Flickers of Freedom

So long, and thanks for all the fish

My month has come to an end! It was really helpful to present some of the ideas I've been kicking around in this format, where I had to try to to defend them against kind and intelligent naysayers. I know my work will benefit. Thanks again to Thomas for this opportunity, and to everyone who offered such great comments. I'm still hoping to reply to a few more recent comments today.

I ran out of time and didn't get a chance to discuss criminal responsibility and reduction, the topic of my presentation in Florence next week. Many of my views on the subject can be found here, however. The talk next week also discusses mysterianism, so anyone interested in that particular topic can email me for a copy of my presentation.  

I hope everyone has a lovely summer! 

 

The diachronic self, incarcerated*

In my last post I argued persons may be responsible for aspects of themselves that are under their diachronic self-control, and I highlighted self-interventions discussed by Roskies as important means to create and manage the culpable self. Such self-interventions include the ability to engineer ones’ environment so that it elicits or makes manifest valued dispositions, and does not realize those disvalued; intervening on ones’ future self by making commitments to future behavior or setting overarching policies; and practicing and strengthening the processes of self-control.

There is some interesting overlap, I think, between a diachronic self-control view and Aristotelian virtue theory. Virtue theory claims character is built by habituation, which involves building a trait via the use of practical reason. A stable disposition to act in accordance with a trait, such as honesty, is established as a result of being appropriately honest over time and in a variety of circumstances. Similarly, a disposition to be neglectful towards ones’ family is firmly established as a result of being neglectful over time. The resultant traits can be seen as flexible dispositions to behave that are in constant development or decline, depending on the choices that one makes (see Annas 2011; Webber 2006). Self-interventions such as manipulating ones’ environment and making commitments for future behavior can be seen as agent management of the processes of habituation.

It hardly needs to be said that when an offender is incarcerated, diachronic self-control and habituation of dispositions becomes extremely difficult within most realms because there are very few meaningful choices to be made. Offenders in prison are denied even the simple choices of everyday life. They are told where to stand, sit, and sleep; what to eat; if and when to exercise and shower; and often, who they can talk to. Very few incarcerated offenders have the possibility of meaningful work or project-oriented hobbies. Some have very limited access to TV or books. Most offenders in the general population of a prison or jail spend the majority of their time doing …nothing.

Most offenders under isolation orders can only do nothing. All versions of solitary confinement mean living 23 to 24 hours a day in a cell. Sometimes inmates are granted one hour for exercise, which usually takes place alone in an exercise room or a “dog run” (Haney 2003). Solitary confinement cells generally measure from 6 x 9 to 8 x 10 feet. They can have solid metal doors so inmates cannot see outside, and inmates inside are often banned from using a TV, radio, or reading supplies (Haney 2003). (Those interested in the horrors of solitary confinement should see Lisa Guenther’s great book on the subject.)

Almost all philosophical theories of moral responsibility make choice-making central to self and agency. It thus ought to be generally recognized that when we incarcerate someone we are diminishing their ability to construct, and be, a human self. Incarcerated offenders’ sense of their own agency becomes smaller and smaller over time, shrinking to the point where, under solitary confinement, some offenders become severely mentally ill, or surrender into a vegetative state. The effects of this diminishment of self are long-lasting, and sometimes permanent.

Of course, those who justify punishment based in part on retributive blame believe at least some offenders deserve to have their moral agency diminished, and I agree. But once we are clear on the true impacts of incarceration, it seems that in the US more offenders go to prison than should, and most offenders go to prison for longer than is justified. Given the resulting diminishment of agency and self-hood, and their lingering effects, incarceration may be a proportional response to violent and/or repeat offenses, but not to many non-violent and victimless crimes. And those who support forward-looking justifications for incarceration need to balance desired general and specific deterrent effects with the criminogenic effect of prison. Such effects, I think, are directly related to the diminishment of moral agency suffered by offenders who are then drop-kicked back into their communities with impaired capacity for self-control. This impaired capacity is evidenced by released offenders' inability to make long-term plans and commitments, as well as everyday decisions; and their difficulty managing interpersonal relationships. 

