Flickers of Freedom

Punishment without Moral Responsibility

I don’t want to cut off discussion of the previous post, particularly given the important questions recently raised by David, Eddy, Josh, and Neil; but there are only a few days remaining in May, and there is a question that particularly troubles me, and I should deeply appreciate having the insights of my Flickers friends.

For the reasons ably set out by Derk, Neil, and Galen, I believe we cannot justify moral responsibility, and that blaming, punishing, and rewarding in accordance with “just deserts” is fundamentally unfair. I gather that there are a few Flickers Folk who do not share that view; but that’s another issue. One of the most troubling challenges for those who reject moral responsibility is this: What do we do about punishment? Of course the ideal answer is easy: eliminate it, by concentrating on better early social and educational programs that provide genuine opportunities and prevent people from becoming violent criminals. In addition, there are some justice programs that seem to move in a positive direction (such as restorative justice programs). Still, no one believes that we can totally eliminate punishment, at least in the foreseeable future (though we might well dramatically reduce it from the insane current U.S. levels). As Dennett points out, even the restorative justice programs rely on a threat of punishment (if you don’t participate, you’ll be turned over to the standard program and probably imprisoned). Further, Dennett makes a very strong case that there is a deep unfairness in any form of imprisonment if one denies moral responsibility, and that the moral responsibility system is “the best game in town” until someone comes up with an alternative. Dennett’s essay, in which he further develops many of the important themes of his work and expands on them with great force and clarity, can be found at Tom Clark’s naturalism.org site (a rich resource indeed);  together with Tom’s insightful response, Dennett’s response to Tom, and finally my inadequate response: if my response had been adequate, I wouldn’t still be worrying about this problem, would I?

Our society contains some violent and dangerous people, and some must be isolated/imprisoned for the protection of society. But on my view, no one – not even Robert Harris – justly deserves to be punished/imprisoned. Saul Smilansky (in “Hard Determinism and Punishment,” 2011, Law and Philosophy) poses this problem as a reductio of hard determinism: in very inadequate summary form, Smilansky’s rich argument is that given the denial of moral responsibility, no one justly deserves punishment/imprisonment; thus those who deny MR would be obligated to replace punishment with “funishment,” making “prisons” as pleasant as possible (indeed, they would have to make prisons the equivalent of five-star hotels); but that would not only be inordinately expensive, it would also destroy any deterrent effect and might even encourage some people to commit crimes in order to enjoy the funishment facilities; so crime would increase, costs would be impossible, and the result would be something not even hard determinists would want; thus following the demands of denying MR results in a situation that those who deny MR would reject.

From my perspective, recognizing the fundamental unfairness of the moral responsibility system is the best way forward to developing a system in which we minimize punishment, provide genuine opportunity, and find better ways to shape people who are more thoughtful, have a stronger sense of positive self-efficacy, and are less inclined to violence; in short, denying MR promotes examination of the detailed causes of human behavior and of how to shape positive behavior. But even if we eliminated moral responsibility, we would still have the problem – maybe forever, at least for the foreseeable future – of what to do with those persons who pose a genuine threat to others. So my question is this: If we reject moral responsibility, and agree that no one justly deserves imprisonment, but we also recognize that we cannot do without some form of imprisonment for the protection of society, what would that imply? Would it involve the denial of MR in a fatal contradiction, or lead to Smilansky’s reductio of impossible “institutions of funishment”? Suppose one who denies moral responsibility says: Yes, we must imprison some people, even though they do not deserve it; and that’s a terrible thing; but I never suggested that denying MR would make the world perfect, only that it would make it better. Denying MR will not eliminate all the injustice in our world; some people will still have to be imprisoned for the protection of society, and we cannot turn prisons into institutions of “funishment,” because that is not economically possible and it might well be counterproductive; but it is better for us to recognize that in imprisoning a dangerous offender we are doing something that is unavoidable but still unjust, rather than pretending that we are dealing out justly deserved punishment. Recognizing that we are doing something unjust will motivate us to find better ways of shaping behavioral alternatives, and it will prevent us from making prison any more unpleasant than necessary (we will be more likely to imprison in places like Norway’s Bastoy Island rather than U.S. Supermax hell holes), and it will prevent us from imprisoning more people than absolutely necessary. If punishment cannot be eliminated, that is not a special problem for those who want to eliminate moral responsibility; rather, the problem is that the world is not just, and not all injustice can be eliminated from our world. No one justly deserves to be imprisoned, but we will not be able to eliminate prisons for the foreseeable future. Those who deny moral responsibility recognize that as a moral problem; but it is not a problem that is caused by denial of moral responsibility, and it is not a problem that opponents of moral responsibility should be obliged to solve before they argue that moral responsibility is morally wrong. Rejecting moral responsibility is a positive step toward reducing injustice, not a source of injustice.

