is who do you have in mind?

[Kip]

Mark,

Two points:

1. I was pointing out what I regard as the best argument that the compatibilist can make. I wasn't trying to imply that the argument is relatively new. It might be, for example, that compatibilists have been making the argument for a while, but that it is still their best argument.

2. Still, I know of very few compatibilists who explicitly qualify their views in the way that I describe above (the Phew argument). Gary Watson is the best example that comes to mind. Manuel Vargas, to the extent that he's a compatibilist, is another example.

But, in general, I don't know of compatibilists who qualify their view that way. That is, I don't know of compatibilists who explicitly acknowledge that: 1. a significant part of our self-image conflicts with determinism and that, therefore, 2. we have significantly less freedom, responsibility or power than we thought we had--even if we still have enough to say that we are MRB.

The most prominent compatibilists (e.g. Fischer and Dennett) do not, to my knowledge, qualify their view this way. Fischer acknowledges that we lack certain abilities-to-do-otherwise, but does not seem to think that this significantly diminishes our self-image or MRB. Rather, both Fischer and Dennett seem to think that we can have everything that we think we have, and everything that we think we want, in a deterministic world. And I think that attitude is typical of compatibilists in general. For example, Eddy Nahmias, as a neuroticompatibilist, believes that there may be other threats to our freedom, but determinism is not one of them.

[John Fischer]

Just to clarify, Kip: I do think that it is part of our pretheoretical, commonsense conceptualization of ourselves (and our place in the world) that we often have freedom to do otherwise (genuine access to alternative possibilities). Thus, Semicompatibilism represents a major revision of our ordinary "self-image", as you say, if causal determinism is true. I have always thought that, although we can get by without alternative possibilities in our theorizing about practical reasoning and also moral responsibility, this is a significant departure from some aspects of our intuitive self-image. After all, that's part of what's so exciting and challenging about Semicompatibilism (in my view). Reconceptualizing the freedom relevant to moral responsibility and also the openness involved in practical reasoning is (as I have immodestly put it) The Free Will Revolution, even if it is a gentle revolution.

Chairman Mao was once asked what he thought of the French Revolution, and he replied, "It is too early to tell." Same with the Free Will Revolution, but it does represent a significant paradigm-shift.

[Philoponus]

Maybe this is a minor point, but it’s not clear to me that we should concede that Case 2 and Case 4 are no different in terms of Plum’s culpability or responsibility, and I certainly don’t see that excusing Plum in the former case requires us to excuse him in the latter case. These cases actually strike me as very different in terms of the moral analysis we should pursue.

There seems to be a lot of important details missing in Pereboom’s set up of the examples. I take it the evil neurosurgeons are supposed to engineer some rather subtle cognitive/deliberative defect in Plum’s brain. Perhaps when Plum gets really upset with someone like White, the part of the brain that feel sympathy for other people or an aversion to harming others just shuts down, leaving Plum with nothing to offset his ruthlessly self-interested deliberations. OK, then with proof that Plum was the victim of this kind of horrible experimentation, I would exonerate Plum, but the hang the damn neurosurgeon!

I take it Case 4 postulates more or less the same defect, but now as occurring naturally. Perhaps this can occur and actually occurs, but here we need more info before we rush to embrace exoneration or mitigation. In general we don’t excuse people for horrific crimes just because they have some sort of natural defect. My first question would be whether Plum’s defect is known to neuroscience. Suppose it is. Is it well enough known that people are screened for it in school? Was Plum ever tested or did he avoid the test? If he was tested and warned that he had or was at high risk for the condition, did Plum seek treatment? Did Plum, in other words, have reason to believe he might manifest the defect violently in a high-stress encounter, but decline to be treated for it? Depending on the answers I get, I could imagine coming to very different verdicts about Plum’s culpability. None of these questions would be pertinent in Case 2 where an unknown defect has been covertly and artificially created. The main point I would make is Case 2 and Case 4 involve some very different moral issues, such that our verdict in Case 2 really does not have much to with what we’d decide in Case 4.

I don’t know whether this objection is something Todd can deal with in a easy modification of premise 1 of the MMA, but I think the burden of persuasion lies with those who want to assume a “no difference” principle.

[Kip]

Fischer,

Thank you for correcting me! Now I can stop spreading my mischaracterization of your view. I'm starting to like it more and more...

Do you also think that "Total Control" / origination / being-causa-sui / TNR has some claim on our prephilosophical self-image?

[Neal Tognazzini]

Philoponus:

Just to clarify, Todd does acknowledge near the beginning of his paper that a compatibilist might well resist the 4-case argument by taking a soft-line response and trying to distinguish Case 2 from Case 4. He simply notes that he is presupposing for the sake of argument that this response is off the table -- moreover, he points out that not many compatibilists seem attracted to such a line.