To my mind, punishment practices ought to limit offender choice-making only to the extent necessary to directly achieve the principles of retribution and deterrence. This is because such choice-making, even minor choice-making, can be the means to diachronic self-control. Incarceration ought to be seen as a last resort, and community-based sanctions (probation with electronic monitoring and required rehabilitative treatment) ought to be routine for non-violent offenders. Juveniles, who are at a particularly important point in their self-development, ought to never be given life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP) sentences. An LWOP sentence means an offender relinquishes hope of ever again exercising full moral agency, or being a good person: he may only ever be a good prisoner.

To give an example: a person like Bert, convicted of child abandonment, might benefit from parenting classes, which could help him formulate a long-term commitment to be a better parent and teach him skills relevant to honoring this commitment. If offered as a condition of probation, Bert could maintain his already established disposition to be hardworking, because he could keep his job, and at the same time improve his parenting skills. If Bert is sent to prison, however, his virtuous disposition of being hardworking, and ability to contribute to his kids financial well-being, may be permanently undermined. Further, it will be very difficult for Bert to learn parenting skills or establish a disposition of care toward his children without having any contact with them. 

Even within a jail or prison setting, incarcerated offenders should be given some opportunities to make choices about their daily lives and to thus perform self-interventions and build dispositions. There are some model programs that do this. In Chicago, Sherriff Tom Dart has offered jail inmates the opportunity for bee-keeping, chess, drug addiction counseling, gardening, yoga, and the maintenance of chickens. He also offers offenders paid work demolishing abandoned properties. One California prison offers a program allowing prisoners to work as care-givers for other demented prisoners as a means to earn early release. As a result of the program, Shawn Henderson, who got 25 years to life for a 1985 double murder and was twice denied parole, earned his release. Mr. Henderson claimed that doing a job where “you get spit on, feces thrown on you, urine on you, you get cursed out” helped teach him to cope outside prison. “Now when I come into an encounter like that on the street, I can be a lot more compassionate,” he said.

If we offer offenders the opportunity to practice diachronic self-control, and encourage the development of virtuous dispositions, some of them may be better persons after their interactions with the criminal justice system. If we fail to offer such opportunities, we may ask too much of offenders when we demand they manage themselves such that they don't recidivate. 

 

 * I ask patience from those who have read my rants on this topic before. Mass incarceration is such an important issue I feel it is appropriate to address the topic repeatedly.

 

Responsibility and Diachronic Self Control

This will be my last post about Bert, the father found guilty of child abandonment because he lapsed with regard to his parenting schedule and went to Vegas, leaving his kids home alone. Theories of moral responsibility that require agents have a conscious understanding of the moral implications of an action have difficulties holding lapsers like Bert responsible, especially if the lapse isn’t part of a pattern of behavior. In my previous post, I argued that tracing doesn’t necessarily make the task any easier, because it is often tough to identify a past conscious decision from which the harm caused was reasonably foreseeable.

I’m now going to try to explain why I think Bert is responsible and justifiably punished for his lapse. I think Bert’s capacity to understand his duties under the law, and his capacity to conform his behavior to this duty over time, are necessary to Bert’s criminal responsibility. The view I have been developing (a view still in progress!) is informed by some really interesting recent work on diachronic self-authorship and control (see, for example, Kennett and Mathews, 2009; Roskies, 2012; Vincent, 2013). Adina Roskies, for example, has argued that diachronic self-authorship can ground a compatibilist account of responsibility that preserves real agency but avoids “obscure metaphysics” (2012). We can deliberately intervene in our future selves, says Roskies, by manipulating our mental content in ways that have foreseeable consequences, and because we have such diachronic control we are in a “very real sense responsible for who we are” and our behavior (2012: 331). Roskies provides examples of diachronic self-interventions, including the ability to engineer ones’ environment so that it elicits or makes manifest valued dispositions, and does not realize those disvalued; intervening on ones’ future self by making commitments to future behavior or setting overarching policies; and practicing and strengthening the processes of self-control (agents can practice making decisions in a way that increases deliberative control).

