Flickers of Freedom

Two (or Three) Things We Might Be Talking About When We're Talking About Degrees of Responsibility

In late 2008 or something, Philip Swenson and I were driving to Vegas on a spontaneous poker run, and we were lamenting the fact that Gary Watson was leaving UCR.  Philip was a first year grad student at the time, so I "magnanimously" volunteered some information about this awesome workshop on psychopathy that Gary and John Fischer had run the year before ("oh man, you really missed it!").  From there, we started talking about psychopathy and whether it was an exempting condition on responsibility, or perhaps, only a mitigating one.  And this conversation eventually led to the theory of degrees of responsibility that we developed in "Reasons-Responsiveness and blah, blah blah..."

Of course, Philip and I certainly aren't the only folks to think about degrees of responsibility.  It's something that folks working on criminal responsibility have talked about a good bit.  And recently, folks working on moral responsibility (e.g., Dana Nelkin, Manuel "other people can promote his work as well" Vargas, and Michael McKenna and Benjamin Kozuch) have been working on it and related issues as well.

But for all this, I think that what it is we're talking about when we're talking about degrees of responsibility is relatively obscure.  In particular, I think there are two (or really, three) conceptually and normatively distinct properties that we could be talking about when we're talking about degrees of responsibility.  And so I think it will be incumbent on a plausible theory of degrees of responsibility that it accurately specify which of these properties it refers to, since the conditions under which one of these properties is instantiated might be significantly different than the conditions under which another of these properties is instantiated. [1]

 

The (Lower) Limit of Moral Responsibility

Consider the following two cases of apparently altruistic helping behavior:

Broken Glass

Rob’s thirsty, and he sees a glass across the room.  Since she’s closer to it than he is, Rob asks Pearl to hand him the glass so that he can pour himself some water.  Pearl notices that the glass is broken, so she gets up and gets another glass that isn’t broken and takes the unbroken one to Rob instead. Having a functional glass into which he can now pour water, Rob is genuinely grateful to Pearl and expresses his gratitude by telling her that he appreciates her help.

Crying Child

In a daycare filled with crying children, Julie sees Maggie crying and inconsolable.  She takes Maggie her favorite toy and sits with her, gently touching her and waiting with her until she feels better.  Cynthia sees this, and she is very appreciative that Julie took care of Maggie, since she’s got two other crying children to deal with.  Later, when she gets a free moment, Cynthia makes sure to thank Julie.

In these cases, it appears that it is appropriate for Rob and Cynthia to feel and express gratitude towards Pearl and Julie respectively.  No doubt, there is some instrumental reason for this: by expressing their gratitude, Rob and Cynthia make it more likely that they are helped in the future.  But I don’t think this fully explains why gratitude is the fitting response in this case; for independently of whether Rob and Cynthia stand to benefit from Pearl’s and Julie’s respective help in the future, there seems to be a weighty reason to feel gratitude in these situations that isn't grounded in consequentialist considerations.  One might even say that it seems that Pearl and Julie deserve Rob’s and Cynthia’s gratitude.

This assessment, I think, is quite plausible given the fact that Pearl and Julie both seemed to recognize and respond to reasons for action and in so doing, revealed the laudable quality of their wills.  (It might take some work to do so, but I think this point can be filled in quite plausibly along the lines suggested by either Nomy Arpaly (2003) or Julia Markovits (2010).)

Now, because Pearl and Julie each seem to deserve Rob’s and Cynthia’s respective gratitude, it seems possible to conclude that they are each morally responsible for their respective action.  After all, praiseworthiness seems to entail responsibility since only morally responsible agents can genuinely deserve praising attitudes like gratitude, appreciation, and esteem.  So with no obvious excusing conditions present, barring something that (putatively) undercuts moral responsibility for all agents (e.g., causal determinism--at least according to incompatibilists), who could doubt that Pearl and Julie are morally responsible for their action? [1]

What a Rare Mood I'm In (A Weekend Post for Weekend Thoughts)

Nat King Cole's "Almost Like Being in Love" could be the jumping off point for a great deal of interesting philosophical theorizing.  It captures something about Humean moral motivation (see Nancy Schauber's really wonderful paper, "Hume on Moral Motivation: It's Almost Like Being in Love").  It also suggests a way of engaging with "the whole human race" that puts pressure on Susan Wolf's famous claim that the life of a moral saint would be an unattractive one.  But of interest to me here is an idea that comes from the second line of the song, wherein the song's protagonist exclaims "what a rare mood I'm in!"  For as the protagonist makes clear, being in a "rare mood" can affect our behavior in really significant ways.

