Flickers of Freedom

Farewell and Thanks!

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who commented and asked questions over the course of my stint as FA in January. It was an honor and your comments and questions have helped me very much. I had planned on posting a couple more times to close out the month but it was just wishful thinking on my part. I do plan on posting in the near future over at Aphilosopherstake.com (a blog I moderate) on related topics so feel free to chime on over there if you're interested.

Also, one last thanks to Thomas for the opportunity. Last month was very helpful for me, especially my first few posts.

For those questions that I have not yet answered, I plan on getting to those this week. Thanks for your patience! Oh, and for those attending the central APA I hope to see you there.

Best,

Justin

Mental Illness and Moral Responsibility

Mental illness affects how we perceive the actions of others and with good reason. Consider two scenarios. In scenario 1 a person crashes into you because they had a non-epileptic seizure while driving. The seizure was due to an undiagnosed anxiety disorder (the person never had a seizure prior to this one). In scenario 2 a person  crashes into you because they want to harm you, they do not have a mental illness of any kind (let's assume). Surely, almost everyone would agree that we are more likely to deem the agent in scenario 2 as morally responsible for crashing into you but not the agent in scenario 1 (MR skeptics aside). I would cite the anxiety order as the exculpating factor in this scenario. The illness left the agent without control over their actions. Now, this is not to say that I think anxiety disorders exculpate in every scenario, far from it! But rather than get bogged down with the details of any one disorder I'd like to speak in more general terms to get the conversation going (though I'd be happy to discuss such details when explaining why we think some disorders exculpate and others do not). 

In the last post I focused on psychopathy. My claim was that psychopaths are morally responsible because their disorder does not leave them without requisite control or with an inability to meet one's favored epistemic condition. In my previous line of work I worked with many that were afflicted with addiction, PTSD, depression, various mood disorders, anxiety disorders, psychosis, schizophrenia, ADHD, and others. Many of these disorders are on a spectrum and some are more dehabilitaing than others. Now, I ask you all: which disorders are exculpating and why? For me, disorders that have as part of their diagnosis hallucinations seem to be excupating in many scenarios (but not all). But the fact that a person has any particular disorder is not exculpating in itself (or is it?), and I think this is an important point. Consider scenario 1 again. This time, let's build into the case that the agent has had 3 such episodes in the last few weeks (call this scenario 1B). Let's further stipulate that the agent can sense when a seizure is coming on and that such seizures can be prevented by taking medication and that the doctor recommended that the agent not drive until the agent had a month without seizures (just to be safe and to make sure the medication was working). Now, it seems that if the agent wasn't taking their meds (because they simply did not want to) and they were feeling as if a seizure was on the verge of coming on but decided to drive anyway, then this agent is morally responsible. Thus, the disorder in and of itself is not doing the work here, at least it doesn't seem to be. Notice that the same thing occurred in scenario 1 and 1B, an agent crashed into an innocent person due to a cognitive disorder that the person was not culpable for (the agent did not ask to have this disorder). In other words, that the agent has this disorder is not *their fault* in either case. What is the agent's fault in scenario 1B, at least at first glance, was a failure to adhere to doctor's orders and for risking driving when the agent felt the seizure coming on. Do folks think that the anxiety disorder exculpates in scenario 1B? These sorts of questions can be generated with any mental illness/disorder and I find it fruitful to use such scenarios to get a grip on what it is about any one disorder that exculpates. I also think that this gets us to deeper questions about the nature of morally responsible agency as well.

Please feel free to discuss variants of the case I mention with other disorders. I find that the thought experiment is helpful to get clear on the disorder in question as well as getting clear on what we find salient in the moral responsibility literature more generally. 

Before concluding I'll ask some further questions (just in case the previous one's were not interesting to you all): (1) Do disorders determine how we will perceive things? Or, do they limit or constrain our salient choices? (2) What is it about an illness that exculpates the person with the disorder?

PS: My stint as FA is coming to a close. However, I do plan on posting a couple more times before handing over the reigns. I'm thinking something on Helen Steward's work re: Agency Incompatibilism, and, a sketch of an epistemic argument against FW skepticism that I'm still working out and would love some feedback on. 

Cheers to a productive work week folks!

Psychopaths and Moral Responsibility: The State of the Debate

In the last post I suggested that moral responsibility may not come in degrees and based on the discussion that ensued it seems that we are pretty torn on whether or not it does. In this post I would like to focus on a different question: are psychopaths morally responsible for their behavior? This debate is dear to me as it is the first debate I weighed in on as a PhD student. In response to Haji 2010, I argued that if we are morally responsible, then psychopaths are morally responsible as well. There is no morally salient difference between *our abilities* (non psychopaths) and those of the psychopath (I'll speak to this a bit more in a second). If one admits that we are sometimes morally responsible for at least some of what we do, then one should conclude the same re: psychopaths. So, where do we all stand on this issue? Morally responsible or not? I'm thinking that like the last question I raised that we will be pretty torn on this front as well. I should note that the philosophical literature seems to weigh in favor of exculpating the psychopath or so it seems,( see Haji 1998;2010; Levy 2007 and 2014; Shoemaker 2011 for a few approaches to why this is so)  whereas  a commonly held view by non-philosophers seems to be that psychopaths are morally responsible for what they do. Having worked with young adults being treated for an array of psychopathic traits in the past (for 5 years at a residential program), it is also worth noting that many of them hold themselves morally responsible for what they do as well. So, to get the discussion going I'll offer an overly brief summary of the debate and mention why they might not be morally responsible and offer some reasons for thinking they might be. I'll be quick and fast because I know most of you are pretty versed in the literature. In the end, I'd like to hear why folks think they are morally responsible (or not). What condition do they fail to meet? I particularly like this debate because of the interdisciplinary feature of the research, but I digress.