Bert had the capacity to perform these sorts of self-interventions within an extended time frame running up to his lapse. At least, there was no evidence that Bert had diminished cognitive capacities such that knowing the law or remembering appointments was unusually difficult for him. Thus it seems Bert was capable of the sort of self-authorship Roskies describes. With regard to his lapse, Bert could have engineered his environment such that he was less likely to forget his parenting schedule: he could have set a reminder or kept a calendar, for example. Bert could have made a conscious commitment to be a reliable parent and set for himself policies to meet this commitment, such that when the topic of his children arose this commitment came to mind. Finally, Bert could have practiced the process of deliberative self-control by slowing down and mentally reviewing his schedule before making decisions that might involve his parenting schedule, such as deciding to leave town. All of these are diachronic means for Bert to better avoid a lapse with regard to his parenting schedule.

I think Roskies’ account of diachronic self-control, and my own views, are to some extent compatible with some expressivist theories of moral responsibility, including Angela Smith’s “rational relations” view. Smith holds that agents are responsible for aspects of themselves that are rationally modifiable over time, including unconscious or implicit attitudes, and “what we notice or fail to notice about the world” (2005). Thus Smith claims agents like Bert are directly morally responsible for lapses. The process of self-authorship, according to Smith, requires the capacity to recognize, assess, and respond to reasons counting in favor of both attitudes and actions. Roskies’ account, I think, gives this idea a specifically diachronic spin by focusing on ways in which agents can increase their self-control and likelihood of behaving in a way that expresses self-authorship over time.  

Importantly, Smith is clear that she intends to provide an account of direct responsibility, not just aretaic blame: agents, she says, are morally responsible for harm caused by mental states that are rationally modifiable. Agents like Bert who have this ability of rational self-review are accountable for their attitudes and actions, and may be called upon to “explain or justify rational activity in some area, and to acknowledge fault if such justification cannot be provided (Smith 2008: 381).”  

For Smith, holding responsible is a two-step process, where it is first determined whether an agent is responsible for an attitude or act, and secondly, if any social criticism or punishment is warranted. The distinction between the two steps seems important, because Smith’s views are fairly expansive regarding the things for which an agent is responsible, and many attitudes and acts for which we are responsible may not be deserving of criticism or punishment. For example, on Smith’s theory a tired parent who forgets to drop off their infant at day care on a hot day and leaves him in the car is morally responsible when the lapse causes the child to die from heat exposure. However, it seems a parent who suffered from such a tragic lapse is decidedly not a good candidate for social criticism or criminal punishment. (Charges are filed in about 60% of such cases, but they tend to drop out before a guilty verdict would mandate a minimum sentence.) 

A Roskies/Smith diachronic rational self control view (clearly I’ll need to come up with a better name) coheres nicely, I think, with HLA Hart’s idea that legitimate law is internalized by citizens as practical rules for conduct, such that they feel obliged, and not just obligated, to obey the law. Legitimate law acts as broad guidelines for diachronic exercise of self-agency, because law is internalized by citizens such that they are generally law-abiding. In negligence cases like Bert’s the law provides guidelines with regard to specific standards of care (often attached to different roles – parent, contractor, taxpayer). Legal responsibility rests not just on a presumption of the capacity for diachronic self control, I think, but also a presumption of knowledge of the law (in general, ignorance of the law is not an excuse). There are various ways in which the law becomes known and internalized by citizens that I can’t discuss in detail here, but our system of criminal punishment is one important means by which the law becomes known. In rare cases the presumption of knowledge of the law may be rebutted, such as in a case of a person who just recently moved to the United States from a country with very different legal rules (Eddy Nahmias’ example in a comment on an earlier post).

