Return of GFP Reading Group

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

Download the_manipulation_argument.doc

Two weeks from now, Kristin Demetriou, a grad student at the University of Colorado (whose - so far unpublished - work Pereboom's 4 case argument is already getting citations) will post her comments on the paper.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

Is Reactivity all of a Piece?

Things have been might quite around the garden for a while. In an attempt to see if can’t stir up a few of the ghosts of threads past, I will engage in my favorite activity: attacking semi-compatibilism, by way of my other favorite activity, mangling science.

More Free Willish Goodness from Science

The Libet studies, which have caused such a stir, apparently demonstrated that conscious choice lags behind by neural activity by around one third of a second. One of my favorite responses to these studies  - Dennett's - argues that the notion we can perform simultaneity judgments as to neural events and volitions depends upon the idea of the Cartesian Theatre, a place in the brain where everything comes together. But while that response looks plausible for a lag of one third of a second, it doesn't look quite so plausible when the gap is an enormous 7 seconds. That's the claim of a new study just published in Nature Neuroscience.

In the study, subjects engaged in a free choice task, choosing between pressing a button with their left or their right hands. The researchers found that they could predict with 60% accuracy which hand they would choose, a full 7 (and up to 10) seconds before the subject reported that the decision was made, by analysing activity in the PFC. The popular presentations of this study have not failed to draw the conclusion that this study threatens free will. 

One comment: I don't see why we shouldn't interpret the PFC activity as representing a disposition and not a choice (though PFC is involved in high level planning).

Best papers 2007

As many of you will know by now, the Philosopher's Annual has apparently been revived. Brian Leiter and Keith DeRose have both opened threads  calling for suggestions on the best papers of 2007. Now it's your turn: what were the best papers in free will/moral responsibility/agency in 2007?

New Journal - Neuroethics

The journal Neuroethics - of which I am the editor - is now accepting submissions. I define 'neuroethics' very broadly. As well as covering issues in applied ethics arising from interventions into the mind (brain privacy, neuroenhancement, and so on), the journal will also publish work on the ways in which all the sciences of the mind illuminate traditional issues in philosophy. So understood, some of the work of frequent contributors to this blog counts as neuroethics: survey work on causation and harm, on the intuitiveness of compatibilism, and of course work on social psychology and free will.

For more on how broadly I construe neuroethics, have a look at my new book.

Neural glitches and agency

A paper in Neuron reports that spontaneous fluctuations in neural activity seems to affect intentional action.  The activity is pretty low-level - pushing a button at a signal - and the effect of spontaneous fluctuation was small (no effect on reaction time; the effect was limited to the force of the button press). Nevertheless, this might be sufficient by itself to make the difference between success and failure at performing a task.

It is common for philosophers to use examples in which agents succeed or fail at a task due to random neural glitches. This is experimental evidence for the existence of such glitches.

More nonsense on free will from scientists

Here. An anecdote. A prominent neuroscientist gave a talk I attended about moral responsibility. In question time, I pointed out that compatibilism exists as a view. The prominent neuroscientist said "Oh, I know that philosophers say something like that. But they don't really believe it, do they?"

More on the Consequence Argument

A howler in Harry Potter is an abusive letter that reads itself aloud, embarrassing the recipient. A howler in philosophy is a really bad mistake. If I'm about to commit a howler, don't send me any howlers.

Why don't I think that the Consequence Argument  (in the kind of context in which Fischer is moved by it, ie, a context in which what is in question is alternative possibilities, and not sourcehood) is a problem for compatibilism? One reason is that it seems to be to be over-general: it doesn't tell us anything about determinism and alternative possibilities. Here's one way of getting at the point. Suppose you think the following argument, or some suitable refined version of it, is sound

P

(P ⊃ Q)

Therefore, Q

Then it seems to be that you should also find the following argument sound:

P

(P ⊃ Q v R)

Therefore, Q v R

But the second argument is just a simple version of the Consequence Argument for indeterministic worlds, and therefore allowing for alternative possibilities. In other words, the 'no choice' operator does not depend upon the assumption of determinism for any force it has.

The Essence of Freedom

Manuel’s last post generated a brief exchange about whether free will can be localized. This exchange motivated me to post a quote from John Fischer, which I find puzzling. Here’s the quote (from Four Views on Free Will, but I think John has made the same point elsewhere):

It can be one thing to articulate a meaning or concept, and quite another to specify the nature or “real essence” of something. The meaning of the term, “water,” and the ordinary concept, “water,” presumably do not contain anything about “H2O.” But arguably the nature or real essence of water is H2O. Similarly, the ordinary meaning of the term “can,” and the ordinary concept of “freedom,” may not contain anything about the possibility of extending the actual past, holding the natural laws fixed; but arguably the nature or real essence of our freedom includes these features.
    I have for many years been puzzled at how some philosophers find the Consequence Argument (in some form or another) absolutely and uncontroversially sound, whereas others dismiss it entirely [...] One possible explanation of this puzzling phenomenon is that some philosophers are thoroughly focused on the issues about meaning and concepts, whereas others are attuned to the nature of or real essence of freedom.

Now I understand the distinction between concepts and essences when it comes to natural kinds, like “water”. But I don’t understand it when it comes to something like freedom, which is neither a natural kind like “water” or a historical kind like “species”. How do we go about investigating the essence of “freedom”? We might claim that the concept “freedom” picks out a certain class of actions, and then investigate the nature of those actions. But applying this Kripke-Putnam style move will require us first to settle the extension of the concept “freedom”, and once we have done that the controversy is over. (Or so it seems to me). That is, the philosophical issues will have been resolved, and it will be time to hand the matter on to the scientists.

What am I missing?

More on science and free will

Some empirical evidence that the belief in free will affects behavior:

    Belief in free will can be manipulated with methods developed by Vohs and Schooler (2007). These researchers had some participants read an essay by a well known scientist (Francis Crick, a Nobel laureate) rejecting and indeed mocking the notion of free will. Others read a neutral essay. Another manipulation involved a procedure in which participants read aloud a series of statements emphasizing either freedom of action or lack of freedom and determinism. In those studies, participants who had been induced to disbelieve in free will were later more willing than controls to cheat on a test.
    Likewise, manipulations of belief in free will have been shown by Baumeister, Masicampo, and DeWall (2006) to affect other social behaviors. Participants who had been led to disbelieve in free will were significantly more aggressive and less helpful toward others.
    We are not suggesting that these studies be taken as proof of the existence of free will. Nevertheless, taken together, these findings indicate that not only is the belief in free will normative, but it is also socially beneficial. Undermining that belief leads to an increase in antisocial actions (cheating and aggression) and a reduction in socially desirable behavior (helping).
    Also, in these studies, manipulations aimed at promoting belief in free will typically yielded results identical to neutral controls, which suggests that encouraging people to believe in free will simply reaffirms their ordinary state. That is, people normally believe in free will, and getting them to disbelieve in it is the departure from normal. This pattern indicates that belief in free will is woven into the fabric of everyday social life and the assumptions according to which people perceive and interact with each other.