The question of whether the psychopath is morally responsible for his actions has received much attention within psychological, legal, and philosophical circles over the past 20 years. There is debate within each tradition as to whether we should treat the psychopath differently than we do other criminals (assuming the psychopath commits a crime). The psychological debate has focused on the psychopath’s ability to utilize cognitive faculties when theorizing about how one ought to act. The legal debate has focused on the punishment of these individuals and how the insanity plea can be applied to them. Because they seem irrational at times, the term ‘moral insanity’ has been used to describe them (Benn 1999, Levy 2007). This causes friction for the judge and/or jurors trying to justly sentence the psychopath because the insanity plea suggests a different approach to their treatment. The philosophical debate has taken a few different approaches to the problem (though I should note that the aforemetnioned approaches have not been restricted to any one discipline, I am grossly summarizing here). 

The first approach tried to assess which kinds of moral knowledge the psychopath could possess (Fields 1996, Glannon 1997, Haji 1998, Levy 2007a). But, this debate seems to be at a stalemate . As Neil Levy notes; “…given that both the truth and the best interpretation of MI (motivational internalism) is extremely controversial, this argument did not serve to advance the debate.” The debate was rooted in discussion about which relevant moral beliefs the psychopath was capable of having given that the psychopath was motivated differently and seemingly without the appropriate motivations .

The second approach focused on the psychopath’s failure to grasp the moral/conventional distinction (Levy 2007a, Levy 2007b, Nichols &Vargas 2007a, Showmaker 2011). The argument there goes something like this; since the psychopath lacks the relevant moral knowledge to be deemed morally responsible the psychopath is unable to control their actions in light of moral reasons because those reasons can only map on to a conventional distinction and not a purely moral one (Levy 2007a). Advocates of holding the psychopath culpable say they may have sufficient knowledge to act morally . Without proof of a lacking of other sorts of knowledge that may be at play when morally theorizing we shouldn’t be quick to revise our intuitions regarding the culpability of the psychopath. I do not think that these two debates are much different from one another. With that said, it doesn’t seem that we have heard sufficient evidence on either side to declare one side wrong, conclusively (even though I find the arguments by Vargas and Nichols a bit more persuasive). This brings us to the third approach and the most current literature within the debate surrounding the responsibility of psychopaths. This approach focuses on three main elements; emotional sensitivity, ethical perception, and a tracing condition centered on an agent’s responsibility of his current dispositional attitudes. This last approach, put forth by IshHaji (Haji 2010), has not yet received much attention. 

In “Psychopathy, Ethical Perception, and Moral Culpability”(2010) Haji claims that psychopaths will either 1) not be morally culpable for their actions, or, 2) their degree of moral culpability will be diminished, perhaps considerably so, in light of their lack of emotional sensitivity (recall the relevance of our last discussion on degrees of moral responsibility). Haji offers support for these claims by appealing to a multitude of recent and widely accepted psychological research. The above mentioned two-fold conclusion rests on the conclusions of 3 separate but closely related arguments which he justifies by use of this research. Suffice to say that because psychopaths lack empathy (emotional sensitivity) this has a decided influence on their ethical perception. And, because ethical perception impacts our understanding of moral reasons to act or refrain from acting it follows that psychopaths might not be able to acquire moral knowledge. Assuming that the psychopath is not morally responsible for their emotional insensitivity it follows that the psychopath might not be morally responsible for their actions/behavior.

To see why the fact that  psychopaths lack emotional sensitivity (empathy) is relevant consider a case by Gilbert Harman (1977): You round a corner and see a group of young hoodlums pouring gasoline on a cat and igniting it. As Harman remarks, and Haji suggests; “you do not need to conclude that what…(the hoodlums) are doing is wrong; you do not need to figure anything out. You can see that it is wrong” (Harman 1977, Haji 2010). Here, you can see the work that ethical perception is doing. It seems to be informing our moral intuitions or reactions to the igniting of the cat . Anyone “properly morally trained” should recognize through ethical perception, which has as its central feature emotional sensitivity, that the igniting of the cat is wrong. How could we expect a psychopath to see this as wrong if they are lacking the central feature of ethical perception, emotional sensitivity, that allows them to see it as such?  

For those who might find this line of argument persuasive, how we perceive the situation has priority over what we decide-- this make sense. However, why think that empathy is the only emotion or faculty bearing on our ethical perception, or that empathy is*necessary* in order to perceive a scenario as moral or not? (once we ask this question we seem to fall back into the debate between Levy and Nichols and Vargas) Further, it might be the case that in passive cases, often ommissions (like Harman's example) empathy is central to our ethical perception, but, in the more interesting cases, the active cases (where there is deliberation involved on the part of the psychopath), it seems that much deliberation is needed to act successfully and it’s not clear to me that an empathetic emotion is *needed* to conclude that one ought not perform an action on moral grounds(Paul Bloom has recently done some work on empathy  that favors  this line of thinking). This seems to fetishize empathy and I'm not convinced that we need a high-level of it to properly assess a situation as moral or not. I'm much more confident that such an emotion is an important feature that helps us sustain deep interpersonal relationships, but that's a different conversation.