Now, neither me (nor Harold Ramis, who rolled Cole's song over the last scene of Groundhog Day when Phil Connors really is, for him at least, in a "rare" mood) are the first to note the importance of moods on behavior.  I'm not much for Aristotle myself, but I'm sure he had something to say about moods.  The Stoics too--they were on to all kinds of interesting stuff.  I've also heard that Heidegger theorized about moods as well.  More recently, Michael Stocker (who really should get more play) discusses moods at length in his great paper "Desiring the Bad: An Essay in Moral Psychology," and although my books are in the office (so I can't check now), I'd be willing to bet that Nomy Arpaly has said some insightful things about them too.  And apparently, as my colleague Cynthia Freeland has informed me, moods are even getting attention some in recent work in aesthetics.  (See how much I have to read!) 

But for all that, contemporary action theorists haven't paid very much attention to how moods play a role in explaining action. 

 

A Boring Episode of *Always Sunny in Philadelphia*

Suppose that Mac embezzles money from his business but that his colleague Charlie does not. [1]  It seems obvious that their co-workers have more reason to blame Mac than they do Charlie.  In fact, because innocent people don’t deserve to be blamed, unless there are some special consequentialist considerations, there doesn’t appear to be any reason at all for the co-workers to blame Charlie.

But now suppose that causal determinism is true, and that Mac was causally determined to embezzle the money.  The incompatibilist tells us that in such a case, Mac wouldn’t deserve to be blamed either.  But this, I think, doesn’t mean that there are equally weighty reasons to refrain from blaming Mac and Charlie.  For plausibly, Mac and Charlie’s co-workers still have less reason to blame Charlie than they do Mac.  Of course, if there is less reason to blame Charlie than Mac, then there must be some reason for Mac’s co-workers to blame him. [2]  Causal determinism, it seems, doesn’t change this.

Ahoy!

Hi all!  

Thanks to Thomas for inviting me to “host” the blog for a month.  I think this "featured authors" thing has been a great innovation for the blog, so I’ve been looking forward to it for a while now.  I didn’t realize, though, that it would be so pressure-packed.  I’m not even one day into my month, and I already feel like I’m letting y’all down. 

As it stands, I hope to be able to blog about panicky metaphysics (and why Strawson’s right to think they’re bad), two faces of mercy, the nature of blame, and why it’s good to be ambivalent.  I’d also like to blog about some other issues as well (including hypocrisy, degrees of responsibility, and moral luck), but we’ll have to see how things go. 

I’ll start off though, with a quick question about basic desert. 

Passing the Torch!

It's once again the first of the month--which means I have to pass the Featured Author torch to the philosopher waiting on deck.  But first, I want to thank Matt King for doing a great job last month stirring the philosophical pot with a series of posts about responsibility, blame, and punishment. It is always great to see so many talented philosophers (junior and senior) who are working on issues that are near and dear to my own heart! It's never clear to me how much progress gets made--partly because it's not clear how to measure progress in philosophy--but it is always fun to see how each of us tries to contribute to the debates that interest us in our own unique way! I look forward to seeing what Matt comes up with in the months and years ahead.  Based on his posts last month, he's got a lot of interesting projects in the pipeline!

That said, I would now like to welcome this month's Featured Author at Flickers of Freedom--namely, D. Justin Coates. Justin is an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of Houston, and he also teaches courses in the Phronesis Program in the University of Houston Honors College. Before coming to Houston, Justin was the Law and Philosophy Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.  And before that, he received his PhD from theUniversity of California, Riverside and his MA from Georgia State University.  

Justin specializes in ethics and philosophy of action.  Right now, he is mainly thinking about ambivalence, blame, forgiveness, love, moral responsibility, practical reasons, and autonomous agency.  If you're interested in more details, check out his Research page, which has a full list of his publications and information about his current work. Needless to say, I am delighted to have Justin posting this month!  As always, it should be a good time for all!  So, please join me in welcoming Justin to the show!

p.s. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, please help both Justin and the blog more generally by taking a few minutes to use the social media icons at the bottom of each post to spread the word.  One of the chief benefits of the Featured Authors series for junior philosophers is that it can increase the visibility of their work.  So, please help by doing your part! It takes very little effort for you and it can make a big impact for the authors.

p.p.s. Here is the upcoming schedule for the Featured Author Series:

November:            Charles Hermes

December:             Peter Tse  

January:                V. Alan White

If you are interested in doing a stint as a Featured Author, please send me an email. Similarly, if you have some suggestions for others who might be interested--especially people who are not already regular contributors to the blog--please let me know.  I am looking to start filling up the line up for 2015!