The Agency & Responsibility Research Group Blog

Welcome!

Welcome to the Agency and Responsibility Research Group (ARRG). We are a group of scholars from philosophy and psychology who are interested in action theory, free will, moral responsibility, moral psychology, and related topics. Many of us were contributors to Flickers of Freedom, the now defunct blog dedicated to free will and moral responsibility that I ran from 2010-2017. We would now like to rebuild our community using a different (and hopefully more engaging and sustainable) format. That said, ARRG will be purposely and exclusively online. There are no members, in the traditional sense, and hence neither membership dues nor meetings at in-person conferences. All events will be open access. Every speaker or commentator will be volunteering their time in the name of helping to build this community. ARRG is not affiliated with any institution. It is an independent enterprise that will hopefully serve as a DIY model for other philosophers who want to start similar groups for their subdisciplines.

Some good advice...

Share this if you think it is worthwhile, esp to your graduating students:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCO8eoDWqHQ

Meanwhile, have a wonderful summer, especially you moral responsibility skeptics: you deserve it!! [sorry]

More on Putin and Moral Responsibility (Fischer)

Just a small introduction.  About a week or so ago I sent an email to some of you (well, a good number), just because I was thinking about the horrors of the war in Ukraine.  I had just finished working through and teaching Gregg Caruso's engaging book with Daniel Dennett, and it got me to thinking about how a moral responsibility skeptic would conceptualize the behavior of Putin and our appropriate reactions to it.  Somewhat provocatively, and in a sour mood (induced often these days by the very, very terrible things going on in this war--and other things), I contended that Putin deserved the severest possible blame and punishment.  In a flourish (gratuitous, but I felt inclined to it), I stated that I believed that Putin deserved to be tortured and then put to death.  Ok, I'm not sure about the "tortured" part, but I do think that he deserves the very worst possible treatment (compatibly with our moral constraints, if adding this is not question-begging).  How many people in the civilized (and even uncivilized) world would deny this.  And yet it seemed to me entailed by moral responsibility skepticism of the sort defended by some of my very best friends in philosophy--great philosophers like Derk Pereboom.  (But I also realized that I was perhaps not being ideally careful or charitable--just blowing off metaphysical steam, as it were.)  There ensued a discussion (which I cannot summarize here), but now I add:

As Eddy pointed out (in our email discussion of an aspect of some versions of moral responsibility skepticism), Putin is not exactly destitute.  Apparently he has about 200 billion or more USD squirreled away in a complex shell-game.  Hiding this amount of money takes a lot of savvy, if only to hire the best "wealth management" consultants!!  Did he grow up in grinding poverty?  Not to my knowledge.  My presumption is that he is fully morally responsible, and deserves to be blamed and treated harshly to the fullest extent possible. 

Ok but that's a defeasible presumption, as suggested in email conversation with some of you.  K.  On my view, to be morally responsible, Putin must have the capacity for guidance control.  He is morally responsible for (say) an action only if he owns the reasons-responsive process from which it issues.  Guidance control is owned reasons-sensitivity (to put it over-simply).  As I wrote above, my presumption is that Putin does have the relevant capacity (and also the required epistemic capacity).

But, let's suppose that despite his not-quite-destitute financial situation, and perhaps at least minimally decent upbringing, he is (for whatever reason this happens) a genuine psychopath.  I think this would imply that he can't grasp moral reasons, although he clearly grasps prudential reasons.  Given that one must have the capacity to grasp moral reasons to be morally responsible, if this highly implausible scenario were to obtain (i.e., Putin were unable to grasp moral reasons), then he would not be morally responsible, and would not deserve blame or punishment.  Blame involves moral condemnation, and punishment is  (among other things) harsh treatment that symbolizes the state's moral condemnation. 

Just to try out an idea (and I've only had one cup of coffee), maybe (assuming psychopathy) Putin does not deserve moral blame--he does not "speak the language" of blame/punishment.  This is the language of reasons, including moral reasons.  It doesn't make sense to speak to such an individual in a language they don't and can't speak.  But punishment involves at least two components: blame (symbolic expression of indignation) and harsh treatment.  Perhaps then we could consider the presumptive psychopathic Putin to be fully deserving of the harshest possible treatment (he does speak the language of prudential reasons).  The harsh treatment would not symbolize moral condemnation, but would be fully deserved (or if you prefer, fully appropriate/justified, all-things-considered).  We could justifiably kick the shit out of him, and put him down like an animal.