A sports analogy may be apt here; does the budding basketball player need to have a great jump shot to be a good player? I don’t think that she does. She could be good in other facets of the game (recognizing other relevant moral features) and lack a good jump shot (altogether) and still be considered a valuable contributor to the team (or a moral agentmoral community) She may have a hard time playing against teams that allow one to shoot but defend the drive rigorously—but overall, she could still be considered a good player and even in those cases can . Similarly, it seems that the psychopath could be lacking in empathy which could affect her ability to ethically perceive correctly in many passive cases, however, in active cases it seems he could get by just fine. And, in such cases, it would seem appropraite to hold them morally responsible.

Well, I'd be interested to see how others see the state of the debate; are psychopaths morally responsible for at least some of what they do? 

Does Moral Responsibility Come in Degrees?

Many have assumed either implicitly or explicitly that moral responsibility comes in degrees, but why? For me, it seems quite natural to say that I am either morally responsible or I am not. I either meet the conditions of one's particular view, or I do not. Oddly, this has been assumed often times with little explanation as to why moral responsibility is a degree concept and not a binary concept (by binary I simply refer to an either/or concept). Consider this quote from a paper by Al Mele:

Moral responsibility is very commonly and very plausibly regarded as a matter of degree. If young children and adults are morally responsible for some of what they do, it is plausible, on grounds of the sort I mentioned, that young children are not as nearly *as responsible* (my emphasis) for any of their deeds as some adults are for some of their adult deeds. (2008, p. 274)

He states further:

Normal parents eventually come to view their children as having some degree of moral responsibility for what they do. The word degree is important here. Normal four-year-olds are not as well equipped for impulse control as normal eight-year-olds, and they have less developed capacity for anticipating and understanding the effects of their actions (2008, pg. 271-272)

I think Mele is right to say that moral responsibility is commonly regarded as a matter of degree, but I’m not so sure that such an assumption is warranted. And, if the assumption is warranted, I think it’s worthwhile to get clear on why this is so.  Investigating this so-called degree feature might help to shed light on the nature of moral responsibility itself. Further, if one holds that moral responsibility does come in degrees it might limit what one can say about the nature of moral responsibility and this conclusion could be fruitful as well for those trying to uncover the the root of the differences between competing views.

The only published paper that I have come across that has tried to make sense of this degree talk in depth is a recent paper by Coates and Swenson (2013, Phil. Studies) though I have read a few unpublished manuscripts that have focused on this assumed feature of moral responsibility in depth (by Manual Vargas, Brandon Warmke, and Gwen Bradford). So, feel free to suggest further work on this topic that I may have missed. 

So, the purpose of posting on this topic is simply to get a sense of how can we make sense of moral resposnibility as coming in degrees. Must we assume that blameworthiness and moral responsibility is the same thing to make sense of this? And, what does it even mean to say that moral responsibility comes in degrees? 

At last year's Pacific APA I had the opportunity to comment on Gwen Bradford's very nice paper "Difficulty and Degrees of Praise and Blame". In that paper, she argued that one of the most natural ways to make sense of degree talk is to posit what she calls the Blame-Mitigating Thesis (BMT): the difficulty of a morally required action can mitigate the blameworthiness for failing to perform it. She ultimately rejects (BMT) claiming that difficulty can't do the work on it's own (she also discusses a similar thesis with regards to praise). I agreed with her on this point but I took this point to be a knock against the degree feature altogether, a line she did not explore in her paper. If difficulty can't do the work to make sense of when someone is *more or less* morally responsible for doing A then what can? Buildng off Fischer and Ravizza's account of reasons responsiveness Coates and Swenson suggest that to make sense of the degree feature of moral responsibility we could appeal to the degree in which an agent can respond to reasons. But, for those who do not hold a reasons-responsive view how are they to make sense of degree talk? Further, should they try? I'd be curious to see how you all think about moral responsibility. Does it come in degrees? Overt blame surely does but does moral responsibility proper? I'm not sure why I find this degree talk puzzling, but I do nonetheless. I suggest that we can understand moral responsibility instead as a binary concept; we are either morally responsible for some act A or we are not. Am I wrong to think of MR in this way? If so, what would be a downfall for thinking of it in this way? Further, is such a project worthwhile?

So, I ask those that are compelled by this degree talk:  what is moral responsibility such that it*could* come in degrees, and further, what is lost if we give up such talk? Notice that in the quoted passage from Mele he says “The word degree is important here”. Should we think that degree talk is important and what would change if we gave it up?

Anyway, I raised lots of questions in this post. Feel freeto answer them all or none at all. I'm hoping to get at least one more post up this week and a handful more before the month is over.

On a Freedom Requirement for Forgiveness

We have all forgiven someone before.  In fact, forgiveness can often serve as a key ingredient in our most cherished interpersonal relationships. Many of us who work on free will related topics have thought long and hard about questions concerning blame. Questions like: When is it appropriate to blame? Who should we blame? And, how much overt blame would be justified in any given scenario (among others)? What many have rarely analyzed are questions that arise after we move on from the blame game. For instance, when should we give up the attitudes that constitute blame (resentment, anger, etc.) for more favorable sentiments toward those who have wronged us? When should we forgive?

Forgiveness is confusing. How are we to understand the nature of forgiveness and how do we distinguish it from other related concepts? Peter Strawson once said, referring to forgiveness, that it was “a rather unfashionable subject in moral philosophy at present” (1962/2003 pp. 75). Whether or not this statement was true at that time is unclear. However, the statement, if written today would be false. Over the past 10 or 15 years the literature on the subject has been expanding. A quick glance at the bibliography of the SEP entry on forgiveness suggests that it is a topic at the head of much philosophical debate[1]. Given that there is so much controversy surrounding what the nature of forgiveness is I’ll try not to make sweeping claims about all understandings of the concept.  In this post I’d like to talk a bit about what forgiveness is and what many accounts seem to assume. My goal in discussing forgiveness here is to think about how we can differentiate it from similar concepts without invoking some sort of free will requirement. This may be harder than you think, but first a bit of background.

