Abstract
In recent defenses of moral responsibility skepticism, which is the view that no human agents are morally responsible for their actions or character, a number of theorists have argued against Peter Strawson’s (and others’) claim that “the sort of love which two adults can sometimes be said to feel reciprocally, for each other” would be undermined if we were not morally responsible agents. Among them, Derk Pereboom (Living without free will. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, Ideas y Valores 141:5–25, 2009) and Tamler Sommers (Philos Q 57(28):321–342, 2007, Relative justice: cultural diversity, free will, and moral responsibility. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2012) most forcefully argue against this conception of love. However, in this paper, I plan to defend the claim that there is an essential connection between love and moral responsibility, a thesis I will call love internalism. To begin, I will specify the content and scope of love internalism, and consider ways in which other theorists have attempted to motivate it. I will then consider the various arguments that Pereboom and Sommers advance against love internalism. These arguments, it seems to me, offer us powerful reasons to reject several of the ways in which philosophers have tried to connect moral responsibility to love. Consequently, in light of these criticisms, I will further precisify the content of love internalism. And as we will see, love internalism (as I argue for it) is immune to Pereboom’s and Sommers’ criticisms. Moreover, when its content is sufficiently clarified, love internalism can serve as a plausible premise in an anti-skeptical argument. I thus conclude by arguing that this suitably reformulated statement of love internalism offers a significant challenge to moral responsibility skepticism of the sort Pereboom and Sommers endorse.
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Notes
Hume (1742/1987) I.XIX.11. This question immediately follows Hume’s humorous response to the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes (the book in which Solomon declares life to be meaningless): “Had he tried the secret of one wife (instead of 700) or mistress (instead of 300), a few friends, and a great many companions, he might have found life somewhat more agreeable.”.
For a helpful discussion of what it is to be concerned for someone for “her own sake,” see Velleman (1999).
Of course, it must be noted that our paternalistic love for young children ideally aims at helping the child grow into the sort of person with whom reciprocal relationships are possible. This will invariably involve forms of engagement that reflect the child’s growing, though still less-than-wholly-developed capacities for interpersonal cooperation and interaction. Consequently, even in our relationships with young children, we tend to treat them not as objects to be manipulated but as persons with whom we are reciprocally related. This does not, however, tell against my claim that there is something distinctive about those reciprocal relationships we enjoy with other adults, since adults generally possess the sorts of agential capacities that are necessary for standing in relationships grounded in reciprocal love.
I am especially indebted to Martha Nussbaum on this and related points (see especially fn. 9).
It is worth noting that in very few of these quotations is the thesis of love internalism explicitly or precisely stated. However, it seems clear from context that it is an assumption that underlies each of these claims.
Similarly (in a theological context), Anglin writes: “God might have created us in such a way that it was prearranged that we “love” him and each other. This would not really be love. For no one can love truly unless, at some time or other, he is free not to love, and in a sense which precludes an arrangement which would be a sufficient cause of love-like behavior” (Anglin 1990, 20). Of course, as Robert Kane rightly notes, Anglin is hardly the first theologian to make this connection: from Augustine on, Christian theologians have claimed that the kind of free will (or control) that is required for moral responsibility is a requirement on the possibility of love. This is hardly surprising however, since independently of the truth of love internalism, free will theodicies lose much of their motivation.
Kierkegaard (1843/1971).
I want to emphasize that the kind of love I am interested in is, unlike Kierkegaard, not simply confined to marriage. Indeed, given the historical characteristics of marriages (e.g., the widespread view of wives as inferior to or as properly submitted to their husbands), they are probably not the best example of a love relationship that aspires to full reciprocity of the sort I am discussing. Moreover, marriages often serve to isolate one of the partners—most frequently women—from healthy networks of friends and relations, and this seemingly makes one partner dependent on the other in a way that unfortunately promotes deep asymmetries in the relationship. Thus, many marriages fail to facilitate or even aspire to the conditions of reciprocity.
