Flickers of Freedom

Moral Responsibility: Freedom Conditions & Epistemic Conditions

I know this is a very busy time of year with lots of pressing alternatives to blogging.  So here’s something that doesn’t need much of a set up.

Philosophers sometimes talk in terms of a “control” or “freedom” condition on moral responsibility and epistemic conditions on moral responsibility.  I’m curious about the extent to which these conditions are separable from one another.  For example, in the case of free actions for which one is morally responsible, it might be that some epistemic conditions that need to be satisfied if one is to be morally responsible for the action also need to be satisfied if one is to perform the action freely and that some other epistemic conditions of the former kind are not conditions of the latter kind.

Let’s set aside indirect moral responsibility for now.  What are some epistemic requirements for being directly morally responsible for A-ing that are not requirements for (directly) freely A-ing?  Maybe with teamwork we can come up with a plausible list of such requirements.

Luck

In my 2006 book (and elsewhere), I’ve raised what I called the “problem of present luck.”  The problem I’m trying to make salient has a long history, and it comes up when I talk to journalists and other nonspecialists about libertarianism.  I don’t bring it up; they do.  My primary question for you is whether you can answer the problem in a way that would satisfy educated lay folk (e.g., journalists who have little or no philosophical background) – and, more specifically, persuade them that “present luck” is compatible with deciding freely.  But I’m also interested in hearing from people who believe that there’s no problem to begin with or that the problem has no solution. What follows is some background.

Here’s an example I’ve used to illustrate the problem.  It seems especially appropriate at this time of year.  Bob’s world is indeterministic and it is assumed that at no time is it determined what Bob will choose.

Bob lives in a town in which people make many strange bets, including bets on whether the opening coin toss for football games will occur on time.  After Bob agreed to toss a coin at noon to start a football game, Carl, a notorious gambler, offered him $50 to wait until 12:02 to toss it.  Bob was uncertain about what to do, and he was still struggling with his dilemma as noon approached.  Although he was tempted by the $50, he also had moral qualms about helping Carl cheat people out of their money.  He judged it best on the whole to do what he agreed to do.  Even so, at noon, he decided to toss the coin at 12:02 and to pretend to be searching for it in his pockets in the meantime.  (He decided to C, for short.)

Control

Bob Kane contends that his event-causal libertarian view gives agents “more power” (or control) “than compatibilists can give us in a determined world” (p. 397 in “Rethinking Free Will” in the second edition of his Oxford Handbook).  Here he’s responding to what he calls the “no-more-power” objection to event-causal libertarianism.  He has in mind such claims as the following:

Derk Pereboom’s claim that event-causal libertarianism fails because it “does not provide agents with any more control than compatibilism does” (2001 book, p. 56).

Randy Clarke’s claim that “the active control that is exercised on [an event-causal libertarian] view is just the same as that exercised on an event-causal compatibilist account. [The] view fails to secure the agent’s exercise of any further positive powers to causally influence which of the alternative courses of events that are open will become actual” (2003 book, p. 220).

Question A. Who is right about this?  Bob? Derk? Randy? None of the above?

Question B. Does anyone out there know of a way of measuring control that would help in answering the previous question?

    Here’s another way of getting at the issue.  Jane’s world is deterministic.  Joan’s world is indeterministic.  The two women are otherwise as similar as can be, given this difference; and they are very good at assessing reasons for action and choosing on the basis of their assessments. Their present circumstances are as similar as can be too, given the difference I mentioned between their worlds.  Neither is being subjected to undue pressure, neither has been manipulated in any way relevant to their upcoming choice, and so on.  At t, Jane rationally chooses to jump to the left straightaway, and she acts accordingly.  The past and the laws of Joan’s world leave open various options for her at t.  They include her rationally choosing to jump to the right straightaway and rationally choosing to jump to the left straightaway (that is, both are compatible with the combination of her world’s past and its laws of nature).  At t, like Jane, Joan rationally chooses to jump to the left straightaway, and she acts accordingly.  Some philosophers write in terms of “amounts” of control when discussing, for example, differences between compatibilist views and event-causal libertarian views.  Regarding the choices they make, might one of these two agents have a greater amount of control than the other at the time?  If so, which one and why?  Might they have the same amount of control regarding these choices?  If so, how is their control measured?  Are Jane’s control at the time regarding the choice she makes and Joan’s control at the time regarding the choice she makes incommensurable?

Featured Author: Alfred Mele

For starters, I wanted to thank both Saul Smilansky and John Martin Fischer for doing an excellent job helping me launch the new Featured Authors series here at Flickers of Freedom.  So far, I humbly think that the new series has been a resounding success.  I, for one, have certainly enjoyed the posts and discussion threads for the past two months.  So, thanks to John, Saul, and to the readers of the blog for some illuminating and engaging online conversations about free will.  I think the past two months have highlighted the true potential of philosophical blogging!

That said, I am very pleased to announce this month's featured author--namely, Professor Alfred Mele.  Professor Mele  is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University and director of the Big Questions in Free Will Project (2010-13). He is the author of Irrationality (1987), Springs of Action (1992), Autonomous Agents (1995), Self-Deception Unmasked (2001), Motivation and Agency (2003), Free Will and Luck (2006), Effective Intentions (2009), and Backsliding (2012).  He also is the editor or co-editor of Mental Causation (1993), The Philosophy of Action (1997), The Oxford Handbook of Rationality (2004), Rationality and the Good (2007), and Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work? (2010).

So, hopefully, everyone will read Professor Mele's posts as eagerly as I will and participate actively in the ensuing discussions.  

 The upcoming schedule for the Featured Author series is below the fold.