[from Baumeister, Sparks, Stillman and Vohs (forthcoming) Free Will in Consumer Behavior: Rational Choice and Self-Control. Journal of Consumer Psychology]

Some necessary caveats: the notion of free will that was manipulated was almost certainly some kind of contracausal notion (it’s hard to be sure; both the studies cited are unpublished). The authors of this paper note that many philosophers are compatibilists, but having noted it they seem immediately to forget it. Second, we need to distinguish the following two situations: shaking belief in free will affects behavior (for the worse) and shaking belief in a cherished notion affects behavior (for the worse). Still, some very interesting results for optimistic disbelievers in free will to mull over.

Best papers?

Over at Thoughts, Arguments and Rants, Brian Weatherson suggests that some blog take up the slack left by the (apparent) death of the Philosopher's Annual. I don't think this is the right place to take up the task in its entirety. But I'm a big fan of distributed cognition: we can take on the part where we have expertise. So I hereby call for nominations: what are the best papers in philosophy of action, moral responsibility and free will, published since 2003 (the last year for which PA produced a volume)?

New Work

A couple of things to draw to the attention of gardeners:

A study conducted at my (Australian) university found that subjects gave much shorter sentences to (real) criminals if they had detailed knowledge about the offender. This seems to be in line with the intuitions pumped by Watson's paper on Robert Harris. It's good to have empirical confirmation (for once) that our intuitions are shared. One caveat: though the average sentence members of the public wish to impose is very much shortened by knowledge of the offender, there is a great deal of variation across individuals. Media report here (the study itself is as yet unpublished).

Despite what you might think from JFP, free will is flourishing in the journals, with recent and forthcoming papers in many of the best. I won't bother pointing out isolated papers. But the latest issue of the Journal of Ethics definitely rates a mention. It's entirely devoted to John Fischer's work.

Conference

The following conference will be of interest to many Gardeners.

Call for papers
SELFHOOD, NORMATIVITY, AND CONTROL
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
May 10-11, 2007
Keynote speakers: David Velleman and Susan Hurley
It is a basic folk intuition that genuine agency can be distinguished from mere bodily movement in virtue of an agent's capacity to be in control of their behaviour. This intuition is also central to many traditional philosophical accounts of human agency, no matter how diverse they may be in other respects. Central features such as agential authority, or selfhood, and acting for a reason, or normativity, are often thought to imply some important kind of control. An agent's actions are considered to be hers in virtue of the agent's being in control of her actions. And an action is done for a reason in virtue of the agent's capacity to bring her behaviour under normative constraints.
Recent developments in experimental psychology, however, raise questions about this intuition. Experimental work suggests that for at least some types of behaviour, our trusted notion of conscious control does not do any explanatory work. These new results force philosophers and psychologists alike to rethink the traditional picture of human agency with its key notions of selfhood, normativity, and (indeed) control. In particular, do we need the concept of control to make sense of selfhood and normativity, or can we do without? If we can't do without it, which revisions of the traditional idea of control do we need?
We invite those who would wish to contribute to the conference to send us an abstract of their paper before October 1, 2006. Decisions about the conference programme will be made by November 1, 2006. We will be able to offer those invited to present a paper accommodation in Nijmegen for three nights and we are trying to get additional funds for covering travel reimbursement.

Abstracts to Jan Bransen:

Professor of Philosophy
Behavioural Science Institute
Radboud University Nijmegen
P.O. Box 9104
6500 HE Nijmegen
Netherlands
Phone: + 31 24 - 361 18 17
Fax: + 31 24 - 361 62 11

Email: j.bransen@pwo.ru.nl
Website: http://www.ru.nl/pwo/bransen/

(Hat tip: David Hunter).

Talbert on Carlos Moya (no, not that Carlos Moya)

More free will related goodness here. Matt Talbert reviews Carlos Moya's Moral Responsibility: The Ways of Scepticism.

History

Alright, enough meta-blogging. Here's a controversial claim to get the argumentative juices flowing. In a recent Times Literary Supplement (not online, unfortunately), Saul Smilansky reviews Kane's Contemporary Introduction to Free Will. The free will debate, Saul writes, belies the widespread view that philosophy never progresses: in fact with regard to free will recent progress has been so great that it's not worth reading anything on the topic published earlier than 'about 1960' (I quote from memory).

I want Saul to be right. I want a justification for my own practice of rarely going to the library, and almost never reading anything published more than a few years ago. Of course I know that many of the positions defended today have historical precedents, in the work of Hume, Reid, and Kant. But the compatibilism, agent-causation and Kantianism defended by contemporary thinkers is much more careful and plausible than these original views (as I understand them). These greats deserve recognition but do I really need to read them?

More on My Way

I’m reviewing My Way for the Philosophical Quarterly. It will probably be a short review, so I won’t have time to do much more than express admiration. Nevertheless, I’m reading the book carefully. I wanted to try out some (rather inchoate) thoughts on fellow gardeners.

My Way

Papers from the INPC symposium on John Fischer's My Way are now available in the latest issue of Philosophical Books (subscription required). I forebear commenting on David Zimmerman's last footnote!

Where are the gardeners?

As you all should know, there's a really interesting exchange over at the On-line Philosophy Conference between John Fischer and Kadri Vihvelin, on Vihvelin's claim that Frankfurt-style cases should never have convinced anyone that PAP is false. The garden is even cited by John in a footnote. But gardeners have been conspicious only by their absence (apart from me). I thought we (and I include myself) were all so verbose and argumentative that a post on GFP alleging that the sky was blue would generate 24 responses, most sceptical! C'mon, let's make this thing a success. You've already missed an opportunity to point out that I said something quite daft (I believe the correct expression is D'oh).

Good news...

...for Derk Pereboom and for our field.

Congratulations Derk!

Cognitive Science Cafe

Exhausted after all this cogitation over why we should believe we're morally responsible? Why not take a relaxing break at the Cognitive Science Cafe?

Pressing the problem of luck

I don’t know if we have any defenders of event-causal libertarianism out there, specifically of something like Kane’s version. Perhaps some of you may be motivated to reply to a version of the problem of luck. The original problem goes like this.

For Kane, we need not have alternative possibilities every time we freely and responsibly act. Instead, it must be true that at the time of the action either (a) we have APs, or (b) our action is determined by our characters, and our characters are the product of “self-forming actions” (SFAa), where a “self-forming action” is an action which sets our will one way or another, and regarding which we did possess APs.

Imaginative resistance and the X-Philes.

Once more into the experimental breach. This post applies equally to Eddy (et al) and to Thomas and Adam’s paper, over at the X-phile website.