All the evidence presented in Bert’s case indicated he had both the capacity for diachronic self-control and to understand his obligations as a parent under the law. Because Bert failed to exercise his diachronic capacity to meet the applicable standard of care, he is directly morally responsible for his lapse and may be punished in keeping with both the aims of retribution and deterrence.

Let me close with just a few words specifically about Bert’s punishment. In the US the current consensus model of punishment is a hybrid theory where retributive notions of just desert (which probably rest upon moral emotions, see (Moore, 2009)) provide an appropriate range of justified penalty within which an offender might be sentenced (Frase, 2003; Morris, 1974). Backward-looking retributive considerations of proportionality must then be balanced with forward-looking considerations of social order to create a punishment package that is proportional to crime and offender, but also aims to reduce recidivism and overall crime rates. It seems to me that Bert’s sentence of probation was proportional with his level of blameworthiness, and also serves the aim of deterrence. Bert seems to be a good candidate for social criticism in part because Bert’s punishment, and similarly situated parents, may be deterred from future lapses and be encouraged to change their attitudes and habits with regard to their parenting schedules. In comparison, the parent who leaves his child in the hot car does not seem to need social criticism to be deterred from future similar acts, and news of a child dying in a hot car is likely to impact other parent's behavior regardless of whether the lapsing parent is found criminally responsible for the death was punished.

Ideally, Bert’s punishment would also include rehabilitative treatment, such as parenting classes. One especially appealing aspect of the diachronic rational self control view is that it highlights the importance of rehabilitative punishment for strengthening offenders’ agency and decreasing recidivism. The self-interventions discussed by Roskies (engineering ones’ environment, intervening on ones’ future self by making commitments to future behavior, and practicing and strengthening the processes of self-control) can be taught or encouraged by rehabilitative programming such as anger management and parenting classes, and even yoga and chess. I’ll further discuss rehabilitative punishment in my next post.

I apologize for the somewhat sketchy nature of the arguments here. I'm trying to work within space constraints, and to be honest, my views are still under construction.  

Moral Responsiblity for Lapses via Tracing Conditions

In this post I’m going to continue my discussion of Bert, the father who forgot it was his weekend to care for his kids, went to Vegas, and ended up getting convicted of child abandonment. For many of us, Bert’s case generates the intuition that Bert is morally responsible for his lapse and the harm caused to his kids, and thus his guilty verdict was correct. However, Bert was not aware of the moral implications of his decision to go to Vegas: assuming Bert suffered from an honest lapse with regard to his parenting schedule, he did not intend or know this decision would cause his kids to be abandoned.

One way we might hold Bert morally responsible is indirectly, via tracing conditions. If one thinks consciousness is required for moral responsibility, tracing allows responsibility for some conduct missing a conscious mental element (awareness of the moral implications of the act) to be traced back to a decision or action that does possess a conscious element.  A classic case where tracing is the attribution of moral responsibility to a person who becomes voluntarily intoxicated. Although the very drunk driver is suffering from a diminished capacity to understand and/or control his acts at the time he drives off the road into a crowded bus stop, his responsibility can be traced back to point where he decided to drink so much that he became intoxicated. We expect persons to understand the moral implications of getting drunk when they intended to drive home: in other words, it was reasonably foreseeable that getting drunk would make the drive unsafe.

In Bert’s case it seems we might use tracing to look for a decision or act wherein the harm he caused to his kids was reasonably foreseeable (Vargas 2005). For example, maybe Bert was like the father, Sean, I mentioned in my first post. Sean consciously “tuned out” his ex-wife so he wouldn’t have to pay attention to her demands with regard to care of their children. It was reasonably foreseeable that Sean’s decision to tune out would result in him missing appointments (really, this was the whole point of Sean tuning out). Sean is thus responsible when his conscious failure to pay attention results in a failure to remember his kid’s science fair, and for the harm caused by the missed appointment.

