Abstract
Is moral responsibility essentially historical? Consider two agents qualitatively identical with respect to all of their nonhistorical properties just prior to the act of A-ing. Is it possible that, due only to differences in their respective histories, when each A-s only one A-s freely and is morally responsible for doing so? Nonhistorical theorists say “no.” Historical theorists say “yes.” Elsewhere, I have argued on behalf of philosophers like Harry G. Frankfurt that nonhistorical theorists can resist the historical theorists’ case against them, and that, therefore, a nonhistorical thesis remains a live option. Nevertheless, I have remained officially agnostic in this debate, as I acknowledge the pull of the competing considerations speaking on behalf of each view. In what follows, I turn from defending the nonhistorical position to fashioning a new historical theory, a relatively modest one that captures what is especially gripping about the kinds of examples that seem to commend an historical conclusion.
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Notes
Giving a precise specification of the distinction between historical and nonhistorical properties is a tall order. In what follows I shall operate with the rather rough thesis that an object, O, possesses a nonhistorical property, P, at a time, t, just in case whether O possesses P at t does not depend on any facts about O’s history prior to t. A simple example of a nonhistorical property is shape or weight. A simple example of an historical property is “being the sibling of.” (Fischer and Ravizza 1998: 171–173)
By “the free will ability” I do not mean to commit to any particular conception of free will. I mean for the expression to be open to the sorts of action-level freedom-or-control-constituting abilities theorists as diverse as Frankfurt (1971), Fischer and Ravizza (1998) or Ginet (1990) might endorse.
In asking whether the nature of moral responsibility is historical, I have framed the question in terms of an agent’s acting freely and being morally responsible for doing so. This reflects a fairly widely-held presupposition that any would-be historical condition for moral responsibility is nested in the freedom conditions for moral responsibility. While this seems a reasonable assumption, I will not defend it. It is open to an historical theorist to contend that moral responsibility is essentially historical, but free action is not (Haji 1998 goes this route). This is a detail that will not have much bearing on the way I shall treat the issue, and so I will ignore it in subsequent discussion.
I do not think of the free will ability in terms of the ability to do otherwise, but rather in terms of responsiveness to reasons, where this is consistent with but does not require the ability to do otherwise. This detail, however, has little bearing on the current issue, and so thinking about freedom in terms of the ability to do otherwise can simply be granted for present purposes.
Compatibilism, as I understand it here, is the thesis that determinism is compatible with both free will and moral responsibility. Incompatibilism is the denial of compatibilism. Libertarianism is the view that persons are able to act freely in a way that is incompatible with determinism, and this is required for morally responsibility.
For reasons I shall not develop here, it seems that an historical compatibilist thesis makes it easier for compatibilists to resist some (but not all) manipulation arguments for incompatibilism. This is because, as the historical compatibilists would see it, some of these manipulation arguments (but not all of them) mistakenly make use of examples of manipulation in which an historical condition is violated. For an examination of this point, see McKenna (2012b).
I will operate with this notion of value, though it does not fully capture the relevant class of attitudes. One could desire X and think it good and yet not be motivated to X because one was committed to its value. (On a related point, see Watson 2002: 144–145) Judging X valuable, even when motivated to pursue X, is more inclusive than valuing X. When thinking of a person’s values as they figure in explanations of her actions, presumably we are interested in the more restrictive notion. I will set this aside here, as it will not bear on the discussion to follow.
The temporal qualifications given for unsheddable values warrant emphasis. A value’s being unsheddable is best thought of as relative to a duration of time. Thus, a value might be both unsheddable for an agent for a certain period of time (say, the five minutes of deliberation preceding a particular decision) and sheddable for that same agent over a more extended period of time (say, 5 years following the time of that decision).
Note that an agent might possess an unsheddable value with respect to some context of action (she has to make a decision in five minutes), and yet she possesses that value in a way that renders her indirectly free and indirectly morally responsible for it. At earlier times, she might have freely and knowing made herself into a person who later valued certain things in ways that she would not be able to alter readily on the fly.
In the remained of this paragraph and in the next two, I draw from McKenna (2004: 180–181). In doing so, I have revised slightly the case of Suzie Instant so as to fit it for the points developed in this paper. One noteworthy revision is that in this setting I have opened up the discussion so as to include incompatibilists. Previously I restricted the discussion to a dispute just among compatibilists.
For an excellent treatment of agents like Suzie Instant, see Zimmerman (1999). Some have expressed concerns about the conceptual possibility of agents like Suzie Instant, for example Davidson (1987) with his case of swampman. I set those concerns aside here. I assume such beings are conceptually possible.
One potential source of concern about this example is that when Suzie Instant A-s, she does so while non-culpably believing about herself many things that are false. Given reasonable epistemic constraints on moral responsibility, this might excuse or exempt her. But as Haji and Cuypers (2007: 349–350) have pointed out, all that is required to avoid this pitfall is that Suzie’s act of A-ing be one that does not implicate any objectionably false beliefs.