[Cihan]

Neal,

I haven't had a chance to read the paper yet. So with that in mind, my question to this response is: How much are you going to excuse Plum and people in a deterministic world?

What's going to stop one from excusing them completely?

(By the way, an interesting question is: if you excuse them completely but still think they are MR, are you a compatibilist?)

[John Fischer]

btw, I agree with Neal that Patrick's paper is interesting and highly worth reading.

Meanwhile, to answer Kip's question, I think we have some pre-theoretical or "commonsense" notion that, when we are morally responsible, we are the "originators" or "initiators" or "sources" of our behavior. But I also think that an indeterministic construal of these notions goes beyond what is given intuitively or pre-theoretically. Also, I obviously think that "Total Control" goes beyond what is admittedly an element of our self-image.

I don't doubt that we would typically think of ourselves as the "source" of our behavior, when we think of ourselves as morally responsible. I just wish to point out that it is controversial to make the further step to an indeterministic interpretation of this element of our self-image.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Kip,

Let's distinguish between two questions:

1) Does determinism threaten freedom?
2) How much freedom do we have?

Compatibilists are categorized as those who answer, "No", to the (1). We could add a (1*) about moral responsibility and say that Semicompatibilists are those who answer, "No," to that question.

Regarding question (2), the compatibilist/semicompatibilist is not required to answer, "Just as much as we've always thought", simply because of their answer to (1).

Fischer's own response is testament to that, but so are the actual works of nearly every compatibilist I've ever read. But, I suppose that if all one reads in the compatibilist literature is the stuff that deals with the consequence argument and Frankfurt cases, then I suppose it is possible for one to derive the invalid view that compatibilists/semicompatibilists typically answer, "Everything we thought we had," to (2).

For an early historical example, Kant was outraged with Hume's compatibilism because it was revisionistic. Kant tried to demonstrate that compatibilistic freedom was compatibile with the truly robust pretheoritical views of our freedom (Kant is definitely not a libertarian), but I don't think he was very successful. Kant is the one compatibilist I know of who really made an effort to answer (2) with, "nearly everything we thought we had," but insofar as his systemization was far more complex/exacting than the folk account, it has to be considered revisionstic by anyone considering adopting it.

John Locke approached the "how much" problem from a completely different angle, and it could lead to a misinterpretation of what his answer to (2) would be. Locke was primarily concerned with what he considered to be "ideal agency". He argued that ideal agency was compatible with and in fact demanded causal determinism. However, he also argued that there was a large gap between the ideal agent and us. So, he is definitely in the revisionist camp.

There may be other compatibilists who argue that the answer to (2) is, "Everything we thought we had", but I must not be familiar (enough) with their works since none pop to mind. Perhaps Dennet fits here? His account is definitely not mainstream compatibilism, but I'm not sure what his answer to (2) would be.

[patrick todd]

Hi Neal,

Thanks for the post! First, I'd just like to express my substantial agreement with Kip's first comment. :)

A few thoughts:

In response to your (a), I admit that compatibilists can *consistently* maintain that determinism mitigates blameworthiness. My challenge is just to articulate a plausible picture of what such mitigation would look like, i.e. what it is in virtue of which determinism merely mitigates (but doesn't rule out) blameworthiness. As I noted, maybe this can be done, but it seems like tricky business. But your point that mitigation is always relative to some standard is a good one. I haven't thought enough about this yet, but here's roughly how I was thinking about it when writing the paper. Clearly, the way I set things up won't work against the background of supposing that everyone is already subject to Case 2 style manipulation. That is, it won't make sense to ask someone whether Plum's being Case-2ed (new verb) mitigates his blame if that person already builds in everyone's being Case-2ed into his initial judgments of blame. [In that case, what becomes relevant are certain counterfactuals, i.e. how blameworthy one would judge Plum to be were it not for his being Case-2ed, holding other things fixed, etc. If he thinks folks would be more blameworthy were it not for being Case-2ed, and he's a compatibilist, we're entitled (I say) to ask him for an explanation for why this is so. For this would amount to his thinking that the truth of determinism means mitigated blame.]

