Abstract
This article explores the significance of agents’ histories for directly free actions and actions for which agents are directly morally responsible. Candidates for relevant compatibilist historical constraints discussed by Michael McKenna and Alfred Mele are assessed, as is the bearing of manipulation on free action and moral responsibility.
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Notes
NFM is identical with a statement (NF) in Mele (2006, p. 170), with one exception: NFM includes the words “and is not morally responsible for A-ing” (between “does not freely A” and condition 1).
I take it that being able to A at will entails being able to A very easily and with very little effort. Some might say “effortlessly”; but I regard that as a bit of an exaggeration, if the assertion is taken literally.
For example, in Mele (1995), I replied to the view expressed in the following claim by Harry Frankfurt: “to the extent that a person identifies himself with the springs of his actions, he takes responsibility for those actions and acquires moral responsibility for them; moreover, the questions of how the actions and his identifications with their springs are caused are irrelevant to the questions of whether he performs the actions freely or is morally responsible for performing them.” (Frankfurt 1988, p. 54) As I explained in Mele (2009a, p. 163), this claim obviously does not commit Frankfurt to rejecting McKenna’s assertion (see Mele 2009a, p. 162) that two drunk drivers “are such that only one is responsible and not the other if only one freely chose to get drunk and then drive while the other was force-fed two bottles of tequila and put behind the wheel of a car.” (McKenna 2012, pp. 156–157) But Frankfurt’s claim does entail something interesting. Suppose that Art freely embarked on a program of self-perfection that included many free selfless actions for which he was morally responsible and eventually made himself such that it was psychologically impossible for him to turn down the reasonable request for assistance that he just received from a homeless child. Art fully identifies with the springs of his actions. Compare Art with Bart, who, until this morning, had been a self-made selfish jerk for years—a jerk who enjoyed humiliating the homeless when he had the opportunity. Last night, everything changed for Bart. Art’s wonderful values were implanted in him and all competing values were erased. Bart identifies with his implanted values to the same extent that Art identifies with his. As Art helps a homeless kid on one side of town, Bart helps another homeless kid just as much on the other side of town. The view expressed in the quotation from Frankfurt entails that if either kid-helping action is free so is the other—and the same goes for moral responsibility. If directly free action and action for which the agent is directly morally responsible are not options here, then this pair of cases is not getting at what McKenna wants to get at. But cases of this kind do receive a lot of attention in Mele (1995)—partly because of their direct relevance to Frankfurt’s stated position.
For a real-life case in which a brain tumor turned a man into a pedophile, see Burns and Swerdlow (2003). After the tumor was excised, the pedophilia disappeared.
I am grateful to Gunnar Bjornsson for motivating me to write this paper and to Michael McKenna for his comments on a draft. This article was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
References
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Mele, A.R. Moral Responsibility, Manipulation, and Minutelings. J Ethics 17, 153–166 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-013-9148-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-013-9148-8