>-- The Garden of Forking Paths --<

Morality without responsibility

I have posted a draft of a piece on morality without responsibility on the SSRN site (--the abstract-and-download site recently described by Brian Leiter).   Comments and suggestions would be deeply appreciated.

Evil and Libertarianism

I want to follow up on one of Eddy’s older posts.  On July 10, 2006, in a post titled “Free Will in the World Cup”, Eddy asked:

“For that matter, why is it that in the case of other foolish and seemingly irrational acts, like suicide terrorism, people are so much less interested in applying their theory of mind modules to figure out what drives the behavior and so much more likely to just say it's evil (is there a boundary past which we give up trying to explain or simply cannot explain certain actions)?”

    Those words really resonated with me.  Surely, I thought, Eddy was picking up on a real phenomenon: people were less able or willing to understand the behavior of wrongdoers and more willing to attribute their behavior to evil simpliciter.  Indeed, Eddy was making a point I tried to make on September 11th 2004, in a post titled “Who Was Morally Responsible For September 11?”: “The world's response to the events of September 11, 2001 suggests that our intuitions about freedom and responsibility are, in some ways, mistaken…”

    When I wrote my post on September 11th 2004, I had not yet read about cognitive biases.  But last summer I did research on many such biases that might be relevant to the free will problem.  Fortunately, I discovered research documenting exactly the phenomenon that Eddy and I were talking about.  I quote my findings below:

“Asymmetrical attributions of blame may reach their zenith in the process of demonization (Ellard et al. 2002). Demonization is an unwillingness to empathize with another such that the person regards this other as evil.  Despite correcting for any potential differences in personality, by having the same person write both a story as a perpetrator and a story as a victim, Baumeister, Stillwell, and Wotman found significant differences between the two kinds of stories: perpetrators recalled much shorter time spans, victims regarded the actions of perpetrators as more inexplicable, and victims regarded the perpetrator’s actions as more harmful (1990).  One might worry that these findings are only relevant to attributions of evil but Baumeister and Vohs are quick to suggest that demonization admits of degrees and so may be a common feature of our responsibility practices:

‘To be sure, our research sample consisted of many everyday conflicts and misdeeds, few of which were sufficiently important to qualify for the grandiose term evil.  Our assumption, however, is that similar processes operate in everyday transgressions as in large-scale misdeeds, and that if anything, the gap between victim and perpetrator would probably be even larger in horrendously evil events than in petty, everyday conflicts.’
(2005: 87)

    In the context of the free will debate, the most important feature of demonization may be the failure of victims to understand the actions and motivations of perpetrators.  Baumeister et al. reported that although “[b]oth victims and perpetrators distorted their stories—and to almost identical degrees,” “the weight of the evidence tends to be closer to the perpetrators’ accounts” (2005: 89-90).  This is so because “[p]eople rarely attack for no reason” even though the “perpetrator’s motives are often opaque to the victim” and “victims cannot or will not see this perspective” (2005: 88-89).”   

    This research fits well with Nichols & Knobe’s data suggesting that affect tends to make people more free willist.  But I don’t think it is quite right to suggest that these persons become more compatibilist because such actions do not “come out of nowhere.”  The observer of wrongdoing in a deterministic world can always explain, in principle, where the behavior came from: just trace the states of the universe back in time, according to the laws of physics.

    Instead, I take the data from Baumeister and his colleages to suggest that angry or affected persons simply lose their grip on determinism.  Bully soccer players, or suicide terrorists, tend to make us more libertarian, not more compatibilist.  Indeed, it is most interesting that, according to the Luck Objection, the actions of libertarian agents “come out of nowhere” and cannot be attributed to the agent, just as victims see transgressors as “attacking for no reason.”

    I’m optimistic about the prospects of cognitive science to help us solve the free will problem.  Baumeister et al.’s research helps explain third person attributions of evil and may be relevant to understanding third person attributions of freedom and responsibility.  It suggests that such attributions may vary in degree, according to context.  But further research would need to explore first person attributions of freedom and responsibility and the ways in which different contexts inspire different attributions.  Other biases (such as the illusion of control), and other contexts, may also be important.  Such research has not yet solved the free will problem.  But it suggests to me how we might go about trying to solve it.

Smilansky, Van Inwagen, and You

Once again, the Indomitable GFP Reading Group of Destiny returns with another action-packed episode, with enough chills, thrills, and spills to keep you bathed in the glow of your monitor just a bit longer. In this episode, the Hero of Haifa - a mild mannered professor usually known as Saul Smilansky-  swings into action to test the the Sultan of South Bend, his excellency Peter van Inwagen. The target? The Sultan's forthcoming edict: "How to Think About the Problem of Free Will."

Will the edict stand? Will the Hero prevail? Who will the people favor? Dear reader, only YOU can decide.

Saul's comments begin below . . . .

(Thanks to Saul and Peter)
---------------
Peter van Inwagen’s paper “How to Think about the Problem of Free Will” is written with his usual admirable clarity, force, and scope. Anyone working or thinking seriously about the free will problem, whatever his or her position, will benefit from reading this challenging paper. It can help us to open up a meta-free will debate, about what it is valuable to discuss at all, and how. And the stakes are high: Peter calls for no less than a radical change in the whole direction of the contemporary free will debate. The fact that this proposed transformation is traditionalist, wishing to take us back to the golden past, should not hide from us the truly revolutionary nature of this paper. If Peter is right, many (and perhaps most) of us have been wasting our time, while if he were to be widely followed and is mistaken about the debate, as I believe that he is, this would set back the philosophical investigation of the free will issue enormously.

Peter does a number of things in his paper, and I will not be able to address them all. After briefly presenting some of his main contentions, I shall make a preliminary point, and then sketch a very different construal of what the free will problem is about.

Van Inwagen’s points (that I will discuss)

Broadly, Peter sees the debate in the following way (and I urge you to read his paper and not settle for my brief outline). There are (a) seemingly unanswerable arguments for the incompatibility of free will with determinism, and (b) seemingly unanswerable arguments for the incompatibility of free will with indeterminism. If all those arguments are indeed unanswerable, there is no free will. But (c) there are also seemingly unanswerable arguments for the dependency of moral responsibility on free will. It is, however, evident that moral responsibility does exist. But all this cannot be true together: it cannot be the case that there is moral responsibility, which is dependent upon free will, while there is no free will. So, at least one of the claims made above must be false. Given that moral responsibility is evident, either (a), (b), or (c) must be denied. The free will problem is about deciding which one.  (pp.1-2)

Free will, according to PVI, is the “power or ability to do otherwise than one in fact does”. And “compatibilists and incompatibilists mean the same thing by ‘able’”. Therefore, “’free will’, ‘incomatibilist free will’, ‘compatibilist free will’ and ‘libertarian free will’ are four names for one and the same thing”. (p.8)

Much of what goes on in the free will debate is, therefore, a mere pernicious confusion, “led astray by bad terminology and confused ideas” (p.14). For example, “It’s simply not true that there are two distinct things, libertarian free will and compatibilist free will, and that libertarians want the one and don’t regard the other as worth having” (p.12). It is therefore not true that libertarians want something else than compatibilists or soft-determinists. “We present-day incompatibilists see the free will that compatibilists believe in as the genuine article; their only mistake, in our view, is to suppose that it, the genuine article, is compatible with determinism” (p.12). In sum, “There is only one variety of free will worth wanting, because there is only one variety of free will: the ability to do otherwise” (p.13). The way to be a compatibilist is to follow David Lewis and discuss the "Consequence Argument" (p.19).

A preliminary point

How should we understand the issue of free will? It seems to me that we should try to formulate the issue so that what are widely accepted as major contributions in the contemporary debate are not excluded outright. Peter’s suggestion clearly doesn’t meet this guidance. Perhaps the two figures that have been most influential in the contemporary debate are Harry Frankfurt and P.F. Strawson. A major insight of Frankfurt was that it seems that people can have free will and be morally responsible, even in situations where they did not have the power or ability to do anything except the very thing that they did do. That is the intuitive force of “Frankfurt-type” examples, namely, that “ability to do otherwise” is NOT required for free will and moral responsibility. This position is of course (and reasonably) contentious. But it is excluded by definition in Peter’s very formulation of free will (see the previous two paragraphs). P.F. Strawson’s contribution to the free will debate was made in terms of the reactive attitudes and of the justificatory force that they have. It seems that for Strawson's "scepticism-proof" neo-Humeanism there is even less room under the constraining guidelines for the debate that we are being offered. It might be countered that it IS after all possible that even such central positions will be completely mistaken, and perhaps Frankfurt, Strawson and the many philosophers who they have influenced are talking about the free will equivalent of the “ether”, and not about reality. But a very strong case has to be made in defence of such a claim, and I don’t see it. In sum, it is not clear why we should construe the issues in such very narrow and exclusionary ways. On the other hand, we immediately see how much that is interesting and fruitful would be lost to the debate, if we adopted Peter’s Draconian constraints. When I shortly set out in outline my own alternative understanding, we will (I think) see further reasons for not accepting these constraints.

A very different way to see the free will problem (and hence what the debate should be like)

The quickest way in which I can sketch an alternative to Peter’s way of seeing things, and show the attractions of this alternative, is to take up the challenge at its critical points. I will sketch the way I see compatibilism, and then show that the notion of “compatibilist free will” is relatively clear, that it is clearly something very different from "libertarian free will", and that what separates the different positions on the free will debate follows from these differences.