But the important thing to note here is that, in the actual world, we don't suppose folks generally to have been Case-2ed. And so the scenario as I set it up seems fair, I think. Think of the last thing someone did to you to make you mad. Then imagine fully taking on board the idea that his doing so (in all its particular details) was the causally inevitable outworking of a nefarious plan long ago set in place. If the manipulation arguments work, there's no relevant difference between that and determinism. Now ask yourself whether you think the relevant person's blame is less than you originally thought. Is his blameworthiness mitigated relative to whatever standard you first employed? Of course, it won't be if your standard included the notion that everyone is Case 2ed. But no one is like this. In short, I find it very plausible that people's judgments of blame in the actual world are *not* sensitive to the fact (were it a fact) that everyone has been Case-2ed. But then, if the manipulation arguments are right, our judgments are not sensitive to the fact (were it a fact) that determinism obtains. Thus, were determinism true, that would imply that our actual judgments of blame are overblown. Importantly, it is not simply the case that we ought to blame folks *more* were we to decisively find out that we are 'indeterministic initiators' or some such.

On your (b), for what it's worth, I think that someone's being MR for doing something wrong entails that he or she is blameworthy. But it is for precisely these reasons that I cast the whole argument for the beginning in terms of mitigated *blame* rather than mitigated *MR*.

On your point about our intuitions about Plum, maybe that's right. Of course, the incompatibilist has an easy time here: we feel (or ought to feel) less entitled to blame Plum because, well, it turns out that Plum is less blameworthy than we'd originally supposed. Not sure what a compatibilist could offer here though.

Thanks again for the post!

[Alan]

Todd's paper is punchy and clear--nice example of solid work.

I can't go along with the slide from 2 to 4, however, with respect to all compatibilist accounts of responsibility. One big difference for determinations of responsibility between manipulator- and natural cause-scenarios is a pragmatic one: in case 4 any reasonable finger of responsibility is pointed to just Plum and Plum alone (given some compatibilist account). But to maintain that the job of finger-pointing is likewise completed in case 2 just doesn't get all the work done that such assignments of responsibility should get done: if mere deterrence of a type of crime is one worthy goal of assigning responsibility, locking up the Plum of 2 won't stop the manipulators from striking again if they were still around and had continued their practice, or might lead to exposing a wider program of such manipulations that certainly might involve other cases like Plum’s and require investigation (matters of individual justice are not always separable from matters of social justice after all), whereas there is no practical reason to believe that we need do anything more in 4 to prevent future crimes than to lock up Plum. I'm obviously setting aside questions here about Plum deserving punishment in an incompatibilist's sense of ultimacy, but many compatibilists explicitly renounce such questions as groundless anyway. (The fact that Plum-2 was deliberately manipulated as opposed to the bad moral luck of Plum-4 again points to asymmetries that the compatibilist might well exploit. But it is always open to critics to push the moral luck claim back onto deterministic manipulators as well--one reason to favor pragmatics in assigning responsibility. We can do something about moral agents individuated as beings; we can do little about the metaphysics of determinism or indeterminism as equally bountiful fountains of moral luck.)

BTW it always makes me nervous when I share the surname of the victim in these cases!

[Kip]

Alan,

Consider two Hitlers, molecule-by-molecule identical. One is in a distant galaxy far away, that we can only watch on TV. The other is here and now, sitting in a jail cell, under our control. They both committed the exact same crimes.

By your pragmatic logic (if I understand it correctly), we can do something about the jailed Hitler, and so we should believe he is morally responsible. We can't do anything about galaxy-far-away Hitler, so we should not believe he is morally responsible.

But I don't moral responsibility works that way, and I think most people would agree with me. Whether or not believing someone is MR is pragmatic has, seemingly, no bearing on whether that person actually is MR.

[Tom Clark]

Alan, you said

"...whereas there is no practical reason to believe that we need do anything more in 4 to prevent future crimes than to lock up Plum."

Practically speaking, we can do more than lock him up to prevent future crimes. We can investigate and address the causes, particular and systemic, of why case 4 Plum became the bad apple (sorry!) he is in order to stop others from following in his footsteps. A deterministic understanding of Plum's origins in effect distributes causal responsibility for the crime outside him (but without excluding him), which might help explain the mitigation of blame produced by certain readings of compatibilism. I've called this the mitigation response (also discussed in a review of Michael Moore's book Placing Blame). I haven't yet read Todd's paper so don't know if he makes this point.

[Alan]

Kip--

I think your two accounts are distinct precisely because they are ones that on the one hand can be accounted for in pragmatic terms and the other that cannot be so accounted for--but direct appeal to the latter as somehow conceptually correct is begging the question against a pragmatic account. There has to be a metapositional argument here: how could responsibility be assigned if neither determinism nor indeterminism favors such an assignment? I think that a pragmatic position about responsibility fills this gap (and thus is a form of de facto compatibilism since it does not require incompatibilism), and offers a very viable alternative to intuitions posed as filler for the supposed skeptical alternatives. Could one say that I am posing as a Smilansky illusionist? Perhaps--but there can be (I would argue) conceptual separation between even this position and my own if there is a distinction between nihilism of truth-value about freedom in which one pretends to posit a positive position about the truth of freedom and uses that in turn as a ground for pretending that it exists as such, as against the pragmatist position of workability about what functions as freedom but has no literal truth-value--the former as truly illusionist, but the latter not, and treating freedom (and consequent responsibility) in this case as a purely pragmatic concept.