I started thinking about forgiveness a few years back while attending a ‘Social Psychology Research Group’ at the University of Calgary (2012). One of the graduate students in the Psych dept. was discussing her research about 3^rd party forgiveness. 3^rd party forgiveness comes about when someone wrongs someone you care about. So, let’s say your best friend is in a monogamous relationship and he gets cheated on by his spouse. 3^rd party forgiveness in this case would be when *you* cease to hold the transgression of your friends spouse against them. 2nd person forgiveness would be when your friend forgives his spouse for the cheating, and first person forgiveness is when your friend’s spouse forgives themselves for their wrongdoing. Notice though that just discussing forgiveness in this way already assumes a lot. First, consider how I describe 3^rd party forgiveness: “3^rd party forgiveness in this case would be when you cease to hold the transgression of your friends spouse against them”.  This is very contentious! Why? Well, if I was to simply forget about the cheating, then I would cease to hold the transgression against my friend’s spouse.  But forgetting is not proper forgiving . Forgiveness seems to require more than just forgetting. So, to distinguish forgetting from forgiving is crucial and this has been recognized in the literature.[2]  

So let’s think about some of the  best attempts to separate forgetting from forgiving and see if there is an underlying freedom requirement  that appropriates forgiveness(in one form or another).  Hopefully some of you will see the relevance to your own work on blame and moral responsibility. Let me summarize a couple of views and show how they may connect to free will. I’ll be following Nelkin here in her summary of some general positions.

Forgiveness seems to come about when a person thinks that another has done them wrong[3]. This seems to be a good starting place. So, if one fails to do what they should have, like stay faithful, it seems that we have a negative reaction to the wrongdoing.  Now that the wrong has been done we are left to figure out when we should forgive if ever. Here are 3 ways of thinking about it.

1.  The Overcoming of Resentment on Moral Grounds (see Bishop Butler and Jeffrie Murphy)

After we acknowledge the wrong that was done to us this account suggests that you appropriately forgive when you do so for moral reasons. Jeffry Murphy has suggested a couple: (i) When the offender has apologized; (ii) when the offender has suffered enough for their transgression;. So, and as Dana Nelkin has noted, the essential feature for this account boils down to “forgiveness is the forswearing of resentment for moral reasons”. Notice that a moral reason to forgive would help us distinguish it from simply forgetting. One of the ideas behind this view is to separate the act the agent performed from the current state of agent. Thus, if the agent sincerely apologizes for what they did it may be appropriate to forgive. I can think of a bunch of counterexamples to this view but I don’t want to focus on problems with these different views. Remember, my goal is to analyze these conceptions of forgiveness to see if there as underlying freedom requirement.

 

2. Nelkin’s Debt-Release Model

On this very intriguing model, Nelkin says “forgiveness is constituted (at least in part) by a special kind of release from a special kind obligation the offender has to the victim.  In typical cases, the obligation might be fulfilled by apology, sincere remorse, penance or related phenomena.  In forgiving, one ceases to hold the offense against the offender, and this in turn means releasing them from a special kind of personal obligation incurred as the result of committing the wrong against one.” (2013; pg. 175)

3. Hieronymi’s Uncompromising Model

Pamela Hieronymi has forwarded a rich account of forgiveness (2001). First, like Murphy, Hieronymi claims that resentment must fade away. And, like Murphy, this fading must be due to a change in judgment due to reasons stemming from an understanding of the forgiver. Thus, forgiveness is the overcoming of resentment. Second, unlike Murphy, Hieronymi claims that the forgiveness must be “uncompromising” in acknowledging that one should not be treated in the way one was. She posits this condition  Hieronymi’s view is different in that  she understands resentment as “a protest against a past action that persists as a present threat” (ibid, p. 546). For Hieronymi, the past action poses a  present threat if forgiven without this uncompromising feature because a past action that wronged you in a significant way that has not been atoned for, apologized for, or repudiated in some way makes a continuing claim that you can be treated in this way again and/or that such treatment is acceptable. This is why Hieronymi understands resentment as such. But, when a genuine apology has been given and one forgives the transgressor then and only then can the forgiveness be uncompromising. Now, she admits that there are cases where one who has not repent can be forgiven but such cases are not the norm. Thus, a genuine apology by the transgressor seems central to Hieronymi’s view.


Freedom and Forgivness

Admittedly, I have gone very, very fast here, but I assume this is okay in a blog format. So, let’s discuss why I think these accounts require freedom. I’ll discuss two separate but related worries:

First,  on Nelkin’s account, obligations play a key role. But, if we were to understand these obligations as agent-specific or related to OIC then we already have a worry (see here for the worry re: OIC). If one believes that OIC and also that determinism is true it seems that skeptics would have a hard time adopting this account. Tying forgiveness to obligations to others seems to implicitly tie forgiveness to a species of control that might be rejected by FW skeptics. Put differently, people are forgiven only if they either have done wrong, or, have done something that one thinks is wrong. But as I have suggested in earlier posts, there would be no basic-desert blameworthiness nor could there be wrongdoing (in the relevant sense) in a world void of free will. It would follow then that forgiveness would also be imperiled since forgiveness presupposes basic-desert blameworthiness and wrongdoing. That point aside, a related point arises concerning apologies, a central notion in accounts 1 and 3.  