Well, I don't myself doubt that Putin can grasp moral reasons, in addition to possessing a stunning (and cunning) capacity for prudence.  But it must be admitted that psychopaths sometimes have startling lapses in their prudence, so there is at least some evidence that he is one, in addition to his apparently uncaring brutality.  Still, as I wrote above, we would be totally justified in treating him as harshly as he has caused others to be treated (to the extent possible, which is only a tiny bit).

Now for my second cup of coffee.  Maybe with this assistance, I can figure out (and articulate) how someone could deserve (which I take to be a moral notion) harsh treatment (and not mere sequestration), but not in virtue of doing something blameworthy.  Also, perhaps I'll be caffeine-empowered to explain how it could be appropriate (or justified) all-things-considered to so treat someone not blameworthy.  I hope the ideas sketched above will be deemed incomplete, rather than totally incoherent.   Strict liability for genocide?  Help wanted, and who better to ask than my friends on this blog.

Cory J Clark (03/17/22)

Cory J Clark (Psychology, University of Pennsylvania) gave a talk on March 17th at 4:00pm (EST). The recording of the talk can be found here.

Title:

Don Corleone and the Rational Irrationality of Blame

Abstract:

People have a pro-blame bias, more readily doling out judgments of blame, bad intentions, and bad moral character than judgments of praise, good intentions, and good moral character. This pro-blame bias extends to numerous attributions of responsibility, but also to broad beliefs in human free will—when people wish to punish others, they report higher beliefs in free will and are more skeptical of science that challenges free will. In other words, beliefs about responsibility are “motivated” by desires to hold others morally accountable for their harmful actions. I will review this work and propose an evolutionary explanation for pro-blame bias, termed ‘The Don Corleone Principle.’ When evaluating harmful behaviors, people may err on the side of assuming a person is morally culpable to minimize the costly error of underblaming and gaining a reputation as easily exploitable.

John Martin Fischer (01/27/22)

John Martin Fischer gave a talk on January 27th at 7:00pm (EST). The recording of the talk can be found here.

Title:

Rethinking Free Will Debates

Abstract:

I'll suggest that the kinds of freedom implicated in moral responsibility, autonomy, and authenticity build on the core notion of guidance-control.  These three freedom-implicating notions are thus unified at their core, but also different in important ways. Seeing the differences will help us to "re-think" various debates at the core of Agency Theory.  I will of course only be able to present this package of ideas in a programmatic way, hoping to suggest some fruitful directions for future reflection.

Carolina Sartorio (12/03/21)

Carolina Sartorio gave a talk to ARRG on Friday December 3rd at 3:00 pm EST. Justin Capes provided commentary. The recording of the talk can be found here.

Title:

What is the default view of free will?

Abstract:

I argue that it’s not what you might think (the “classical” model in terms of alternative possibilities), but a simpler “causalist” model that works as an extension of the causalist view of action. This means that, unless given good reason to think otherwise, we should prefer the causalist view to the classical view. I then discuss an interesting defense of the classical view recently put forth by (among others) my critic today, Justin Capes. He defends the classical view from the famous objection in terms of Frankfurt-style cases. A central part of that defense consists in the claim that agents in Frankfurt-style cases are not responsible for acting in the way they do (since they couldn’t have acted otherwise), but only for acting on their own. I offer a counter-reply.

Christian List (10/27/21)

Christian List gave a talk on Wednesday October 27th at 1:00 pm EST. The recording of the talk can be found here.

Title: A Case for Scientific Realism about Free Will

Abstract:

In this talk, I will present a case for scientific realism about free will. I will begin by summarizing some of the main scientifically motivated challenges for free will and will then respond to them by presenting a naturalistic indispensability argument for free will. The argument supports the reality of free will as an emergent higher-level phenomenon. I will also explain why the resulting picture of free will does not conflict with the possibility that the fundamental laws of nature are deterministic.

Derk Pereboom (09/30/21)

Derk Pereboom gave the inaugural ARRG talk on September 30th at 4:00 p.m. EST. The recording of the talk can be found here.

Title: Forward-looking responsibility,  moral anger, and the backfire effect

Abstract:

I defend a forward-looking account of moral responsibility in which the ground-level practice is directly sensitive to aims such as moral formation and reconciliation, and does not feature an intervening level of desert claims. An advantage for this view is that the practice of holding responsible is more sensitive to the forward-looking aims that justify it. I discuss the implication this position has for moral anger in light of the backfire effect, which occurs when interventions result in higher credence in targeted beliefs, and higher incidence of targeted actions.