Tom-

I'm very much with you as stated above. Pragmatically of course.

Al

[patrick todd]

Hi Kip,

Thanks for your kind comment about the paper -- glad you liked it.

Just one thought on your 'Phew' response. Take your (5). In some sense, I agree that compatibilists should say this -- they should think that the relevant kind of manipulation mitigates blameworthiness. I think they should say this in the sense that I think that this is true. But in another sense, it seems compatibilists shouldn't say this -- compatibilists qua compatibilists perhaps should resist the idea that the manipulation mitigates. For then we get to ask: why is this so? And it seems the compatibilist will have a hard time answering this question. Anyway, the point of my paper is just to say that compatibilists can't *simply* admit that Case 2 manipulation (and hence determinism) mitigates blameworthiness, even if they are inclined to admit that. They have to also specify how determinism *merely* mitigates but doesn't rule out blameworthiness. That's what I take to be the burden of my paper. Either you say the manipulation mitigates or it doesn't. If you say it does, I press for an explanation here. If you say it doesn't, I note that your heart is harder than we'd previously noticed.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Nice paper, Todd. Your argument gives compatibilists more reason to take the line I advocate against manipulation arguments (e.g., in my response to Kip's recent post): to reject the No Difference principle (for genuine cases of manipulation). (I certainly don't think compatibilists should take the line that determinism mitigates FW or MR.) In fact, by putting things in terms of degrees of blame, I think you help clarify this response.

What is the difference between determinism and manipulation? They differ roughly according to the degree to which the manipulation, if fully spelled out, would involve cutting off possibilities for the agent (in a way determinism does not) *because* the manipulators want a certain outcome to be brought about in a certain way. I'm inclined to add that this degree of control by the manipulators also corresponds with (perhaps accounts for) the degree to which we intuitively shift responsibility onto the manipulators and hence (to that degree) away of the manipulated agent.

Of course, one can always say that the manipulators could care less about what the agent does or how he does it--e.g., the neuroscientists just set Plum up to have the compatibilist capacities and care less what he does with them, just like the random machine that Pereboom suggests might take the place of the neuroscientists. (This move makes little sense in case 3 with the indoctrination, since indoctrinators have outcomes they want to achieve). But to the degree the manipulators don't care about the outcome, they also leave it open how Plum will turn out and what he will do--and our intuitions should not be pumped otherwise. Of course, Plum's actions are not open in the sense that they are the outcomes of deterministic processes (as stipulated by Pereboom), but if it's determinism that's driving the intuition that Plum is not responsible, then the cases don't show anything about the compatibility question, do they?

[Paul Torek]

Mark and Kip,

I dissent from the idea that compatibilists need to back off from maximal moral responsibility. I would agree that no, or extremely few, compatibilists could endorse the maximal punishments (e.g., hell) that are often endorsed by the general public - but this is typically due to their morality, not their metaphysics. For many of us, were we to discover tomorrow that people often act as first causes, that would not change our stance on the correct punishments for various transgressions. Note that degree of responsibility is only one of the factors determining degree of punishment.

One can deny many common beliefs about any given subject X - be it "moral responsibility" or "mass" or (Dennett's example) "erotic love" - without necessarily thereby lessening the commitment to X. We can change our beliefs without thereby ceasing to talk about the same things. We can give up Cupid without giving up (even part way) on love. We can give up the conception of mass as an intrinsic property without giving up (even part way) on mass. (Note that the amount of mass in the universe does not depend on whether you take a Newtonian or an Einsteinian view of it.) And so on.

[Michael PJ]

Nice paper!

I'm inclined to think that a hard-line compatibilist should say that Plum is just as blameworthy in Case 2 as he is in Case 4, but I would account for this in a different way.

If we consider the relative blameworthiness in terms of evaluating the person, then perhaps we can say that Plum is a bad person in Case 2, but that he is made so by the neuroscientists. For the compatabilist this is indeed no different from Case 4 where Plum is made a bad person by chance. This does not mean that Plum is not a bad person, and should not be judged as such.
(I should clarify that Plum is a bad person in a very odd and specific way that could only possibly affect White, and is very insensitive to reasons etc. These might be grounds for mitigating his blameworthiness, but they apply equally to both cases)

[Kip]

Patrick,

I said the argument was the compatibilist's best argument; I didn't say it was a good argument!