Similarly, if Bert made a conscious decision not to pay attention when he discussed the custody schedule with his ex-girlfriend, or consciously dismissed the idea of writing down the schedule, he is indirectly morally responsible for the abandonment of his children. In this case it was reasonably foreseeable that Bert’s conscious decision not to listen or set a reminder might lead him to forget the parenting schedule.

However, the actual evidence presented in the case didn’t really support this account of the relevant events. There had been a brief in-person conversation some weeks before the lapse between Bert and his ex-girlfriend about the schedule. This discussion occurred after Bert dropped off the kids while the two were standing outside of his ex-girlfriend’s apartment. Afterward Bert had failed to write the schedule down or set a reminder. Bert didn’t own a calendar or a date book, and testified that he never wrote down any of his appointments. Importantly, Bert claimed that it never occurred to him to write down the schedule or set a reminder, despite the fact that the parenting schedule changed a lot because he often asked to switch weekends with his ex-girlfriend, and sometimes she asked to switch. Bert’s ex agreed that she had never known him to keep a calendar or write down appointments.

[Sidebar: Many of you have been asking for more details in Bert’s case. I will only report what I actually remember from his case (I did observe his entire trial). In the criminal law, as in life, responsibility assessments are performed under imperfect epistemic conditions. When I decide to flunk a student for cheating on a take-home exam, it is often at least possible that it was a coincidence her exam was so very similar to her classmate’s. Judges and juries listen to the (often contradictory) evidence presented, make credibility assessments, try to understand circumstantial evidence, and then make a judgment “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Some level of doubt often remains – if a case is very clear-cut, it probably would have been plead out before trial.]

On the admittedly incomplete evidence we have, it is plausible that Bert never made a conscious decision not to pay attention to his ex, or not to set a reminder or write down his parenting schedule. It may have never crossed his mind to do either of these things. If this is the case, was the harm he caused his children reasonably foreseeable? It seems not.

Looking further back in time, we might find the conscious initiation of the habit of failing to keep a calendar or set reminders; we might, for example, find a point where Bert consciously dismissed a high school teacher telling him to write down his assignments. But it does not seem reasonably foreseeable at the time of this decision that Bert might lapse and abandon his yet-to-be-born kids. The link between this long-ago decision – even a series of such long ago decisions – and the criminal harm Bert caused seems too thin to hold Bert morally responsible and thus justify his criminal punishment.   

This analysis of Bert’s case seems supported by Matt King’s 2009 paper on negligence and tracing. King argues that the hallmark of negligence cases is the failure to exercise a standard of care, which often manifests as a failure to pay attention or a failure to take note of the risk. King gives the example of Negligent Nate:

“…[S]uppose that Nate, tired from waking up early, is backing out of his driveway. His thoughts turn to his meetings that day, and his attention is partially focused on a radio commercial. Due to his inattention, Nate doesn’t see a child walking to school and so hits him, braking the child’s leg. Nate is negligent: he fails to pay proper attention to what he is doing and so risks harm to others, a risk that is unfortunately realized.”

Tracing works, says King, only when the prior decision or action meets two conditions: (1) the agent is responsible for that decision or action; and (2) that decision or action caused the agent to fail to satisfy the conditions on responsibility for the later action. This is fairly easy to do in cases where an agent makes a choice that impairs his later agency, such as drinking too much, or sleeping too little. In standard cases of negligence, however, King argues that it is difficult to trace back to a prior conscious choice that caused the subsequent lack of proper attention or care. “[Nate] doesn’t chose to be inattentive, nor does he do anything else for which he is responsible that also obviously creates the condition of his inattentiveness.”  

