Abstract
Seemingly one of the most prominent issues that divide theorists about free will and moral responsibility concerns whether the ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom and responsibility. I defend two claims in this paper. First, that this appearance is illusory: everyone thinks an ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom and responsibility. The central issue is not whether the ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom and responsibility but which abilities to do otherwise are necessary. Second, I argue that we cannot determine which abilities are necessary until we have determined the nature and justification of moral responsibility. Thus, theorizing about moral responsibility ought to take pride of place in theorizing about free will.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A central issue that has received due attention is what kinds of ‘alternative possibilities’ are relevant, where this distinction is usually drawn between on the one hand, the mere possibility of something else happening, and the agent’s doing something else (Fischer 2006), and, on the other hand, between when an agent has the ability to do otherwise and when the agent knows or understands that he has the ability to do otherwise (Pereboom 2001). Often the distinction is put in terms of robust vs. non-robust alternative possibilities. Notice, however, that robustness does not (or at least does not obviously) draw a distinction between kinds of abilities. For Fischer the distinction is between the mere possibility of something else happening and the ability to make something else happen. For Pereboom the distinction is between abilities we are aware of and abilities we are not aware of.
Alternative possibilities for Fischer include but go beyond the ability to do otherwise.
Compare: FSCs show that an agent’s “inability to choose and do otherwise is irrelevant to his moral responsibility” (2012, p. 41).
Clarke (2009) has dubbed the recent work by Smith 2003, Vihvelin (2004, 2013), and Fara (2008) “the new dispositionalism”, as they argue that abilities are either identical or related to dispositions in a way that reveals both that agents retain the ability to do otherwise in FSCs and that determinism is no threat to this ability. See Clarke (2009), Whittle (2010), and Franklin (2011b) for critical discussions of these claims.
In FSCs the putatively morally responsible agent is thought to lack the ability to do otherwise because of the presence and powers of an agent who steads ready to intervene if, for example, the agent shows any signs of doing otherwise. Given that the agent never manifests these signs, the intervener does not actually intervene but would have intervened if the agent had shown the relevant signs. Thus the intervener is a counterfactual intervener.
It seems that Vihvelin (2013, chapter 4) does indeed think that he, and many others, have made this basic mistake.
Something like this might also be going on in the apparent dispute between Fischer and Nelkin about whether ability in the “interference-free” sense is retained by agents in effective FSCs. Fischer and Ravizza (1992) have argued that it is not retained, while Nelkin (2011) argues that it is. Matters are less clear here, however, since the nature of this ability remains vague. The vagueness of the nature of this ability is on display in the exchange between Clarke (2013) and Nelkin (2013). My suspicion, however, is that once the relevant notion of interference is given greater specificity, it will become clear that this too is a verbal dispute.
What about other compatibilists, like Wallace (1994), Scanlon (1998), and Smith (2005, 2008). Do they also think that an ability to do otherwise is necessary for moral responsibility? Once we recognize the relative nature of ability-attributions, it becomes clear that they do. All of these authors, like Fischer, contend that an agent’s responsibility depends on his rational capacities. Wallace contends that a morally accountable agent must possess normative competence: “the ability to grasp and apply moral reasons, and to govern one’s behavior by the light of such reasons” (1994, p. 1). Moreover, one is normatively competent only if one can, among other things, critically reflect on one’s desires and possesses “the power to refrain from acting on” one’s strongest motives when these motives diverge from what one judges one should do (1994, p. 158). Scanlon writes, “A person governs herself in the sense required [for moral responsibility] if she is sensitive to the force of reasons and to the distinctions and relations between them and if her response to these reasons generally determines her subsequent attitudes and actions” (1998, p. 281; emphasis mine). While Scanlon offers no analysis of sensitivity, any such analysis will require that the agent be capable of responding to different reasons and this means the agent must be able to do otherwise. Similar remarks apply to Smith’s account (2005, 2008), since she also makes use of a sensitivity connection between actions or attitudes and rational judgments (2008, p. 370).
This claim holds only for those whose interests in free will lie primarily in its supposedly being the necessary degree of control required for moral responsibility. As far as I can tell, this is how most contemporary theorists approach free will. But those interested in free will apart from moral responsibility need not concede the primacy of moral responsibility.
Watson (1996) famously distinguished between responsibility in terms of attributability and accountability. Others have emphasized moral responsibility as answerability (Smith 2005, 2008). See Fischer and Tognazzini (2011) and Shoemaker (2011) for helpful discussions of the various species of moral responsibility.
I take this to be similar to the proposal put forth by Terence Horgan over thirty years ago (Horgan 1979). It is unfortunate that this excellent article has gone so widely unnoticed.
I am grateful to Neal Tognazzini for pressing me to make this comparison.
This is not to say that every putative disagreement between compatibilists and incompatibilists is genuine. Perhaps at certain times and places there have arisen mere verbal disputes between these theorists. My claim is only that there are some genuine disputes between these theorists.