If I was the compatibilist I would say that we think have an ultimate kind of sourcehood over our decisions. When we think of determinism, though, we realize that we only have a proximate kind of sourcehood. That proximate, or intermediate, kind of sourcehood, is only compatible with a limited kind of responsibility. And that's how the responsibility is mitigated.

But note that many or most compatibilists don't agree that ultimate sourcehood is a part of our natural intuitions.

[Kip]

Eddy,

Suppose Ernie is molecule-by-molecule identical in deterministic worlds A and B. He robs a bank in both A and B.

The only difference between A and B is that, in A, Ernie came to be himself through Diana's cosmic design. In B, Ernie came to be himself through cosmic accident and blind evolution.

Your previous comment seems to imply that Ernie has more options in A than B. Do you agree with that?

It seems to me that, because Ernie-A and Ernie-B are molecule-by-molecule identical, that Ernie-A and Ernie-B have the same options open to them: just one, the life they actually live out, including robbing the bank.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Paul,

I am perfectly open to the idea that the folk embrace a range of ideas about what "maximal responsibility" would entail and that some of those ideas are either incompatible with determinism or straight up incoherent.

For instance, when I discuss my pet philosophical hobby topics, people usually perk up and get interested when the conversation turns to free will, fate, moral responsibility, meaning of life, etc. People usually have a good deal to say about these topics even if they are not trained philosophers, and while I have not conducted any rigorous sampling, I hypothesize that peoples views about themselves and others are generally aligned around one of two guiding values: the value of self-expression and the value of self-definition.

I believe that self-expression gets us most of what all of us want, or all of what some of us want, and that it is compatible with determinism.

I believe some people think that self-definition gets them something more than mere self-expression, and depending upon how self-definition is cached out (in terms of a causal/metaphysical story) it is most always incompatible with determinism and many times it is straight up incoherent.

When I encounter someone who realizes that their personal commitment to self-definition faces serious challenges, these people usually have to go through some sort of inner trial where they really wrestle with this idea. Some of those people come out as skeptics (like Kip?) and some of them come out as compatiblists.

Those that come out as compatibilists typically do so by adopting self-expression as the replacement value. When I have seen this happen, these converts are usually very inquisitive about what sorts of attitudes that they used to hold still make sense. During this "re-education" phase, I have seen that people typically soften their judgements towards other people when they realize that the bar is set pretty high: self-expression implies that there is a sort of battle going on where sometimes the self loses, and in those cases the facts of a situation tell us little to nothing about the agent, and that it is sometimes difficult to tell when those situations occur.

I would say that adopting the virtues of humility and grace are praiseworthy regardless of one's guiding values, but a lot of the "hot heads" I am able to speak with seem to be people who subscribe to various kinds of the self-definition story.

I am not sure that merely being a (properly informed) compatibilist increases one's propensity toward virtuous living, but I have seen some evidence to think there may be a corellation.

[Kip]

I just want to chime in and say that Mark's theory about self-expression and self-definition really resonates with me, and I think helps get to the heart of the matter. You can especially see this if you understand self-definition in terms of self-creation (as Galen Strawson and others have talked about).

This all relates back to my other point, which is that design is a type of control. So people want to design themselves. That is, they want to create or define themselves. Unfortunately, that turns out to be logically impossible.

It's not enough to just express themselves, if someone/something else defined themselves. Because then you're just expressing what someone else designed/created/defined. You're just an intermediate vessel, an actor playing out someone else's script. That, at least, is the danger that the incompatibilist worries about, rightly or wrongly.

One thing that complicates this is that some people are happier with themselves than others. So the fact that someone else designed/controlled/created/defined their life (or character) disturbs them less. They will regard the fact that they received the character/personality they have as a happy coincidence. They may also have a thicker, more robust notion of personal identity, that captures more of their character and personality.

In contrast, someone who doesn't accept themselves, who sees their character and personality as bringing them a lot of pain and suffering, is going to be more disturbed by the possibility that someone else created/defined their life or character. They may have a thinner notion of personal identity, almost devoid of personality and character, and regard the personality/character they have as an external thing imposed on them. That is, they'll feel victimized by the character they were given. So they're going to be more concerned with self-definition, because they realize how dangerous it is to not define yourself.

But the person with more self-acceptance, who regards their character/personality as a happy coincidence, isn't going to worry about that. As long as they can express the great character they were given, they'll be happy.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Kip,

These two points seem to be mutually exclusive:

1. It is logically impossible for a real person to be created/designed by someone else.
2. It is logically possible for a real person who is a creator/designer to exist.