Further, King thinks that although most intuit that Nate is responsible for negligence, there are no principled means to distinguish Nate from cases like the one of Leadfoot Lenny, who inadvertently steps on his friend’s hand when he gets up from the sofa to get a soda and is distracted by the movie playing. Both Nate and Larry should have paid more attention, and both violated some duty to take care (though one duty seems more important than the other), but neither violations can be linked to some prior conscious decision. We tend to treat Nate more harshly, King says, because his failure with regard to the duty of care is more serious, but there is no real difference in their cases to be discovered via a tracing condition. One is expected to take more care driving than walking, because the risk of harm to others is greater. Negligence, King concludes, is just a form of inadvertence, in which the expected negative value of inattentive conduct is great. He concludes that neither Nate nor Lenny are morally responsible for the harms they bring about.

So I think we have reasons to doubt that tracing will allow us to hold Bert morally responsible for the harm caused by his lapse. But I’m open to suggestions.

 

Unconscious Mens Rea, part 2

In my last post I discussed the case of Bert, the father who honestly forgot it was his weekend to take care of his kids, and was found guilty of child abandonment. I indicated that those who don’t attribute moral responsibility to agents for harm caused by lapses could support punishing Bert based on purely forward-looking aims of punishment, such as deterrence. Indeed, I suggested that some intuitions finding Bert responsible may stem from beliefs about deterrence and maybe not due to the presence of some condition that justifies holding Bert morally responsible.

However, I’m now going to come clean and admit that I think Bert IS morally responsible for the harm he caused to his kids. (Many of you who commented seemed to agree.) I’m going to argue that, if the facts of Bert’s case justify punishing him on grounds of deterrence, then those same facts also mean that Bert meets the conditions for minimal moral culpability.

Punishing Bert based on pure deterrence grounds indicates that we think Bert may be specifically deterred from child neglect and abandonment in the future due to his experience of being punished. This seems right: I can imagine that Bert, despite getting a sentence of probation, may be shamed enough by his encounter with the family court system to be more careful about caring for his kids in the future. Similarly, I can imagine a parent who heard about Bert’s case in the news being more careful about her custody schedule after hearing about Bert’s arrest. (This may be due to the worry about being punished, or just a heightened awareness of a possible lapse with regard to their kids’ care.)

If we think that Bert is capable of conducting himself such that he doesn’t lapse and violate the law due to the threat of punishment, this means we think the standard of care that constitutes a violation of the law is known, or should have been known, by Bert (if somewhat nebulously). Further, that Bert’s punishment can have this effect on his behavior suggests that the behavior triggering and targeted by the punishment is within his control.

I think this may mean that anyone who supported Bert’s forward-looking punishment actually implicitly supported assigning him direct moral responsibility. The efficacy of his forward-looking punishment rests on him having had the capacity to manage his behavior such that he met a particular standard of care. But the control and knowledge conditions discussed above sound suspiciously like grounds to attribute moral responsibility, even though Bert possessed no conscious awareness that the decision related to the lapse would cause criminal harm. For example, Fischer and Ravizza (1998) claim one has guidance control over an action if it is caused by a moderately reasons-responsive when an act is issued from a mechanism that is regularly receptive to reasons. If we think application of punishment to Bert means he, and others, may be deterred in future, we presumably also think the same threat of punishment may have deterred Bert, and the others, in the past. Thus we think Bert could have responded to the law as a reason not to lapse – that is, we think his act issued from a reasons-responsive mechanism. 

To put the argument in slightly different, more legalistic, terms: Those who would deny moral responsibility to Bert might support punishing him based upon forward-looking aims of punishment. But application of such punishment entails the idea that persons have the capacity to avoid lapses due to the threat of punishment. In Bert’s case, this means he both knew of and had the capacity to meet the legally required standard of care. When one has the capacity to know of and meet legally required standards of care, they are morally obligated to do so. Thus Bert is morally responsible for the violation of the standard of care due to his lapse.

