Al Mele's paper: a Garden Discussion

Comments on Al Mele, "Manipulation, Compatibilism, and Moral Responsibility"
Tim O'Connor

Prof. Mele provides us with an admirably clear presentation and analysis of several related arguments for the incompatibility of determinism with freedom and moral responsibility. Mele is undecided on the truth of incompatibilism, whereas I am an incompatibilist who has always found it difficult to feel any temptation towards compatibilism. Despite our differences, I find much to agree with in Mele's critical discussion of certain incompatibilist arguments. I will organize my remarks around four issues. I ask you to forebear my taking the liberty in this context of sometimes stating things in a quick, loose, and sloppy fashion. As one instance of such looseness, I will slide back and forth between talking of freedom and moral responsibility.


1. Mele's historical condition on responsibility

Mele argues that everyone (regardless of one's views on incompatibilism) should recognize an historical condition on freedom and moral responsibility for one's action at a given time. Imagine an agent who involuntarily undergoes a motivational overhaul such that he now performs action A as an expression of values that were "very recently produced in a way that bypassed his capacities for control over his mental life by value engineering." Mele argues that if we flesh out the situation in certain ways (see p.8 for a full and careful statement of the scenario Mele has in mind), then independent of our views concerning compatibilism, and even if all typical compatibilist conditions on freedom are meet, we have good reason to regard the action as nonautonomous, as not having been freely and responsibly performed. And he goes on to draw the conclusion that a plausible compatibilism will recognize an historical dimension to freedom, requiring that the values a free agent expresses in action must have been developed in a way that does not undercut ordinary means of exercising control over one's mental life.

I agree with all of this. And if this is correct, then an argument for incompatibilism that assume that there is no relevant difference between just-prior-to-action manipulation scenarios and non-manipulative deterministic scenarios should be unpersuasive. Still, there might be reason to poke at certain details in Mele's discussion here. Notice that the sufficient condition he provides (p.8) for an agent's being unresponsible for A-ing owing to recent manipulation (NFM) involves his being unable to do otherwise on a compatibilist reading. This is a stronger form of inability than an incompatibilist one (as compatibilist ability is less demanding than incompatibilist ability). Why restrict NFM in this way? Granted, NFM lays down a sufficient condition, not a necessary one, but it still seems a gratuitous weakening of the condition. Suppose manipulation that leaves me strongly desiring to A (contrary to what I would have desired previously) and with no countervailing desire, and so I unhesitatingly A. Surely the compatibilist can agree no less than the incompatibilist that in this case, even if I am able to do otherwise in a compatibilist sense (but not in the plain incompatibilist sense, I act unfreely.

O.k., now suppose that metaphysical freedom in fact requires indeterminism and that the way my action unfolds post-manipulation corresponds to the indeterminist account that best captures the notion of freedom, at least apart from a plausible historical condition on freedom. (I suggest you consult a volume entitled PERSONS AND CAUSES for helpful clues on what this might involve.) On these assumptions, it's tempting to say that while the agent's freedom is diminished, it is not lacking altogether.  (Note on p.7 Mele's passing use of the qualifier, "unfree -- to a significant extent.") For possible significance of this last point, I turn to issue 2.


2. Mele's criticism of Pereboom's manipulation argument to the best explanation for incompatibilism

Pereboom defends a manipulation argument that does not depend on a "no difference" premise, but instead on a "best explanation" premise. The best explanation of the intuition that an agent is not responsible in certain manipulation cases is that "his action results from a deterministic causal process that traces back to factors beyond his control" (quoted on p.19). Mele suggest that we can test this judgment by considering cases of manipulation that are nondeterministic. He then suggests that we imagine cases where the manipulation leaves open exactly two causally possible outcomes: either the A-ing of the original scenario or the incapacitation of the agent. Suppose the agent in facts A-s. Mele notes that we judge the agent not be responsible here, even though the action was not determined. The conclusion drawn is that the no-responsibility intuition in the deterministic scenarios is more likely driven by the presence of manipulation, and not by the deterministic nature of the scenario.

But I wonder whether Mele gives the right kind of indeterministic test-case scenario. Why not consider a case where it is causally open to the agent to undertake two or more different courses of action, with the manipulation consisting in the fact that the motivational package driving the consideration of these options constitutes a complete change-over from what was the case previously. In this scenario, we might be inclined to credit the agent with some (albeit highly diminished) degree of responsibility for the choice he makes. And if this is correct, this might lend support to a more modest conclusion than Pereboom's, viz., that the best explanation of our intuition in his deterministic manipulation scenarios is that it is to some degree undergirded by the presence of both determinism and manipulation.