Thanks again to Thomas for this wonderful site, and for this special opportunity; and to all who have made these discussions – certainly for me – very helpful. I’m looking forward to Neil’s postings; and in anticipation of that, here is a passage from Ecclesiastes: it is clear that when Solomon wrote it, he was inspired by Neil’s Hard Luck.

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

The "rational man" influence on free will beliefs

The research of Tversky and Kahneman, and the development of behavioral economics, dealt a severe blow to the “rational man” model in economics and the always implausible view that the economic activities of people are in accordance with rational calculation of their best interests. Though obviously it is quite different from the rational man view in economics, philosophers have a long tradition – stretching back to Plato and Aristotle – of emphasizing and sometimes glorifying human rational capacities. There are wonderful exceptions, of course (David Hume and Annette Baier spring to mind); but there is no question that reason and the remarkable powers of human reason have played a huge role in philosophical thought, as well as in contemporary views of free will (think of Harry Frankfurt, Gerald Dworkin, Susan Wolf, and Dana Nelkin, to name just a few outstanding examples). My question is this: What impact should the sort of research done by Tversky and Kahneman and many others have on our understanding of free will, and does that research require us to rethink our conception of free will? For example, Kahneman compares our conscious reflections to a rider on an elephant (the elephant being our nonconscious thought); the rider mistakenly believes he or she is controlling the direction of the elephant, when the rider is in fact operating more as a director of public relations providing justifications for whatever the elephant decides to do. Thomas Nadelhoffer and Tatyana Matveeva have a marvelous paper on “Positive Illusions, Perceived Control and the Free Will Debate” in Mind & Language, 2009, which describes the very important positive illusions (as researched by Shelley Taylor and others) that play a key role in our behavior and our psychological well-being (in contrast to our common belief that we are always better served by accurate beliefs).

Our capacity for careful deliberative thought (what Kahneman calls system two thought) is not nearly as impressive as we had imagined; and the limited capacity we do have is influenced by our “need for cognition” and our sense of “cognitive self-efficacy,” neither of which is under our rational control. John Doris has done a splendid job of covering the extensive research in situationist psychology, which shows that seemingly trivial environmental influences (such as finding a coin in a pay phone) can have a huge impact on our behavior without our conscious awareness of its influence. One need not subscribe to Dan Wegner’s epiphenomenalism to acknowledge the importance of his work for showing how often we are deceived by our conscious thought processes (for example, believing that we are exerting conscious control when we are not, and vice versa). And many more examples could be noted, without mentioning the work of Libet (to which Al Mele has posed strong challenges) and the research on priming (at least some of which has recently been questioned). Of course it is possible to reject the legitimacy of some or all of this research: some philosophers are skeptical of situationist psychology; and Mark Young has a nice paper (available online, not sure it has been published yet) in Philosophical Psychology which challenges some of the research on positive illusions.

But my question is not about the legitimacy of such psychological research, but about its implications. Gregg Caruso’s book very forcefully describes some of those challenges for libertarian views; and the implications may go much further. For example: Charles Taylor suggests that it is always within our power to think harder about our deep values, even when we do not; if Kahneman (limits on system two thinking) and Haidt (on the powerful force of deep value “intuitions”) and Bandura (on influences on self-efficacy) and Baumeister (on the effects of ego-depletion for sustained careful thinking) are right, then we do not have such a power. When Frankfurt’s “willing addict” reflectively deliberates on his higher-order desire to remain addicted, is that reflective deliberation actually transparent to the addict, or are there forces at work of which the addict knows nothing? Susan Wolf’s inspiring account of freedom as the capacity to accurately track the True and Good: does that require rational powers that are mythic rather than psychologically plausible? In short, if we count this enormous body of psychological research as plausible, will that mean the demise of a “rational man” model in philosophy and free will? Would if have effects on philosophy as far-reaching as those in economics?

Can We Separate Free Will from Moral Responsibility?