COMPATIBILISM is the view that even if everything is determined people can have the sort of control over their actions that suffices for moral responsibility (and concomitant notions).

The “suffices” here is ambiguous, hence it is useful to distinguish between

MODERATE COMPATIBILISTS, who believe that compatibilist control or free will suffices for SOME measure of moral responsibility (but perhaps not for all significant forms or levels of moral responsibility), and EXTREME COMPATIBILISTS, who think that compatibilist control or free will suffices for ALL the worthwhile forms or levels of moral responsibility. Such a moderate compatibilist might hence also be at the same time (gasp!) partly a hard determinist, and think that there are also important forms or levels of moral responsibility (and desert, and moral worth, etc.) that are impossible under determinism, and hence that determinism does matter greatly. I am in fact such a moderate compatibilist and a partial (or moderate) hard determinist, which adds up into making me a “dualist” on the compatibility question. I think that there are at least two and very distinct varieties of free will in some sense worth wanting, the compatibilist and the libertarian. In my book I sought to combine the partial but valid insights both of compatibilism and of the type of hard determinism which morns the absence of libertarian free will. 

Clearly all this is grossly muddled, and disallowed, according to van Inwagen’s way of understanding the problem. But while I may well be mistaken, I don’t see that my way of speaking lies outside of the free will debate, nor that is it trivially mistaken. And (if I may say so), it also seems fruitful for those who have other views on free will to think about such an alternative position. If this is so, Peter’s advice about how to understand the issues should not be followed.

COMPATIBILIST FREE WILL is the capacity and ability people have (even under determinism)   to recognize options, to understand and evaluate reasons, to reflect critically upon their desires, to form their choices in accordance with their reasons and desires, and to act effectively upon their choices.
[or something like that.]

In another way, compatibilist free will is the sort of control that compatibilists investigate. But why do compatibilists think that we can have moral responsibility even under determinism? Clearly, because they are less demanding: they settle for such lowly forms of local control that exist even under determinism. They think compatibilist free will suffices.

Arguably, most people most of the time have compatibilist free will. When people perceive new options, reason better, reflect upon their desires, enhance their self-control, increase their power to pursue their choices, and so on, they (I claim) are increasing their free will (and capacity for behaving responsibly). People who do not have such pedestrian, compatibilist, free will – because they are under the power of overwhelming compulsions and fears, say – ARE MUCH LESS FREE. The kleptomaniac or alcoholic, just as the person who is afraid to leave her house, or must constantly wash her hands, or has hallucinations she cannot distinguish from reality, are not free in the sense that most people are. And – this is very important – these people would typically wish to be released from the grasp of the forces harming their free will.

But notice that the difference between the free and unfree here has NOTHING to do with determinism. The difference between such examples of lack of freedom and normal, more or less free human beings is not that the one group is determined and the other not (if we assume here that determinism rules all human actions). What make the crucial difference are the type of deterministic processes that are going on, and their impact upon compatibilist control, rather than the mere fact of determinism. I think that if Peter himself were to become convinced of determinism he would, on reflection, still see that some unfortunate people have much less free will (reflective control over their actions) than others, on account of such compulsions (and the other factors discussed by compatibilists). He might admit that they have good reason to wish to become more free, in compatibilist terms. And he might even think that some (those who have compatibilist free will) might take part in a Community of Responsibility while others (whose level of compatibilist control is very low) cannot. That being as it may, such considerations show that compatibilist free will is both a clear and an important notion, and (more controversially) that most people most of the time have quite a large measure of it.

What, then, is in contention? Some determinists (the extreme hard determinists) and libertarians put the bar of freedom and moral responsibility much higher: such pedestrian forms of control as we have considered do not suffice for genuine moral responsibility, they claim. They are more demanding, THEY WANT MORE. There is some truth here, and compatibilist free will indeed does not give us everything, morally and personally, that we thought we could have, and that it matters that we don't have (recall that I am also a partial hard determinist). Yet, I also think that such extreme incompatibilists are too extreme when they completely deny the importance of commonplace compatibilist free will. Recall the kleptomaniac and alcoholic. But that is a big issue that I cannot argue here further. What I believe that everyone should recognize, pace van Inwagen, is that those who seek (or mourn the absence of) something beyond compatibilist free will, are seeking (or morning the absence of) something ELSE. This, properly called libertarian free will, is some form of transcendent ability to control one’s actions, which goes beyond anything that is possible within a deterministic world. It certainly goes beyond the models of free will offered by compatibilists. I am not the right person to try to make sense of this ambitious notion, but some such thing is what libertarians try to describe, and in doing so they go beyond the commonplace compatibilist forms of control. This other thing is also what libertarians WANT, in the precise sense that they think that moral responsibility requires it, and hence they hope that it exists – again, distinctly apart from the pedestrian compatibilist forms of control. In order to explain this very different thing libertarians utilize indeterminism (which is of no use whatsoever to compatibilists explicating compatibilist free will), or postulate a new form of (“agent”) causation. 

There is hence, as far as I can see, no problem in making sense of the notion of “compatibilist free will”, and in seeing that it is a very different and much more conventional thing than “libertarian free will”. Similarly, it makes perfectly good sense (and even happens to be true) to say that (extreme) compatibilists do not see why anyone would want libertarian free will (they are happy with mere reasons-responsiveness etc.), while libertarians do want it – otherwise they would be content to lie alongside the lion of determinism, as the compatibilists are. 

To go back to the beginning of Peter’s paper, what, then, is the free will problem about? As I have written in the Garden before, I have found it helpful to think about it as a combination of four very different BIG questions:
1. Is there libertarian free will (LFW)? (Here would go as sub-questions the issue of determinism, the question whether libertarian free will is at all coherent, and so on.)
2. If LFW does not exist, do we still have moral responsibility and the related things (e.g. desert)? This is, of course, the familiar compatibility question, best asked as the question whether we can have moral responsibility without LFW (rather than with complete determinism).
3. If we do not have moral responsibility (etc.) because of the absence of LFW, or if MR is at least seriously harmed by the absence of LFW, is this a good or a bad thing?
4. What can and should we do about the conclusions to questions 1-3?

In our daily lives as free will investigators, many specific questions will concern us: How can compatibilist free will be enhanced (irrespective of LFW)? How important are things like rationality, or identification, or second-order reflection, or tracking values, or self-expression, within compatibilist free will? If there is no LFW (so that all we can have are pedestrian compatibilist forms of control), how deep can compatibilist notions of free will, desert, justice, self-respect or moral worth be? How much do we need to revise our view of free will and moral responsibility, if there is no LFW? If there is no LFW, is there a difference between the viability of the notions of free will, ability to do otherwise, moral responsibility, blameworthiness, praiseworthiness, self-respect and desert (i.e., can we have some but not others)? To what extent ought our decisions about the degree of compatibilist free will and moral responsibility to be context-dependent? Or affected by contractual or utilitarian considerations? How can we combine moderate compatibilism and moderate hard determinism? What sort of free will do people believe in, and how much can such beliefs (and related reactions and practices) change? What would be the effects of the decline of belief in libertarian free will, and should we encourage it? These are just a few quick examples of the many fruitful questions that we have been discovering relatively recently. It makes perfectly good sense to speak in such mostly van Inwagen-forbidden ways, and I think that doing so is the key to making progress on the free will problem.

Pereboom on the Weirdness of Compatibilism

I want to write a post about an interesting point Pereboom makes about compatibilism.  It is a point I’ve tried to make, however inelegantly, several times before.  But Pereboom is an eloquent writer and does a better job than I could.  I first heard him give this argument at the symposium on Fischer’s work at Inland 2006.  Now he has published an article with largely the same arguments in Philosophical Books.  Here’s Pereboom:

“While this ‘legitimately calling to moral account’ notion may be a bona fide sense of moral responsibility, it is not the one at issue in the free will debate. For incompatibilists would not find our being morally responsible in this sense to be even prima facie incompatible with determinism. The notion that incompatibilists do claim to be incompatible with determinism is rather the one defined in terms of basic desert.”

Pereboom is writing in terms of desert and moral responsibility.  But, I think, the point also applies, and with more force, to talk about “free will.”  In short, Pereboom is pointing out the remarkable, but obvious, fact that compatibilists are committed to the following claim

WEIRD: The power or faculty of “free will” is something nobody would deny most humans have most of the time.

Now, suppose you were learning about the free will debate for the first time—as all of us must have at some point.  You learn about compatibilist conceptions of free will and you learn about incompatibilist conceptions.  Perhaps you’re sufficiently unprejudiced and trying to decide which one actually captures what “free will” means.  If you are like me—and, I imagine, most compatibilists—the weirdness of compatibilism counts against it.  Personally, I thought something like “well, the compatibilist thinks free will is something that most people have, most of the time, and that just can’t be right.”  But the question is: when I think “that just can’t be right”, am I correct?

Some points:

1. Compatibilism isn’t committed to WEIRD per se.  For example, I can imagine that a compatibilist is genuinely committed to requiring powers the existence of which is controversial.  The neurotic compatibilism of Nahmias is something like this (although, even then, the threats that concern Nahmias don’t seem so troubling, and he seems to share my optimism about this).  Similarly, a compatibilist might require “free will” to involve something that no human being has—perhaps something like an IQ of 2000.  But, in practice, most compatibilists are committed to this weird claim.  Whether we are discussing Fischer’s ownership and reasons-responsiveness, Frankfurt’s identification and hierarchy of desires, Watson’s concern with values, Dennett’s list of evolved faculties, these are all powers that nobody would deny most people have most of the time.

