Flickers of Freedom

Superorganisms and Skepticism about Free Will

Over at Daily Nous and Practical Ethics, there are posts about this interesting piece by Peter Kramer and Paola Bressen entitled, "Humans as Superorganisms: How Microbes, Viruses, Imprinted Genes, and Other Selfish Entities Shape Our Behavior." Here is the abstract:

Psychologists and psychiatrists tend to be little aware that (a) microbes in our brains and guts are capable of altering our behavior; (b) viral DNA that was incorporated into our DNA millions of years ago is implicated in mental disorders; (c) many of us carry the cells of another human in our brains; and (d) under the regulation of viruslike elements, the paternally inherited and maternally inherited copies of some genes compete for domination in the offspring, on whom they have opposite physical and behavioral effects. This article provides a broad overview, aimed at a wide readership, of the consequences of our coexistence with these selfish entities. The overarching message is that we are not unitary individuals but superorganisms, built out of both human and nonhuman elements; it is their interaction that determines who we are.

Here is a table from the paper (also posted over at DN):

I have a longstanding interest in toxoplasma gondii (here is an old post of mine over at the Experimental Philosophy blog from all the way back in 2005!)--especially the controversial claim that the "manipulation hypothesis" purportedly applies to humans and not just other animals (see here and here). Needless to say, as a skeptic about free will and moral desert, I find the suggestion that we are not unitary agents but rather superorganisms intriguing when it comes to our agency and responsibility. From the manipulation question to the issue of whether we have a unified self, the data summarized by Kramer and Bressen seem relevant to the issues we explore here on this blog.  

It's no surprise that this issue has peeked the interest of scientists who are interested in free will.  For instance, here is a piece by Cristoff Koch in Scientific American entitled, "Protozoa Could Be Controlling Your Brain"--which begins with the following lead in/hook: 

THE ANCIENT DEBATE surrounding the existence of free will appears unresolvable, a metaphysical question that generates much heat yet little light. Common sense and volumes of psychological and neuroscientific research reveal, however, that we are less free than we think we are. Our genes, our upbringing and our environment influence our behaviors in ways that often escape conscious control. Understanding this influence, the advertisement industry spent approximately half a trillion dollars worldwide in 2010 to shape the buying decisions of consumers. And extreme dictatorships, such as that in North Korea, remain in power through the effective use of insidious and all-pervasive forms of propaganda. Yet nothing approaches the perfidy of the one-celled organism Toxoplasma gondii, one of the most widespread of all parasitic protozoa. It takes over the brain of its host and makes it do things, even actions that will cause it to die, in the service of this nasty hitchhiker. It sounds like a cheesy Hollywood horror flick, except that it is for real.

Another eminent scientist (and free will skeptic) has taken a similar line.  Here is an excerpt from an interview with Robert Sapolsky as Edge.org:

In the endless sort of struggle that neurobiologists have — in terms of free will, determinism — my feeling has always been that there's not a whole lot of free will out there, and if there is, it's in the least interesting places and getting more sparse all the time. But there's a whole new realm of neuroscience which I've been thinking about, which I'm starting to do research on, that throws in another element of things going on below the surface affecting our behavior. And it's got to do with this utterly bizarre world of parasites manipulating our behavior. It turns out that this is not all that surprising. There are all sorts of parasites out there that get into some organism, and what they need to do is parasitize the organism and increase the likelihood that they, the parasite, will be fruitful and multiply, and in some cases they can manipulate the behavior of the host.

As we learn more about "toxo" and other organisms that may influence our macro-behavior without our awareness, it is unsurprising that some might suggest we reevaluate the traditional way of viewing human thought, agency, and behavior. It is surprising, then, that there is no mention of toxoplasma gandii in all of the Philosopher's Index. While the aforementioned manipulation hypothesis was initially met with skepticism when applied to humans, the science has steadily pushed further towards that conclusion. Now this paper by Kramer and Bressen has compiled the findings on various other micro-organisms that (may) influence our behavior in ways that satisfy their interests while running counter to our own.

So, what say you, philosophers of action? What sense are we to make of the gathering data on microorganisms and macrobehavior? Can these findings be summarily dismissed? If so, why? If not, how should it affect what we say about agency and responsibility? If you hate headlines like "My brain made me do it," just think of how you'll respond to "My toxo made me do it"! For skeptics, this is just more grist for the mill. But for the rest of you? You may have some explaining (away) to do...

 

Free Will Skepticism and Criminal Behavior: A Public Health-Quarantine Model

Seeing as though this is a free month, I thought I would start things off by posting a draft of my paper on free will skepticism and criminal behavior. Since I will be using this paper as my  Presidential Address to the SWPS, as well as presenting it at Cornell University and Ghent University, I would really appreciate your feedback. Bruce Waller talked me into sharing the paper so I hope he kicks things off in the comments ;)

The paper appears below but if you prefer to read the PDF version it is available here.

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.

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[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.