Abstract
It typically taken for granted that agents can be morally responsible for such things as, for example, the death of the victim and the capture of the murderer in the sense that one may be blameworthy or praiseworthy for such things. The primary task of a theory of moral responsibility, it is thought, is to specify the appropriate relationship one must stand to such things in order to be morally responsible for them. I argue that this common approach is problematic because it attempts to explain the way in which an agent can be morally responsible for something that is external to her, the agent. Since, I argue, everything that matters for moral responsibility is internal to the agent, the accounts that emerge from this approach are committed to a particular form of moral luck. Instead, we should reject this form of moral luck, and with it, the possibility of moral responsibility for objects external to the agent. We are, I argue, morally responsible only for our inner willings. Thus, a form of internalism about moral responsibility is defended.
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Notes
It is also often thought that responsibility requires the satisfaction of an ownership or authenticity condition.
There are occasional gestures to this view in print (e.g. Pereboom 2001, p. xxi) and in discussion, and I speculate that many of those working on free will and moral responsibility have considered it, in a general way, at one point or another (perhaps to be quickly dismissed as overwhelmingly implausible, or, alternatively, acknowledged as so obvious as to be barely worth mentioning). It has not, however, seen development and defense in the contemporary literature and that is my project here.
The classics on moral luck are Williams (1981) and Nagel (1979). While Williams and Nagel draw attention to this notion it is Zimmerman (1987) who coins the term “resultant moral luck”. See Sartorio (2012) for a recent treatment. Note that I distinguish between resultant luck and resultant moral luck. Resultant luck occurs when luck affects the results of one’s action. The existence of such luck is uncontroversial. Resultant moral luck occurs if resultant luck affects one’s moral responsibility. The existence of this form of luck is controversial.
My defense of the rejection of resultant moral luck must wait until the third section, for it appeals to the conception of willings developed in the second section.
Suppose that P witnesses a person being assaulted outside his window. P does not pick up the phone and call the police. But even if P had tried he would have been unsuccessful because the telephone lines were dead. Harry Frankfurt criticizes Peter van Inwagen for claiming that this undermines P’s responsibility for failing to call the police, for in either case P makes the same bodily movements with the same intentions:
Now this is what P is morally responsible for: it is for making these movements. He is morally responsible for making them, of course, only under certain conditions—only, for instance, when he makes them with certain intentions or expectations. But if those conditions are satisfied, then what he is morally responsible for is just making the movements themselves (Frankfurt 1993, p. 291).
The fact that Lee’s envattment in Case 3 is recent should block most worries concerning externalism about mental content.
If one has particular doubts or concerns about disembodied brains in vats, just replace Case 3 with a case in which Lee, body and all, is unknowingly hooked up to an experience machine.
Notice that there’s no reason, beyond ease of presentation, to limit ourselves to three cases (with Case 1 and Case 3 being the poles). As the number of intermediary cases increases the difference between each subsequent case will decrease, and hence it will be more implausible to insist on drawing a line between any two cases. One might think that this argument is a sorites. A sorites, too, proceeds through a series of cases. In the first case some property is attributed. In each successive case the difference in the relevant factors is so small, that it is thought not to undermine the attribution of the property. This is not a sorites because it is not that, in each case, there is a small difference in the relevant factors that ground responsibility. There is no difference at all in the relevant factors that ground responsibility. See Pereboom (2001, p. 116) who makes this point in relation to his Four-Case Manipulation Argument.
And any physical elements, such as brain events, on which the mental supervenes. My talk of mental life and mental states should be understood to include this qualification. I am not here assuming anything like mind–body dualism.
Compare Adam Smith: “To the intention or affection of the heart, therefore, to the propriety and impropriety, to the beneficence or hurtfulness of the design, all praise or blame, all approbation or disapprobation, of any kind, which can justly be bestowed upon any action, must ultimately belong” (1759/1976, II.iii.intro.3.). Quoted in Nelkin (2013).
I will discuss further objections in Sect. 4, my response to which builds upon points yet to be made.
Though, of course, those who accept such luck are free to accept the core claim of this section: that responsibility for results or outcomes, including mere bodily movements, entails the existence of resultant moral luck.
Here is an argument for this sort of possibility (assuming the commensurability of the blameworthiness of actions). In general, killing is more blameworthy than assault. But, of course, a given act of assault may be more blameworthy than a given act of killing. Perhaps the killing, in the given circumstances, while not justified was understandable; say, a parent killed his child’s vicious assailant. The parent may not be particularly blameworthy in such a case. Similarly a given act of assault may be very blameworthy; for example, when the agent viciously assaults an innocent child. Thus, there are cases of killing that are less blameworthy than cases of assaulting in addition to cases of killing that are more blameworthy than cases of assaulting. Further, it is obvious that there is a continuum of intermediary cases. Thus, there will be some possible intermediary cases in which the act of killing is blameworthy to the exact same degree as an act of assaulting.
