Reasons and responsibility

Ethics

Volumn 111, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 374-394

  Watson, Gary ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0011378790     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233477     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. Among other articles, see John Martin Fischer, "Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility," in Responsibility, Character and the Emotions, ed. F. Schoeman (New York: Cambridge university Press, 1987); and John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, "Responsibility and Inevitability," Ethics 101 (1991): 258-78; and Mark Ravizza, "Semi-compatibilism and the Transfer of Non-responsibility," Philosophical Studies 75 (1994): 61-93.
2. Among other articles, see John Martin Fischer, "Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility," in Responsibility, Character and the Emotions, ed. F. Schoeman (New York: Cambridge university Press, 1987); and John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, "Responsibility and Inevitability," Ethics 101 (1991): 258-78; and Mark Ravizza, "Semi-compatibilism and the Transfer of Non-responsibility," Philosophical Studies 75 (1994): 61-93.
3. Among other articles, see John Martin Fischer, "Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility," in Responsibility, Character and the Emotions, ed. F. Schoeman (New York: Cambridge university Press, 1987); and John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, "Responsibility and Inevitability," Ethics 101 (1991): 258-78; and Mark Ravizza, "Semi-compatibilism and the Transfer of Non-responsibility," Philosophical Studies 75 (1994): 61-93.
4. I'll say more about 'mechanism' later; for now, just note that this term is meant to refer to "the process that leads to the action, or the way the action comes about."
5. R. Jay Wallace makes this criticism in Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), p 190.
6. On some interpretations of counterfactuals, even this formulation is problematic as a sufficient condition. Toddlers and wantons might vacuously satisfy it because they could not meet the conditions of the antecedent.
7. Naturally, moral competence of some kind is a condition for moral responsibility, and that is the avowed concern of the book. However, in many passages Fischer and Ravizza seem equally concerned with attributions of responsibility in nonmoral contexts, for example, in the context of assessments of prudence. Thus, the capacity to recognize moral reasons should not be taken without argument to be necessary for responsibility simpliciter. If responsibility is responsiveness to reasons, and individuals can be sensitive to nonmoral reasons without being morally competent, then individuals can be responsible agents in these other respects. Perhaps this reasoning is objectionable, but it deserves an answer. (I take up a related point at the end of this article.)
8. The appeal to the criteria of an intelligible pattern of reason recognition, and of "minimal groundedness in reality," brings Fischer and Ravizza's view somewhat closer to Susan Wolf's "reason view"; see Susan Wolf, Freedom within Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). But as it stands, it introduces a large measure of vagueness into the theory; how intelligible and how minimal? Does the reality requirement mean that the individual cannot be substantially deluded about that part of her circumstances that is relevant to the context of appraisal? Or can she be deluded about this so long as she is in touch with a good bit of the "background world"? The former reading seems too strong, if 'deluded' just means mistaken. One can be terribly and innocently wrong about one's circumstances and still be appropriately responsive to the reasons as they present themselves. On the other hand, the second reading lays down a standard that is never violated, if Davidson is right that we can attribute delusion or mistake to ar agent only against a background of presumed agreement. It is often unclear to me what overall picture of responsibility influences the decisions that the authors make.
9. Isaac Marks, Fears, Phobias, and Rituals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 344.
10. I press this difficulty against reasons-responsiveness views in "Disordered Appetites: Addiction, Compulsion, and Dependence," in Addiction: Entries and Exits, ed. Jon Elster (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), pp. 3-28. These cases indicate the need to distinguish reasons from incentives. The susceptibility to counterincentives (which are indeed reasons) might not, after all, be responsiveness to them qua reasons. One's response to what is in fact a reason might not be an instance of sensitivity to reasons.
11. Once we think of it in this way, however it becomes unclear how we can distinguish cases of compulsion in which the actually operative mechanism would be replaced in the alternative scenario from cases of weakness. On what possible grounds could we distinguish between Brown's situation and that of the aforementioned heroin addict or phobic whose actual mechanism is alleged to be bypassed in the alternative scenario?