2. To appreciate this point, consider this analogy: people are arguing about whether ZERODOME exists (you can substitute the non-sensical word of your choice).  The existence of ZERODOME is very contentious.  People have been arguing for millennia.  People have been put to death because of the belief in ZERODOME; others have been spared the death penalty because people doubted whether ZERODOME exists.  One group says: ZERODOME is the Loch Ness monster.  This makes sense, because people have argued about whether the Loch Ness monster exists.  Sure, only one of the Loch Ness believers, or the Loch Ness doubters, can be right at the end of the day.  But at least they were arguing.  Another group, however, says ZERODOME is the city of London.  But this is strange.  It was extremely contentious that ZERODOME exists, yet it is not extremely contentious that London exists.  In fact, it’s not contentious at all.  So it would be very strange if ZERODOME and London were the same thing.  That analysis doesn’t seem to capture the controversial element of whatever ZERODOME was supposed to be.  Yet this is precisely what the London group says: ZERODOME is something that nobody would ever doubt exists.  So a newcomer, trying to decide whether ZERODOME means the Loch Ness monster or London, might feel inclined towards believing it means the Loch Ness monster.

3. It is important to note that you can’t say this about the other analyses of free will in the literature.  Consider first the libertarian conception of free will.  Unlike ownership and reasons-responsiveness, and unlike having five fingers on each hand, the question of whether we are unmoved movers (e.g agent causes) or whether spooky physics in our brains gives us free will is controversial.  Some people actually believe we have these powers and some people strongly doubt that we do.  The libertarian analysis of free will is not weird, in the same way that the compatibilist analysis is, because it is consistent with “free will” being controversial.  One can even make this point, with only slightly less force, about logically impossible conceptions of free will, because even their proponents, like Galen Strawson and Thomas Nagel, insist that—however impossible this kind of free will is—belief in it is incredibly hard to shake.  Fischer, Frankfurt, Watson, and Dennett say no such thing about their kind of free will—they never doubted, in their wildest dreams, that most humans, most of the time, have these weaker powers.  So, again, the other parties of the debate analyze free will in a way that is consistent with people doubting that free will exists.  Compatibilists do not—they make the weird claim that free will is something nobody would doubt that most people have most of the time.

I am not 100% sure that this argument, so formulated, is right.  Is it not possible, for example, that people might argue about whether something (“free will”) exists without knowing, and only later discovering, that it is identical to something that everyone agrees exists?  But I suspect that a better formulation would work.

The compatibilist can say: “Imagine that MYSTERYKEY is a key that opens the mystery door to the tomb.  People argue about whether MYSTERYKEY exists—it is unclear whether any key in existence will open that door.  But everyone agrees that KNOWNKEY exists.  KNOWNKEY is a big gold key that the mayor owns.  The mayor has never tried to open the mystery door with KNOWNKEY.  One day, he tried to open the door with KNOWNKEY and it opens.  People discover that MYSTERYKEY and KNOWNKEY are the same.  So, even though people doubted that MYSTERYKEY existed and agreed that KNOWNKEY existed, MYSTERYKEY and KNOWNKEY can still be the same.”

I suspect that a dogged incompatibilist can resist these sorts of counter-examples.  Pereboom’s point about the weirdness of compatibilism has a strong pull on my intuitions.  But much more needs to be said.  Perhaps the one who needs to say the most is the compatibilist.  Because compatibilism is weird, in a way that incompatibilism is not (as described above), it seems that compatibilists owe us an explanation for this weirdness, like the explanation the mayor can give for how MYSTERYKEY and KNOWNKEY are identical.  Although there is no shortage of compatibilist writings for me to look over, it’s not clear to me that compatibilists have provided such an explanation (and if they have, please feel free to remind me).  They seem to still owe us an explanation for how the existence of free will ended up not being contentious at all.

David Brooks on the Morality Line

David Brooks has an article at the NYT (behind a pay wall) on moral responsibility in the Virginia Tech shootings. A version of the article has also been posted here (free).

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s sad.”

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

“I’m glad he’s sad.”

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

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

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

By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!

Coming to this very blog, a display of mystery, illusion, and philosophical prestigiditation! The Haifan Illusionist (aka Saul Smilansky) will expound on the recently discovered text "How To Think about the Problem of Free Will." Ancient sources attribute the text to the Mysterionist of South Bend, Peter van Inwagen.

The prestige will be unveiled sometime during the week of April 30th. Prepare to be amazed.

Warning: The Garden of Forking Paths is not responsible for any fainting that should occur from laws of nature being defied or the revelation of other arcana best not seen by the weak of mind. Indeed, the Garden may not be responsible for anything at all.

(Thanks to Saul Smilansky and Peter van Inwagen for agreeing to comment and provide the paper, respectively).

Cokely and Feltz on the Folk Containing Both Compatibilists and Incompatibilists

I'm surprised that this has not been mentioned (to my knowledge) at the Garden yet: the Experimental Philosophy blog has a post introducing new research by Cokely and Feltz on free will and folk intuitions.  They describe their main thesis thus:

"Our main finding is that there seem to be groups of people who express compatibilist or incompatibilist intuitions--hence, the folk are not compatibilists or incompatibilists. Moreover, contrary to Nahmias et al's tentative position, our data suggest the biggest group of folk are incompatibilists. Section 3 reports these new findings (sections 1 and 2 are background)."

Their conclusions seem intuitive to me.  But I need to read it again to digest how these new results square with the earlier findings by Knobe, Nahmias, and their colleagues.  I'm also very curious to see how these results might fit with the research that Nahmias, with others, is currently conducting.

The paper is here.
The Experimental Philosophy post is here.

Enjoy.

Neurolaw Revisited

As I noted a few weeks back, there was a recent article in The New York Times by Jeffrey Rosen concerning the growing new field of neuro-law.  The central issue in Rosen's piece is the role that cognitive neuroscience (CNS) can (and should) play with respect to the criminal law (and its underlying notion of criminal culpability).  In the article, Rosen mentions an interesting paper by O. Carter Snead entitled “Neuroimaging and the ‘Complexity’ of Capital Punishment.”  And while Snead mostly limits his attention to the role that CNS could play with respect to capital sentencing (and punishment) rather than punishment more generally, for present purposes I want to use his argument as a way of jump starting a discussion concerning the general relationship between CNS and criminal law.

For starters, I want to first provide a brief overview of what I am going to call the Cognitive Neurolaw Agenda (CNLA)—an agenda that Snead associates with the following two-fold goal:  (a) the short term goal of CNLA: get CNS findings into the courtroom as mitigating evidence, (b) the long term goal of CNLA: use findings from CNS both to debunk retributivism at the institutional level and to develop a forward looking two-pronged preventative and rehabilitative regime. 

According to Snead, the proponents of CNLA envision the long term goal as a focused attempt to adopt a more humane and compassionate response to the crime problem than the present retributivist regime. Snead criticizes CNLA on two fronts.  On the one hand, he tries to show that the short term goal and long term goal of CNLA are inconsistent.  By his lights, the present goal of using data from CNS to mitigate or exculpate blame would be undermined by the long-term goal of purging the criminal law of retributivist principles.  On the other hand, Snead claims that if the long-term goal of CNLA were to come to fruition, it would make the system of criminal law more rather than less brutalizing and inhumane. 

Jonathan Cohen and Joshua Greene are two individuals who advocate for something roughly like CNLA.  In a very fascinating paper entitled “For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything,” they argue that as the public becomes better informed with respect to the gathering data from CNS, it will have a transformative effect on our beliefs about agency, autonomy, free will, and moral responsibility.  Moreover, according to Cohen and Greene, this paradigm shift in our self-conception will usher in a paradigm shift with respect to criminal law as well.  On their view, a forward looking and preventative and rehabilitative regime will eventually replace the backward looking retributive model we have now.  As Snead correctly points out, “Cohen and Greene do not merely believe that the overthrow of retribution by cognitive neuroscience will yield a better functioning system of criminal justice.  They believe that it will make it more humane for criminal defendants” (Snead: 45). 

Proponents of CNLA not only believe that retributivism is undermined by the gathering evidence from CNS, they also believe that purging the criminal law of retributivistic principles will have a humanizing effect on the law.  In this respect, the CNLA fits quite nicely with the progressive and reformative theories of punishment developed earlier by Becarria, Bentham, Wooten, and others.  What is envisioned is no less than an entire paradigm shift from a regime that focuses on the suffering of the defendants to one that focuses on both the defendant’s well-being as well as the well-being of society at large.  The benefit of CNS—according to proponents of CNLA—is that it may help soften (or perhaps even eliminate) the public’s retribuvistic impulses and beliefs—thereby paving the way for the transformation of the criminal law envisioned two centuries ago by reformers such as Bentham.

Snead’s main criticism of CNLA is that:

Simply put, the project, taken as a whole, is utterly at war with itself.  The short term aim relies on a particular theory of mitigation that is firmly grounded in the notion of just deserts—a principle that is explicitly rejected by the architects of the cognitive neuroscience project as destructive and unintelligible (Snead: 54).