Perhaps Fischer agrees with van Inwagen on this point. Perhaps Fischer thinks that compatibilists and incompatibilists mean the same thing by ‘able’ and he thinks that any plausible analysis of ‘able’ will entail that being able to do otherwise is not necessary for the freedom necessary for moral responsibility. Alternatively, as an anonymous referee suggests, perhaps Fischer thinks we all have an inchoate grasp of the sense of ‘able’ relevant to free will and, again, any plausible analysis of ‘able’ will entail that being able to do otherwise is not necessary for the freedom necessary for moral responsibility. The first view suffers from the same problems as van Inwagen’s: namely assuming that compatibilists and incompatibilists mean the same thing by ‘able’. The second requires that free will, apart from moral responsibility, has a rather fixed sense. That seems mistaken to me. While not anything will count as an analysis of free will, the range of analyses does not seem restricted to, for example, the strong notion of ability. Perhaps one could argue that an adequate analysis of free will will entail that an agent has free will only if they are sometimes able to do otherwise. But even if this were correct, there are numerous different senses of ‘ability’, and thus there is no guarantee that the proper analysis of ‘ability’ will show that being able to do otherwise is not necessary for the freedom necessary for moral responsibility. Both the first and second interpretations of Fischer end up making his view suffer from the same problem: namely the false assumption that there is some clear, fixed sense of ‘ability’ we are all talking about. The notion of ability is a relative one, its meaning shifts across different contexts, and is simply not sharp enough for profitable discussion until it is tied tightly to some relevant set of facts. And of course the facts relevant to ‘ability’ in our context are the moral responsibility facts, whatever those turn out to be.
My interpretation of Fischer differs from both of these. Fischer’s work has been structured by the desire to safeguard moral responsibility from the threat of determinism. As I see it, Fischer concedes that it is very plausible to think that the ability to do otherwise, understood as the ability to add to the given past, is incompatible with determinism, but argues that this sense of ability is not necessary for the kind of freedom necessary for moral responsibility (Fischer 1994, 2006). His subsequent denials that alternative possibilities or the ability or freedom to do otherwise are necessary, are then to be read under the following qualification: in the sense of the ability to add to the given past. Unfortunately, in recent years Fischer and his critics have tended to treat his claim in an unqualified way, as though he were claiming that alternative possibilities or the ability to do otherwise simpliciter were not necessary for moral responsibility. His critics then argue that the ability to do otherwise simpliciter is necessary. The problem, of course, is that there is no such ability—there is no ability to do otherwise simpliciter, but only an ability to do otherwise relative to these facts, an ability to do otherwise relative to those facts, and so on.
Let me hasten to add that I think this point has been acknowledged by others, but it does not seem to have been sufficiently appreciated. Evidence of this underappreciation is seen in the verbal disputes between Fischer and Vihvelin (and others), as well as those who argue that free will is (in)compatible with determinism without clearly connecting up the sense of ability at stake with the facts about moral responsibility.
I am grateful to Michael McKenna for comments about how best to draw the distinction between my and van Inwagen’s views.
It is precisely this task that van Inwagen never attempts and, I suggest, it is precisely here that compatibilists resist his argument.
The qualification ‘in an important sense’ is crucial, to my mind, because in reality there is no sharp distinction between ethics and metaphysics. A question about the nature of an object (e.g. a morally responsible agent) or activity (e.g. holding responsible) has metaphysical dimensions. That said, there is a clear even if not sharp difference between more ethically laden issues about praise, blame, reward, punishment, desert, fittingness, excuse, and exemption, and more metaphysically laden issues about causation, laws of nature, counterfactuals, and so forth.
My claim is distinct from but compatible with Wallace’s claim that the metaphysical facts about whether someone is morally responsible are conceptually subsequent to and dependent on the facts about “our practice of holding people responsible” (Wallace 1994, p. 91). As Wallace sees it, one’s being responsible is dependent on our “appropriately” holding them responsible. Wallace’s claim of dependence slides between a metaphysical and epistemological reading. My claim about the priority of ethics is an epistemological one: we cannot know which sense of ability is relevant until we know the nature and justification of moral responsibility.
In this way I disagree with Vihvelin’s contention that compatibilists ought to think of “the free will/determinism problem as a problem within metaphysics: more specifically as a problem within modal metaphysics. The relevant questions…are questions about necessity, possibility, and ability; the laws of nature and how they constrain our abilities (or limit our opportunities); causation and causal powers; counterfactuals” (2013, p. 19). Vihvelin is right that all these questions are of utmost importance, but they are not of first importance. Vihvelin, in the guise of an earlier self, seems to agree with me: “The ‘can’ relevant to free will is the ‘can’ that we have in mind in contexts in which we raises questions about moral responsibility, and, in particular, contexts in which we raise questions about the justification of choices and the evaluation of agents on the basis of their choices” (2004, pp. 428–429). But if questions about moral responsibility fix the sense of ability we are interested, how then can issues in metaphysics be primary?