Strictly speaking, Zimmerman’s view only allows for the partial rejection of resultant moral luck. It denies that resultant luck can affect the degree to which one is responsible, but it entails that resultant luck can affect the scope of one’s responsibility. I believe that we ought to deny resultant moral luck in both of these senses.
See Khoury (2012). Note that this principle does not entail that one is responsible for all the factors in virtue of which one is responsible (such as whatever first-order normative theory is true).
Relatedly, it also entails that establishing that one is not blameworthy in virtue of Φ does not thereby establish that one is not blameworthy for Φ.
If we are, as I presently assume, responsible for anything at all.
See McCann (1974). My primary characterization of willings should be taken to be ostensive in the sense expressed here. The willing is simply, to use Ginet’s (1990) adjective, the “actish” event that occurs when a properly envatted agent reasonably believes that she is acting. The willing is that event, however we choose to characterize it descriptively. Taken thusly, the existence of willings, in the relevant sense, should be no more controversial than the existence of actions.
For instance, the existence of willings, on my usage, is perfectly compatible with both physicalism and determinism.
Smith (1988, p. 408) makes this point as well.
Smith (1988) makes this point, though he favors ‘tryings’ to my ‘willings’.
Also see Lewis (1989, p. 56, fn. 4).
Though these willings have different extrinsic properties they have the same intrinsic properties and, on this view, it is only an action’s intrinsic properties that are relevant to moral responsibility.
Mele (1997, p. 2) concurs.
I thank an anonymous referee for suggesting I address this issue.
Fischer and Ravizza (1998) is an influential example of such an approach.
It is this sense of control that distinguishes events that merely happen to us from the things that we do. Events that happen to us, such sneezing or shivering, are things that are not expressions of control. Things that we do, our actions, are expressions of control in this sense.
It is generally assumed that we are not responsible for all our willings, such as those that are irresistible (e.g. those resulting from addiction). And it might be objected that the only way to sort out the responsible willings from the non-responsible ones is by appeal to those willings over which one has control. Thus, it might be thought, the latter view collapses into the former. But this is not the only possible way to distinguish between responsible willings and non-responsible willings. For example, one may hold that it is only those willings that are expressive of the agent’s real self that are the proper objects of responsibility.
For example, both Adams (1985) and Smith (2005) readily grant that agents can be responsible for actions. Graham (2014) denies that we are, strictly speaking, responsible for actions but instead only for the motivations that led to them. However, this may be consistent with the present account if Graham’s conception of motivations encompasses what I have been calling willings.
Sripada (2016) defends a subtle deep self account of moral responsibility according to which an agent’s deep self is fundamentally a matter of the person’s cares.
Consider, for example, this famous passage from Kant: “A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes…Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature, this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose—if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the good will were left-then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself” (1785/1998, p. 8).
Some may be resistant to such a direct appeal to intuition. But note, first, that it is not clear there is any rational alternative to appealing, at bottom, to intuition in moral theory (see DePaul 2005). Second, such appeals to intuition are taken very seriously by those working on free will and moral responsibility, and it is to these theorists that this paper is primarily addressed. For example, discussion of manipulation arguments has risen to the level of a cottage industry in the literature on responsibility. And such arguments must appeal to the intuition that manipulated agents are not responsible. I think it is clear that the intuition that there is no resultant moral luck is not substantially weaker or less widespread than the intuition that manipulated agents are not responsible. Thus, anyone who takes those arguments seriously should similarly take this argument.
See Shoemaker (2013).
It may be that such confusion explains the common judgment that the causal consequences of willings can be proper objects of responsibility (and which entails the existence of resultant moral luck, at least with respect to scope).
This may be because of an implicit alteration of the representation of Lee’s mental states themselves (e.g. he was more committed to killing, or the consequence was more foreseeable, etc.) or because of an implicit alteration of the moral standards against which we evaluate those mental states (e.g. the occurrence of the consequences may prompt us to apply stricter moral standards). Martin and Cushman (2016) cite Walster (1966) as the first to note this distinction in the psychological literature.
Contra Williams’ (1981) interpretation of his Gauguin example.
Baron and Hershey took their results to establish outcome bias, which they contrast with hindsight bias. Whereas hindsight bias involves a tendency to explicitly judge actual outcomes as more foreseeable for the agent, outcome bias does not. In their experiments the probability of the various outcomes for the decision-maker were given in the vignette. They did, however, consider the possibility that outcomes affect subjects’ implicit judgments concerning the epistemic situation of the agent.