Why is it so strange for philosophers to separate free will from moral responsibility? John Fischer does so; but then, sadly, he takes the wrong turn, and rejects free will while keeping moral responsibility: from my demented perspective, that’s a classic philosophical case of throwing out the baby while keeping the bathwater (though it still seems to me that John continues to give fabulously inventive and instructive arguments that support and elucidate free will). So his misguided allegiance to moral responsibility notwithstanding, John has led the way in arguing that free will and moral responsibility are distinct issues. So why is it that there is such reluctance among philosophers to examine the free will and moral responsibility questions as separate issues? I can understand why some traditional libertarian views (such as Pico della Mirandola’s and C. A. Campbell’s) connect free will with moral responsibility; after all, their accounts of free will are specifically designed to make sense of moral responsibility.

But leaving those aside, why should contemporary compatibilists believe that their free will views must match up with moral responsibility (they certainly make no appeals to contra-causal powers or God-given powers to make ourselves either beastly or godly)? Why shouldn’t we think that Frankfurt’s higher-level reflectiveness is a very important elucidation of free will, but that it fails as an account of moral responsibility? Why shouldn’t we think that various levels of reasoning are very important to a more robust account of free will, but fail as grounds for moral responsibility?

To go even further afield: Why shouldn’t we agree that it is very important to consider alternatives (and they do not have to be mystical contra-causal alternatives) and what they contribute to our enriched understanding of free will (a contribution that Bob Kane makes to the literature) even if we are not convinced that Bob has been successful in establishing grounds for moral responsibility? Or might we agree that Dennett has made a wonderful contribution to our understanding of free will with his emphasis on the psychological importance of “self-making,” and that Manuel Vargas has a most insightful account of the importance to free will of “building better beings,” while being skeptical of the claim that such accounts also support moral responsibility (in the just deserts sense)? For this question I’m not really focusing on whether those free will accounts are or are not successful in supporting moral responsibility; rather, I’m more interested in why it is so rare for philosophers to accept an account of free will (in particular one of the fascinating contemporary compatibilist accounts) while rejecting the view that we also have moral responsibility; or from the other – misguided – direction, accepting an account of moral responsibility while believing we lack an adequate account of free will? That is, why is it so surprising (even incoherent?) to say: I think Frankfurt (or Dennett or Vargas or Nelkin) gives a great account of free will; but I agree with Kane or Shoemaker (or with Pereboom or Levy) when it comes to moral responsibility. Or one might say that Hume and Schlick have it right when it comes to moral responsibility, but Kane has focused on an essential condition for free will (which Hume’s account cannot meet). It seems surprising to me that philosophers don’t mix and match these views on a regular basis. Of course there is a tradition of linking free will with moral responsibility, so that they stand or fall together (a tradition extending from Augustine to Valla, on to Luther and Pico and all the way to Hume and Kant and Campbell and Frankfurt); but surely philosophers are not slaves to tradition. So why shouldn’t we take advantage of the wonderful possibilities of mixing these views?

Does Ought Imply Can in an Unjust World?

Many thanks to Thomas for this opportunity. The chance to pick some favorite ideas to discuss with such a remarkable variety of insightful philosophers is a special opportunity indeed. Thanks also to Thomas for this fantastic blog. It is a wonderful resource, especially for those of us whose meager travel budgets make it a challenge to gather with the faithful. There is no substitute for face to face discussions with persons working on the same subject – but lengthy discussions on “Flickers” have their own special benefits, particularly the extensive points and counterpoints and replies and clarifications. Plus there is the great benefit of finding books and articles I would otherwise have missed – such as Randy’s Clarke’s posting on Michael Frede’s A Free Will. So thanks to Thomas for this blog and this opportunity, and to all those who post at this site. And thanks to Michael for a wonderful six weeks of thoughtful provocative questions, together with incredibly detailed comments on all responses; and especially for providing a “fix” for those of us who were suffering withdrawal during March, when it appeared we would have to wait a full four weeks for a new topic: Justin and I obviously share a profound incapacity for handling delayed gratification. For anyone who hasn’t had a chance to read Mike’s new book, Conversation and Responsibility, it should be at the top of your summer reading list: it is a genuinely innovative approach to understanding moral responsibility, while also placing Mike’s position clearly in the context of other related contemporary developments – which not only elucidates his position, but also provides a helpful map of some of the interesting work now being done along similar lines.