I’m thinking imaginative resistance (IR). IR is the phenomenon of readers failing to go along with the stipulations of authors. This happens most easily in moral cases, but it is not limited to such cases. JK Rowling can say that Harry Potter can fly on a broomstick, and – in the world of the books – it’s true that Harry Potter can fly on a broomstick. But if she said that Voldermort tortured an newborn kitten to death, and stipulated that he acted morally in so doing, it wouldn’t be true, even in the book, that Voldermort acted morally in doing so. Roughly, we get IR when an author stipulates that a concept applies to the description of a case when the facts upon which that concept supervenes are not in place (so IR comes in two basic forms: the claim that X is the case, when the supervenience base for X is missing, and the claim that X is not the case, when the – undefeated – supervenience base for X is present). For an understanding of IR along these lines, see Brian Weatherson, "Morality, Fiction, and Possibility" over at Philosopher’s Imprint)

Now, as Thomas and Adam note in their paper, in Eddy’s original studies some people failed to reason conditionally. They had to be asked to suspend disbelief (a majority stated that the scenario in which a supercomputer predicts with certainty that an agent will perform an immoral action 20 years later was impossible). Now, suppose that the folk, or at least a large proportion of the folk, are incompatibilists. That may commit them to the claim that libertarian free will is, or is part of, the supervenience base for the application of freedom. In effect, I am suggesting, the scenarios asked the participants to reason as if a concept applied, when the supervenience base of that concept failed to apply. They therefore would have experienced IR to the claim that the agents had free will (as evidenced by their initial failure to reason conditionally, and their claim that the scenario is impossible).

What happens if people are asked to reason conditionally about IR situations? I have no real idea: there is, to my knowledge, no data, and it is difficult to guess a priori. One possibility is that the folk will bracket the facts that form the supervenience base as if another set of facts were stipulated; another possibility is that they will bracket the supervenient property and reason as if another such property were stipulated (the one that is in fact held to be supervenient on the physical facts stipulated). My guess is that which way they will go will depend upon how difficult the scenario is to imagine, in its physical properties. In ‘Voldermort’, for instance, if they were asked whether Voldermort deserves praise for acting well, the folk would deny it, because it is all too easy to imagine torturing a kitten to death.

But in the deterministic scenarios which the studies present, the subjects may bracket the stipulated (subvenient) base. They may, in effect, substitute another set of physical facts for the ones stipulated: the kind of facts they believe actually apply. Given that people experience IR not merely to the holding of the concept stipulated in the light of the physical facts, but to the physical facts themselves, the case is not like 'Voldermort'. Instead, we should expect the supervenience base itself to go. But if that’s the case then it may well be that the studies tell us nothing about whether people believe that agents can be free or responsible in deterministic worlds.

Where the action is

Over at the Leiter reports, Brian gives an overview of the state of Nietzsche studies, and asks philosophers to post on 'where the action is' in their own  subfields. Since I'm interested in folks' perception of the state of the art in our subfield(s) (one or many?), I encourage you to comment on where the action is in free will/moral responsibility. Are Frankfurt-style cases the cutting edge or now passe? The consequence argument? X-philosophy?

A Counterexample to the 'Belief in Ability Thesis'

I’m gradually reading my way through the recent issue of Midwest Studies in Philosophy, on free will and moral responsibility. I’ve read over the half the volume now, and I’m pleased to say that it’s all excellent. My impression is that the standard is actually higher than in comparable general journals. Some of you may have seen the discussion of all invitation journals and their problems on Brian Weatherson’s blog. I share some of the worries expressed there, but issues like this one go a long way towards allaying them.

Here, I want to address Coffman’s and Warfield’s paper, ‘Deliberation and Meatphysical Freedom’. The topic will be familiar to most of you: it’s the link between  deliberation and our belief in freedom. Specifically, Coffman and Warfield want to defend what they call the Belief in Ability Thesis (BAT), which they attribute to van Inwagen and Searle, against putative counterexamples.

Attributionism

A quick follow up to the discussion of the question "What is moral responsibility?" My paper on the preferability of a volitionist account of MR to an attributionist account has just been published in The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, which (for those of you who don't know) is a web-based, peer-reviewed journal attempting to establish itself as a leader in the field.

The paper is here. Hope some of you find it interesting.

What Is Moral Responsibility?

In the comments  on my previous post, David asks the following question:

can you recommend any readings I might look at that attempt to explicate or defend a definition of moral repsonsibility? As I said above, I'm most interested in definitions and not - as seems to me more usual in the literature - conditions that need to be satisfied in order for one to be held morally responsible.

That seems to me to a bloody good question. The standard answer, if there is one, is the one which I had previously given David: aptness for the reactive attitudes. But it has always seemed unsatisfactory to me. I think part of the problem is this: though the definition might 'fix the reference', it actually doesn't tell us what moral responsibility consists in (so far as I can see). Moral responsibility must be some kind of relationship between an agent and her acts; it doesn't require any observers, or even the persistence of the agent after the act (for what it's worth, I have the same problem with definitions of knowledge: the problem with JTB is not that it open to counterexamples, but it leaves me in the dark as to what knowledge actually is).

So I want to echo David's question, and ask, further, for clarification. Am I missing the point? Is there nothing to say about what MR consists in, beyond giving necessary and sufficient conditions for it? Does anyone - in the literature or here - have anything illuminating to say that will answer David's and my question?

Todd Long on Moderate Reasons-Responsiveness.

I’m reviewing the Campbell, O’Rourke and Shier volume. The review will be short, so I won’t be able to say much about it (it’s always hard to review collections in any case). But of course I’ll have lots to say about many of the papers. Rather than waste my brilliant insights, I’ll post them here, if I think they might interest anyone. I begin with Todd Long’s interesting discussion of Fischer and Ravizza’s (F & R’s) account of moral responsibility.

Responsibility and the emotions

In their revised paper, posted on this very site, Nichols and Knobe argue for a claim that harmonises the emprical findings on (in)compatibilist intuitions so far: people have both compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions. More precisely, they have an incompatibilist theory of moral responsibility, and will therefore answer theoretical questions about blame (and praise? this hasn't been tested) in an incompatibilist manner. But when they are presented with examples that engage their emotions, they respond in a more compatibilist manner, blaming those who do wrong, even if they know that their actions were determined.

Now, the interesting question (for me) is how we should resolve these conflicting intuitions. Should we go modus ponens or tollens? It is a commonplace that strong emotions can distort our judgments, so there is some reason to go with the theory, and reject the compatibilist intuition, but philosophers increasingly recognize (inspired in part by the work of scientists like Damasio) that emotions can also be an essential ingredient in accurate cognizing. So there is some pressure to reject or modify our theory in the light of the emotion.