For example, LaBine and LaBine (1996) found that subjects were more likely to judge a mental health therapist’s treatment of a patient expressing violent ideation as negligent when told that the patient did subsequently commit violence than when not. A review of these studies in the legal domain can be found in Harley (2007).
See Royzman and Kumar (2004) who draw on these and other studies to argue that the judgment that resultant moral luck exists is due to hindsight bias. Also see Levy (2016) for a similar argument. Young et al. (2010) have provided some corroborating empirical research according to which the judgment that resultant moral luck exists is not primarily due directly to the mere occurrence or non-occurrence of the outcome, but indirectly by the effect that this has on the judger’s representation of the agent’s mental states (though they officially remain agnostic as to whether such an effect is irrational).
Domsky (2004) also argues that the intuition that resultant moral luck exists is debunked by appeal to empirically well-established cognitive biases, though he appeals to the optimistic bias and the selfish bias. According to this view the judgment that there is resultant moral luck is due to the implicit optimistic belief that we won’t be the victims of bad luck and the selfish disposition to favor moral views according to which we fare better. While I find Domsky’s argument intriguing its explanatory power is limited to cases involving outcomes brought about unintentionally. As such, it cannot explain classic cases of alleged resultant moral luck such as that of Lee in Case 1 and 2.
On this explanation, when judgments of blameworthiness appear to be sensitive to mere outcomes, it is often via an implicitly altered representation of the agent’s quality of will. Cushman (2008), has found that judgments of “blame and punishment” show greater sensitivity to outcomes than do judgments of “wrongness,” “permissibility,” and “moral character,” which largely track mental states (the language of “moral character” is not found in Cushman (2008) but is used in Martin and Cushman (2016) when referring to those results). Martin and Cushman (2016) argue that, while there is a good deal of evidence for the hindsight bias explanation, it alone cannot explain this discrepancy, and instead suggest that the sensitivity of judgments of punishment to outcomes is due to the adaptive function of punishment which concerns moral education. Note that I have only appealed to hindsight bias to explain away judgments that outcomes affect one particular kind of moral evaluation: judgments of blameworthiness. I speculate that Cushman’s results concerning “blame” are tracking judgments concerning whether overt or expressed blame is appropriate all-things-considered, and that the results concerning “wrongness,” “permissibility,” and “moral character” are tracking judgments of what I’ve been calling blameworthiness. As Smith (2007) has argued, the conditions of holding responsible may significantly differ from the conditions of being responsible. Consistent with these empirical results, one can consistently hold the normative view, as some theorists do, that blameworthiness is not sensitive to outcomes but that appropriate punishment (or expressed blame) is, because punishment (or expressed blame) is not solely a matter of blameworthiness (on this point see, for example, Zimmerman 2002, p. 562).
Enoch and Guttel (2010) have raised a number of objections to the empirical arguments of both Domsky (2004), and Royzman and Kumar (2004) (though they primarily focus on the view of Domsky, see fn. 46). It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a detailed response. However, they appear to insufficiently engage with the debunking explanation construed as part of argument to the best explanation, and this dulls the force of some of their objections. For example, they emphasize that the debunking explanation of the intuition that resultant moral luck exists does not entail its falsity:
For all that has been so far shown, it is quite possible that we hold such beliefs because, say, we are selfishly and optimistically biased, but that these beliefs are still true so that there is moral luck (p. 383).
And they point out that it is possible that the intuition against resultant moral luck may similarly be debunked:
Indeed, it is quite possible that both our intuitive belief in the control condition [according to which there is no resultant moral luck] and our intuitive belief in moral luck can be given debunking explanations. What would be needed in order to win the debunking-explanation game is not just a debunking explanation of the moral luck intuitions, but also the claim that it is a better, more debunking, explanation than whatever explanations available to those trying to support the moral luck thesis by explaining away our intuitive adherence to the control condition. And we have so far been given no reason to believe that this is so (p. 385).
As I see it, these remarks distort the dialectical context. The proponent of the debunking argument, construed abductively, will readily admit that the existence of resultant moral luck is not logically inconsistent with the truth of her explanation. She will also admit that it is logically possible for the intuition that there is no resultant moral luck to be debunked. What she claims is that, given the evidence we have, these possibilities are not the most plausible ones. The dialectical burden is on opponents of the argument to articulate an alternative explanation that is at least as plausible as the one against the intuition that there is resultant moral luck. Enoch and Guttel offer no such explanation.