“Ought implies can” has a distinguished philosophical history, and it certainly seems fundamental and obvious; David Copp refers to it as “the Maxim.” There have been fascinating recent discussions of the principle, including the work of Mele, Haji, Copp, Widerker, and others, and Fischer’s commentary on those arguments (in Deep Control). And of course Derk Pereboom recently started a very interesting discussion of uses of ought claims (see the Flickers discussion in February on “Determinism and ‘Ought’ Judgments”). Those discussions are superb, and anyone interested in this topic should consider them first. But I’ve recently been reading some material by psychologists studying “belief in a just world”: research that largely started with Melvin Lerner several decades ago, and now has become quite extensive, and philosophers seem to have shown comparatively little interest in that body of research (I know Neil Levy has studied it, but I haven’t seen many other references by philosophers – though I might well have missed them). It is a rich body of research, and I won’t attempt to summarize it; but among the interesting elements is the study of the effects of our widespread (nonconscious) belief in a just world, particularly our response when an innocent suffers. There is a tendency to conclude that the “innocent” person must not have been so innocent after all; and thus we preserve our comforting belief in a just world – if we do the right thing and play by the rules, we will be safe from severe harm. In looking at this research, is it possible that a dubious (largely nonconscious) “belief in a just world” is one source for our strong belief that “ought implies can”? That is, it would not be just that there are moral obligations we cannot fulfill. But if we set aside our deep belief that the world is just (a belief most of us reject when we consciously reflect on it), then the idea that ought implies can (assuming one is not treating it as definitional) seems much less obvious. It’s not just (not fair) that we have obligations we cannot fulfill; but after all, who really believes that we live in a just world? This seems to me the claim that Bernard Williams is making in Shame and Necessity, when he argues that the ancient Greeks (especially the Greek dramatists, but not Plato) believed that the world is not ordered to match our ethical requirements; and that our considered contemporary view is similar to that of the ancient Greeks. Thus it would make perfect sense to say: Bruce ought to grade the papers he promised his students he would return tomorrow; but because he is profoundly lazy and has puny powers of self-control, he cannot do so; or perhaps, I ought to repay the money you loaned me and that I promised to repay in May, but I cannot because I had financial losses. It’s unfortunate that the world is such that we cannot always meet our genuine obligations, but not really surprising. So: if we believe that we do not live in a just world (God is not in His or Her heaven, and all is not right with the world), does that undercut the plausibility of the principle that ought implies can? The principle would certainly make sense for Kant, who believed that the world must be well-ordered (and in a morally well-ordered world, we could not have a genuine moral obligation that we could not fulfill); but for those who reject any godly or transcendent moral order, and reject the comforting belief that we live in a just world, does the ought implies can thesis remain plausible?

May's Featured Author: Bruce Waller

Alas, it's once again that time of the month when the torch is passed from one featured author to the next!  So, let me start by thanking Michael McKenna for doing an outstanding job stoking the philosophical fires during the month of April.  As always, it has been a real pleasure following the discussion threads.  That said, I would now like to welcome this month's Featured Author at Flickers of Freedom: Bruce Waller, who is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University. In addition to several textbooks and a variety of journal articles, he has published Freedom Without Responsibility (1990), The Natural Selection of Responsibility (1998), and Against Moral Responsibility (2011). His major interests are examining the implications of contemporary psychological research for questions of ethics, free will, and moral responsibility; developing an account of natural free will that is psychologically and biologically plausible; and beating down the walls of moral responsibility and sowing salt in its fields.  Needless to say, I am very excited to see what he comes up with this month for us to discuss here on Flickers!

I also wanted to mention that as things stand, I only have one more Featured Author lined up:

June 2013:

Neil Levy is a Research Associate at the Oxford University Institute for Science and Ethics. Professor Levy specialises in free will and moral responsibility, and empirical approaches to ethics. He has published widely on many topics in philosophy, including bioethics, applied philosophy, continental philosophy and free will. He is the author of 4 books and over 50 articles in refereed journals. His most recent books include Neuroethics (2007) and Hard Luck: How Luck Undermines Free Will and Responsibility (2011).

While I am delighted to have Levy on deck, I don't want his stint to be the last in the series!  I hope to send out some more invitations soon.  It would be nice to get one or two folks who don't usually blog. So, if you have any suggestions send them along!