Even if forgiveness proper must go there may be features of forgiveness that remain, for instance a genuine apology (Pereboom mentions this as well, see his 2014). If  we believed that the agent who wronged us^[4] couldn’t refrain from wronging us, then it would be hard to take his apology seriously, the apology could not be authentic. An apology consists in recognizing what one *should have done* but if one was determined to do the act, then it will not be true that one should not have done it. So, a genuine apology, an apology that results from the recognition of what one morally ought to have done, would not be tenable in a deterministic universe. Now, we could suppose that one might still see an act as bad regardless of the control that one had.And, one could apologize for this. However, it is not clear that such an apology would have the same meaning as a genuine apology, an apology that stems from the recognition that one should have done something else and one believed that one was capable of doing that other thing. This is so because the meaning behind a genuine apology is derived from the relation between the two parties involved. However, if one is forced to adopt the objective stance, then this reciprocal relationship might not be sustained.^[5] Also, from the point of view of the person forgiving, since all that remains would be these non-genuine or generic apologies, it would follow that such an apology would lose its force to hold relationships together. Consider what it would mean to receive a generic apology when compared to a genuine apology. It seems reasonable to understand an apology as entailing a belief or acknowledgement by the transgressor that oneshould not have done what one did, then we would have no reason to accept the apology. If one believes in hard incompatibilism and one is rational, then one cannot also have a true belief that what one did was wrong, or that one was obligated to refrain from performing the action. I don’t see how generic apologies could influence one to hold onto a relationship. ANyway, I pick on the fw skeptic only to show that they might not be able to accept certain understanding of forgivness because of their views re: control. This suggests that there is a control requirement for forgivness.

So there are 2 important questions to consider: 1^st,  what is forgivness? And, 2^nd when is it appropriate to forgive? The free will requirement might be implied in either question so thinking about forgiveness and it’s connection to freedom is complicated. A further wrinkle: are there different kinds of forgiveness? In a post a few years back (see here) I suggested two distinct kinds of forgiveness. Maybe one kind requires some implicit freedom requirement and the other does not?

Anyway, I’d like to hear what you all think.

---

[1] For an excellent (!) resource I suggest Brandon Warmke’s chronological bibliography on forgiveness. Here.

[2] In “Freedom and Forgiveness” (2013) Dana Nelkin points out a few flaws with some well-respected views on forgiveness, she also puts begins to lay the groundwork for her own view as well. She also discusses the importance of distinguishing forgetting from forgiving. Anyone interested in forgiveness should give her essay a read. Disclaimer: this piece is in the volume I edited in late 2013.

[3] It’s worth mentioning here that those of us who think that one cannot do morally wrong (or have a moral obligation given OIC) in a determined world (as I suggested that in the post and comment thread here) the concept of forgiveness already seems doomed.

[4] Again, I’m not sure we could hold this initial belief in the first place since we could not take ourselves to be “wronged” as this evaluation could not be true given hard incompatibilism.

[5] A discussion of Stephen Darwall’s second-personal reasons and how they are given up when the objective stance is adopted would be beneficial to help my case here (Darwall 2003).

Optimistic Skepticism and Forward Looking Blame

Many philosophers (1) have spent substantial time wrestling with, expanding on, and arguing against the central ideas put forth in P.F. Strawson's seminal piece "Freedom and Resentment", and with good reason. In that essay, Stawson lays out many concerns that are worthy of deep reflection. In this post I would like to further reflect on what Strawson called the reactive attitudes (the list that we’re familiar with includes anger, resentment, forgiveness, love, and gratitude among others). And, in keeping with my last post I’ll be questioning a claim endorsed by a particular species of skepticism; optimistic skeptics.

Contra Strawson, many optimistic skeptics (and others) have suggested that losing the ability to appropriately direct these attitudes toward others would not be a big deal (see Caruso on this  acouple of weeks back) . They minimize the perceived loss of such attitudes by putting forth analogues that would remain in the wake of FW and MR skepticism. So, though some of them admit that we must give up the idea that desert-based blame can ever be justified, what remains is a forward-looking account of blame. They make similar moves re: other attitudes such as forgiveness (which I may post on next), anger and even moral responsibility itself (Pereboom 2013) (2). The optimistic skeptical narrative looks to be some variation of this: (i) show that we do not have the kind of free will associated with desert, (ii) show how the loss of FW entails the loss of desert and all the concepts and practices associated with it and, (iii) be optimistic about these losses. In this post I’d like to press on (iii) a bit by posing a problem for those who endorse a strictly forward-looking account of blame. One thought is that maybe these analogues aren’t doing the heavy lifting that the optimistic skeptics are hoping for. So, maybe posing a question or 2 about the application of these analogues might help. But first, maybe I should say a few more words about the desert-laden traditional reactive attitudes.

I think about the traditional reactive attitudes as responses to others who show us good-will, ill-will, and everything in between; they are responses to how others treat us in the world. They seem to help us communicate to others our feelings re: how they treat us and this seems important! Let’s consider a couple of examples:

Imagine getting into a packed elevator and suddenly someone steps so firmly on your foot that it breaks your toe. How would you feel? At the very least you would likely be in pain. But, beyond this pain, how you feel about getting your toe broken will depend largely on what *caused* this person (call her Juanita), to step on your foot. If, for instance, you find out that Juanita purposely stomped on your foot because she didn’t like the shirt you were wearing, you are likely to direct anger or some other negative reactive attitude toward her and you would be seemingly justified in doing so. You may even blame her for doing so. On the other hand, if it turned out that Juanita stepped on your foot because her friend Jim pushed her, then you are more likely to direct your negative reaction toward Jim as it would seem inappropriate to direct your negative emotions toward Juanita. But, even in this latter case there are other factors as well as answers to further questions that will have a significant impact on how you decide to respond. For instance, did Jim accidentally push Juanita onto your foot because an earthquake caused her to lose her footing? Likely, though still angry, one may feel unwarranted in *directing* that anger, or blame, toward Jim if that were the case. One question that will likely have an impact on your response is this: Did Jim *freely* push Juanita into you? If you found that Jim was coerced or forced into pushing Juanita you are likely to respond differently because Jim was not acting freely.