On his view, “it is only by virtue of the doctrine of just deserts that neuroimaging evidence of the roots of criminal violence can be understood as mitigating…the long term aspiration seeks to undermine and destroy the very distributive principle of retributivist justice upon which that of the short term depends.” (Snead: 54)  Moreover, not only does Snead think that the long term success of CNLA will undermine the use of CNS for establishing mitigating factors, he also claims that the data from CNS will still be used to establishing aggravating factors and future dangerousness.  As he says:

In a further ironic twist, once retribution is snuffed out as a distributive principles of punishment is replaced with a regime that single-mindedly concerns itself with the prediction of crime and the incapacitation of criminals, the only possible significance of the body of neuro-imaging research on the roots of criminal violence for capital sentencing (on which the short term approach is erected) is as an aggravating factor of future dangerousness (Snead: 60).

In addition to purportedly establishing that CNLA is internally inconsistent, Snead also claims that even if the long term goal of CNLA were to come to fruition, it would have a brutalizing rather than a humanizing effect on the criminal law.  In supporting this claim, he suggests that:

Many of the features of the criminal justice system that arte frequently criticized as draconian and inhumane, are in fact, motivated by the consequentialist crime-control rationale of predicting and controlling dangerous behavior.  Such measures include: laws that authorize life sentences for recidivists; laws that reduce the age at which offenders can be tried as adults; laws that punish gang membership; laws that require the registration of sex offenders; laws that increase sentences dramatically by virtue of past history; and, most paradigmatically, laws that provide for the involuntary commitment of predators who ‘show difficulty’ in controlling their behavior (Snead: 63).

Snead takes these examples as evidence that if the proponents of CNLA are successful in transforming both public opinion and the criminal law, this success will produce more rather than less draconian punishments.

I am presently working on a response to Snead’s paper—but it is still really rough around the edges.  For now, I just wanted to float two knee-jerk responses to Snead that may hopefully generate some discussion here on GFP.

Objection One:

Snead tries to show that if CNLA’s long term goal of purging the law of retributivism were successful, defense attorneys would no longer be able to use evidence from CNS as a mitigating factor.  According to Snead, the very notion of a mitigating circumstance only makes sense against the backdrop of retributivist justice.  After all, the whole point of trying to establish that there were mitigating circumstances surrounding a defendant’s actions is to show that he is less than fully blameworthy.  But if—as the proponents of CNLA suggest—no one is blameworthy, then the very idea of mitigating circumstances becomes otiose.  If all of us are equally blameless, there is no blame to mitigate!  Snead takes this to show that in some sense CNLA defeats itself.  But is this correct? 

The most obvious move for the proponent of CNLA to make is to simply deny that the underlying issues that presently arise in the courtroom when judges and juries consider mitigating and aggravating circumstances would have no roll to play in a purely forward looking regime.  Keep in mind that consequentialists such as Bentham insist that certain restrictions are to be put in place when it comes to punishment.  Minimally, in order for punishment to be justified in a given case, punishing that individual must not be groundless, inefficacious, unprofitable, or needless.  On this view, determining whether punishing an individual fails on one of these fronts requires judges and jurors to look very carefully at the specific circumstances surrounding a violation as well as the specific circumstances surrounding the mental states of the agent.  Finding out that someone had less than full control over their action does not make them less blameworthy—after all, in some sense, no one is blameworthy according to the proponents of CNLA—but it does make punishing them less sensible.

If Snead just means to claim that the long-term goal of CNLA would undermine the notion of a mitigating circumstance, then what he says is in some sense true by definition.  After all, if “mitigating” just means “blame reducing,” then clearly the long-term goals of CNLA threaten the role of mitigating circumstances in the criminal law.  But notice this would also undermine the notion of an aggravating circumstance as well.  But it does not follow than the very same issues that arise when we presently consider aggravating and mitigating factors won’t arise in a post-retributivistic world.  Just because we may no longer talk about a defendant’s blame, we may nevertheless be very interested in his upbringing, his beliefs, his mental and emotional capacities, his impulsiveness, his susceptibility to addiction, and the degree of remorse he expresses.  These are all factors that will surely continue to play a central role in our criminal proceedings—albeit for different reasons.  Rather than appealing to these factors under the banner of determining moral and legal blameworthiness, we will appeal to them under the banner of determining what needs to be done in order to rehabilitate and reintegrate criminals into society more effectively and efficiently. 

Moreover, by focusing on crime prevention and rehabilitation rather than general deterrence, the proponent of CNLA can further allay many of Snead’s worries since much of his fretting seems to be driven by the assumption that all forward-looking punishment theorists are going to focus on general deterrence more than prevention and rehabilitation (see, for instance, his discussion of the debate between Bentham and Blackstone concerning excuses and utilitarianism). 

Critics of forward-looking theories of punishment often conveniently forget that these theories almost always focus first and foremost on crime prevention rather than general deterrence.  The importance of this forgetfulness is a story for another day.  For now, I just want to point out that Snead makes a blanket assumption about forward-looking theories of punishment that cannot withstand close scrutiny.  Nearly all of the factors that retributivists think are relevant to determining how much punishment criminals deserve will be relevant to the consequentialist’s attempt to figure out how to reform and rehabilitate criminals.  Indeed, the only factor that will be irrelevant to consequentialist is how much suffering criminals deserve for their transgressions.

Objection Two:

Snead claims that forward-looking theories of punishment are ironically to blame for what he takes to be the recent dehumanizing of the criminal law (e.g., mandatory minimum sentences, trying children as adults, and the like).  My response is two-fold:  First, his claim appears to be false on the facts.  The criminology literature over the past twenty years reveals that the pernicious and counter-productive punishments Snead identifies have been driven not by consequentialism but by the rebirth of retributivism that we witnessed in this country beginning in the late 1970’s.  Moreover, not only does the criminology literature show that Snead is wrong about the source of these new forms of “hard treatment,” it also reveals that most criminologists are painfully aware of just how unsuccessful many of these programs are in the grand scheme of things when it comes to crime prevention.  Indeed, I suspect that one could show that each and every one of the punishments Snead mentioned would fail one of Bentham’s aforementioned four conditions for justified punishment.

Second, even if we grant for the sake of argument that abandoning retributivism would produce longer sentences for less serious violations, Snead’s worries seem to sneak retributivism in through the back door.  Keep in mind that one reason we are particularly keen on making sure we don’t send innocent people to jail is that prisons are brutal, dehumanizing, and depressing places that are designed to punish criminals rather than reform or rehabilitate them.  It is precisely because of the prevalence of hard treatment that makes punishment so brutal.  Minimally, the brutality of our current regime makes the worry about punishing the innocent (or punishing people more than they deserve) all the more pressing.  But if we viewed prisoners as human beings who understandably need our assistance in being part of society rather than apt targets of our retributivistic impulses, “prisons” would look less like dungeons in the dark ages and more like treatment facilities.  For now, we need not worry about what these facilities might look like.  It should suffice to point out that they would not look anything like they do now.  By my lights, Snead’s argument only appears successful because he forgets to take into account just how radically different the criminal law would look if the proponents of CNLA have their way.  His worries about dehumanization are fueled by a failure to take into consideration the myriad of ways that CNLA would change the way society views criminality. 

Once we let go of the idea that people deserve to suffer for their anti-social sins, we will quickly see that what criminals need is encouragement, a sense of self-worth and accomplishment, the ability to read and write, the fortitude and determination to stay off drugs, anger management, treatment for mental illness, job skills, and the like.  And when our best attempts to build up the criminal fail to stave off his future criminality, we may regrettably need to quarantine him.  But the place where he will be housed will not be a prison of ill-repute but a more hospitable place that is not designed to make the individual suffer any more than he already has as a result of his inability to play by the social rules.  By my lights, retributivists such as Snead can only scare us away from forward-looking theories of punishment that focus on prevention and rehabilitation by keeping a lot of the backdrop against which we are asked to judge these theories decidedly retributivistic.  This kind of shortsightedness makes retributivism appear to be part of the solution rather than the ultimate source of the bulk of the problems!

Fischer Heads South

On 26 April, GFP's very own John Fischer will depart the beauty and serenity of Riverside and head south to the dingy Tijuana suburb of San Diego to give a talk entitled "Source Incompatibilism."  Word on the street is that he's going to publically acknowledge his newfound support for SI and his repudiation of semi-compatibilism.  OK, so I just made that up—but one can hope.  (It's not too late to convert, John!)  Any Gardeners in the area wanting to come join the festivities are welcome.  The talk is scheduled for 12:30 on USD's campus.

Neurolaw in The NY Times

I originally hoped that my first post here would be more substantive than this one, but apparently that was not in the cards!  Instead, I simply want to point the Gardeners to an article in yesterday's NYT about neurolaw in the event that some of you have not already seen it.  I thought the crew here might not only find the piece interesting, but it might even open the door to yet another discussion here concerning the thorny relationship between the gathering data in the sciences of the mind and our (shrinking?) autonomy and responsibility. 

Free Will and Cognitive Biases Part 4: The Most Important Bias of All?

When I researched free will and cognitive biases last summer, I found myself in an awkward position. The plausibility of some biases having influence on the free will debate was obvious enough: the illusion of control, the fundamental attribution error, the just world phenomenon, etc. But the plausibility of other biases being relevant was often less obvious. Yet, sometimes, it was these “hard sells” that I, personally, thought would be most important to the debate.

In this shorter post, I want to describe one of the harder sells. To convey the notion, I first want to focus upon the idea of a happy coincidence: people might find certain constraints on their alleged freedom to be less disturbing if they are more confident that things turned out, nevertheless, the “right” way.

