In Defence of History

Non-historicists about responsibility (eg. Frankfurt, McKenna) argue that how an agent came to be the way they are is not relevant to whether they are responsible for how they now behave: even manipulated agents (not to mention instant agents) can be responsible, so long as they satisfy some current time-slice conditions (CTS conditions). So, for instance, Mele’s manipulated Beth, who is a dedicated philosopher only because her dean hired neuroscientists to rewire her preferences to make her a psychological duplicate of Ann, can be responsible for the very first act she performs upon waking from the manipulation, even if that is an act she performs only because she has been rewired (perhaps she agrees to referee a paper).

 

But are they entitled to this view? No one doubts that recent history matters to moral responsibility; even non-historicists concede tracing cases (that is, cases like the drink-driver case, in which someone is morally responsible for hitting a pedestrian while DUI, even though they didn’t control hitting the pedestrian, because they are apparently responsible for their inability to exercise control).  But they can apparently point to a relevant difference between these cases and the case of Beth. The principle they uphold, which explains both cases like Beth and the drink-driver, is that all responsibility traces back to free choices by agents who satisfy some set of CTS conditions, regardless of how the agent came to satisfy these conditions.

 

But recent history matters to moral responsibility in ways beside those seen in tracing cases. Actions are extended processes. Even the shortest take time: it takes time to perceive the stimulus, to begin the reaction and to translate it into overt bodily movements. Now, surely on any view how this history goes matters to whether the agent is responsible for the action. Consider Mog who robs a bank. Mog is responsible in virtue of a complex and extended series of actions: planning the robbery, stealing the getaway car, planting the dynamite... To see this, suppose that some deity creates Mog as an instant agent with lit fuse in hand. I don't think we would hold Mog responsible, even if Mog were to place the dynamite against the wall, in accord with his plan (which he falsely believes himself to have formulated). If you don't buy that, then consider Mog’s twin Meg. Meg is created by the same deity and comes into existence at the very moment she launches a punch aimed at George’s head. She has just time to deflect the trajectory of the punch, were she to desire to do so, but she has no such desire.

 

Why are agents like Mog and Meg responsible in the real world? In virtue of an extended serious of actions, including actions which are analogues of those like the ownership conditions set down by Fischer, Mele and other historicists. Actions begin as urges or desires; they go on to become overt bodily movements because we fail to inhibit them. That seems at least analogous to the endorsement condition we can find in historicists. So it turns out that history does matter, after all.

Comments

[Kip]

Any fan of incompatibilist manipulation arguments will have some motivation for arguing that history doesn't matter, at least at some point.

The heart of these manipulation arguments (the Zygote Argument, the four case argument) is that there is no relevant difference between the manipulated agent, who is prima facie not free, and the "merely determined" agent.

I think this symmetry is more important than any history condition on MR. For example, if there is a historical condition on the kind of MR that motivates G. Strawson-style skepticism, the condition seems to involve self-creation and logical impossibilities that even time machines can't help.

[Neil]

Kip, the manipulation argument turns on history mattering. Being manipulated is having a history that undermines moral responsibility. I think you're right that you need to be a compatibilist to think that history *doesn't* matter. Frankfurt's response to manipulation arguments just is to insist that thinking that causal history doesn't matter is what comptibilists should say ("We are inevitably fashioned and sustained, after all, by circumstances over which we have no control.")

[Richard]

I'm not sure I see the force of the Mog and Meg examples. These agents do fewer things than their historically-extended counterparts. But it seems to me that they are just as responsible for those (few) things that they do in fact do.

[Neil]

You bite the bullet, Richard? Meg is responsible for punching George in the face? Or at very least for failing to deflect the punch? Even though she has been created in the act of throwing the punch and with a set of mental states the lead to her think that it is best, all things considered, to allow the punch to go to completion? Surely that's a mortar shell rather than a bullet (as Michael McKenna says somewhere).

[Paul Torek]

Are Mog and Meg agents? Doesn't agency itself require a certain amount of extension through time?

[Richard]

As you say, "actions are extended processes", so if the prior parts of the process are missing, this casts doubt on whether there's really an action there at all. I certainly agree the agent can't be responsible for something she didn't actually do.

But assuming Meg could have deflected the punch, but fails to do so for reasons that reveal deep flaws in her character (a callous disregard for others' welfare and bodily integrity, say), then sure, she sounds to me blameworthy [hence responsible] for that.

[Sofia Jeppsson]

I think one problem with Mele's example with Beth the philosopher, is that it's so extremely unrealistic so it's hard to intutionize about it (is "intuitionize" even a word? nevermind). As far as I know, there's no technique available in the real world for anything even resembling the so-called brainwashing that Beth and other agents undergo in Mele's thought experiments. In real life one can brainwash people into becoming very different by torture, isolation etc. Less radically one can influence people with various advertisement tricks, but that's hardly a failsafe way to completely change someone's values, and I don't think it's counterintuitive to hold people responsible for what they do after having been subject to (even very clever) adverts. What one cannot do in real life is to simply take out the "value box" from someone's head and replace it with a different "value box" without that person's consent or knowledge. And to create a person in the middle of an action is of course even further from realism.

But if I strain my intuitional faculties to come up with something about those cases anyway, it would be like this: A person who has only existed for a few seconds can't properly be called an agent, at least not a moral agent. That requires a capacity to act for reasons and plan etc. But if that person then went around and did things, she would gradually become more and more of a full-blown moral agent. A little like when a baby gradually develops into a moral agent, although the instantly created person would presumably develop into one much faster since she'd have much more mental capacities from the beginning.
Magically brainwashed Beth may by and large be counted as the same person as old Beth, but when it comes to things she does that are tightly connected to the brainwashing, I'd suggest she should be counted as a new moral agent in that respect. So if she seconds after the brainwashing is complete sits down and start philosophizing, it might seem weird to praise her for that. It wouldn't look like a proper action, more like the knee-jerking someone does after having been hit lightly with a doctor's hammer. But the more time that passes since the brainwashing, the less relevant it becomes.

I think the view that history matters the way Mele thinks it does give rise to some counter-intuitive consequences. Let's take his example of Charles Manson, who were presumably really evil, but was then magically brainwashed into a good guy. What does it mean to say that he can't be responsible for his good deeds, no matter how much time that passes, and for how many years he lives as a good friend, valuable member of society etc? Does it mean we should break his (now good and tender) heart by treating him the way his former evil self presumably deserved to be treated? Or does it mean we should treat him nicely and say nice things to him, but so to speak, always within quote marks? But what would possibly justify that kind of policy? Doesn't it make much more sense to say that since he's now good, he's to be treated just as well and with as much respect as any other good person? I think so.