Law and Neuroscience Colloquium

The Law and Neuroscience Colloquium will take place on July 6-7 at University College, London, and the Garden's own John Fischer will be presenting his reply to the luck objection on behalf of the libertarian. 

Comments

[John Fischer]

I believe that our moral responsibility and personhood should not "hang on a thread". That is, we shouldn't have to give up our views of ourselves as deeply different from mere animals and as morally responsible (in a robust sense), if we were convinced that causal determinism were true. I have sought to present a theory of moral responsibility according to which moral responsibility is compatible with casual determinism.

It would be equally problematic, in my view, if our moral responsibility depended on the truth of causal determinism. In this case, moral responsibility would also hang on a thread. Thus I have always thought there must be SOME answer to the "luck" problem for the libertarian.

In my paper for the Law and Neuroscience Colloquium in London, I seek to provide at least a sketch of an answer to the luck problem. It is not completely worked out yet, but I'm trying...

So wish me luck (er, but not too much!!)...

[Cihan Baran]

Hello Prof. Fischer,

You write that:
"I believe that our moral responsibility and personhood should not "hang on a thread""

This seems a little confusing.

I agree it *should not* hang on a thread but for all we know, it actually does hang on a thread. (And moreover, I'd even say most of our commonsensical thinking about free will is mistaken.)

What I don't get is that why you are engaging in this sort of thinking. Why should one think that certain ways of thinking about our persoonhood and responsibility can't/shouldn't fall prey to empirical discoveries and then try to come up with arguments for those ways of thinking? Shouldn't we try to be objective, evaluate what's actually the case and then decide things hang on a thread?

I'm somewhat reminded of theists that are prejudiced to think that god(s) exists and then try to come up arguments for their existence.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Cihan,

While I would be interested in hearing Fischer's own answer, I think that Fischer could say simply that he values moral responsibility and therefore has an epistemic duty to defend it. This is a strand of the debate that Kip and I are having in the reading group thread (in case you didn't see the argument yet).

The argument was presented in two forms, the weaker form was presented first here. Don't forget to check out the follow up discussion on page two.

[John Fischer]

Well, it is hard to articulate, and perhaps problematic, but my view is that we have "intuitions" or perhaps considered judgments about dependencies. I have the intuition that our being morally responsible should not depend on whether the laws of nature have associated with them 99.999% probabilities or 100% probabilities.

Wouldn't it be weird to think that we are (or may be) morally responsible, as long as the physicists inform us that the probabilities are 99.999%, but if they were to inform us that, having jiggled the equations, it turns out that the probabilities are indeed 100%, then we would have to conclude that we are NOT morally responsible. I just think our moral responsibility should not depend on this sort of thing.

Now this is of course merely one consideration, and it is defeasible. If it turned out that moral responsibility required alternative possibilities or sourcehood, and the causal determinism ruled out alternative possibilities or the relevant notion of sourcehood, then it would turn out that in fact our moral responsibility WOULD (or at least might) depend on whether the laws are deterministic.

Thanks for your question, Cihan, and for the pointer, Mark.

[Kevin Timpe]

This is only tangentially related and anecdotal, but I thought I'd post it anyway. I'm at a conference and had a chance to talk with a Nobel Laureat in physics, as well as a physics prof from Oxford. I asked them, in their estimate, how many of the world's 100 leading physicists either think that determinism is true or think that it is likely to be true. Both said 0.

[Chris Franklin]

I'm convinced :)

[Alan]

Okay I wrote this earlier, but of course I received "error on page" when I hit "post". I suppose I should then favor indeterminism of posting. But arguably my resultant cursing was not of my own free will.

And--what I said--was that I agree with the physicists in one sense--the sense of indeterminism that encompasses all systems of events irrespective of scope. That is because some--subatomic events and systems that significantly involve such events (Schrodinger Cat scenarios or genetic mutations from radiation, e.g.)--are almost undoubtably indeterministic. Thus, unrestrictedly, what I call absolute determinism is false. But there are system descriptions such as billiard-ball collisions that do not significantly involve such sub-atomic interactions--and--as I thought I cleverly said before but now sounds much more otiose in a second typing of it--if you believe that billiard-ball systems are indeterministic, then I know some pool-sharks who will separate you from your money if you put it where your mouth is. Such systems exhibit what I would call restricted determinism, but determinism nonetheless.

It is an open question whether brain-related psychology relevant to FW questions is more like Schrodinger Cat scenarios or more like billiard-ball ones. Kane versus Honderich. We are not done on determinism due to quantum indeterminacy.

[Tom Clark]

Seems to me that no matter what we found to be the case re determinism/indeterminism, we'd still hold people responsible in the practical, consequentialist sense of making rewards and sanctions contingent on behavior in order to guide goodness. We'd be justified in doing so since we all agree it's a social necessity. And we'd still be able to pick out moral agents: those with normal control capacities that make them responsive to moral norms. So it doesn't seem that moral responsibility in this sense depends on libertarian sourcehood or alternative possibilities. Nor would it be threatened if in torn decisions we found that sheer luck was determinative, since after all the agent would still endorse the choice as reflecting her reasons, deliberations, etc. (which it does, luck notwithstanding), in which case her behavior would still be justly subject to goodness-guiding responses. So we can safely say that this sort of MR has nothing to fear from determinism or luck; it doesn't seem to hang by a thread.

What it seems John is defending against determinism and (now) luck is robust, non-consequentialist MR of the sort that often plays a crucial role in justifying retributive punishment, something that's bound to come up at a conference on neuroscience and the law. I'm wondering, as always, where the non-consequentialist element comes from on his view. References welcome!

[Tom Clark]

I should add that while consequentialist MR commonsensically seems not to hang on a thread, robust MR conceivably might, at least according to some people's intuitions, e.g., some libertarians. It seems on the face of it more metaphysically demanding to provide reasons why agents deserve moral responses independent of what behavior-guiding consequences those responses have. Therefore robust MR might seem more dependent on what the final empirical story is about our agentic powers. This is, perhaps, why John and others feel the need to develop theories that show it *isn't* dependent on empirical findings about determinism and luck, or that it survives no matter what the findings turn out to be.

[Paul Torek]

Tom,

It isn't only consequentialists who would support a justice system that is immune to determinism and to luck-in-torn-decisions. Many Kantians, contractarians, discourse theory ethicists, and so on (I see these as one big superfamily) would as well. And so would many virtue ethicists. These ethical approaches provide interestingly different routes of justification for punishment. Perhaps there is some reason for denying them, too, the title of "robust" MR?

[Tom Clark]

Paul,

Whatever routes of justification for punishment ethical approaches use, they should be denied the title of robust MR insofar as they don’t justify non-consequentialist punishments – e.g., solitary confinement whether or not it serves any deterrent or rehabilitative effect. I take it that Fischer and other compatibilists, in arguing for robust MR (his word, see his first comment), are in the business of justifying such punishments. As is Dennett, who in a 2007 talk on free will (critiqued here) defended retributivism against Greene and Cohen’s consequentialism, although his arguments were surprisingly weak. Still, he did say that since determinism shows we don’t have “cosmic desert,” the criminal justice system should be “gently and humanely” reformed. So he feels (rightly in my view) the humanitarian pull of *not* insulating our conception of moral responsibility and our responsibility practices from the (likely) truth of causal determinism at the macro level of human behavior.