Consider this interesting data point: those who tend to be non-realists about free will also to also be non-realists about moral truths. This is true of at least myself, Tamler Sommers, Richard Double, and Joshua Greene (correct me if I have gotten this wrong). Why might this be? It may just be that these persons find themselves attracted to deflationary views in general (e.g. perhaps they enjoy shocking people with their outrageous claims). I want to suggest something deeper is going on: such non-realists feel it is less of a happy coincidence that they are who are they are and do what they do. For example, a person who both (i) believes that killing innocent people is wrong and (ii) finds himself as the sort of person who neither kills innocent people nor wants to do so probably considers this a happy coincidence. Even if he lacks the freedom to be, or have become, such a killer, this freedom does not undermine his sense of free will much, because he has nevertheless found himself on the one, true path (so to speak). A non-realist (or anti-realist) about moral truths, however, does not have this luxury.

Given this consideration about happy coincidences, I wonder: is there a cognitive bias that might be relevant here? I had not thought so until I remembered Smilansky’s lovely phrase “we are merely the unfolding of the given.” Smilanksy is right, I think, to characterize the free will problem as one about the self, and one’s relationship with the self, and this worry about given-ness. Just how disturbing is this given-ness and how disturbing should this given-ness be? There is a prominent cognitive bias that might distort our judgments about that which we are given: it is called the endowment effect. According to the endowment effect, people develop undue liking, or irrational fondness, for that which is given to them. There is similar bias called the mere exposure effect: people develop undue liking, or irrational fondness, for that with which they are familiar.

Suppose that the endowment effect and mere exposure effect are real. Then one tantalizing possibility is that compatibilists and libertarians finds Smilansky’s given-ness to be less disturbing because of a happy accident—an arguably irrational one. The idea here is that, because we are given the original traits and characters we have (the “slant” of our constitution, to use Fischer’s phrase), that alone gives us a preference for being ourselves. And as we grow more familiar with ourselves, at the expense of familiarity with others, this irrational preference grows and continues. Because we prefer being ourselves, we feel less disturbed at the given-ness which Smilansky describes. By analogy, a boy at Christmas might say “wow, I thought it was so awful that I couldn’t choose my own Christmas presents, but then I discovered that I got just the presents I wanted! With a Santa Claus like that, who needs to make their own decisions about presents?” We regard ourselves as happy accidents but, to the extent that these biases are irrational, this may be a mistake. I actually suspect that this bias may be the most relevant of all to the free will problem (which is not to say that I suspect its absolute relevance is great; further experiments may help settle that different question).

The level after next: Clarke on Vihvelin

You've heard of taking it to the next level. Now witness the spectacle, nay, the earth-shattering event of Randy Clarke taking it to the level after next! As Beyonce taught us all to say, I don't think you can handle this. So, get your mama, get your copy of Kadri Vihvelin's paper, and get ready to join in the extraordinary experience of the latest edition of the GFP Online Reading Group.

Thanks to Ed Minar and Phil Topics for letting us post a copy of Kadri's paper.

Randy's comments begin below the line:
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Compatibilists have long argued that having an ability to act is having a causal power or disposition. Incompatibilists have long disagreed. The dispute was, for a long time, side-tracked by the mistaken assumption, on both sides, that causal powers or dispositions are analyzable in terms of simple conditionals: e.g., x is water soluble iff, if x is immersed in water, x dissolves.

Incompatibilists were right that having an ability to act is not analyzable in terms of any such conditional. But the core compatibilist claim, that having an ability to act is having a causal power (or a bundle of dispositions) is nevertheless correct. Seeing where the simple conditional analysis of dispositions goes wrong allows us to see where the simple conditional analysis of ability to act goes wrong, and we can then see that the latter mistake leaves untouched the thesis that an ability to act is a disposition (or a bundle of dispositions). With this correct view of ability to act, we can see that having free will–having the ability to make choices on the basis of reasons--is compatible with determinism, and, indeed, that even in Frankfurt scenarios, agents are able to choose and act otherwise.

So, in brief, argues Kadri Vihvelin in “Free Will Demystified: A Dispositional Account” (Philosophical Topics 32, nos. 1 & 2 [2004]: 427-50).

The paper is rich and instructive. (Pointing out the parallel [pp. 444-45] between cases involving disposition finks and an objection from Lehrer meant to counter conditional analyses of ability is one of many nice observations.) There’s long been a need to bring to bear on the free will debate some very good recent work on dispositions, and Vihvelin’s paper is one of a few recent papers that begin to fill this need. There’s a lot I’d like to say about the paper; I’ll have to select only a few points for comment. (Even so, the comments are lengthy. If you aren’t at all interested in what dispositions are [though you should be!], you might skip no. 1.)

1. What was wrong with the simple conditional analysis of dispositions? For one thing, the analysis failed for cases involving finks, entities that might remove a disposition in just the circumstances that would ordinarily trigger its manifestation, or that might add a disposition in precisely such circumstances. A glass might be fragile, disposed to shatter if struck. Yet a wizard might stand ready to render the glass non-fragile should it be struck. Then, although the glass is fragile, it is false that it would shatter if struck. Conversely, a wizard might render a glass non-fragile (by somehow changing its molecular structure), but stand ready to make it fragile as soon as it is struck. Then, although the glass isn’t fragile, it would shatter if struck.

In his “Finkish Dispositions” (Philosophical Quarterly 47 [1997]: 143-58), David Lewis observed that finks work by altering intrinsic properties of objects that constitute the causal bases of their dispositions. He proposed the following template for a revised conditional analysis of dispositions:

RCAD: Something x is disposed at time t to give response r to stimulus s iff, for some intrinsic property B that x has at t, for some time t’ after t, if x were to undergo stimulus s at time t and retain property B until t’, s and x’s having of B would jointly be an x-complete cause of x’s giving response r. (Lewis, p 157)

(An x-complete cause is “a cause complete in so far as havings of properties intrinsic to x are concerned, though perhaps omitting some events extrinsic to x” [Lewis, p. 156].)

Vihvelin assumes, for the sake of her argument, that something like RCA is correct. But it is quite doubtful that anything like RCA is correct.

a) Finks remove or add dispositions. Things of another sort–masks--prevent dispositions from manifesting without removing the dispositions. A poison’s power to kill when ingested can be masked by an ingested antidote. A glass’s fragility can be masked by internal packing that prevents breakage even if the glass is struck. Masking presents a difficulty even for RCAD. For, given the possibility of masking, the causal basis for a disposition may be present and retained, the stimulus conditions may be present, and yet the manifestation not occur.

Can any conditional analysis accommodate masking? One might think that all the possible maskers of a given disposition can be considered part of the stimulus condition, or that an additional condition that none of these maskers is present can be added to the analysis. But one difficulty with either strategy is that there is no end to what might mask a given disposition; a comprehensive list of potential maskers would be infinite. And all that they need have in common is that they can prevent the manifestation of the disposition, even when (the rest of) the stimulus as well as the causal basis of the disposition are present. To cover them with any such general characterization would trivialize the analysis.

b) Even setting aside masking, the stimulus conditions for the manifestation of a disposition need not guarantee its manifestation. There need be no such guarantee. A causal power might be indeterministic. In the case of such a disposition, the stimulus might be present, the causal basis retained, and all masks absent, and still the manifestation might or might not occur. This point would not seem irrelevant when what is at issue is the proper understanding of an ability to choose otherwise, particularly if such an ability is, even in part, a causal power. Shouldn’t it, at the start, be an open question whether the ability to choose otherwise includes such a power?

c) Some dispositions are unconditional: their manifestations aren’t conditional on any stimulus. Some such dispositions might be continuously manifesting. George Molnar (Powers, Oxford University Press: 2003, p. 87) suggests that rest mass may be such a disposition, as massive objects manifest gravitational power in interaction with space-time for as long as they possess mass.

Other unconditional dispositions spontaneously manifest. Again, here’s an example from Molnar (p. 85): a muon has a capacity to decay into an electron, a neutrino, and an antineutrino. The power is manifested (when it is) without any trigger or stimulus.

Of course, the point stands if there so much as can be such unconditional dispositions. No conditional analysis can cover them.

Certainly no one wants to claim that abilities to act are continuously manifesting dispositions. And no one should hold that an ability to act is just a spontaneously manifesting disposition, for the manifestation of such a disposition, in a case like that of the muon, is just a matter of chance. But might incompatibilists not think (something along these lines) that having an ability to choose to A is having a spontaneously manifesting disposition AND its being up to you whether, on the occasion in question, that disposition is manifested?

2. Setting aside the question of whether there is any correct conditional analysis of dispositions, is there some such analysis of ability to act?

Vihvelin observes that abilities to act (like dispositions) can be finkish. A fink can remove an ability in just those circumstances in which it would, if retained, be exercised, or create an ability to act only when such circumstances obtain. The lesson, she recommends, is that “persons have abilities by having intrinsic properties that are the causal basis of the ability” (p. 438). She suggests the following Revised Conditional Analysis of Ability:

RCAA: S has the ability at time t to do X iff, for some intrinsic property or set of properties B that S has at t, for some time t’ after t, if S chose (decided, intended, or tried) at t to do X, and S were to retain B until t’, S’s choosing (deciding, intending, or trying) to do X and S’s having of B would jointly be an S-complete cause of S’s doing X (p. 438).