Nichols and Knobe cite evidence that emotions can sometimes distort attributions of responsibility. We judge people as more responsible when our negative emotions are aroused, even when our emotions are aroused by an unrelated event. But (as they recognize) evidence for a dissociation between justified assessments and the emotion is not evidence that the emotions will not usually play a role in guiding assessment properly; just because you can induce an illusion does not show that the faculty you're fooling is unreliable (call the belief that it does Wegner's fallacy).

Here is a very quick and, as it stands, inadequate, argument for the view that we should regard the relevant emotions as distorting, rather than enabling, our judgments here. Begin by asking what emotions are for. Plausibly, we evolved to feel affect because it enhanced our inclusive fitness. Sometimes having the capacity for the right emotions will lead to better outcomes than not having it. For instance, it is often irrational to punish transgressions, because the cost of enforcing the punishment is high (transgressors are often strong; they've grown fat on ill-gotten gains). So if we assess the costs and benefits of punishing cooly, we will refrain from punishing. But having the disposition to punish transgressors might be adaptive. If transgressors know that we will punish them, whatever the costs, they might refrain from transgressing in the first place. The emotion of anger bridges the gap, motivating us to punish when a cooler analysis would counsel us to cut our losses.

Now, why do we have compatibilist responses to wrongdoing, from this evolutionary perspective? Not  because agents in a deterministic world are really responsible. Presumably our emotions are not sensitive to such metaphysical issues. Instead, our emotions are sensitive to whatever enhances our inclusive fitness in the long run. We can expect to feel indignation and resentment toward agents who require collective control because they threaten our fitness-relevant interests. Presumably, it is only necessary that these agents share the surface properties of rational beings for our emotions to be triggered. And we find just this in the way doctors react to psychopaths: because they seem bad rather than mad, even psychiatrists who hold a theory according to which psychopaths cannot be blamed find themselves resenting them.

Since the reactive attitudes will be triggered by merely surface properties of agents, then, they cannot be regarded as reliable guides to responsibility. We therefore ought to disregard them when we engage in assessing responsibility.

Contextualist Response to Frankfurt-Style Cases

A possible response to Frankfurt-style cases has just occurred to me. In a Frankfurt-style case, an agent is felt to be blameworthy for an action they were unable to avoid performing, because a counterfactual intervener waits in the wings to ensure they perform it. Such cases conflict with a widely held intuition that agents are responsible only for actions which they could have avoided performing. Now recall Watson’s ‘Two Faces of Responsibility’. There Watson distinguishes two kinds of responsibility, which he calls aretaic responsibility and accountability. Watson argues that both are genuinely kinds of responsibility, and attributing either (in its negative mode) is a way of blaming. But different conditions must be fulfilled for each rightly to be attributed. I am aretaically responsible for something if it expresses where I stand on matters of importance. But I am accountable for it only if I had a fair opportunity either to avoid performing the action, or to avoid getting myself into the situation in which (as I knew) I could be called upon to perform it.

Part of Watson’s aim in ‘Two Faces’ is to dispel the apparent paradox sketched by Susan Wolf, when she argues that there is an asymmetry in our judgments of praise and blame. Wolf argues that if an agent is so constituted that she cannot help but perform a morally good action, she deserves praise, but if she is so constituted that she cannot help but perform a bad action she deserves no blame. Watson argues that the asymmetry is the product of switching between the two faces of responsibility. Aretaically the good agent is praiseworthy, but she may not be accountable for her action. The bad agent is not accountable for her action, though she is aretaically blameworthy. If we stick to one standard of responsibility, we dispel the paradox (just as we can block certain sceptical arguments by maintaining a consistent standard for the application of ‘knows’).

It will be obvious where I am going with this. Is it possible that alternative possibilities is a precondition of responsibility as accountability, and that agents in Frankfurt-style cases are not accountable? On this view, they are (merely) aretaically responsible for their actions, because they express where they stand on questions of value.

How many battalions does incompatibilism have?

I want to gauge people's assessment of the current state of play in the free will debates. In the 60s and 70s, incompatibilism was very much a minority view (right?) Today, incompatibilism is much better represented. Is it still a minority view, or is as often (or more widely) held as compatibilism? Van Inwagen reports Slote's comments that incompatibilism is now the standard view, as well as Warfield's comments that most philosophers who worked on the problem were incompatibilists, while most analytic philosophers more generally were compatibilists. Is that right?

Finking Frankfurt

Things have been pretty lively in the Garden of late. I hope this relatively technical post won’t put an end to that…

I’ve been thinking about what Frankfurt-style cases do and don’t show. I take it that they do show that alternative possibilities (APs) are not necessary for agents to be responsible for (token) actions. But I’ve been playing with a possible response on the part of those who think that alternative possibilities are necessary for MR more generally. Mightn’t they argue that though MR for token actions does not require APs, nevertheless the power to exercise dual control is necessary?  ("Dual control" is  Kane's term; I take it to be a synonym for what Fischer calls “regulative control”).

What started me down this road is noticing the similarity between the structure of Frankfurt-style cases and cases in which dispositions are finkish. A disposition is finkish (inter alia) if s, the stimulus which elicits it, also causes that very disposition to vanish. Consider, for instance, Mark Johnston’s ‘shy but powerfully intuitive chameleon’. Johnston’s chameleon is green, but, because it is so shy, it blushes bright red whenever it intuits that it is about to be put in a viewing condition. The chameleon is therefore disposed to look green, in normal viewing conditions, unless and until it is actually about to be in normal viewing conditions.

The shy chameleon is disposed to look green, though it never actually looks green. Its disposition is masked by the very stimulus that is necessary and sufficient for eliciting it (being placed in normal viewing conditions). Its failure actually to give response r does not count against its possession of the disposition to r. Now turn to agents in Frankfurt-style situations. Their apparent moral responsibility for their choices and actions, despite their inability to choose and to act otherwise than they do, is supposed to show us that APs are irrelevant to moral responsibility. But we might argue that these agents are appropriate targets for the reactive attitudes because they have the power to exercise dual control. Powers, like dispositions, can be masked without their possessors losing them (even temporarily).

Frankfurt-style cases might show that APs are not necessary for MR in individual cases. But they do not show that the power to choose alternatives is not a necessary condition of moral responsibility. Principles like “ought-implies can” might therefore better be understood as a claim about the powers of responsible agents: such agents are under moral obligations only if they can choose alternatives – that is, only if they have the power to exercise dual control over their actions. The demonstration that we can be morally responsible for something on a particular occasion, when our power to exercise dual control is masked, does not show that we need never possess that power.

Mele on Pereboom

In the latest issue of Analysis, Al Mele gives  us a critique of Pereboom’s ‘four-case argument’ for incompatibilism. Pereboom’s strategy is to present four cases, beginning with an entirely manipulated agent and ending with a moderately reasons-responsive agent, but which form a relatively smooth continuum. He argues that the first agent isn’t morally responsible for their actions, because they are causally determined to act as they do, and that the changes introduced into each subsequent scenario do not alter that fact. If agent 1 fails to be morally responsible for their actions, because they are causally determined to act as they do, then agent 4 – a moderately reasons-responsive agent – cannot be responsible either if their actions are causally determined.