I think you would readily accept (1), but if (1) is true, then it is only trivally true since it means that (2) is true since there wouldn't be anyone/anything that exists that could boot strap the process.

In other words, if designers can't design real people, then designers themselves cannot exist... wouldn't that mean that such thought experiment have serious coherence problems?

Keep in mind, when I'm talking about "existence" in this context, I am not talking about atoms and molecules -- I am talking about whatever it is that would turn Pinocchio into a "real boy" and whether we (who obviously did not design ourselves) could have that too.

If it is logically possible for there to be "real boys" running around attempting to design other "real boys", then (1) is false. Right? If (1) is false, what is there to motivate this impossiblism?

[Mark Smeltzer]

Errr... The first paragraph of my last post is worded weirdly and I got one of the claims inverted. My meaning would have been clearer if I had said:

I think you would readily accept (1). But, if (1) is true, then it is only trivally true since it means that (2) is false because there (logically) couldn't be anyone/anything that could boot strap the process. In other words, if creators/designers are logically impossible then of course they couldn't create/design anyone else, but if they are logically possible (to make the thought experiments have merit), where could they come from?

[Kip]

Mark,

I don't think (1) is true. And I'm not sure why you think I would accept it. In fact, I think the opposite: I think it's possible (at least conceivable) that Diana could design someone's life, just as Mele suggests in the Zygote Argument.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Kip,

Perhaps my point wasn't clear... in such thought experiments, where does the designer come from? Is the designer meant to represent something over and above determinism?

Remember, my #1 doesn't mean the same thing that Mele does in his thought experiment. I'm not talking about creating a sack of molecules... I am talking about designer creating a person. Big difference. So, my #1 says that it is logically impossible for a designer to create/design a morally responsible person. That's a statement that I think you agree with, and that's what I meant in the above post(s).

Moving on from there, if the designer isn't supposed to represent something over and above mere determinism (e.g. the designer is not a morally responsible person and it is functionally equivalent to a mere physical process), then (for the compatibilist) the designer is going to be irrelevant except for highlighting cases where we can see that the designed/created agent's capacity for self-expression is somehow thwarted.

If the designer does represent something over and above mere determinism, the compatibilist at least deserves an explanation of what kind of thing the designer is: if the designer is considered to be a morally responsible person and the designer is posited to exist within a determinist world, then the example already presupposes that compatibilism is true and cannot discredit compatibilism directly -- although surely thinking about ways in which people can thwart other people's responsibility is a worthwhile project in and of itself, this would not help the incompatibilists case any.

Do you see the dilemma now?

This may just be me, and I might be the loan odd ball, but because of this dilemma I've never seen any relevance of designer cases to developing an argument against compatibilism.

[Kip]

Mark,

I may have missed the qualifier "morally responsible" when you say that it's impossible for a designer to create a morally responsible person.

Yes, I tend to agree that it's morally impossible for the designer to do that. But that's not because of design. Design arguments are supposed to show that moral responsibility is impossible in general (at least in deterministic worlds), because there is no relevant difference between designed and not-designed scenarios.

To answer you question: no, I don't see the dilemma. You say that "if the designer is considered to be a morally responsible person and the designer is posited to exist within a determinist world, then the example already presupposes that compatibilism is true." Well, let's stop right there. The designer is not considered (necessarily) to be morally responsible. In fact, that would be quite inconsistent with the argument's incompatibilist conclusion (as you note). The designer can just as well not be morally responsible.

The key point is this: what is disturbing about the designer is the design, and not the designer's being morally responsible. If the designer's moral responsibility is tripping you up, simply remove it from your understanding of the argument. It works just as well without it.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Kip,

If the designer isn't a morally responsible person, then it is dubious to suppose that they have the features that the designer arguments posit the designer to have. Moreover, the designer becomes equivalent to a mere force of nature.

What the designer is does matter if your goal is to try and convince a compatibilists to change his mind. If you just want to do a little back patting, no need to present arguments to do that.

[Cihan]

Mark S.,

You could see the argument as a reductio ad absurdum. The argument could state, "suppose there could be morally responsible agents in a deterministic world and suppose Diane was one of them" and proceeded to show the impossibility of moral responsibility therein.

This is in the same spirit of Euclides' proof of the infinity of primes that starts with the supposition that there is a prime number P that's the greatest prime.

This is such an elementary point that I feel like it needs no discussion.

And no, since the likes of Al Mele take the design argument seriously; rest assured that it's more than "a little back patting".

[Mark Young]

The argument could state, "suppose there could be morally responsible agents in a deterministic world and suppose Diane was one of them" and proceeded to show the impossibility of moral responsibility therein.