3. Mele's discussion of an 'original design' argument for incompatibilism

Mele thinks a better incompatibilist argument is of an 'original design' sort. We imagine the value engineering to occur not fairly immediately before the target action, but at the time of the creation of the agent. Imagine Diana in a deterministic universe creating a zygote in a precise way in order to bring about the mature individual Ernie's A-ing thirty years later. Here Diana employs impressive computational powers in relation to her equally impressive knowledge of the laws of nature and the state of the universe just prior to her creating the zygote, so as to deduce what it will take to achive the desired result. First premise: Ernie is not responsible for his action, owing to the value engineering. Now compare this case to an otherwise identical situation involving an agent Bernie's A-ing, where Bernie comes about in the usual way, absent any designer intending any of his actions. The second premise of the argument is that there is no freedom-relevant difference between Ernie and Bernie. From these two premises, the appropriate conclusion is drawn.

Mele is uncertain whether this is a good argument, with his uncertainty centered on the first premise. He suggest that the ideal adjudicators between the conflicting intuitions had by compatibilists and incompatibilists are "reflective agnostics" (such as…himself!). And his hunch is that what will determine the judgments on this premise for such arbiters is the degree to which they have doubts about the compatibility of freedom and moral responsibility with any form of indeterminist agency. The thought is that most reflective agnostics will assume that freedom and responsibility are possible, so if they are not possible under (significant) indeterminism, then they must be under determinism, but then the argument in question must be unsound, and premise 1 is the one to go.

I agree that an antecedent judgment about the prospects for indeterministic free agency will skew the judgments of many reflective agnostics about Mele's premise 1. Here I'll simply note that I am not persuaded that it is reasonable to allow the former judgment to drive the latter one.

Mele further suggests (p.28 and n.22) that verdicts about premise 1 may vary depending on what event it is that Ernie is designed to produce. (Compare cases involving Ernie killing his aunt with ones in which he donates money to charity.) If Mele is right about this, and premise 2 is quite strong, then I suggest that the fact that judgments may waver depending on what kind of event our designer intends may reflect doubts about compatibilism in the face of its consequences. Well, that claim is very quick, but to keep things short, I will simply toss it out and move on.


4. The bearing of Humeanism wrt laws of nature on incompatibilism

Mele invites us to think hard about whether Humeanism about laws of nature and causation should affect the strength of the compatibilist position (29-30). He contends that Humeanism would undermine the thought experiment concerning the origin of Ernie's zygote. Here I think he falls into error, owing to his focusing on only certain of the relevant consequences of Humeanism for freedom. He notes that, since on the Humean view, laws of nature are determined by the totality of (allegedly non-causal) local matters of fact, what the laws of nature are may be partly owing to the way Ernie acts. The laws are not logically prior truths that, together with Diana's action, guarantee his action. All the facts that are fixed by events prior to Ernie's actions do not ensure what he will do, since future facts, including Ernie's action, are needed to fix what the laws of nature are. (If this sounds crazy, that's largely because it is. And I don't have space to do the spelling out that makes it just a little less crazy-sounding.)

So, all that would seem good for Ernie and his freedom. But consider this: if Humeanism is correct, it's not merely the case that the past history (including Diana's designing intentions and action) leading up to Ernie's action at time t leave it open what the laws are, and so also whether Ernie will A at t. It is also open at time t itself (the time of the action) and for a long time thereafter whether, properly speaking, Ernie has even so much as acted at t (let alone acted freely)! Whether the events involving Ernie constitute an action depends on whether there are appropriate causal connections at play. If the future were to unfold in accordance with very different fundamental patterns than those that held sway hitherto (or with no interesting patterns at all) -- and nothing up to and including what occurs at t will ensure that they won't -- then the event that might at the time have looked like an action will turn out not to have been any kind of an action at all.

What conclusion should we draw from this strange, even grotesque state of affairs, on which whether you or me (never mind Ernie) have ever performed so much as a single action is still an open matter, and will remain open long after our deaths? I suggest this: if all this is so, then however the radically contingent, 'loose and separate' events of the future fall out, whether validating certain events as actions or not, then for any one of them, it surely wasn't up to me just then -- something I made to be the case at that very time -- that I did what I did (if indeed I did anything at all). The very dependency of the facts of agency on the entire world history, in the Humean scheme of things, itself supplies grave grounds for doubt about the possibility of freedom and responsibility in anything but the most pathetically deflationary sense. My compatibilist friends, maintain some minimal standards, please! Whatever exactly freedom and responsibility consist in, surely they can't be grounded in so radically external a way as that.