(To be precise, her claim is that RCAA, or something reasonably close, is correct for “basic abilities,” those that are dispositions. “Complex abilities, including the ability to make choices for reasons, are not dispositions; they are bundles of dispositions” [p. 439]. On the ability to choose, see no. 6 below.)

Vihvelin argues (pp. 441-45) that various objections that were taken to be forceful against the simple conditional analysis of ability fail when applied to RCAA. Some of her claims here are puzzling.

One objection was that an agent may be able to A, and yet may try but fail to A. (J. L. Austin’s case, in “Ifs and Cans,” of the golfer who misses a putt of a sort that he usually makes is an example.) Vihvelin says the objection has no force against RCAA, but it seems to apply as powerfully here as it does against the simple conditional analysis, for it has nothing to do with subtraction or addition of any causal basis of the ability.

Another objection was that the conditional ‘if S chose (decided, intended, or tried) to do X, then S would do X’ may be true, but still S may be unable to do X, for S may be unable to choose (decide, intend, or try) to do X. Vihvelin considers this objection as part of a regress objection (which adds that if we in turn try to analyze ‘S is able to choose to do X’ in terms of a similar conditional, then we are off on an infinite regress). But the original objection may be considered in its own right, and as such it seems to count as fully against RCAA as it does against the simple conditional analysis. It may be true that (as Vihvelin says) some agent (an animal, or a young child) may have an ability to perform an action of type A without having any ability to choose to A, but the further possibility that some agent may lack that ability to choose and, for just that reason, lack the ability to A undermines RCAA as an analysis of ability to act. For despite that lack of ability to choose to A, the agent may have some set of intrinsic properties B such that, if the agent chose to A and retained B, then the agent’s choosing to A and her having B would jointly be an agent-complete cause of her A-ing.

Vihvelin also suggests that, in such a case, if asked whether the agent can A, we should answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’. But the ‘yes’ goes against one of her remarks about her target: she is concerned with the ability that is relevant to moral responsibility. An agent who can’t A because she can’t choose to A may, because of that inability, be excused from responsibility.

3. Setting aside the question of whether there is any correct conditional analysis of either dispositions or abilities to act, is ability to act a disposition (or a bundle of dispositions)?

Vihvelin notes (p. 431) several important similarities between dispositions and agents’ abilities to act. Like dispositions, abilities to act are relatively stable features that typically continue to exist even when not being manifested. Indeed, like a disposition, an ability to perform an action of a certain type can exist even if never manifested. And as objects possessing a certain disposition can behave in certain ways, so agents possessing a certain ability to act can act in that way.

On the basis of such observations, Vihvelin advances the following:

ABD: To have an ability is to have a disposition or a bundle of dispositions (p. 431).

Is this claim correct?

Here are some things we might have in mind when we think or say that someone, S, has an ability to (is able to, can) do something, A:

i) S has a general capacity to A. (S can speak Spanish, ride a bicycle, drive a car, etc.)

ii) S has a general capacity to A, and the circumstances are friendly to S’s exercising that capacity. (S is capable of driving a car, she has a functioning car handy, she has the keys to it, the weather is mild, there are good roads between her house and her intended destination, etc.)

iii) S has a general capacity to A, and it is open to S (at some specified time) to exercise (at some specified time) that capacity.

iv) S has a general capacity to A, and it is up to S (at some specified time) whether S (at some specified time) exercises that capacity.

v) S has a general capacity to A, and S has a choice (at some specified time) about whether S (at some specified time) exercises that capacity.

Some of these characterizations are less than perfectly clear; one thing we might seek is further clarification of them. Perhaps some are equivalent to others. Note that on none of them is an ability to do otherwise explicitly incompatible with determinism. It may be, however, that some argument shows that on one or another of these characterizations, the ability to do otherwise is in fact so incompatible.

The type of ability characterized in (i) is quite plausibly just a causal power, or a bundle of such powers. ABD is apparently correct about such abilities. But the other sorts of abilities aren’t so obviously just dispositions, though having each may require having some dispositions. ABD isn’t so obviously correct about them.

Is, then, THE ability to act just a disposition (or a bundle of them)? Arguably the question carries a false presupposition. There are many different things that we might be thinking or talking about when we think or say that someone can or is able to do a certain thing.

4. Can agents act otherwise in Frankfurt scenarios? Vihvelin points out (p. 447) that the would-be intervener in common Frankfurt scenarios is a fink: he doesn’t actually remove any of the agent’s dispositions, but he would, if necessary, remove those that constitute the ability to do otherwise. But since none of these dispositions is actually removed, the agent is in fact able to do otherwise, despite the set up. Frankfurt’s claim to have shown that responsibility is compatible with the inability to do otherwise is thus mistaken.

How could there possibly have been any disagreement on this point? Consider this hypothesis: there is a type of ability, ability_V, that Vihvelin is concerned with when she maintains that, even in Frankfurt scenarios, agents are able to do otherwise. And there is a different type of ability, ability_O, that her opponents are concerned with when they deny that, in Frankfurt scenarios, agents can do otherwise. Vihvelin is right that, in Frankfurt scenarios (at least in prior-sign cases), the agents have the ability_V to do otherwise. Her opponents are right that, in those scenarios, the agents lack the ability_O to do otherwise. (So maybe we CAN all be friends.)

Vihvelin’s concern is, I think, roughly, (i) above. The would-be intervener doesn’t actually mess with such abilities. But the presence of the would-be intervener arguably undermines abilities of some of the other types.

Vihvelin says that her target is the ‘can’ that is relevant to moral responsibility. If the agent in the Frankfurt scenario is responsible for what she does, then obviously no ability that is relevant to moral responsibility is missing. Vihvelin’s opponents might be tempted to say that Frankfurt’s argument shows that NO ability to do otherwise is required for moral responsibility, but perhaps that is too strong. Surely certain powers or general capacities for deciding and acting otherwise are retained by the agents in Frankfurt scenarios (at least in the prior-sign versions). Perhaps it should be accepted that, in a sense, any agent possessing those kinds of powers to A can A.

But what about ability_O? If having that type of ability to do otherwise isn’t something required for responsibility, then do we really have any interest in it, are there really any contexts in which we are concerned with it? Those who accept Frankfurt’s argument perhaps owe an answer to these questions. Since this comment is already rather long, I’ll forego offering any suggestions here.

5. Is the ability that is relevant to moral responsibility a disposition (or a bundle of dispositions)? Sometimes, in excusing, we say that someone was unable to do something, or couldn’t do it, when it was some circumstantial factor that prevented them from doing it. I regret that I wasn’t able to get to the family reunion because the airport had closed due to inclement weather. None of my intrinsic powers to get to the reunion was removed by the airport closing. There is at least A sense of ‘can’ or ‘ability’ that is relevant to responsibility and concerns more than the agent’s dispositions.

Even setting aside circumstantial factors, here’s something that one might think: to be responsible for A-ing, one must have possessed a general capacity to A, and one must have originated one’s exercise of that capacity. Whether originating an exercise of a causal power is itself simply a matter of manifesting a disposition would seem to be a relevant question. Certainly some argument would be needed to show that such origination isn’t just disposition-manifestation, but what in Vihvelin’s paper shows that it is (or, alternatively, that no such origination is required for responsibility)?

6. What is free will? Vihvelin rightly chides earlier compatibilists for attempting to reduce or replace the question of free will with that of freedom of action. Free will, she suggests, is “the ability to make choices on the basis of reasons, an ability that can be exercised in more than one way” (p. 427).  To have this ability is to have a bundle of simpler abilities, such as an ability to form and revise beliefs in response to evidence and argument, an ability to form intentions in response to one’s desires and instrumental beliefs, and an ability to engage in practical reasoning in response to one’s intention to make up one’s mind what to do (p. 439). Each of these abilities is, in turn, a disposition or a bundle of dispositions. Hence,

FWBD: To have free will is to have the ability to make choices on the basis of reasons and to have this ability is to have a bundle of dispositions (p. 429).

As with abilities to act, the ability to make a certain choice that is of concern to Vihvelin is, she says, the sort that is relevant to moral responsibility.

But now, setting things up this way just about makes it incomprehensible that anyone should have ever thought that an agent lacking an ability to choose otherwise might be responsible for what she chooses and does. Whether or not that thought is correct, it’s comprehensible that some have thought it. That’s comprehensible because there are notions of ability to choose that aren’t at all obviously tied to responsibility. Many writers simply set things up differently from the start. Perhaps their target is a type of ability to choose characterized roughly along the lines of (iii), or (iv), or (v) above. (Again, it would help if they said more about what our interest in such an ability is.)

I admire much in Vihvelin’s paper. I’ve noted here some points on which I dissent, and I’ve raised some questions that bloggers may want to discuss.

Review: John Searle's Freedom and Neurobiology.

John Searle, Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006       

                                                                                                                                           By Christopher Franklin   

                                                                                                                                       

      In this short book John R. Searle proves again why he is one of the most innovative and thoughtful philosophers of our time.  Known best for his work on consciousness, Searle has recently turned his philosophical gaze towards agency (see also his book Rationality in Action).  The book is composed of seemingly two unrelated chapters that both grew out lectures delivered in Europe. However, both chapters are attempts to move us closer to a solution to what Searle calls the single overriding question in contemporary philosophy: How do humans fit in? How do we square the fact that the world is wholly composed of “mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles” with our ordinary conception of ourselves as “conscious, intentionalistic, rational, social, institutional, speech-act performing, ethical and free will possessing agents”? (p. 5)

      Chapter 1 concerns the problem of free will and its attendant problems of rationality, consciousness, and the self.  Chapter 2 focuses on social ontology and political power.  Given the venue of this post, I found it appropriate to focus my discussion on Chapter 1.

