Abstract
This article identifies and assesses a way of thinking that might help to explain why some compatibilists are attracted to what is variously called an internalist, structuralist, or anti-historicist view of moral responsibility—a view about the bearing of agents’ histories on their moral responsibility. Scenarios of two different kinds are considered. Several scenarios feature heavy-duty manipulation that radically changes an agent’s mature moral personality from admirable to despicable or vice versa. These “radical reversal” scenarios are contrasted with a scenario featuring “original design”: a supernatural designer determines exactly how an agent’s life will go before the agent comes into existence. It is explained why scenarios of these two different kinds generate very different challenges to compatibilism. Partly in light of that explanation, it is argued that the way of thinking at issue is misguided.
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Notes
Ernie is intended to meet conditions I have proposed as sufficient (but not necessary) for being morally responsible for performing a given action if compatibilism is true. (see Mele 2006: 188) Hence the reference to such things as ideal self-control and “unsheddable values” in this story. To say that a value is unsheddable by an agent over a stretch of time is, very roughly, to say that the agent is incapable both of eradicating it and of significantly attenuating it over that stretch of time. For a fuller account of unsheddable values, see Mele (1995: 153–154). As I understand valuing, “S at least thinly values X at a time if and only if at that time S both has a positive motivational attitude toward X and believes X to be good.” (Mele 1995: 116) When values are understood as psychological states, I take them to have both of these dimensions by definition. This account of thinly valuing and the corresponding thin account of values are not intended as contributions to the theories of valuing and values; their purpose is to make my meaning clear.
For related story, see Mele (2006: 168).
Frankfurt would not attempt to avoid this result by alleging insufficient psychic integration. Beth, in ONE BAD DAY, and Chuck, in ONE GOOD DAY, are agents of the sort Frankfurt has in mind in the passage I quoted from Frankfurt (2002: 28) at the beginning of this section.
Some readers may worry that Beth has been (temporarily) replaced by another person. I lack the space to discuss worries about personal identity here, but see Mele (1995: 175, note 22).
As I use the expression “morally responsible,” an agent’s being morally responsible for performing good or bad intentional actions of the sort featured in the cases presented in this article entails that he deserves some moral credit or moral blame for the action. I take no position here on exactly how moral credit and moral blame are to be understood. For some support for my assessment of the two cases, see Mele (1995: Chapter 9) and Mele (2006: Chapter 7). Arguing for that assessment again is not part of this article’s task.
Some readers may view Beth and Chuck as being able to do otherwise than kill their victims—George and Don—even if they are unable to show mercy. Discussion of various compatibilist conceptions of ability is beyond the scope of this article.
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 related indeterministic cases of manipulation, see Mele (2006: 139–144).
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.
Watson’s way of putting the “general point” is perhaps a potential source of confusion. Suppose that some moral responsibility does have a necessary historical component. Call that component (or “constitutive condition”) H. Provided that moral responsibility does not also depend on another historical matter, namely, the causes or causal origins of H, Watson’s general point, as stated, may be true even given this supposition about H. That is, it may be true, even if externalism or historicism is true (in virtue of H being a necessary component of moral responsibility). However, I take Watson’s “general point” to be intended as a statement of internalism or anti-historicism. If I have caused any confusion just now, an analogy may prove useful. A necessary condition of something’s being a sunburn is its being nondeviantly caused by exposure to the sun. This makes our concept of sunburn a historical concept. To find out whether sunburn is a historical concept, we do not need to look into another historical matter – namely, the causes or causal origins of something’s being nondeviantly caused by exposure to the sun.
See note 10, above.
On real-life cases of dramatic character change, see Mele (2006: 179–184).
This is not to say that an adequate defense of these claims would support compatibilism. Keep in mind that propositions such as B2 and C2 are used in arguments for incompatibilism.
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.
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Mele, A.R. Moral Responsibility: Radical Reversals and Original Designs. J Ethics 20, 69–82 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-016-9222-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-016-9222-0