I would love to see that argument. Perhaps you could explain how the design arguments implement that pattern?

[Kip]

Mark S.:

It's not dubious that the designer could lack moral responsibility. This is true on a magical/impossibilist conception of MR. And it's also true on traditional compatibilist accounts.

For example, the designer could have a compulsion so that the designer can't resist designing Ernie. Or the designer could lack any conception of good or bad, or right or wrong. There's nothing about the design scenario that requires the designer to be morally responsible.

BTW, I agree that the designer argument doesn't necessarily convince compatibilists. If I recall correctly, Mele is troubled by the idea, but hasn't converted to incompatibilism. Gary Watson says that any compatibilist must be a hard compatibilism, but hasn't renounced compatibilism. Just recently, Fischer confirmed that he doesn't believe that the design arguments undermine his semicompatibilist view.

But I don't think that should stop me from making the argument. In philosophy, few arguments are slam-dunks that make the opposition roll over.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Oops, you asked the question on this thread, so I'll re-post my answer on this thread:

Kip, you ask if Ernie has more options in B [deterministic world] than A [designed world] even though we can stipulate that they are molecule-for-molecule identical. I think the answer is "yes" (again assuming that the designer actually has designs for Ernie). Rather than re-hashing my view once more, let me just offer an analogy that I think illustrates how two internally identical persons can have different options.

Freddy and Eddy are molecule-for-molecule identical. But Freddy, unlike Eddy, has a guardian angel, Diana, who watches over him. If something is about to severely harm or kill Freddy, Diana will intervene to protect him. Alas, Eddy would just get run over by the truck (at which point his molecules would no longer be identically situated to Freddy's!). As it turns out, Freddy and Eddy live identical lives, avoiding severe harms, and dying peacefully in bed.

I think Freddy and Eddy have different options--that different things are possible for them, that different possible worlds are closer or farther from them (e.g., the possible world where Eddy gets crushed by a truck is much closer than the one where Freddy does).

I won't try to make the connections to manipulation arguments here, but I think the connections are there to be made.

[Kip]

Eddy,

I think that Freddy and Eddy have the exact same options even with the Guardian angel. (If you disagree, please explain to me how one of Freddy or Eddy could actually ever act differently than the other).

But let's put that to the side. You inject the following the premise into the question: INTERVENE: if Diana sees Freddy about to act differently, she will intervene.

INVERVENE is nowhere mentioned in my question. I said that Diana designs the agent; I didn't add that "and Diana is an incompetent designer who doesn't trust her design, and so she sticks around to intervene in case it goes bad."

So, in the interest of making progress, and answering the question as I intended it (and not, perhaps, the question you would like me to ask you), let's remove INTERVENE from the question.

Here we go:

Suppose Diana designs Eddy. Blind evolution creates Freddy. They are molecule-by-molecule identical and live exactly the same lives in their respective deterministic worlds.

After Diana designs Eddy, she dies of cardiac arrest. Thus, she cannot intervene, even if she otherwise wanted to. (Of course, she would never need to anyway, because her design is perfect, but let's ignore that for the moment.)

The question is: do you agree (as almost every seems to agree) that Eddy and Freddy have the same amount of freedom and options?

[Mark Smeltzer]

Eddy,

Based on your comment, do you have a general suspicion that Frankfurt cases do not work? Though I'm a full blooded compatibilist, I've long been suspicious about Frankfurt cases for similar reason to what you describe, and I do not use Frankfurt cases to motivate compatibilism.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Kip, just to reiterate, I was offering a case to illustrate how possibilities may depend on more than the internal structure of the agent (or object) under consideration. Look back at my case. It's not about the design argument or Freddy's and Eddy's options for *action* but about what possibilities exist for them. Once you look back at it, do you really think "that Freddy and Eddy have the exact same options even with the Guardian angel"?

[Kip]

Eddy,

1. You didn't answer my (revised) question?!?!?

2. Yes, I think that they have the same options. I'm pretty hardcore on this point (see my post Brittle People and the Varieties of Free Will Not Worth Wanting).

The reason I think they have the same options is this: Freddy and Eddy are both constructed to do the exact same, single thing. So whether there is anyone waiting to stop them from doing something else is irrelevant.

In other words, in order for it to matter, that someone would stop me from doing X, it must first be the case that I would ever do X. Given determinism, Freddy and Eddy will never even try to do X. So X is simply not available to them.

In your comment (above) you say that "possibilities may depend on more than the internal structure of the agent." Perhaps. But they at least depend on the internal structure (whether they depend on more, I leave that open for now). Eddy and Freddy's internal structure already limits their options, in deterministic worlds, to one (call it X). The only external constraint that would matter for them is one that tries to stop them from doing X.