     Before diving into the free will problem Searle lays some ground work.  It might seem anachronistic to say that the question of how we fit it is the most pressing question in contemporary philosophy.  After all, haven’t philosophers been concerned all along with precisely this question?  So what is so special about the current day?  He answers this question as follows: it has only recently become possible to treat all these topics (e.g. consciousness, rationality, language, intentionality, free will, etc.) naturalistically; we can provide answers to these questions that are consistent with and a natural outgrowth of the basic facts.  He takes the basic facts of the world to be described in the atomic theory of matter and evolutionary biology.  Searle takes the world, as described by these theories, as a starting point. 

       Moreover, there have been recent developments in philosophy that allow us to tackle this question in a way that was previously impossible.  All of the following have contributed to our privileged position: The move away from epistemology and its skeptical arguments about knowledge of the material world, the move from philosophy of language back to philosophy of mind, the destruction of a sharp line between philosophy and empirical disciplines, and also the great benefit we have from our philosophical predecessors, who over the last sixty years, have focused on answering questions in piecemeal fashion, providing distinctions and clarifications so that we can state theories in precise terms which admit of empirical verification. 

      Chapter 1 is entitled “Free Will as a Problem in Neurobiology”.  The goal of this chapter is to take the first steps towards showing how the free will problem could achieve a scientific resolution.  The task of the philosopher, as Searle sees it, is to provide a precise formulation of the problem of free will so that it admits of empirical and scientific testing.  He thinks he has done this with the mind-body problem and he also wants to do this with the problem of free will.  He wants to transform the traditional free will problem into a problem essentially about how the brain works. Let us now consider his attempt to move us towards this goal.

      The logical form of the free will problem is that we appear equally committed to two positions which are inconsistent.  We think, on the one hand, that natural phenomena occurs in such a way as to admit of deterministic explanations (contrastive explanations).  When we explain why an earthquake occurred we do not merely explain why it just so happened to occur, we explain why, given the antecedent conditions, it must have occurred.  There are sufficient causal conditions for the earthquake.  However, there appears to be a small subset of human behavior that does not admit of deterministic explanations.  We explain “free action” by citing the reasons we acted on.  However, we ordinarily do not take ourselves to be giving deterministic explanations.  Given the antecedent reasons, beliefs, and desires, we believe that we could have done otherwise.  There are not sufficient causal conditions for free action.

      The problem of free will arises from a feature of our experiences that Searle labels “volitional consciousness.”  “The feature is that I do not sense the antecedent causes of my action in the form of reasons, such as beliefs and desires, as setting causally sufficient conditions for action….” (p. 41)  This is strikingly different from perceptual consciousness; we do not experience our perceptions as being up to us in the way we experience some of our behavior as being up to us.  Searle refers to this as the experience of the gap.  This gap only occurs in a few places: (i) between reasons and the making of a decision, (ii) between decision and the onset of action, and (iii) for extended action, between the onset of action and its continuation.  But on the other hand determinism appears just as convincing.  We typically only accept explanations which cite sufficient causal conditions as true or adequate explanations for natural phenomena.  Hence the problem of free will is the problem of a certain sort of consciousness, volitional consciousness. 

      Not only do we arrive at the postulation of a gap via experience, but this gap is also reflected in the logical structure of reason explanations.  Such explanations are not deterministic in form, but instead specify a reason that an agent acted on.  Ordinary causal explanations have the logical form: A caused B.  However, rational explanations have the following logical form: “A self S performed action A, and in the performance of A, S acted on reason R” (p. 53).  But a problem arises at this point: How in the world can such explanations be adequate since they do not cite casually sufficient conditions?  They do not explain why, given A, B must have occurred and hence they do not furnish us with contrastive explanations.  So what must be the case in order for rational explanations to be adequate?  Searle believes that such explanations cannot be adequate unless we posit an irreducible, non-Humean self.  He provides the following transcendental argument for the existence of such a self (pp. 53-55):

     1) Explanations in terms of reasons do not typically cite causally sufficient conditions (assumption)

     2) Such explanations can be adequate explanations of actions (assumption)

     3) Adequate causal explanations cite conditions that, relative to the context, are causally sufficient (assumption)

     4) Construed as ordinary causal explanations, reason explanations are inadequate (conclusion)

     5) Reason explanations are not ordinary causal explanations (conclusion)

     6) Reason explanations are adequate because they explain why a self acted in a certain way.  They explain why a rational self acting in the gap acted in one way rather than another, by specifying the reason that the self acted on (conclusion)

    

      Again, it is important to note that this is not a deductive argument but a transcendental argument; one that attempts to state what necessary conditions must obtain in order for there to be adequate reason explanations. Hence, the intelligibility of reason explanations requires the postulation of an irreducible, non-Humean self.  Taking stock: the free will problem leads us to two other problems: consciousness and the self.  Consequently, a solution to the free will problem requires a solution to these problems.

      So what must the brain be like in order to realize free will?  Searle’s picture of the brain is that at the micro level there are neurons, neurotransmitters and synapses.  Consciousness is a higher-level or systemic feature entirely composed of the micro level elements.  At the higher level we have decisions leading to intentions and at the micro level we have neuron firings causing more neuron firings.  Moreover, consciousness at each instant t is completely determined by what is going on at the micro level at t.  So the free will problem now becomes this: “If we suppose there is a gap at the top level in the case of rational decision making, how might that gap be reflected at the neurobiological level?” (59).  We know there are no gaps in the brain: So what must the brain be like at the micro level in order to realize the gap at the higher-level of consciousness.  Searle thinks that if the total state of the brain at any instant t1 is causally sufficient for the state of the brain at t2, then we do not have free will.  Hence, there are two hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: for every brain state S1 at any instant t1, S1 is causally sufficient for S2 at t2.  Hence, free will is an illusion.  The experience of the gap is realized in a brain that is wholly deterministic.  Hypothesis 2: the experience of the absence of causally sufficient conditions at the psychological level is matched by the absence of causally sufficient conditions at the neurobiological level.  Hypothesis 2 envisages the brain as being such that the micro elements are sufficient to determine the conscious state at any given moment, but that the operation of the conscious self is what explains the movement from one conscious state to the next.

       However, neither Hypothesis is very satisfying.  Hypothesis 1, although consistent with what we currently know from brain science, leaves us with epiphenomenalism and this goes against everything we know about evolutionary biology.  The problem with Hypothesis 2 is its extreme demandingness.  It requires the brain to have the following three features: (1) consciousness functions causally in moving bodies, (2) the brain causes and sustains the existence of a conscious self that is able to make rational decisions and to carry them out in actions, and (3) the brain operates in such a way that the “conscious self is able to make and carry out decisions in the gap, where neither decision nor action is determined in advanced, yet both are rationally explained by reasons the agent is acting on” (p. 73).  Searle thinks that (3) is the trickiest condition.  Since quantum mechanics is the only indisputable form of indeterminism in the world, in order for Hypothesis 2 to be correct, consciousness must manifest quantum indeterminism.  But this does not necessarily mean it is random.  The whole does not necessarily have the properties of the parts.  So randomness might be a property of the parts without being a property of the whole.

     I would now like to turn to questions and comments about Searle’s intriguing project.  This first point is somewhat nitpicky, but I think it is worth mentioning for clarity sake.  I find Searle’s equating sufficient causal conditions with deterministic causal conditions objectionable.  If A nondeterministically causes B, then wouldn’t A be a sufficient cause for B?  Searle appears to simply move from sufficient causal conditions to deterministic causal conditions.  I find this usage unfortunate and at times misleading.  It would seem better to state the worry in terms of deterministic causal conditions and the experience of the gap as an experience of a lack of deterministic causal conditions. 

      Moving on to more substantive questions/comments, I worry that Searle’s program provides fertile ground for revisionism or skepticism about moral responsibility.  Searle makes it clear that he does not know whether or not we actually possess free will.  In discussing Hypothesis 2 he writes, “Notice that I do not ask, ‘How does the brain work so as to satisfy these conditions?’ because we do not know for a fact that it does satisfy these conditions…” (p. 71).  Although Searle explicitly maintains that he is not concerned with moral responsibility, his view of our current epistemological status with respect to the existence of free will raises questions about whether or not we are justified in engaging in our ordinary practices of praise and blame (which might be thought to presuppose the existence of free will). Depending on one’s temperament, one might find an argument for skepticism concerning moral responsibility or an argument for revisionism about what justifies our ordinary practices lurking in this comment.

      Lastly, although I applaud the spirit of Searle’s project, I worry to what extent the problem of free will is reducible to a problem in neurobiology.  After all, “the free will problem” hardly denotes a single problem.  So if even we were able to substantiate Hypothesis 1 or 2, would it really be correct to say that we have arrived at a solution the free will problem?  I think this question deserves a negative answer.  After all, one of the most pressing questions that is often denoted by the phrase, “the free will problem”, is whether or not free will is compatible with determinism.  Searle himself simply asserts that he is using “free will” in such a way that it is incompatible with determinism.  However, were we to discover that Hypothesis 1 is correct, could we, as fair minded philosophers, really announce that free will is illusion without first dealing with the question of whether or not it is actually compatible with determinism?  And it is far from clear to me that this latter question is reducible to any scientific discipline. 