Instead, intimate friendships seem to be a better example of such a relationship. But because it seems to me that what Kierkegaard says about marriage is plausibly true of close, long-term friendships, I address it here. Moreover, because in many parts of the world, friendship is now thought to be a feature of marriage, I think it is plausible that a great many marriages do aspire to full reciprocity (though again, whether marriages are successful in this aspiration is another question—even in those societies that prize marriages made of love and friendship).
This is, I think, exactly analogous to the sort of case that Anglin has in mind. However, in Toothpaste, it is Pearl and not God, who manipulates Margaret’s love.
Indeed, if the neurological changes induced by the Love Potion No. 9 in Pearl’s toothpaste bring about her daily renewals of commitment in the right way, then I (and other so called “hard compatibilists”) would judge Pearl to be morally responsible for her commitment. However, I also think that there is something suspect about Pearl and Margaret’s relationship. Thus, on my view, and on the view of other love internalists who accept hard compatibilism, that Pearl is not morally responsible can play no role in explaining why her relationship with Margaret is not meaningful in the way that we take our relationships with loved ones to be.
Of course, this does not mean that what we really want is someone who will let us walk all over them or someone who will remain committed us no matter what. Rather, we want their love for us to respect the fact that we are not fungible. And if some loves us only because on balance, the reasons favor love, then presumably, in a case in which the reasons favor love of someone else to some greater degree, they should love that person.
I take ALI to do little more than make explicit a thread of argumentation in Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment.”.
Cf. Scanlon (1998).
Here is the context of Hume’s claim: “But friendship is a calm and sedate affection, conducted by reasons and cemented by habit; springing from long acquaintance and mutual obligations…” (Hume 1742/1987 I.XIX.20).
Though Strawson uses the language of demands here, it is implausible to think that he literally means demands, where these are a particular kind of speech act. Rather, he means normative expectations. For more on this point, see Wallace (1994).
Though this seems plausible, it might be that Wallace has overstated his case somewhat. After all, when I teach entry level ethics courses, I have a normative expectation that my students appreciate and understand (at least some of) the content of Kant’s Groundwork. However, as it turns out many of them do not ultimately come to appreciate or understand its content. But despite the fact that many of my students routinely fail to appreciate or understand Kant, I do not feel disposed to resentment or indignation. Nor do I believe that such responses would be appropriate in the situation. In fact, I actually believe that it would be positively inappropriate for me to be susceptible to the reactive emotions in this case.
Now, Wallace might reply that I do not really hold my students to the normative expectation that they appreciate and understand Kant. Perhaps Wallace could argue that I have taught it too many times, and seen too many times that students will inevitably fail to understand the subtleties of the Groundwork. And this predictive expectation that many students will fail has led me to abandon the normative expectation that they not fail. While I cannot deny this is a possibility, it seems unlikely. After all, like me, my students are also convinced that I hold them to the normative expectation that they appreciate and understand Kant. I continue assigning them those pesky readings, papers, and tests. And even more frustratingly, when they do not do well on those assignments, I give them poor grades. But my grading is not (I hope!) motivated by any proneness to resentment; rather it is determined by external standards (i.e., my proneness to test students). So in this case, it does not seem like my normative expectation is essentially connected to the reactive attitudes.
Of course, despite this, it does seem plausible to think that some normative expectations, those tied specifically to the quality of agents’ wills, are essentially connected to the reactive emotions. On this view, then, not just any normative expectation is (in part) constituted by a susceptibility to the reactive emotions in the case that the expectation is not met. Rather, it is only those normative expectations that are tied to our concern for good will and respect. Thus plausibly, we have a normative expectation of others that they will show us good will and respect in virtue of the fact that should they fail to do so, we will be disposed to feel resentment or indignation towards them or to judge that resentment or indignation would be appropriate. Or in the self-regarding case, we have a normative expectation of ourselves that we will show others good will and respect in virtue of the fact that should we fail to do so, we will be disposed to feel guilty or to judge that feeling guilty would be appropriate. However, even if I am wrong in restricting Wallace’s claims about normative expectations, Wallace’s account of normative expectations will nevertheless serve as the basis for 4.
Or in the self-regarding case, we can speak of a disposition to feel guilty.
For more on this point, see Pereboom (2001: 199–201). And for encouraging me to explicitly address this objection to 4, I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Ethics.
