Incompatibilism and the Avoidability of Blame

Ethics

Volumn 108, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 685-701

  Otsuka, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0009269012     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233847     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. I understand causal determinism to be the claim that "the prevailing laws of nature are such that there do not exist any two possible worlds which are exactly alike up to some time, which differ thereafter, and in which those laws are never violated." Here I follow David Lewis, "Causation," Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973): 556-67, p. 559.
2. Here I follow Harry Frankfurt's nomenclature. This claim is a narrower version of, and implied by, Frankfurt's unrevised version of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, according to which one is morally responsible for performing an act of a given type only if one could have refrained from performing an act of that type. See Frankfurt, "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility," Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829-39. In Frankfurt's version, the requirement also applies to acts for which one is worthy of praise and those acts for which one is held morally accountable even though neither praise nor blame is appropriate (e.g., the signing of a contract that accompanies purchases made by credit card). In this article I limit myself to a discussion of acts for which one is blameworthy.
3. Ibid.
4. Here I follow Elizabeth Anscombe, who introduced the locution of an act's being intentional under one description but unintentional under another. She has also written of being obliged to do something under one description but not obliged under another. See Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), p. 11, and "'Under a Description,'" Noûs 13 (1979): 219-33.
5. Here I follow Elizabeth Anscombe, who introduced the locution of an act's being intentional under one description but unintentional under another. She has also written of being obliged to do something under one description but not obliged under another. See Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), p. 11, and "'Under a Description,'" Noûs 13 (1979): 219-33.
6. I believe that when X moves her trigger finger, she performs a single act of indefinitely many types (e.g., pulling the trigger, firing a bullet, killing Smith, killing a human being, killing before breakfast, alerting her neighbor, etc.) rather than many distinct acts of these different types. But nothing of substance in this article hangs on the correctness of the former rather than the latter view regarding the individuation of acts. I could reformulate, without diminishing the strength of, my argument in terms of this latter view.
7. Frankfurt credits Nozick for having made a similar point in earlier unpublished lectures. See Frankfurt, "Alternate Possibilities," p. 835, n. 2. John Locke presented a similar counterexample to the claim that voluntariness requires ability to do otherwise. See Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 10.
8. Frankfurt credits Nozick for having made a similar point in earlier unpublished lectures. See Frankfurt, "Alternate Possibilities," p. 835, n. 2. John Locke presented a similar counterexample to the claim that voluntariness requires ability to do otherwise. See Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 10.
9. I have taken the liberty of adding a bit of detail to the example. Frankfurt does not himself specify the nature of Jones's deed.
10. Frankfurt proposes that we let "Black pronounce a terrible threat" and thereby coerce Jones into killing Smith. To those who maintain that it is impossible by such means literally to render it impossible that someone refrain from performing an action, Frankfurt proposes that we let "Black give Jones a potion, or put him under hypnosis, and in some such way as these generate in Jones an irresistible inner compulsion to perform the act Black wants performed and to avoid others. Or let Black manipulate the minute processes of Jones's brain and nervous system . . . so that causal forces running in and out of his synapses and along the poor man's nerves determine that he chooses to act and that he does act in the one way and not in any other" (Frankfurt, "Alternate Possibilities," pp. 835-36). To those who maintain that such neural manipulation is not compatible with agency on the part of Jones, we can imagine, on Frankfurt's behalf, that Black is an omnipotent being who has the power to impose deterministic laws of physics that make it inevitable that Jones kill Smith. Frankfurt's opponent would not want to deny the compatibility of determinism and action, for such a denial would beg the question against Frankfurt, since then, a fortiori, determinism would have to be false for there to be action for which one could be blameworthy.
11. Ibid, p. 836.
12. A note on nomenclature: like the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, the Principle of Avoidable Blame states that the presence of an alternate possibility is a necessary condition of blameworthiness. Were it not for the fact that the Principle of Alternate Possibilities is already so well known by that name, I would have given it a name that differentiates it from the Principle of Avoidable Blame and subsumed both it and the Principle of Avoidable Blame under a genus by the name of 'Principles of Alternate Possibilities'.
13. Suppose that someone would have behaved in a manner for which she would have been entirely blameless if and only if she had had a totally unexpected, involuntary, and incapacitating seizure. Suppose that she could have had such a seizure insofar as this was a physiologically live possibility. There is perhaps a sense in which she could have behaved in a manner for which she would have been entirely blameless. But for the purpose of interpreting the Principle of Avoidable Blame, she could not have so behaved.
14. As I shall define the notion of "behaving less badly," one would behave less badly by X-ing rather than Y-ing if and only if, given one's factual knowledge of one's circumstances, one would have stronger moral reason to X rather than Y if one could do either. In order to determine the strength of one's moral reasons, one must consider such familiar morally relevant factors as the expected harmfulness of one's behavior, the extent to which such behavior would come into conflict with one's duties and obligations, the nature of one's intentions, one's motives, and so forth.
15. One further qualification: even if one found oneself in a predicament in which one is worthy of blame for what one has done and would have been worthy of blame for whatever else one could have done in this predicament, one nevertheless could have behaved in a manner for which one would have been entirely blameless if one landed in this predicament as the result of a previous choice for which one is worthy of blame. For example: one found oneself in a predicament in which one could not have prevented one's car from barreling through a crosswalk filled with schoolchildren. But one landed in this predicament because of a previous choice for which one is blameworthy to drive far in excess of the posted speed limit. The Principle of Avoidable Blame also applies to this previous choice: one is blameworthy for it only if one could instead have behaved in a manner for which one would have been entirely blameless.