Determinism is the view, roughly, that the state of the universe at a time together with the laws of nature entails that there is only one physically possible future.
I will sketch a very rough argument to this effect. Obviously much more would need to be said with respect to any particular account of compatibilism or incompatibilism.
This will be true, for example, insofar as the incompatiblist believes that determinism rules out control, and that a lack of control over X implies that X’s occurrence or non-occurrence is a matter of luck relative to that agent (and that notion of control).
Of course, the well-known “luck objection” to libertarianism charges that these accounts fail to do this: they still render agents subject to luck (though of the random chance, rather than deterministic, variety). Tognazzini (2011) argues that libertarians (and “resilient” compatibilists) can resist this objection by understanding such luck on the model of resultant moral luck, which he counsels us to embrace by appeal to an ownership condition. Though interesting, I don’t find this strategy to be compelling. It appears to amount to an attempt to explain away one alleged implausibility by appeal to an even greater one.
Notice, for example, that the majority of the literature on moral luck focuses on resultant moral luck.
This is why, I think, all plausible forms of compatibilism must ultimately make, what McKenna (2008) calls, a “hard-line” reply to some conceivable manipulation argument. Deery and Nahmias (2017) argue that compatibilists can avoid this by appealing to the notion of causal invariance in their account of sourcehood. I don’t find this strategy plausible for it entails that an agent’s responsibility does not supervene on the properties within that agent’s life.
See Hanna (2014) for a defense of circumstantial moral luck.
Such a compatibilist would be, reasonably I think, denying Levy’s (2011) contention that all luck is morally on a par; that is, that all luck is equally responsibility undermining. Much of this will boil down to the debate over manipulation arguments. See McKenna (2008) for a compatibilist response. Hartman (2016, p. 2858) has also recently argued that the compatibilist is committed to both constitutive and circumstantial moral luck.
See Fischer and Ravizza (1998, Ch. 4).
This is not to say that the notion of guidance control is irrelevant to moral responsibility. It may be that responsibility for one’s willing requires that the willing exhibit the properties associated with guidance control. This is plausible and explains the intuition that an agent who is overcome by an irresistible and alien desire is not responsible. In such a case the agent’s willing may not be her own in the relevant sense or it may not be suitably responsive to reasons. The point is that control is relevant to responsibility only at the level of the agent’s willing and not the effects of that willing. An envatted agent lacks control over the world, but this does not entail, by itself, that she is never blameworthy.
I return to the drunk driver case in the next section.
On this topic see, for example, Scanlon (1998) on attributive responsibility and substantive responsibility.
And, perhaps, some other non-volitional mental elements.
Fischer and Tognazzini (2009, p. 553).
See Khoury (2012).
With thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting such a case.
I thank an anonymous referee for pressing me to clarify my position on this issue.
Nagel (1979, p. 35).
See Levy (2011) for a recent such skeptical argument.
See Tognazzini (2011, p. 98, fn. 6) who suggests that all these forms of luck concern the etiology of action.
For example, consider another version of the case of Lee, Case 4, in which just as he was about to pull the trigger, a truck pulls up blocking his shot. This is an example of circumstantial luck. There was no willing to pull the trigger because of a lucky feature of the circumstance: the presence of the truck. One might think that the present account does not have the resources to explain the intuition that there is no (or little) difference in Lee’s responsibility across Case 1 and 4. But this is not clearly the case. For one may respond by (a) pointing out that there is a willing in Case 4 such as Lee’s preparing to shoot his victim and (b) arguing that this willing has all (or most) of the same responsibility relevant properties as does the willing in Case 1. If so, then such circumstantial luck does not give rise to (much) circumstantial moral luck.
As I see it, when the comparative circumstances differ in more and more significant respects, such as Nagel’s case of the German who moved to Argentina in 1930 compared to the Nazi officer, it is more plausible to think that there is a difference in responsibility due to luck. This would be so if the luck that gave rise to the differing circumstances also gave rise to differences in the responsibility relevant features of the willing. Whether this is so will, of course, depend on how the details of the case are filled out along with an account of what those relevant features are. But if so, then such cases may be viewed as also involving constitutive moral luck.
See notes 11 and 37.
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Acknowledgements
For helpful discussion and comments, I thank Cheshire Calhoun, Parker Crutchfield, Peter Dennis, Ian Evans, Peter French, Robert Hartman, Benjamin Matheson, Emily McTernan, Douglas Portmore, an audience at the London School of Economics where an earlier version of this paper was presented, and several anonymous referees.
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Khoury, A.C. The objects of moral responsibility. Philos Stud 175, 1357–1381 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0914-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0914-5