The case of Suzie Normal is similar to the case of Mele’s Ernie, who was created by the goddess Diana in zygote form and then set free to live out a normal human life. (Mele 2006: 188–189)
Two points bear mentioning here. First, some readers are likely to object that in an indeterministic setting the case of Suzie Normal does not have the intuitive clout it has in a deterministic setting. (And they will also likely contend that the same point applies, though with less force, for the case of Suzie Instant.) In a deterministic setting, we can suppose that the god who creates Suzie Normal can set her on the path to performing the act of A-ing at the specified time—and this brings forth the pertinent concerns about the role of manipulation as a basis for defeating freedom and responsibility. But, so the objection goes, this cannot be in an indeterministic setting. Agents in indeterministic settings cannot be manipulated into performing putatively free acts. This, however, is not clear. Suppose that the god who created Suzie Normal had highly reliable knowledge of the probabilities describing the nondeterministic laws of nature at the world Suzie Normal inhabits, so that this god could predict to a likelihood of .99999, or instead .99998, or instead .99997, and so on, that Suzie Normal would A at the specified time. Depending upon how close to a probability of 1 rather than 0 we get, would this not still elicit worries about manipulation like those elicited in fully deterministic contexts? (A similar point applies with even more force to the case of Suzie Instant in an indeterministic context.)
Second, in the present context, the point of these thought-experiments is to test intuitions about the relationship between history and responsibility. Here the worry is not, as it is when these thought experiments are used in the service of an argument for incompatibilism, whether extreme manipulation per se defeats freedom and responsibility (in a way that is no different from the way determinism does). The worry is, rather, whether history bears upon free and responsible agency in a certain way. And so the comparative cases of Suzie Instant and Suzie Normal are here doing the work of running a case of one Suzie without any history and one Suzie with a history, while keeping all else constant. Hence, we can allow the thought-experiment to be neutral as between deterministic and indeterministic contexts.
Arpaly develops this point in responding to Mele’s defense of an historical thesis. (Arpaly 2003: 128)
This is Mele’s central contention in response to my defense of nonhistorical compatibilism. (Mele 2009b)
This is how Mele argues for his negative historical thesis. (Mele 2009a: 169–170)
Imagine a nonhistorical theorist objecting that at least in a deterministic context, the difference is arbitrary because it is inevitable that both Suzie Instant and Suzie Normal will wind up with the unsheddable values whereby each A. Just one observation about this point here: While it is at least understandable that an incompatibilist might be suited to make this point, it seems an odd one for a compatibilist to make as a way of advancing a nonhistorical thesis. This is because compatibilists should not regard considerations of inevitability as defeaters to the moral praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of an act. After all, if determinism is true, there is a sense in which every act of every agent is inevitable. Suzie Normal’s act of A-ing might thus be just as inevitable as Suzie Instant’s act of A-ing, but this itself should not be regarded—at least by compatibilists—as a reason to think that the acts Suzie Normal performed earlier in life, which, let us suppose, gave rise to the acquisition of her unsheddable values, are therefore irrelevant with respect to the status of her act of A-ing.
Mele frequently describes his cases in which one of his pairs of agents, the one with an unobjectionable history, actively engages in his or her own character formation. (e.g., Mele 1995, 2006, 2008, 2009a, b) Haji (1998), as well as Haji and Cuypers (2004) also feature agents whose character formation is the product of free action.
I am indebted to rewarding conversations with E.J. Coffman and David Palmer for this way of formulating PH.
It is open to an historical theorist to build on the central idea in PH by arguing that it is a general condition on free and morally responsible agency that an agent have acquired an evaluative structure whereby she was afforded the opportunity to critically assess, endorse and sustain its contents free of any coercive interference that would bypass those abilities. If this were regarded as a general condition on free and morally responsible agency, then it would apply even to acts in which an agent’s unsheddable values played no causal role.
Various critics have objected to Fischer and Ravizza’s positive historical thesis on just these grounds. (Eshleman 2001; McKenna 2000; Mele 2000) The basic complaint is that plausible counterexamples to their requirement can be generated whereby an agent does not adopt the pertinent attitude toward her own conduct, but is nevertheless morally responsible for her actions. For Fischer’s response, see Fischer (2006).
I am indebted to Al Mele for pointing out this problem.
Consider in this regard Susan Wolf’s (1987) instructive case of JoJo, who, Wolf maintains, is exempted from morally responsible agency on the grounds that he is not morally sane. As Wolf explains, JoJo’s history matters; he was raised by a psychopathic father who was a ruthless dictator. But his history only matters because it made him into a moral monster, and it is the fact of his being such an agent that is the basis for our assessment of him.
On this point, I am indebted to rewarding conversations with Terry Horgan.
For my assessment of it, see McKenna (2008).
Although it should be noted that it is possible, even though very unlikely, that these conditions could arise even in the most repressive condition.
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Acknowledgments
For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I would like to thank Gunnar Bjornsson, E.J. Coffman, Ish Haji, Terry Horgan, Al Mele, Shaun Nichols, David Palmer, Derk Pereboom, Carolina Sartorio, David Schmidtz, David Shoemaker, Angela Smith, and Brandon Warmke. I also profited from the editor and two anonymous referees at Mind. Finally, I would like to thank Angelo Corlett for inviting me to contribute to this special 20th anniversary volume of The Journal of Ethics. We who work on free will and moral responsibility owe Angelo a great deal. He has done so much to highlight the importance of these philosophical issues. On a more personal note, I would like to thank Angelo for his friendship and for supporting me and offering me a special opportunity early in my career.
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McKenna, M. A Modest Historical Theory of Moral Responsibility. J Ethics 20, 83–105 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-016-9227-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-016-9227-8