      It seems to me that the virtue of Searle’s program is an attempt to test certain hypotheses put forward as an answer to one part the problem of free will opposed to an attempt to reduce the whole problem to a neurobiological problem.  Hence, it seems somewhat exaggerated to say that problem of free will just is whether the brain states at t1 are sufficient to cause the brain states at t2.  Instead, such testing will help us in discerning the viability of certain libertarian programs.  So again, I fine Searle’s approach quite advantageous when it comes to specific hypothesis offered as a solution to one aspect of the free will problem, but I am dubious about whether the whole problem can be reduced to science.

      However, despite some of my disagreements with Searle, I am a huge admirer of this excellent piece of philosophical work. I am confident that it will generate interesting research programs and many responses from various fields of inquiry.

                                       

      Christopher Franklin

Cognitive Biases and Free Will Part I: The Dual-Process Challenge

I’ve presented challenges to free willism in other posts. For example, I still find the prospect of a “Medicalized Society”, according to which wrongdoers are treated almost like sickly or diseased people, to pose a fascinating challenge.

More recently, I’ve become interested in cognitive biases that seem to affect humans in general. These biases suggest another possibility: the dual process hypothesis. The dual process hypothesis paints a picture of the mind like the following:

1. the mind has both (i) slower, smarter, more generalized (SlowSMG) circuits and (ii) faster, dumber, more domain specific (FastDDS) circuits
2. amongst the FastDDS circuits are circuits relating to identifying other agents,      understanding the causal relationship between events, assigning blame and praise, and the emotions such as anger, thirst-for-revenge, and so on
3. the FastDDS circuits compensate in speed for what they lack in accuracy, and so represent a “knee jerk” response that, upon cooler and more thoughtful reflection, is sometimes mistaken
4. so our prephilosophical or instinctive attitudes and beliefs about other agents,      responsibility and blame, and anger and retribution, etc. are sometimes mistaken or imprudent.

Now, we are all fairly familiar with the dual process challenge because Nichols & Knobe did fascinating studies showing that affect, or the moral salience of an event, seems to increase compatibilist responses at the expense of incompatibilist responses. For example, Nichols & Knobe suggest that “[p]erhaps the most obvious way of explaining the data reported here would be to suggest that strong affective reactions can bias and distort people’s judgments.” This would fit with the dual process challenge: the affective or morally salient situations *trigger* the faster, dumber, more domain specific circuits in our brain (such as those dealing with anger and retribution), which produce less accurate or more imprudent responses.

NOTE: I know some, such as Eddy Nahmias, take issue with this research. I would love to hear any possible explanations for the differences between their data and the Nichols & Knobe data.

Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt have done similar research on issues such as consequentialism/deontology, moral realism, and the relationship between the emotions and moral reasoning. For example, I think Greene has found that people who give consequentialist answers give them *slower*, consistent with the hypothesis that the SlowSMG circuitry is trumping the FastDDS circuitry. I think he has also put subjects in MRI scanners and actually mapped how different parts of the brain “light up” with respect to consequentialists and deontologists. And Haidt has done fascinating research on “moral dumbfounding” which suggests that people have FastDDS circuits for moral reasoning and, furthermore, that the more cerebral or cognitive parts of their brain *rationalize* the response, which has already been determined by the FastDDS circuits.

These lines of research suggest future directions for studies on the free will problem. Do those who give incompatibilist or non-realist/eliminativist answers give them slower (like the consequentialists)? When subjects give compatibilist or incompatibilists answers while in an MRI scanner, which parts of their brains “light up”, and can one argue that these parts of the brain are more like SlowSMG circuits or FastDDS circuits?

NOTE: This dual process picture of the mind is a hypothesis. It is an empirical question and cannot be settled by thought experiment (or whatever else philosophers do). But, as a live hypothesis, I think it is worth contemplating the ramifications, should the hypothesis turn out to be true or largely true.

Here are some questions for other Gardeners:

1. Do you tend to think that this dual process theory will turn out to be true or largely true? If not, where do you think it goes wrong and why?
2. Regardless of whether you that this dual process hypothesis is right, what ramifications do you think it would have for the free will debate (libertarianism, compatibilism, non-realism/eliminativism)? Is the existence and relevance of such FastDDS circuits likely to undermine one group more than others?

What's an Incompatibilist to Do?

Assume the following for the sake of argument:

1. It’s the year 2016 and the experimental philosophers have taken over.  It’s now almost impossible to get a job in an American philosophy department without doing at least some kind of experimental work.  Harry Frankfurt’s most recent bestseller is called ‘On Surveys.’
2. Empirical investigation has confirmed that people have fundamentally different intuitions about the necessary conditions for desert-entailing moral responsibility (DEMR).   This is just a psychological fact about human beings.  To some people it is intuitively obvious that DEMR requires some variety of libertarian free will.   To others, sophisticated compatibilist freedom is sufficient for DEMR. 
3. Further discourse is extremely unlikely to change anyone’s mind.  The issue is not lack of reflection or understanding, or a failure to appreciate this or that argument.  The issue is simply that intuitions fundamentally differ on the question of the necessary conditions for DEMR.

Although (1) is not all that likely to come to pass, (2) and (3) seem to have some non-vanishingly small likelihood of being true.  So here’s my question.  If (2) and (3) obtain, what metaphysical commitments must incompatibilists hold in order to claim that incompatibilism is true nevertheless?  Would they (we) have to believe that there is a ‘Form’ of DEMR that some people don’t have access to?  Could we maintain that incompatibilism about DEMR is demonstrably true a priori?  (I realize that the Basic Argument is in some sense an a priori argument, but to evaluate its soundness, we have to find certain key premises intuitively plausible.  And in this scenario those are the very premises about which people have fundamentally different intuitions.  So it would have to be a different kind of a priori argument, one that doesn't rely on controversial TNR or AP related premises. Even van Inwagen relies on ‘intuition’ in his defense of beta (pp. 97-99).)  How metaphysically exotic does one have to get in order to continue to defend a universal incompatibilist theory of DEMR under these circumstances?

(Note: I don’t have an answer to this myself.  I’m hoping that those better schooled in metaphysics and Philosophy of Language can shed light on this question, one that grew out of an email exchange I’ve been having recently with Shaun Nichols about Manuel’s Revisionism.  I do recognize that the very same question could be asked about compatibilists, but not being one myself, I’m more concerned about the available options for incompatibilists.)

Back with another one of those blog-rocking posts

Now that the magnificent Mele melee has subsided a bit, we can announce #3 in the ongoing Garden of Forking Paths Unstoppable Online Reading Group of Excellence!

For your reading pleasure and conversating delight, next month we will discuss a paper by Shaun Nichols that dares to ask that forbidden question:

"How Can Psychology Contribute to the Free Will Debate?"

Through the arcane power of the internets, the delight that can only be found in Nichols' paper is available here:

http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/mrvargas/GFP/gfprg.html

As initial commentator, John M. Doris — the world-famous sensei of psychology and philosophy— will show us The Way of The Lurking Tiger.

The opening bell will sound around November 13th.
Your comments will follow soon after.
While you are at it, go grab a psychologist and make him or her comment, too.
Just do it.

Blaming Slaveowners

I'm in the process of reading Carlos Moya's new book Moral Responsibility: The Ways of Scepticism (reviewed here by Matt Talbert).  In the last chapter, he attempts to show that moral responsibility is compatible with indeterminism, and thus give support to a libertarian position.  In the process, he talks about slaveowners and compares our intuitive judgments about the blameworthiness of slaveowners, depending on what century they lived in.  I think this is an interesting question, so I put it to you.

Grant that purchasing a slave is morally wrong.  Now consider someone living in Ancient Greece who purchases a slave.  There's some intuitive pull to saying that even though this person may have done something morally wrong, he is not blameworthy.  On the other hand, consider someone who purchases a slave in 18th century America.  There's some intutive pull to saying that this person has done something morally wrong, and is blameworthy.  How do we explain this difference?

There are a few ways we can go.  Do we want to say that the Ancient Greek slaveowner is not blameworthy because he is not morally responsible?  But then, which condition on responsibility might he fail to meet?  Or do we want to say that the Ancient Greek slaveowner is responsible, but this is one case where someone can be morally responsible for a morally wrong action without being blameworthy?  But then, what mitigates his blameworthiness?  Or do we want to say that despite the fact that purchasing a slave today is wrong, purchasing slaves in Ancient Greece was not morally wrong?

What do you think?

Responsibility vs. Blameworthiness

Let's suppose that to be morally responsible is to be an apt target for the reactive attitudes.

And let's suppose that to be blameworthy/praiseworthy is to be such that the reactive attitudes are justifiably applied to you.

Nearly everyone agrees (I think) that an agent can be morally responsible without being praiseworthy or blameworthy.  That is, in our terms above, an agent can be the sort of object to which reactive attitudes are appropriately applied without it being the case that any reactive attitude is justifiably applied to the agent in a particular circumstance.  But what people disagree about (I think) is what gets you from moral responsibility to blameworthiness/praiseworthiness.  So what is it?

Pereboom thinks (I think) that if you are morally responsible for a morally wrong action, then you are therefore blameworthy f