12. If, the text seems to suggest, the mechanism in the Brown case is the desire to get high, how does it even make sense to say that it responds to the incentive to go to work?
13. The book takes (pp. 184 ff.) Harry Frankfurt's "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, "Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5-20,
14. and my "Free Agency," Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 205-20 to be defenses of mesh theories.
15. I pursue these points in "Soft Libertarianism and Hard Compatibilism," Journal of Ethics 3 (1999): 351-65. There I also suggest that we should reject a "current time-slice" interpretation of Frankfurt's view, since that view could not make sense of the phenomenon of identification (pp. 363-64). But Fischer and Ravizza's take on Frankfurt seems to be correct. For, in his contribution to the volume just cited, Frankfurt confirms the time-slice interpretation: "What would seem to count is just the outcome of the process, or the state of affairs that prevails once the process has been completed. In that case, the endorsement condition can be satisfied within a structural account" ("Responses," p. 372).
16. I pursue these points in "Soft Libertarianism and Hard Compatibilism," Journal of Ethics 3 (1999): 351-65. There I also suggest that we should reject a "current time-slice" interpretation of Frankfurt's view, since that view could not make sense of the phenomenon of identification (pp. 363-64). But Fischer and Ravizza's take on Frankfurt seems to be correct. For, in his contribution to the volume just cited, Frankfurt confirms the time-slice interpretation: "What would seem to count is just the outcome of the process, or the state of affairs that prevails once the process has been completed. In that case, the endorsement condition can be satisfied within a structural account" ("Responses," p. 372).
17. I pursue these points in "Soft Libertarianism and Hard Compatibilism," Journal of Ethics 3 (1999): 351-65. There I also suggest that we should reject a "current time-slice" interpretation of Frankfurt's view, since that view could not make sense of the phenomenon of identification (pp. 363-64). But Fischer and Ravizza's take on Frankfurt seems to be correct. For, in his contribution to the volume just cited, Frankfurt confirms the time-slice interpretation: "What would seem to count is just the outcome of the process, or the state of affairs that prevails once the process has been completed. In that case, the endorsement condition can be satisfied within a structural account" ("Responses," p. 372).
18. George Vuoso, "Background, Responsibility, and Excuse," Yale Law Journal 96 (1987): 1680-81 (quoted in Fischer and Ravizza, p. 186).
19. George Vuoso, "Background, Responsibility, and Excuse," Yale Law Journal 96 (1987): 1680-81 (quoted in Fischer and Ravizza, p. 186).
20. In speaking of the "full description" of the behavior, etc., I am ignoring the issues raised about "snapshot" properties, which we agreed to set aside. N remains true when formulated in terms of "snapshot" properties, but I want to emphasize that the assessment of mesh theories should not turn on this.
21. There appears to be an overlap between these requirements and the condition of moral competence laid down in the account of reasons-responsiveness. It is not clear to me how an agent could recognize that moral reasons apply to him or her without meeting both conditions 1 and 2. So it is not clear to me that an individual could be reasons-responsive on Fischer and Ravizza's account without sa isfying these conditions of ownership.
22. This parenthetical clause reflects a third condition on ownership: that the agent comes to have the set of beliefs required by these two conditions in the right way (see p. 213). We'll see later how this condition comes into play.
23. The book is vague about how and why we come to take responsibility for some mechanisms and not others. We are told that individuals typically take responsibility for actions resulting from the "mechanism of practical reason" (p. 215), as well as certain "non-reflective mechanisms" (p. 216). The latter are said to include habits of driving an automobile, but not epileptic seizures, though the principle of selection is unclear.
24. Reflective authorization is certainly not necessary for taking responsibility on the authors' account, but it is, I think, meant to be sufficient, so long as the third condition is met.
25. Just following the passage quoted above, Fischer and Ravizza align themselves with the views of Galen Strawson, who argues that seeing oneself as free and responsible is a condition of being so. They cite Strawson's example of "natural Epictetans" who have no use for the notions of freedom and responsibility because they live in such a congenial environment and are so naturally wise that they are never in doubt about what to do (Galen Strawson, Freedom and Belief [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986], pp. 249 ff.). But the moral of Strawson's story doesn't support Fischer and Ravizza's theme. What the natural Epictetans are missing, according to Strawson, is not control or agency (he calls them a race of "gifted and active creatures"). The better analogy is not with the sailor whose boat is not under his control but with unreflective but master navigators - with the salmon, say.