These examples point to a belief that many of us share: that in some cases it would be appropriate to direct our reactive attitudes (whether good or bad) toward others and in other cases it would not be. Beyond the communicative point I was hinting at earlier, the desert-base for appropriately directing these reactive attitudes (in at least some of the scenarios) seems quite intuitive as well.

FWIW, Strawson recognizes the importance that the traditional attitudes (grounded in basic-desert) have for  our moral lives. He suggested that if we were forced to suspend such attitudes toward others (due to theoretical commitments such as MR skepticism) then we would be forced to take an objective stance. Such a stance would imperil our interpersonal relationships because we would be forced to treat others as “little more than targets of social engineering” (Sommers 2007). But I’m rambling a bit.

As I mentioned when I opened this post, I’d like to focus this discussion on forward-looking blame (what it is and how is it grounded without desert). So for the time being let’s just assume that desert based concepts must go. Given that our practices often assume basic desert (both good and bad practices), how will our new blaming practices be grounded and what would this mean for our blaming practices (their scope, their requirements to be approrpiate, etc.)?

Forward-looking blame as I understand it, is blame that is not rooted in the belief that the person being blamed deserves to be blamed in any “basic” way. There is debate about what basic-desert entails (4) but let’s side-step that at as well. The proponent of forward-looking blame justifies the blaming practice by appealing to consequentialist justification.  There is no desert-base. Okay, if you’re still with me I’ll finally pose my question/issue, it regards prepunishment.

Prepunishment (5) is the idea that one could be punished before one actually commits a crime, think Minority Report. Similarly, when thinking about blame, it seems that one would be justified in blaming *if* doing so would produce the best consequences. I like thinking about prepunishment because it’s a great way to pump intuitions about how we feel about desert. Anyway, it’s worrisome for some because it allows one to be blamed for something that has never occurred and it would be justified if it could be shown that doing so produces better consequences in the long run.

So, how do folks (even those that aren’t *directly* in this literature) feel about this worry? Is it serious? Is blaming someone (whatever that amounts to without the interaction taking place with directed desert-based feelings) *only*for the sake of changing their future behavior enough to keep our relationships in tact? Would losing desert-based  blame be harmful to our relationships?

I should note up front that I am well aware that we often over-utilize these traditional reactive attitudes and this often hinders  and ruins many relationships. I also think it’s worthwhile to mention that we do sometimes utilize a forward looking account of blame, for instance when we are trying to shape the lives of our children. 

I'd also like to link a couple of articles by Zac Cogley who is writing some very interesting stuff on basic-desert and the reactive attitudes. See here and here.

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(1) Two recent pieces that immediately come to mind are Michael Mckenna’s illuminating book ‘Conversation and Moral Responsibility’ (2012 OUP) and Neal Tognazzini’s piece (which I read this morning) titled “Reactive Attitudes and Volitional Necessity” (2014). I mention these two as examples of an extensive literature that includes some excellent scholarship.

(2) “Moral Responsibility without Desert” in Haji and Caouette (2013)

(3) In Michael Mckenna’s ‘Conversation and Responsibility’ (2012) he favorably discusses some nice features associated with the forward looking aspects of blame though his theory itself need not be understood in strictly forward-looking terms.

(4) See Manuel Vargas excellent book for more on this (Ch. 8 of ‘Building Better Beings” 2013 OUP)

(5) For a nice back and forth see Saul Smilanksy and C. New in Analysis on this. I believe I read something by Michael Robinson on this as well. 

Free Will Skepticism and 'Ought' Judgments

It appears that deontic judgments—judgments of moral obligation, moral right, and moral wrong—presuppose control; specifically, they presuppose one’s having free will. To see this consider an example:

Consider Leroy, a man paralyzed from the waist down, seemingly all alone, enjoying some sun at the edge of the lake in his wheelchair. He notices a young man drowning in the lake. Because of his condition it seems plausible to say that he is not obligated to jump in and save the drowning man. He is not obligated to do so because he cannot do so, he lacks the requisite control. If he had the ability and the opportunity to save him (he miraculously regained feeling in his legs minutes before the accident and he was in a position to save) we would say that he was obligated to save him. Therefore, it seems plausible to link obligations to abilities and opportunities^[1]. Thus we can follow Ish Haji in adopting a central principle OIC, as our control principle for moral obligation:

OIC: S ought to do A only if S can do A.