Again, if you disagree, I invite you to explain how Eddy or Freddy would ever try to do something than the same thing they are configured to do.

[Mark Young]

Eddy, you said that the connections between the guardian angel scenario and the manipulation arguments are there, but that you wouldn't make them. Do you think the following is a fair description of how you view this design scenario?

I'll start by stating the hypotheticals. Eddy and Freddy are molecule-by-molecule identical, in molecule-by-molecule identical worlds, and each world has the exact same set of deterministic laws. The only difference is that Freddy's world was designed by some super-powerful being with the intent that Freddy should rob a bank, while Eddy's world had no such designer.

Your conclusion is that Eddy has more options than Freddy.

The basis of your conclusion is that the relevant possible worlds for Eddy include ones where he does not rob the bank, whereas those for Freddy do not.

The reason for the difference in relevant possible worlds is that Freddy is in a world designed for him to rob a bank, and so any possible worlds with him not robbing the bank were ruthlessly weeded out long before he was capable of making decisions on his (compatibilist) own. Edyy's worlds have had no such pruning.

Any objections?

[Eddy Nahmias]

Mark Y, no objections from me. You've certainly described one way I think the designed and deterministic worlds are different. If we put the designer in the deterministic world, we might need to re-describe the weeding out process.

Mark S, I'm not sure about Frankfurt cases. I am starting to worry that a counterfactual intervener may cut off relevant possibilities in ways similar to a designer and different from determinism and that difference might make a difference to what compatibilists should say.

[Mark Young]

Eddy,

OK, I think I understand about the options. Let me try a third variation and see if I have your response right.

Teddy is molecule-by-molecule identical to Eddy and Freddy, in a molecule-by-molecule identical world with the exact same set of deterministic laws.

Teddy's world was designed, but Teddy's designer had slightly different plans than Freddy's did: Teddy's designer wanted the bank to be robbed either by Teddy or Betty. The designer didn't care which of them robbed the bank, it just so happened that the first design she came up with that had one of them robbing the bank was one where Teddy was the robber.

Now Teddy has relevant possible worlds where he is not the robber -- worlds where the designer found a Betty-the-robber design first. Teddy has more options than Freddy, but less options than Eddy.

(1st) Is that a fair statement of your position?

(2nd) Would it follow from these stories that you hold Eddy and Teddy morally responsibile for robbing the bank, but Freddy not?

(3rd) Would you say that Teddy's MR was mitigated (due to having far less options than he would have had in an undesigned world)? (I know that you said that determinism does not mitigate MR or FW, but this would be mitigation due to design/manipulation.)

Lastly....

The designer in Freddy's world (Diana) was not herself designed in such a way that she would want to make Freddy a bank robber -- it just sort of happened (compare: Eddy just sort of happened to want to rob a bank). So Diana had possible worlds where she did not design Freddy to rob a bank -- worlds where she designed Etta to rob the bank instead, or worlds where she didn't design a bank robbery at all.

Why are those worlds not relevant to Freddy's situation?

[Mark Young]

Hmph -- the last part of my last message isn't getting at what I wanted to get at. That question has a simple and boring answer. Let me try again....

The difference between Eddy's and Freddy's world is solely in the action of Diana. It is the fact that Diana intended Freddy to rob a bank and manipulated the world to bring it about that makes all the difference w.r.t. the relevant possible worlds (and, presumably, moral responsibility).

You said that if Diana were put in the deterministic world that we might have to "re-describe the weeding out process." I take it that that means that the result would be the same, but the description of how it was brought about would change. Let's suppose that we have settled on an appropriate description of what an embedded Diana did -- how she made it come about that Freddy had no option but to rob the bank.

If the important thing is that Diana intended Freddy to rob a bank, then presumably it wouldn't matter how difficult it was for her to bring about the result. She looks into the matter, figures out what needs to be true in order that Freddy will rob the bank, and brings it about. Her actions, however easy or hard she finds them, remove any option for Freddy not to rob the bank. She might need to assemble a crack team of geneticists and guide them in their work. She might only need to move one sheet of paper from an in-box to an out-box on the same desk. Either way, if her goal was to make it come about (deterministically) that Freddy robs the bank, and her actions do bring it about, then Freddy's options are curtailed, and his MR erased.

But what if she looks into the matter, and finds that she doesn't need to do anything? The world is already on a deterministic path that leads to Freddy (who has not even been conceived yet) robbing the bank. Is the mere fact that she intended to do whatever it took to make him a bank robber enuf, in this circumstance, to erase Freddy's moral responsibility for robbing the bank?