This analysis of Bert’s case indicates his lapse may be best understood using a negligence standard. In most cases, a defendant found guilty of a crime is found to possess conscious mental states with regard the criminal harm she caused: she acted for the “purpose” of achieving the harm; she “knew” the harm was likely to occur; or she “recklessly disregarded” the likelihood of harm. However, in some cases criminal guilt is assigned even where there the defendant seems to have possessed no conscious mental states with regard to the criminal harm utilizing a negligence (or even a strict liability) standard. The law does this in cases where the criminal harm can be properly attributed to the defendant even though they lacked such agency, because he has culpably violated an important standard of care.

Violation of a standard of care is the hallmark of negligence. HLA Hart claimed instances of negligence were culpable as cases of unexercised capacity of choice to avoid risk (Hart, 1968). That is, Hart argued that assuming defendants have the capacity to choose to avert risk, they must have that capacity in at least some cases when they don’t avert risk, even where that risk was not consciously foreseen. Moore and Hurd, however, indicate negligence cases are a “dog’s breakfast,” meaning many of them appeal to different capacities, and have little in common besides a lack of specific mental states (Moore and Hurd, 2011). They provide a list of categories of capacities that defendants may fail to exercise such that they are negligently culpable, including: failure to address a dispositional lack of awareness of the risk; failure to address a risk related to character or psychological flaws the defendant knew about; and violation of a known mini-maximum (such as never leave a baby unaccompanied in the tub) (Moore and Hurd, 2011).

Note that in each of these types of negligence cases there is a capacity to abide by a standard of care (one was aware of or should have been aware of), and then a failure to exercise that capacity – exactly what is required for a punishment to have a deterrent effect. This is what amounts to “minimal culpability” in the law. Even in cases of strict liability – where the law claims to require the defendant possess no mental states with regard to the criminal harm – that harm has to be tied to a culpable (not “purely innocent”) act; it cannot be the result of an earlier, fully legal, decision (Brown, 2012). Brown argues that strict liability is applied in categories of cases where actors are oftentimes negligent, and in some cases reckless. The classic case of strict liability is statutory rape, where a defendant is held responsible for having sex with someone underage, even if they did not know what the person’s age was. Legal scholar D. Brown argues courts are especially willing to imply this required “minimal culpability” in cases involving a victim’s age or where the offense involves a weapon (Brown, 2012). “Strict liability does not reject culpability’s relevance but merely serves it imperfectly; strict liability is a clear rule with the inevitable weaknesses of clear rules—it is over inclusive for some cases” (Brown, 2012).

In my next post I want to explore minimal moral culpability in more detail. Can we hang such minimal culpability on indirect moral responsibility via tracing conditions? Matt King says no, and I’m inclined to agree.

---

 

Greetings

I am extremely honored to be this month’s featured author -- thank you to Thomas Nadelhoffer for his gracious invitation. I especially want to thank Thomas for inviting so many women philosophers to be featured this year. It may be that there are so many good women philosophers of mind, action, etc. that it just worked out that way. But if it was a conscious decision, Thomas no doubt understood its moral significance, and thus deserves praise. :) Thank you, Thomas!

I have been trying to read FoF posts regularly for about six months now, and one thing that has kept me from participating is the length of some of the posts. It is possible (likely?) that I am just a bit dimmer than other readers, but some of the posts were so interesting and complicated and well-argued that it would have taken me an hour or so to digest them and come up with an interesting/useful reply. I usually don’t have that sort of time in my day. So I will attempt to write shorter, yet still engaging and provocative posts. This may be more difficult than I imagine, but I’ll do my best.

My research interests are primarily criminal responsibility and punishment, so almost all of my work happens where ‘rubber meets road,’ as Eddy would say. I like to use real life examples of criminal harm caused or criminal responsibility assessments. Right now, partly due to Neil Levy’s 2014 book, I’m especially interested in how the criminal law ascribes responsibility for harm related to lapses and minimally conscious states, or due to a lack of care (negligence cases). My analysis of these cases has led me to some conclusions about the sort of agency tracked by the criminal law. My first few posts will discuss these cases and conclusions from them.