16. Recall that this premise states that if determinism is true, then one never could have refrained from performing acts of whatever types that one has performed.
17. I am indebted to David Copp for the ideas in this paragraph.
18. Margery Bedford Naylor offers this criticism of Frankfurt's counterexample in "Frankfurt on the Principle of Alternate Possibilities," Philosophical Studies 46 (1984): 249-58.
19. More precisely, they would agree if this claim is qualified in the manner indicated in n. 24 below.
20. Frankfurt, "Alternate Possibilities," p. 835, n. 3.
21. See n. 11 above and accompanying text.
22. If, however, Jones could neither have behaved less badly in any fashion that would not have provoked Black's intervention nor have entertained those thoughts that would have triggered Black's intervention, then Frankfurt is not entitled to the claim that Jones is blameworthy for killing Smith. Such a claim would beg the question against the incompatibilist, since in this case Jones could not have done otherwise in any possibly morally relevant respect even if Black had been entirely absent from the scene.
23. It would make no difference if Black were replaced by an imperceptible, impenetrable "force field" that happens to contour itself perfectly to all of Jones's actual thoughts, choices, and actions without influencing them at all. It might appear that this force field rendered it impossible for Jones to have refrained from doing anything that he did and hence that it rendered it impossible for Jones to have behaved any less badly than he did. This appearance is deceptive since Jones could, instead of acting independently of the force field, have voluntarily (but unintentionally) run up against this field and consequently have been irresistibly forced to kill Smith. Hence, even though he is blameworthy (under at least one description of what he has actually done), he could have behaved in a manner for which he would, as the result of such force, have been entirely blameless. (I thank an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this case.)
24. I am indebted to John Campbell for this example.
25. We can imagine that someone presents a heroin addict in the throes of withdrawal with the easy opportunity to steal some heroin from its rightful owner.
26. In cases in which one succumbs to temptation or other pressures that irresistibly move one to act, Frankfurt maintains that one is not blameworthy if one unwillingly succumbs but that one may be blameworthy if one willingly succumbs to this irresistible pressure. See Harry Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5-20, esp. sec. 4. I maintain that one is not blameworthy for anything at all in the latter case if one had no blameless alternative to willingly succumbing to this pressure (and was not at fault for having no such alternative). I stipulate, in the cases under discussion, that if one willingly succumbed to the irresistible pressure, then both the willingness and the succumbing were made irresistible by this pressure.
27. Robert Adams, "Involuntary Sins," Philosophical Review 94 (1985): 3-31, pp. 21-24.
28. Here I follow Peter Strawson, who regards indignation and resentment as impersonal and personal versions of the same attitude. On his account, indignation in response to the actions of others is a reaction "to the quality of others' wills, not towards ourselves, but towards others." Resentment, by contrast, is a reaction to the qualities of others' wills toward ourselves. Indignation is therefore the "vicarious analogue of resentment"; it is, in other words, "resentment on behalf of another, where one's own interest and dignity are not involved." See Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962): 187-211, pp. 199-200. shall employ the term 'indignation' to encompass resentment as well as its impersonal analogue. (Strawson himself notes that his own restriction of 'indignation' to the impersonal is artificial, since "one can feel indignation on one's own account," and this is just another name for resentment [ibid., p. 200].)
29. Here I follow Peter Strawson, who regards indignation and resentment as impersonal and personal versions of the same attitude. On his account, indignation in response to the actions of others is a reaction "to the quality of others' wills, not towards ourselves, but towards others." Resentment, by contrast, is a reaction to the qualities of others' wills toward ourselves. Indignation is therefore the "vicarious analogue of resentment"; it is, in other words, "resentment on behalf of another, where one's own interest and dignity are not involved." See Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962): 187-211, pp. 199-200. shall employ the term 'indignation' to encompass resentment as well as its impersonal analogue. (Strawson himself notes that his own restriction of 'indignation' to the impersonal is artificial, since "one can feel indignation on one's own account," and this is just another name for resentment [ibid., p. 200].)
30. Compare Allan Gibbard: "An observer thinks an act blameworthy . . . if and only if he thinks it rational for the agent to feel guilty over the act, and for others to resent the agent for it" (Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990], p. 47).
31. I also affirm the analogous claim that indignation, and therefore blame, that is directed at someone for the way she is (i.e., for her character) would be warranted only if she could have had a better character.
32. Strawson, p. 191.
33. But if the cost of behaving less badly was so high that it would have been supererogatory to do so, then indignation is not warranted. I shall set this possibility aside in the following discussion.
34. Here I paraphrase an objection that Rogers Albritton has offered in correspondence with me. Albritton believes that the Principle of Avoidable Blame is more plausible in cases (unlike the above) in which someone saw no alternative to doing what she did that was less bad and was not at fault either for not seeing any such alternative or for there not being any (if indeed there was none).
35. Compare Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person."
36. The phrase 'moral blind alley' is Thomas Nagel's. See Nagel, "War and Massacre," Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 123-44, pp. 143-44.
37. Compare Herbert Morris, "Nonmoral Guilt," in Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions, ed. Ferdinand Schoeman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987) pp. 220-40, esp. pp. 236-37.
38. These examples and those that I discuss below were drawn from or inspired by Nagel. See Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck," in his Mortal Questions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 24-38.
39. Ibid., pp. 29-30.
40. More difficult are cases in which one cannot tell, at the time of choosing, whether the gamble is impermissible, permissible, or obligatory. I believe that in these cases the uncertainty should transfer to an assessment of blameworthiness in the event that the gamble turns out a failure.