Again, though I use the example of friendship, I think that what I claim here will be true of any other form of reciprocal interpersonal relationship.
It seems undeniable that in some cases, we are within our rights to predominantly feel sadness or disappointment rather than resentment or indignation when a loved one lets us down. And in such cases, it is not obvious that we are failing to take seriously their agency. But in such cases, it is also plausible to think that we are also disposed to resent them or feel indignation towards them, even though circumstantial features of case make sadness- or disappointment-inducing properties of the friend’s action particularly salient. And this is how our responses to other agents is fundamentally different from our responses to natural disasters: even when a loved one’s wrongdoing makes me feel sad (rather than indignant), I am still disposed, to some degree or other, to feel indignant towards him or her, but when a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina strikes, I am not disposed to feel indignation towards the swirling winds and rains (even if I am disposed to feel indignation towards the former director of FEMA, Michael Brown).
There is, at a very general level, an important parallel between this line of argument and Joel Feinberg’s (1970) defense of rights. Just as something important is lost at the level of the society if people lack rights (even if they have other morally significant obligations, duties, etc.), something important is lost at the level of interpersonal engagement if we cannot engage with others through reactive emotions like resentment and indignation.
Shabo (2012). Shabo’s discussion of Strawson on love and resentment is illuminating, and in many respects, it provides the compatibilist with a response to Pereboom that is complementary to my own. I am therefore grateful to an anonymous referee for The Journal of Ethics bringing Shabo’s paper to my attention.
Ultimately, I do not think this is surprising. Nor do I think this is really a revisionary statement of the view that Strawson articulated. After all, people sometimes express the claim that our practices of blaming would not be appropriate if no one was morally responsible by saying that if moral responsibility skepticism were true, it would not be possible to blame others for their actions. But this is, strictly speaking, false, since even if we are not morally responsible agents, we could still successfully blame others for their actions. Of course, the strict reading is not what is meant. Rather, all that is meant is that our practices of blaming would in some way be inappropriate and that we could not (in the permissive sense of “could”) go on blaming people for their actions if moral responsibility skepticism were true. This is precisely parallel to what I want to argue about love internalism. That is, if moral responsibility skepticism is true then we cannot go on as we have in loving others—at least not without doing something inappropriate.
Of course, there is the old joke from Seinfeld that though we do not enjoy equal standing with animals, it is not because we are “better” than them. Rather, they enjoy the higher standing. As Jerry puts it in the closing scene of an episode, if an alien saw humans’ interactions with animals (especially their pets), the alien would certainly think the animals were in charge.
Recall again Hume’s claim that reciprocal relationships like friendship are built on mutual obligations. But what obligations does a pet have to its owner? If a pet does not love its owner, it might be a bad pet (in some sense), but it has hardly wronged its owner.
To be explicit, I am not meaning to denigrate the form of love that many have for their pets. Such love can be part of a valuable life even if it is not appropriate to regard one’s pet as one with whom you can have fully reciprocal relations of mutual respect.
For more about this other kind of optimism, see Strawson (1962/2003).
As John Martin Fischer has pointed out to me, some will no doubt worry that I am engaged in “wishful thinking” here, but I do not think this is right; instead I simply accept a set of methodological constraints according to which, we can be justified in rejecting an argument as unsound if we are more justified in believing the denial of its conclusion than we are in believing the truth of all the premises or the validity of all its inferences. And I think that I am more justified in believing that our love relationships are (at least sometimes) legitimate than I am justified in believing that moral responsibility requires sourcehood, that moral responsibility requires the ability to do otherwise, or that some version of transfer of non-responsibility principle is valid. Of course, a full defense of this methodology and of these substantive first-order claims would require more than what I say here. But though that is a worthwhile task, it is one for another paper.
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Acknowledgments
For helpful comments on these ideas and on earlier drafts of this paper, I would like to thank John Martin Fischer, Samantha Matherne, Martha C. Nussbaum, Neal A. Tognazzini, and an anonymous referee for The Journal of Ethics.
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Coates, D.J. In Defense of Love Internalism. J Ethics 17, 233–255 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-013-9144-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-013-9144-z