Mele claims that the argument fails, because in none of the scenarios presented by Pereboom is it true that causal determinism explains why the agent fails to be morally responsible. Consider case 1, in which (in Pereboom’s version) the agent is manipulated so that his every momentary state is produced by outside deterministic mechanisms operated by neuroscientists. Suppose, Mele asks, that the neuroscientists exercised indeterministic control in this scenario, so that there is a small chance that instead of producing the desires and beliefs that will motivate the action the neuroscientists want, instead the agent will be incapacitated. Surely the agent is no more morally responsible for their action in this scenario than in the first? So causal determinism cannot be doing the work here.

This seems right. But this does not show, as Mele claims, that the four case argument for indeterminism fails. There is a way to revive the strategy, in the face of Mele’s objection. Rather than insist that it is causal determinism that explains the lack of moral responsibility in cases 1-3 (and therefore 4), an incompatibilist should insist that it is causation that is doing the explanatory work here. Probalisitic (or other indeterminist) causation is still causation, and moral responsibility (the incompatibilist should insist) is incompatible with moral responsibility.

After all, why would anyone think that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility? It’s not (or shouldn’t be) because we think that what happens is settled long before it happens, but because the agent doesn’t control what happens. If I am pushed by a non-deterministic force, which might not have pushed me at all, I am pushed as surely as if I were pushed by a deterministic force. In other words, event-causal libertarian adds nothing to moral responsibility that isn’t compatible with determinism.

I’m not claiming that the four-case argument for incompatibilism will work, if we tweak it as I suggest. But it seems to me that understanding it in this way will refocus the debate where it should be: on the question of the kind of control agents can exert over their deliberations and intention-formation, in both deterministic and indeterministic worlds.

A libertarian defence of compatibilism

There has been some talk recently about the hard heartedness of libertarians. But libertarians are not hard-hearted; quite the opposite. Indeed, one libertarian has recently (and, I suspect, without realizing it) offered us a nice gift: a defense of the view that free will is compatible with determinism. That libertarian is Mark Balaguer, and he offers us this gift in his ‘A Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will’ in a recent issue of Noûs.

Balaguer, like Kane, hangs his theory of libertarian free will on what he calls ‘torn decision’ cases. In these cases, an agent has roughly equal reason to perform each of two or more incompatible alternatives. Balaguer argues that if our choices in torn decision cases are undetermined, then we exert appropriate control over our choices, and we exercise L-freedom (libertarian free will). I think he’s wrong; I think we don’t exercise relevant control in these cases. But that’s not the question I want to focus on here. Instead, I want to show how his view entails that free will is compatible with determinism, at least with regard to some choices.

Balaguer, like Kane, thinks that many or even all of our choices are L-free, even when they are determined. Kane’s view is that if we are ultimately responsible for our characters, because we have formed them through indeterministic choices, then we are responsible for those decisions that are determined by our characters. Balaguer’s view is different. Instead, he holds that if an agent is capable of L-free choices in torn decision cases in a deterministic world, then that agent is L-free, and all the choices of an L-free agent are themselves L-free. L-freedom transfers from undetermined torn decision cases to cases in which the agent’s decision is determined by her reasons.

But if it is mere capability for undetermined choices in torn decision cases that makes an agent L-free, then there is no need for her to actually make such choices. If I am capable of such a choice (Balaguer calls a type-1 decision), then I am L-free, whether or not the world I live in is deterministic. So if I am capable of type-1 decisions, then all my type-2 decisions (where my reasons determine my choices) are L-free. Hence, libertarian freedom is possible in a deterministic world.

Of course, Balaguer does not intend to offer us a defence of compatibilism. I'm pretty sure that he means to say that agents who actually exercise libertarian freedom, by making type-1 decisions, have L-freedom in their type-2 decisions. So I’ve caught him in a slip, which he can easily avoid, by altering his definition of an L-free agent. However, there is a deeper problem here. Balaguer owes us an argument as to why we can’t exercise L-freedom in a deterministic world. Presumably, any such argument will turn on the claim that indeterminism is necessary for the existence of L-freedom: he might say, for instance, that it is not possible to transfer a property you don’t have, and that therefore in order for libertarian freedom to be transferred from type-1 decisions to type-2, agents must actually exercise libertarian freedom in type-1 cases. But this won’t work, simply because (by definition) type-2 decisions are determined, whatever kind of world we live in, so whatever the truth of determinism L-freedom is never transferred to type-2 decisions. I conclude that Balaguer has no principled reason to withhold the attribution of L-freedom to agents in a deterministic world. Hence, on his view, free will is compatible with determinism.

Time and the Compatibilist

A Friday provocation...

Compatibilists claim that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Even if facts about the universe at t, in conjunction with the laws of nature, entail that an agent acts in a certain way at t1, that agent may be morally responsible for acting in that way. Now suppose that time travel to the past is one day a practical possibility. In that case, it might be possible to go back in time to a point prior to t1 and punish (or reward) an action, even though it has not yet occurred. Compatibilists seem committed to holding that this kind of punishment would be just. But this is extremely implausible, so implausible that an account of moral responsibility that entails it cannot be accepted.

Compatibilist Replies and Responses

Incoherence

The compatibilist might argue that the scenario is incoherent. Suppose the punishment meted out by our time traveller (call him Tim) represents a novel intervention in the history of the malefactor, in the sense that prior to the traveller’s observation of the act at t1, no such punishment had occurred. In that case, an event (the malefactor’s punishment) both would and not have occurred at some time prior to t1. Familiar paradoxes raise their head at this point, but here I want to draw your attention to a less familiar problem. If Tim is able to intervene in the history of the malefactor (call her Marie), to make it the case that she is punished for an action before it takes places, even though before Tim observed Marie performing the wrongful act the punishment had not taken place, then determinism as defined above would not hold. It would not be true that Marie is causally necessitated by the state of the world and the laws at nature at t to perform her wrongful act at t1. Not only might she possess the ability to act in such a way that, were she to act in that way, the laws of nature or past states of the world at t1 would have had to be different (Lewis 1981), but at least one person – Tim – could act in such a way as to bring it about that past states of the world at t1 actually are different. But if this is the case, then determinism is false. There is no world in which determinism is true and backwards punishment is possible.