Later in the month I’m going to say a few things about non-reductivism and mysterianism and why anyone who thinks the criminal law properly ascribes responsibility in at least some cases should reject them. I’ll be preparing to argue against Stephen Morse (non-reductivist) and Colin McGinn (mysterian) at a conference on mens rea in June, so I’ll be especially interested to receive comments on this topic.

Actually, all of my posts will discuss current writing projects: I’m embracing this opportunity as a Tom Sawyer paint-the-fence moment. (I’m borrowing this phrase from Dan Dennett, who used it to describe our seminar on his then book-in-progress Freedom Evolves.) So be critical, and thank you in advance for helping me strengthen my ideas and arguments.

Passing the Torch!

Well, it's once again the beginning of a new month--which means it's time to pass the torch from one Featured Author to the next.  But before I do, I first wanted to thank Sue Dwyer for giving us plenty of food for thought when it comes to the recent empirical work that's been done on moral psychology. She raised a number of interesting and important methodological and metaphilosophical issues that researchers would do well to address when trying to shed light on the nature of moral cognition (in children and adults). Hopefully, Sue will continue to post here at Flickers moving forward. I, for one, would like the blog to have more content when it comes to moral psychology. For while free will is clearly the primary focus of the blog, it was never intended to be the only focus--the name of the blog notwithstanding!  So, thanks once again to Sue for encouraging us to broaden the scopes of our respective investigations.

That said, I would now like to introduce this month's Featured Author--Katrina Sifferd. Professor Sifferd holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of London, King’s College, and is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Elmhurst College. After leaving King’s, Katrina held a post-doctoral position as Rockefeller Fellow in Law and Public Policy and Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College. Before becoming a philosopher, Katrina earned a Juris Doctorate and worked as a senior research analyst on criminal justice projects for the National Institute of Justice. Katrina is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, including “On the Criminal Culpability of Successful and Unsuccesful Psychopaths”, co-authored with William Hirstein, Neuroethics 6, 129-140 (2013), “Translating Scientific Evidence into the Language of the Folk: Executive Function as Capacity-Responsibility” in Nicole A Vincent (ed) Legal Responsibility and Neuroscience, OUP series on neuroscience and law (2012);  “The Legal Self: Executive Process and Legal Theory”, co-authored with William Hirstein, Consciousness and Cognition, 20, 156-171 (2011); and “In Defense of the Use of Commonsense Psychology in the Criminal Law”, Law and Philosophy 25: 571-612 (2006). You can follow Katrina on twitter (@KSifferd).

As someone with several overlapping research interests with Professor Sifferd, I am especially excited to see what she comes up with for us this month.  So, please welcome me in joining her to the Featured Author series.

p.s. Here is the upcoming schedule:

June:                No one is lined up.
July:                 Helen Steward
August:            Sarah Paul
September:     Heidi Maibom
October:          Natalia Washington 

2016:

June/July:    Patricia Greenspan

Originally, I was going to take a stab at being Featured Author next month. But during the past year, I have received emails from several long-time readers and contributors suggesting that perhaps the series has been too much of a good thing. One trend that has clearly developed is that contributors don't post for fear of stepping on the proverbial toes of the Featured Authors.

As a result, not as many contributors to the blog actually contribute as they would and should otherwise. I think there is wisdom in the advice I have received (so, thanks to those of you who have contacted me). Because the line up for this year is already mostly filled, I plan to move ahead per my original plans. But I will leave June, November, and December open for now. Moreover, next year I plan to alternate months between "community" months and months with Featured Authors. Hopefully, this helps. If anyone has any additional suggestions, please let me know. As always, thanks for reading, commenting, and being part of this community.