In this post I'd like to discuss issues surrounding the incompatibility of determinism and ought judgments[2], particularly from the free will skeptic's point of view. Free will skeptics claim that free will is incompatible with determinism. Many also conclude that moral responsibility, at least in the basic-desert sense, is incompatible with determinism because the control required to be morally responsible is imperiled by the truth of their skeptical position. But, one variety of skeptic (optimistic skeptics) claim that a robust sense of morality (among other things) remains intact. Thus, even a hard incompatibilist like Derk Pereboom becomes a compatibilist with regards to determinism (and indeterminism) and a robust moral system. Here’s a quote from Pereboom: “Morality, meaning, and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible....” (2001) Thus, judgments like "S ought not to have done A" can be endorsed by the skeptic while consistently embracing their FW and MR skepticism. So I ask you all, are you buying this? Can such judgments be true in the wake of free will skepticism? I’m not convinced. Given that Pereboom has taken this question on (again) in his new book (2014 OUP) I thought I'd focus on his response. But first, to get the conversation going consider this claim derived from the ought-implies-can principle (OIC):

If  S ought not do have done A, then S could have refrained from doing A.

Pereboom himself gets the sense that free will skeptics will have a difficult time denying this claim (see here). As Pereboom points out, compatibilists like Ish Haji (1998; 2012) and Dana Nelkin (2011) seem to have a similar sense. Thus, given that determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise (for many at least) it also seems to threaten ‘ought’ judgments given that such judgments seem to entail an ability to do otherwise as well.

So, to save ‘ought’ judgments from determinism (and indeterminism) Pereboom (2014) follows C.D. Broad (1952) in separating different senses of ‘ought’. Pereboom focuses on a distinction between deliberative ‘ought’ claims which he calls the ‘ought’ of specific agent demand such as “Eduardo ought not hit his mother” on the one hand, and another sense of ‘ought’ which he dubs the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation such as “Lebron ought to win the lottery” on the other. This latter sense of ‘ought’ is not at odds with determinism because according to Pereboom it does not imply ‘can’ whereas the former ‘ought’, the ‘ought’ of specific agent demand does imply can. Pereboom concludes that if we had to settle for the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation our system of morality would still be robust, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. We could still endorse OIC if we understood the ‘ought’ invoked in OIC as the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation. Do you agree? Would it be a big deal to lose the ‘ought’ of specific agent demand? Is it legitimate to understand the ‘ought’ in OIC as the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation? I look forward to hearing what you all think. I have reservations about Pereboom’s attempt to save ‘ought’ claims, I’ll discuss a few.

First, it wouldn’t be fair to hold one to a standard of moral behavior that one could not satisfy; the ‘ought’ contained in the ‘ought’ of axiological recommendation then seems to be the variety of ‘ought’ that is more akin to a hope or suggestion. If this is true then we have moved from agent demands to agent suggestions. Suggestions are rarely forceful from a second-person standpoint and are much less motivational than moral obligations (‘oughts’ of specific agent demands) because they do not carry an emotionally laden expectation. Consider the axiological recommendation that you donate 5 dollars upon entering the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. If you give 4 dollars (or nothing at all) you do nothing morally wrong, though you do something against the axiological recommendation. Whereas if you are morally obligated, (if you had a specific agential demand), to pay an entrance fee there seems to be a requirement that you pay the fee. These requirements generate and sustain expectations that you pay the fee. Failure to do so causes cries of foul play, or unfairness, and these cries seem warranted. Thus, to think that the axiological recommendation is more closely aligned with the ‘ought’ of specific agent demand rather than a hope, wish, or suggestion that one act a particular way seems misguided and thus we are not “saving” ‘ought’ claims at all we are replacing them with something very different. Axiological recommendations seem to have much less motivational force than ‘oughts’ of specific agent demand because these moral ‘oughts’ carry the burden of agential expectations. Such expectations tend to motivate at least some agents and to lose this expectation such agents would be morally justified in acting any way they choose in much the same way the museum goers at the Van Gough museum are justified in giving nothing at all if that’s what they decide.

Anyway, I have much more to say about this but I’d like to hear from you all first. To reiterate some of the questions I asked: How bad would it be if we had to give up ‘oughts’ of specific agent demand? Would an ethical system grounded on axiological recommendations diminish one’s sense of morality? Can one be obligated (fairly) to perform an action if one cannot perform that very act? Likewise, can one be obligated to refrain from doing act A, if one cannot refrain from doing act A?

Disclaimer: I raise these questions in chapter 2 of my diss, which I have not looked at in some time. I blogged about them in 2013 prior to the release of Pereboom's new book (see here). Admittedly, I moved pretty quickly (and a bit sloppy) in this post so if you need to ask clarificatory questions please do so. 

 

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[1] Ish Haji (2002) and Chris Franklin (2012) have suggested that the ‘can’ in the ‘ought’ implies can principle refers to one’s abilities and one’s opportunities. This seems right to me.

[2] See Ish Haji’s 2012 for a carefully reasoned argument for a requirement of alternative possibilities for central moral concepts. 

My Tentative Plan for January

Happy New Year folks!

First things first, I’d like to thank Thomas for this great opportunity! I think I am the first graduate student to be a featured author here at Flickers and I am very appreciative. I will be utilizing my time here to forward some of my arguments from the dissertation (which I am looking to defend this summer) as well as some ideas from smaller projects I hope to get to in the coming months. Also, kudos to Peter on an impressive output as FA for December. Like Thomas, I learned a lot and wish that I could have participated in the discussion but family obligations got the most of my time and to be honest I was in need of a break. Needless to say Peter’s record for posts by a FA will stand for at least a month given that my plan only includes 2-3 posts per week. Here’s my tentative plan:

For the first week or two I’ll blog about my dissertation. In my diss, I focus on the moral ramifications of hard incompatibilism. A growing number of free will skeptics (hard incompatibilists in particular) have argued that living without free will (and moral responsibility) would not be a big deal (Pereboom 2001; 2014, Caruso 2014, Sommers 2007, Waller 2011, Vilhauer, and others). In fact, some have claimed that the recognition of the truth of hard incompatibilism would make life better. Call these skeptics “optimistic skeptics”. I argue, contra Pereboom and others, that many key features of any robust sense of morality as well as some of our most cherished interpersonal relationships would be imperiled without free will: living without free will would be a big deal! Some of the things that would be lost if hard incompatibilism were true would be: moral obligation, a number of fitting emotional responses such as (traditional) blame and forgiveness, as well as the truth of a variety of aretaic evaluations. I then argue that these lost concepts do a lot of work to make our lives meaningful. I tackle some attempts to deflect the concerns I raise by focusing on the analogues (call them P-analogues) that purportedly remain in the wake of free will. I argue that they are inadequate. Put differently, if we admit that forgiveness goes I try to show how P-forgiveness either itself relies on a conception of desert that requires control the skeptic claims we lack, or, why the p-forgiveness is lacking and amounts to something that looks nothing like the traditional concept. I’ll post individually on (i) FW and moral obligation, (ii) FW and the perils of a strictly forward looking consequentialist blame, and (iii) FW and the reactive attitudes of blame and forgiveness. This should provide us with much to discuss and should keep me pretty busy.

During the second half of the month I’ll turn my focus to smaller ongoing projects concerning the moral responsibility of psychopaths, degrees of responsibility, punishment, supererogation and suberogation, agency incompatibilism, tracing, addiction, and other topics if I have the time. I should have my first substantive post up within the next couple of days.

Finally, I would like to take this time to say a very sincere *thanks* to the free will community at large. So many of the top philosophers in this sub-discipline have engaged with me on social media and through email without prejudice (and many times in person). Conversations with those folks (many of them Flickers’ contributors) have helped me (and continue to help me) develop as a philosopher, so thanks!

All the best to a healthy and happy 2015!

-Justin

P.S. I’ll be the primary caretaker for my two sons over the next week or so while they finish up vacation so I may take a little while to respond to comments on my first couple of substantive posts.

 

Passing the Torch!

For starters, I would like to wish the community here at Flickers of Freedom a very happy New Year! I hope everyone has a rich, rewarding, and productive 2015! To kick things off, I must once again pass the torch from one Featured Author to the next. Before I introduce the Featured Author for January, I first want to thank Peter Tse for the impressive work he did during December wetting our philosophical whistles. It was especially nice hearing from a neuroscientist who has a firm grasp of the metaphysical and moral issues that arise in the free will debate. I am pretty confident Peter set a record for the highest output during a stint as Featured Author. Because he was burning the candle at both ends during the holidays, I, for one, wasn't able to participate in the discussion threads as much as I had hoped, but I nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed (and benefited from) reading his posts.  Hopefully, his experiences as a Featured Author have persuaded Peter to participate in the discussion threads in the months and years ahead. It has always been my goal to get more scientists to join the ongoing dialogue here--which is not as easy as I'd like. So, kuddos once again to Peter for his time and energy!

That said, I would now like to hand over the reigns to January's Featured Author--Justin Caouette.  Justin is a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary being supervised by Ish Haji. His research interests lie mainly in moral philosophy, within the free will debate, and at the intersection of both areas. Currently, he is finishing up his dissertation which is focused on the moral ramifications of hard incompatibilism. The title of his dissertation is: “Free Will and Meaning in Life.” He’ll be forecasting some of his arguments here over the next month. Justin also recently (Dec 2013) co-edited a book with Haji titled Free Will and Moral Responsibility for Cambridge Scholars Press. Many of the contributors to the volume are also contributors to Flickers of Freedom, so the volume should be of interest to the readers of the blog!

Prior to starting the Ph.D in Calgary Justin attended Washington State University for his M.A. in Philosophy. During his time at WSU, Justin had the opportunity to meet Joe Campbell. Studying with Campbell got Justin interested in the free will debate. Though he wrote his M.A thesis about virtue ethics, he found himself increasingly interested in free will and moral responsibility. So, upon completion of his M.A., he moved to Calgary in 2011 to start his PhD with the ultimate goal of working with Haji on a dissertation about free will. Because Justin has also recently published articles on psychopathy and addiction, I was especially interested in getting him to be the latest junior philosopher to join the ranks of Featured Authors.  So, please join me in welcoming him to the show!

Before closing, I also wanted to let everyone know that I have already put together an impressive line up for 2015. While there are a few additional invitations being mulled over by potential FAs and some dates yet to be decided, the following is list of the line up thus far. Please help spread the word! 

Featured Authors (2015):

January:           Justin Caouette
February:          V. Alan White
March:             Gregg Caruso
April:                Susan Dwyer
May:                 Katrina Sifferd
June:                Thomas Nadelhoffer*    
July:                 Patricia Greenspan
August:             Sarah Paul
September:      Heidi Maibom

*At this point, there have been 20+ Featured Authors here at Flickers. So, I hope everyone won't mind my self-indulgence here.  I, too, want in on the fun!

One final note: I realize lots of us are busy and it makes it difficult to find time to participate in the discussion threads (even when the topics interest us).  One of the reasons I originally wanted to try the Featured Author format is that it would distribute the burden of posting while at the same time ensuring Flickers would regularly have new, varied, and interesting content. In that sense, the experiment has been a resounding success! I would nevertheless like to ask all of the other contributors to take a little more time in 2015 to participate in the discussion threads--which is something I am asking of myself as well. The Featured Authors spend a lot of time and energy for our benefit and enjoyment.  Let's collectively try to do a better job as an intellectual community to reward their efforts with our feedback!