Response

The plausibility of this compatibilist reply depends crucially on the kind of punishment envisaged and on the metaphysics of time. On an eternalist view of time, an intervention of the kind envisaged in the reply seems to be impossible. On this view, time is fixed and we cannot change the past even if it proves possible to observe it. But kinds of punishment that do not alter the past seem possible, and other views of time may be true. First, backwards punishment may be possible on the eternalist view. It would have to be the case that the punishment, though caused by time-travelling Tim, always preceded the wrongful action. There is nothing incoherent about this idea (it needn’t involve closed causal loops, for instance), but it does raise some complications. If the punishment now precedes the crime, how can we be sure that it isn’t causally necessary for the commission of the crime? Perhaps Marie, embittered by what she perceives as her unjust treatment, turns to a life of crime in protest. In that case, her punishment does seem unjustified, and the counterexample to compatibilism fails. However, there seem to be ways in which this problem can be avoided. Perhaps the events which constitute punishing Marie take place prior to t1, but do not have any impact upon her actions at t1 since she does not learn of her punishment until after that time (perhaps her bank account is emptied by Tim).

Even if this problem were to prove insurmountable, an eternalist view of time might prove false. Suppose the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, but that macroscopic determinism governs the multiverse. In that case, it would be possible for Tim to observe Marie’s wrongful action at t1, and travel back in time to punish her, secure in the knowledge that his punishment would not intervene in the causal chain leading to her action. His punishment would, to be sure, impact causally upon the Marie punished, but the Marie punished and the Marie who performed the original wrongful act would not exist in the same universe. Nevertheless, since macroscopic determinism is true, Tim could be confident that his punishment is just: the Marie punished would have performed the wrongful act without his intervention. On the Strawsonian view, which underlies many compatibilist theories of moral responsibility, the reactive attitudes are a justified response to the good or ill will of agents (Strawson 1962). Tim knows all he needs to know about the quality of Marie’s will to justify punishing her.

Alternative Possibilities

The compatibilist might insist that she is not committed to the justifiability of backwards punishment, since she holds that alternative possibilities (understood in a distinctively compatibilist manner) are a necessary condition of moral responsibility. Since Marie is punished before her wrongful act, she is punished before she chooses between alternative possibilities; she is therefore not morally responsible for the act at the time of the punishment and the punishment is unjust.

Response

Marie will have alternative possibilities, in the compatibilist sense, at the time of her action, even if she undergoes backwards punishment. If it is ever true that agents are responsible for X-ing in a deterministic world because, if they had wanted to Y instead of X-ing, they would have Y-ed, then Marie is responsible for the wrongful act. But since we know that Marie will freely (in the relevant sense) perform the act, her punishment is just. In any case, many compatibilist have now abandoned the thought that alternative possibilities are a necessary condition of moral responsibility (Fischer and Ravizza 1998; Dennet 1984; Frankfurt 1969).

Biting the Bullet

The compatibilist might insist that backwards punishment is just. We balk at the thought, she might argue, because though the world in which we live is or might be deterministic, the future is unknown. Perhaps none of us have alternative possibilities metaphysically open to us; nevertheless the future is epistemically open. Because we do not know the future, we cannot punish people for what they will do: we might wrong, and if we are, we act unjustly. But in the time travel scenario, the future is known, and backwards punishment is just. The gut reaction that it is not is simply the product of the illegitimate perserverance of intuitions which are a response to epistemic openness.

Response

Suppose the wrongful act performed by Marie is very wrong – on the order of mass murder, for instance – and that the only time at which we can punish her is significantly prior to t1. In that case, the view that it is just to punish her is highly counterintuitive. Of course, worries about personal identity might arise, but they seem no more pressing than the similar kind of worries which arise with ordinary (forwards) punishment. Suppose that the only way to prevent Marie from committing her crime is by killing her prior to her even contemplating the crime. Compatibilists need not think that this is just (they need not subscribe to a consequentialist account of punishment, for one thing), but they are committed, it seems, to holding that it is less unjust than killing an innocent person at random. And that seems highly counterintuitive.

Since we know that Marie will commit the wrongful act at t1, there seems no reason not to punish her at some time prior to t1 (assuming that punishment is ever justified). Once epistemic worries are set aside, as they are in the time travel scenario, it does not seem to matter, from the point of view of justice, whether punishment precedes or follows the crime. And that is a hard bullet for the compatibilist to bite.

Will you or will you not?

Most philosophers of action prior to the twentieth century seemed to have thought that actions were caused by volitions. Ryle’s attack on the notion of volition in The Concept of Mind seems to have killed off the notion. But, like a lot of other previously unfashionable notions, volitions have been making something of a comeback in recent years. Some (relatively) recent defenses of volition: Ginet’s On Action (1990); Lowe’s Subjects of Experience (1996), Pink’s Psychology of Freedom, as well as a whole series of publications by our own Jing Zhu. Some attacks on volitions: Adams and Mele (1992), ‘The Intention/ Volition Debate’ and Berent Enç’s How We Act (2003).

Why think volitions are required? Ryle’s main argument against volitions was a regress argument (embedded in a dilemma: either volitions are voluntary or they are not. If they are not, then how can the actions they cause be voluntary? If they are, then don’t we need to postulate a volition as a cause of our volitions?). Volitionists tend to reply with a regress argument of their own: typical human actions can be reconstructed as action-chains, in which each link is caused by the one prior to it. There must be a first link, on pain of infinite regress, and that first link had better be an action (if it is not, it is hard to see how the subsequent links attain this status). Volitionists suggest that this first link is an act of will.

Danto uses a similar regress argument, for the claim that action chains begin with basic actions (rather than volitions). Why should we accept the volitionists claim that action chains begin instead with volitions? At this point, volitionists tend to wheel in their second argument, the argument from paralysis. Suppose that S’s arm is paralysed, unbeknownst to her. S is blindfolded and asked to move her arm. Then her blindfold is removed, and she is surprised to see that her arm has not moved. She has failed to perform a basic action. But she has done something; she tried to move her arm, and this trying equates to a volition.

I’m a little puzzled by this argument. It seems to me that it provides no real support for either side. Everyone should agree that actions begin in the brain. We can accept that certain brain events took place in S (and perhaps not only brain events, but also nerve firings). Volitionists say that these events are acts; others might say that they are the forming of proximal intentions. Are they really disagreeing about anything , apart from what to call these events? Debates about what to call something are best settled by stipulation.

Let me turn now to Jing Zhu’s arguments for the existence of volitions. One thing Zhu invokes repeatedly is action slips. Sometimes, when we intend to do or say something, we end up doing or saying something else; sometimes to our great embarrassment (and sometimes with disastrous consequences). Zhu claims that action slips show that we need volitions to keep our actions on course. I think they show the exact opposite. Action slips occur when one over-learned action sequence is replaced by another, similar one. What they show is the extent to which ordinary voluntary actions do not resemble the kind of effortful and mindful acts that volitionists have in mind. They are typically much more automatic than that. The monitoring of actions which usually keep them on track is carried out below the level of conscious awareness, and there is a limit on the extent to which we can make it conscious (how do you manage to monitor your talking? The only way to do it consciously is to slow down, to the extent necessary for you to rehearse every word before you say it. It goes without saying that we almost never do this. We just trust that the scripts we rely on will keep us on track, and think about what we are talking about, rather than about how we talk. The exact phrases I use in speaking and writing can come as a surprise to me).