References
Campbell, Joseph K. (1997). A compatibilist theory of alternate possibilities. Philosophical Studies, 67, 339–344.
Clarke, R. (2009). Dispositions, abilities to act, and free will: The new dispositionalism. Mind, 118, 323–351.
Clarke, R. (2013). Abilities. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 86, 451–458.
Coates, D. J., & Tognazzini, N. (2012). The nature and ethics of blame. Philosophy Compass, 7, 197–207.
Fara, M. (2008). Masked abilities and compatibilism. Mind, 117, 844–865.
Fischer, J. M. (1994). The metaphysics of free will. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Fischer, J. M. (2006). My way: Essays on moral responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fischer, J. M. (2012). Deep control: Essays on free will and value. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fischer, J. M., Kane, R., Pereboom, D., & Vargas, M. (2007). Four views on free will. Malden: Blackwell.
Fischer, J. M., & Ravizza, M. (1992). Responsibility, freedom, and reason. Ethics, 102, 368–389.
Fischer, J. M., & Ravizza, M. (1998). Responsibility and control: A theory of moral responsibility. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Fischer, J. M., & Tognazzini, N. (2011). The physiognomy of responsibility. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 82, 381–417.
Frankfurt, H. (1969). Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility. Journal of Philosophy, 66, 829–839.
Frankfurt, H. (1971). Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. Journal of Philosophy, 68, 5–20.
Franklin, C. E. (2011a). The problem of enhanced control. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 89, 687–706.
Franklin, C. E. (2011b). Masks, abilities, and opportunities: Why the new dispositionalism cannot succeed. Modern Schoolman, 88, 89–103.
Ginet, C. (1990). On action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ginet, C. (1996). In defense of the principle of alternative possibilities: Why I don’t find Frankfurt’s argument convincing. Philosophical Perspectives, 10, 403–417.
Horgan, T. (1979). Could, possible worlds, and moral responsibility. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 17, 345–358.
Kane, R. (1996). The significance of free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. (1976). The paradoxes of time travel. American Philosophical Quarterly, 13, 145–152.
McKenna, M. (2013). Reasons-responsiveness, agents, and mechanisms. In D. Shoemaker (Ed.), Oxford studies in agency and responsibility (Vol. 1, pp. 151–183). New York: Oxford University Press.
Mele, A. R. (2003). Agents’ abilities. Nous, 37, 447–470.
Nelkin, D. K. (2011). Making sense of freedom and responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nelkin, D. K. (2013). Replies to critics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 86, 476–491.
O’Connor, T. (2000). Persons and causes: The metaphysics of free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pereboom, D. (2001). Living without free will. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Scanlon, T. M. (1998). What we owe to each other. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Shoemaker, D. (2011). Attributability, answerability, and accountability: Toward a wider theory of moral responsibility. Ethics, 121, 602–632.
Smith, M. (2003). Rational capacities. In S. Stroud & C. Tappolet (Eds.), Weakness of will and varieties of practical irrationality (pp. 17–38). New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, A. (2005). Responsibility for attitudes: Activity and passivity in mental life. Ethics, 115, 236–271.
Smith, A. (2007). On being and holding responsible. Journal of Ethics, 11, 465–484.
Smith, A. (2008). Control, responsibility, and moral assessment. Philosophical Studies, 138, 367–392.
van Inwagen, P. (1983). An essay on free will. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press.
van Inwagen, P. (2008). How to think about the problem of free will. Journal of Ethics, 12, 327–341.
Vihvelin, K. (2000). Libertarian compatibilism. Philosophical Perspectives, 14, 139–166.
Vihvelin, K. (2004). Free will demystified: A dispositional account. Philosophical Topics, 32, 427–450.
Vihvelin, K. (2013). Causes, laws, and free will: Why determinism doesn’t matter. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wallace, R. J. (1994). Responsibility and the moral sentiments. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wallace, R. J. (1997). Review of The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control, by John Martin Fischer. Journal of Philosophy, 94, 156–159.
Watson, G. (1987). Responsibility and the limits of evil. In F. Schoeman (Ed.), Responsibility, character, and the emotions: New essays in moral psychology (pp. 256–286). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Watson, G. (1996). Two faces of responsibility. Philosophical Topics, 24, 227–248.
Whittle, A. (2010). Dispositional abilities. Philosophers Imprint, 10, 1–23.
Widerker, D. (1995). Libertarianism and Frankfurt’s attack on the principle of alternative possibilities. Philosophical Review, 104, 247–261.
Widerker, D., & McKenna, M. (2003). Moral responsibility and alternative possibilities: Essays on the importance of alternative possibilities. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to John Fischer, Michael McKenna, Neal Tognazzini, and an anonymous referee of this journal for their helpful feedback.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Franklin, C.E. Everyone thinks that an ability to do otherwise is necessary for free will and moral responsibility. Philos Stud 172, 2091–2107 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0399-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0399-4