Abstract
To what extent should an analysis of an agent’s being morally responsible for an action that he performed—especially a compatibilist analysis of this—be sensitive to the agent’s history? In this article, I give the issue a clearer focus than it tends to have in the literature, I lay some groundwork for an attempt to answer the question, and I motivate a partial but detailed answer.
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Notes
Compatibilism about moral responsibility is the thesis that there can be morally responsible agents in deterministic worlds. Determinism is “the thesis that there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future” (van Inwagen 1983, p. 3). There are more detailed definitions of determinism in the literature, but this one will do for my purposes.
Even a little human being performing his first intentional action is influenced by things he has done. For one theory about important effects of movements we make before we are capable of acting intentionally on our subsequent intentional movements, see James (1907), Chap. 26.
In Mele (2003a), I defend the thesis that to decide to A is to perform a momentary mental action of forming an intention to A (Chap. 9) and I develop an actional view of deliberation (Chap. 4).
For data on folk judgments about cases of this kind, see Knobe (2003, pp. 317–318).
A specification of W may feature some part of C, following Frankfurt.
See Mele (2003b) for an examination of various ways of understanding what it is to be able to do something and various kinds or levels of ability.
Readers with concerns about the interpretation of “at t” in principles of this kind may wish to consult Mele (2006, pp. 15–16).
Readers who know that I have developed Frankfurt-style cases that I claim falsify PAP on various natural readings of it (Mele and Robb 1998, 2003; Mele 2006, Chap. 4) may be puzzled by my openness to compatibilism about “could have done otherwise.” (After all, Frankfurt-style cases are a driving force behind semicompatibilism.) To such readers, I point out that I nowhere claim that an agent’s having been able to do otherwise than A is a necessary condition for his being morally responsible for A. Rejecting PAP is consistent with believing that there is an interesting sense of “could have done otherwise” in which agents in deterministic worlds sometimes could have done otherwise than they did. (For an interesting traditional compatibilist reaction to Frankfurt-style cases, see Smith (2003).)
For a critique of an instance of this use, see Mele (2006, pp. 150–153).
Some readers may think that what accounts for my intuitions that Beth and Ike are not morally responsible for their featured actions is the fact that some other agent is morally responsible for the pertinent features of these agents’ internal conditions at the relevant time. They can easily be disabused of this thought. Imagine that Ike’s condition was produced by alcohol that magically appeared in his bloodstream out of the blue shortly before he started his car and that the sudden, radical change in Beth was caused by a brain tumor (see Mele 1995, pp. 168–169). Presumably, the great majority of readers who judge that these agents are not morally responsible for the featured actions in the original stories would make the same judgment in the modified stories.
For readers who wonder about values that are erased and then replaced with exactly similar values, I add that this trick is no part of Beth’s story. But in the kind of story I want to spin, if Beth has any such replacement values, the abilities in question are not rooted in them.
For some evidence about folk attributions of moral responsibility, see Nahmias et al. (2005).
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 take seriously both words in the expression “morally responsible.” As I use the expression, an agent is morally responsible for an action only if the action has some moral significance.
I say “suitably manipulable” so as to exclude omnipotent agents, for example, should such agents be possible and immune to manipulation.
Readers who are puzzled might have lost track of what an internalism-quashing history is supposed to quash. It is supposed to quash a whole family of propositions—anything that counts as a version of conditional internalism, as I am using that expression in this article. Notice that marvelous abilities like Mabel’s may be built into C in CI in an attempt to produce a true version of CI.
Notice the active voice in my “people who suddenly and radically transform their values.” Value transformations caused by brain tumors are another matter.
I reply to worries about personal identity in Mele (1995, p. 175, n. 22).
By the way, have you, dear reader, ever had an urge to kill anyone? I never have (to the best of my recollection).
In Mele (2006, pp. 188–195), I spin and explore a yarn about a goddess in a deterministic world who deduces that a zygote with a certain constitution would, if implanted in a certain woman at a certain time, grow into a man—Ernie—who, 30 years later, A-s while being very reasons responsive and ideally self-controlled. She creates the zygote and implants it in the woman at the right time. Ernie is not a direct threat to any externalist thesis explored in this article. But it might be interesting to compare intuitions about whether Ernie is morally responsible for A (while varying the value of A) with intuitions about agents who A in some manipulation stories and perhaps with intuitions about some instant agents. (Again, intuitions should not be accepted uncritically.) Of course, this would lengthen the imaginary short book. (Neil Levy has suggested to me that the book should include a discussion of instant agents of a largely ignored kind—for example, an instant replacement for me that has the body that was mine.)
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Acknowledgements
For comments on a draft of this paper or discussion of some of the ideas in it, I am grateful to Randy Clarke, Neil Levy, Michael McKenna, and an anonymous referee.
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Mele, A. Moral responsibility and agents’ histories. Philos Stud 142, 161–181 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9181-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9181-1