The only way to rescue volitions, in the light of implausibility of their playing a role in the 97% of our actions which are more or less automatic, is to restrict them to a small class of especially complex and novel actions, à la James. Zhu endorses something like this approach, in ‘Locating Volition’. But (a) if volitions are restricted to a small class of voluntary actions, then all those arguments about how we need to postulate volitions to explain actions are no longer permissible. And (b) it is very hard to isolate a class of actions which require volitions without circularity or stipulation. Zhu suggests that actions elicited by the environment do not require volitions, whereas actions internally generated do. But it is plausible to think that all actions are both internally generated and environmentally elicited. We might go along with James, and think volitions are only necessary in cases of conflict. But breakdowns of the mechanisms of action inhibition (in utilization behavior, imitation behavior, and so forth) in which people fail to inhibit their responses show the extent to which almost all actions involve conflict. If volitions are necessary anywhere, they will be necessary in routine actions too. And they don’t seem to be necessary in routine actions.

Alternative Possibilities and the gap

These remarks are inspired Gary Watson’s paper ‘The Work of the Will’, but since they go beyond it, I’m posting this as a main entry rather than in the ‘What We’re Reading’ forum. Watson distinguishes between internalist and externalist views of the will. The analogy is with belief: on an internalist view of belief, belief has an internal relationship with truth, such that there can’t be a gap between ‘I believe that p’, and ‘I take p to be true’ (hence Moore’s paradox). Analogously, an internalist view of the will holds that there is no gap between ‘I ought to phi’ and ‘I have compelling reason to phi’. For an externalist, these are separate questions: an externalist might ask herself ‘Phi-ing is best, all things considered, but should I phi?’ Internalists have a harder time explaining contra-normative choices – like akrasia – then externalists, for whom its no problem to see how people might choose to act against their own judgments. For an externalist, that’s what the will is for: to bridge the gap between judgment and action.

Now, I suspect that internalist/externalist divide , in one of its guises, is at least as significant as the compatibilist/ incompatibilist as an explanation of fundamental disagreements concerning moral responsibility. Externalists – like me – think that there must be a gap somewhere in the chain leading from judgment to action for responsibility to get a grip. Internalists deny that there needs to be any such gap.

This comes out clearly in the debate over responsibility for states of the agent. As an externalist, I look for the gap which make the attribution of responsibility appropriate, and when I don’t find it I deny that the agent is responsible for the state. So, for instance, I hold that agents are (typically) not responsible for their beliefs because I have an internalist conception of belief (i.e. I hold that to judge that the totality of the evidence supports p just is to believe that p). I think there must be a gap for responsibility to get a grip. Why the need for the gap? There are a couple of ways to motivate it; in my case, I think considerations of fairness play an important role, since I think that agents can only be held responsible for wrongdoing if they had the opportunity to avoid the action or state (of course, there are obvious objections to this line of thought which invoke Frankfurt-style cases. I think the best way to meet those objections is by invoking an externalist notion of responsibility for character: we are responsible for the intentions we freely form and the decisions we freely make, even in the absence of alternative possibilities, just in case we are responsible – in the alternative possibilities sense –for the states of character expressed in those decisions or intentions).

Internalists deny that responsibility requires a gap. They point out, correctly, that belief formation (for example) is an instance of agency, and argue that agency is sufficient for responsibility. In other terms, they argue that guidance control is sufficient for moral responsibility; regulative control is not necessary.

I think there is a tendency in the literature to think that the demand for alternative possibilities is naturally associated with libertarianism. I think this is a mistake: the demand for alternative possibilities is the product of externalism, not of any version of incompatibilism. And the internalist/externalist distinction cuts across the compatibilist/incompatibilist distinction.

Discussion Boards - A suggestion

Gardeners,

Might I suggest some means whereby comments in the discussion boards are tracked (in the same way that comments on the posts are listed down the right hand column)? I thought I'd get the ball rolling by posting a comment on Pettit's book (which I've done). But I see that I've been beaten to the punch: Derk Perebook has a comment on chapter nine of Clarke's book. It would be a pity if posts by people of the calibre of Derk go unread because its too much of a hassle to go and check whether anyone has posted anything.

In the meantime, if anyone wants to join me in reading *A Theory of Freedom*, feel free...

Pathologies of volition, attributability and responsibility

Intuitively, it seems that attributability (the degree to which an action can be attributed to an agent) and responsibility are, if not synonymous, nevertheless inextricably linked. That is, the higher the degree of one of them, the higher the degree of the other. When I am compelled to act by an outside force, if I am not responsible for the action it seems that this is because it is not attributable to me. Here I shall argue that though attributability and responsibility come in degrees, they can come apart. I shall use some pathologies of volition (as I shall call them) to illustrate.

Volition, I claim, can be broken down into three separable elements; which together make up attributability. These elements are (i) the extent to which the action stems from the agent’s action plans, which rationalize the action for the agent and for others; (ii) the extent to which the agent is aware of (i), and (iii) the degree to which the action is experienced as willed. I shall expand on these points as I go.

Now consider some pathologies of volition:

(1) Utilization behavior (UB). In utilization behavior, the agent (usually following frontal lobe damage; its also seen in Alzheimer’s) responds, apparently compulsively, to the affordances (roughly, the possibilities for use suggested by an) an object. So if you put a glass of water in front of them, they drink. If you put a pair of spectacles down, they put them on – even if they’re already wearing a pair.

(2) Anarchic (or alien) hand (AH): this is the kind of pathology seen in Dr Strangelove. One hand of an otherwise quite rational and responsive agent responds to affordances all by itself. It may pick up food from someone else’s plate and put in the patient’s mouth, or make a move in a checkers game (in one case, the hand made the move, the patient took it back with his other hand, only for the hand to repeat the move).

(3) Tourette Syndrome (TS): In TS, the agent experiences a build up of tension, which eventually becomes (apparently literally) unbearable. The tension can only be relieved, usually well before the point it becomes unbearable, by engaging in the (often inappropriate) behavior associated with the syndrome: ticcing, but also swearing or insulting others. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder seems to exhibit a similar symptomology, though here it is the compulsive act which relieves the tension.

Consider, also, one kind of non-pathological behavior. A great many – probably the great majority – of our actions are routinized, and performed without conscious consideration of our options. Here I have in mind such ordinary activities as switching on a light, driving a car, making a cup of coffee. Though we can be aware of our actions as we engage in these activities, we typically are not. We perform them automatically.

Now this kind of automatic activity is attributable to us. Moreover, we are typically responsible for it (we hold people responsible for their driving). So conscious intending of an action is not necessary for attributability or responsibility. It’s not clear to me whether automatic action is experienced as willed. But the other two ingredients of attributability are in place. The action is accord with the agent’s action plans, and (it seems) the agent is aware that this is the case.

We might say that actions with the highest degree of attributability have all three ingredients. Consciously intended actions are usually like this. Automatic actions have enough of the ingredients to be clearly attributable. But the pathologies of volition have fewer of the ingredients.

In UB, the behavior is not in accordance with the patient’s action plans. She has no propositional attitudes which rationalize her behavior to herself or to others. But she is apparently unconcerned; she does not take her action to conflict with her action plans (perhaps her very short-term action plans are themselves environmentally driven). And she apparently experiences her action as willed.

In TS, the action is not in accord with the patient’s action plans. She does not want to insult this passer-by (for instance). But unlike UB, she is aware that her behavior conflicts with her action plans. Finally, like UB she experiences the behavior as willed. Indeed, she is able (to some extent) to choose when she acts. If the stakes are raised and self-control is required, she can hold out much longer (though she must give in eventually).

Finally, in AH all three ingredients are missing. The patient does not experience the action as willed at all. Instead, she experiences her hand as controlled by an alien force.

Intuitively, then, we can say that AH is the least attributable to the agent. I want to suggest that the extent to which the action accords with the action plans is the most significant ingredient of will, so both UB and TS are clearly unwilled. But TS seems to have a higher degree of volition than UB. Why? Because the agent retains the ability to judge whether or not the action accords with her action plan. This element seems to feed into (iii), the extent to which the action is experienced as willed. Obviously, too, an agent can only attempt to exercise self-control if she is aware that something is at stake.

Somewhat paradoxically, however, responsibility diverges somewhat from attributability. I am inclined to regard the long-term sufferer from AH as most responsible – because she retains overall control over her body, and is aware that toward one part of it she must adopt the objective attitude. UB patients are least responsible, since they do not have intact action plans available to them to which they can compare their moment-by-moment actions. And TS sufferers come somewhere in the middle; responsible for just when (and perhaps how) they give in to their urges.

Against Retribution II

This is a very strange article from today's Guardian. It reports on a recent Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung article by Wolf Singer, who is a neuroscientist. Singer argues that brain disease excuses agents from criminal responsibility, and that as a consequence assessments of responsibility are hostage to the current state of the art in psychiatry, brain imaging, and related disciplines. Failure to detect brain disease is not proof of the absence of brain disease.

That raises some interesting questions, for instance about the fairness of current legal practices. But these are not Singer's concern. Instead, he argues that we should stop looking for evidence of brain disease at all: criminal behavior is all the evidence we need. Actually, its not quite clear what his view is. It might be that criminal behavior is evidence of neurological or psychological disorder, or it might be that since hard determinism is true punishment is never approriate.

The article reports that Ted Honderich described Professor's contribution as "breathtaking". It's hard to tell that whether this was meant as praise or blame. Honderich is a clever guy, so I assume it's the latter. Because of course its just not true that brain abnormality excuses. Some kinds of abnormality - for instance, those that make it difficult or impossible for the agent to appreciate the nature of her action or to control it - excuse, but others don't. Some abnormalities are aggravating conditions (eg, high intelligence), others are just irrelevant (my kleptomia won' get me off a speeding ticket). Perhaps courts do have a tendency to excuse people with brain diseases, but that might just be an expression of caution: the accused is not guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

A harder case is the one mentioned in the first paragraph of the article, the criminal with a brain tumor:

Last month, the case against Patrizia Reggiani was reopened in Italy. She is serving a 26-year jail sentence for having ordered the killing of her husband, the fashion supremo Maurizio Gucci. At the first trial in 1998, expert witnesses dismissed her lawyers' claims that surgery for a brain tumour had changed her personality. The new trial has been granted because her lawyers believe that brain imaging techniques developed since then will reveal damage that was previously undetectable, and strengthen their case for an acquittal

Suppose that the tumor has not affected her moral knowledge or her control over her behavior; why should mere character change excuse?

Autonomy - trawling for feedback

Download autonomy_and_addiction.pdf

This is just an entirely shameless attempt to get feedback on the paper above. It defends a view of autonomy as requiring exercise of the capacity to extend our will across time. Agents are autonomy-impaired to the extent they are unable to carry out plans, for whatever reason. The test case is addiction: I argue that some addicts experience constant oscillations of preferences, such that when they consume their choice expresses their all-things-considered preferences. Nevertheless, these agents are autonomy-impaired, and other accounts can't capture the precise nature of the impairment. Hope someone is willing to read it.

Automatism and Reasons-Responsiveness

I've mentioned before that though I think that the Fischer/Ravizza account of MR is the best on the market, I don't think it handles all our deeply held intuitions. Some of my intuitions seem better explained by a characterological account of MR. In this post, I want to sketch one case which the F&R account doesn't seem to handle satisfactorily.

Its an actual kind of case. Sometimes, people perform morally significant acts in a state of automatism. Essentially, they're sleepwalking. These people engage in all kinds of skilful behavior. The case of Ken Parks is illustrative here. Parks had a history of childhood sleepwalking, but he had not experienced it for decades. One night, he arose from his bed, drove 23 kilometres (this was Canada - about 10 miles, I think) to his parents'-in law house, where he stabbed them both. He then drove to the police station, where he said that he thought he had killed someone. At the point, he noticed that his hands were badly cut. He was charged with the murder of his mother-in-law (with whom he had always got on well) and the attempted murder of his father-in-law, but acquitted on the grounds that he was in a state of automatism at the time.

Of course, we can be sceptical concerning the facts. Assume that they are stated (for evidence that this kind of case is possible, see the New York Times Magazine story here ). Now, my intuition is that the courts were right to excuse Parks, because he wan't himself when he acted. He had no history of violence, he liked his parents-in-law and they him; he had no motive for the action. But it seems to me that F&R have to hold him responsible. Parks is certainly reasons-responsive and -reactive at the time of murder. He responds to the affordances of objects (that is, he uses artifacts in the manner he has learned, in a skilful way). He drives through the streets of Scotdale without hitting anything. He might even stop at traffic lights. Is he responsive to moral reasons? That's where F&R will have to concentrate, I think, to give the right result here. He's certainly not responsive to moral reasons qua moral reasons. He doesn't explicitly consider what he has moral reason to do. But neither do normal agents, most of the time. Instead, it may well be that we typically respond to moral affordances: the person who falls is to-be-helped, not because the categorical imperative demands it, or it maximizes utility, or whatever the correct account of morality is, but because I have internalized that kind of response. I'm not sure that I ever ask myself what morality requires of me, rather than what the goods at stake in the actual situation require. If that's right, though, then Parks too might be moral reasons-responsive, in a regular enough way for him to count as a responsible agents on the F&R account. But since he's not himself, I'm inclined to excuse him from responsibility.

Is this is a counterexample to the account? If not, why not? I'm here to learn...