Wanton responsibility

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 2, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 261-276

  Oshana, Marina A L ^a  

^a BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Free agency; Personhood; Responsibility; Wantons

Indexed keywords

EID: 62149102768     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009712618620     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Harry Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person." The paper first appeared in Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971), pp. 5-20.
2. Reprinted in John Martin Fischer (ed.), Moral Responsibility (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 65-80. All references are to the Fischer text.
3. Frankfurt, "Freedom ofthe Will and the Concept of a Person," p. 71.
4. op. cit. Frankfurt claims that what is essential to morally responsible agency is that one acts freely,where acting freely means 'being moved by the will one wants' (or, as Frankfurt rather cryptically states, "the will by which a person is moved when he does what he wants to do is his will because it is the will he wanted," p. 74). Arguably, to want a particular will to move one, and to have that will actually move one, one must have formed a higher-order volition to that effect (Frankfurt's famous discussion of the contrast between the willing and the unwilling addict illustrates precisely this point; the former acts freely just because his will is endorsed by a second-order volition that it be his will, while the unwilling addict fails to secure such conformity). Thus, acting freely would seem to call for actions that proceed from second-order volitions. Since persons alone form second-order volitions, and since the wanton does not form second-order volitions, the wanton does not, on Frankfurt's account, act freely. On Frankfurt's account, this would imply that the wanton is not morally responsible for what s/he does.
5. Thus the kind of wanton I am interested in fails, not on occasion or by fluke, but characteristically, to form volitions of a higher-order. While episodic wantonness is certainly a possibility, it is characteristic wantonness that concerns me.
6. Fischer touches on the wanton's status as a responsible agent at footnote 18 to Chapter 9of his The Metaphysics of Free Will (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 250-251.
7. Also, see Lawrence Haworth, Autonomy: An Essayin Philosophical PsychologyandEthics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 52-53.
8. Frankfurt's account allows both for wantons who are incapable of caring about their wills as well as those for whom concern is possible, but not manifest in fact. Following the suggestion of a referee, the two might be characterized as "impotent" and "mere" wantons, respectively. I address Frankfurt's claims about the former in the following section, but my primary concern is with the latter.
9. Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness", in Ferdinand Schoeman (ed.), Responsibility, Character and the Emotions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 27-45.
10. Reprinted in The Importance ofWhat We Care About (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 159-176. All references are to the latter text.
11. Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," p. 175, op. cit.
12. Frankfurt states, "Insofar as we construe the making of decisions as the characteristic function of the faculty of volition, we must regard such creatures as lacking this faculty." "Identification and Wholeheartedness," p. 176, op. cit.
13. Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," p. 176, op. cit.
14. This is not to discount the general philosophical merit of Frankfurt's revised account. His discussion of the comparative importance of reason versus volition, for example, is noteworthy in its own right. This point was pressed by a referee for this journal.
15. Gary Watson would probably take issue with this last point insofar as he contends that "to ascribe free agency to a being presupposes it to be a being that makes judgments of the sort involved in assigning values to alternative states of affairs": the actions of the free agent "Flow from his evaluational system . . . one cannot dissociate oneself from all normative judgments without forfeiting .. one's identity as an agent
16. See his "Free Agency," Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), pp. 205-220.
17. Reprinted in Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 105-106.
18. Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," p. 73, op. cit.
19. See Philip Pettit and Michael Smith, "Freedom in Belief and Desire," Journal of Philosophy 93 (1996), p. 440, footnote 9.
20. This is clearly Frankfurt's view. See his discussion at "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," p. 67, op. cit.
21. Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," p. 68, op. cit. Here is early evidence that Frankfurt regards the activity of the wanton as primarily impulsive in nature.
22. Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," p. 164, op. cit.
23. Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," p. 168, op. cit.
24. Commenting on the experience of acting in the absence of wholehearted identification, Frankfurtstates that"..while itmay be thatwe performouractiononaccount of the motivating force of our own desire, it is nonetheless also true that we are being moved to act by something other thanwhat we really want. Inthat case we are ina way passive with respect to what moves us, as we always are when we are moved by a force that is not fully our own
25. See "Identification and Wholeheartedness," pp. 163-164; p. 166, op. cit.
26. That is, is the wanton's failure to identify with a lower-order desire a voluntary, or non-voluntary, action on his part? Frankfurt indicates that the wanton's behavior is involuntary: Voluntary action requires identification, and identification calls for a higher-order commitment.
27. See "Identification and Wholeheartedness," pp. 170-171, op. cit.
28. Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," p. 170, op. cit.
29. An illuminating discussion of the concept of volition and its relation to control is found in Daniel Dennett's Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Bradford Books, 1984), especially in Chapter 4, pp. 78ff.
30. Frankfurt explicitly rejects a value laden or normative account of the conditions for responsible agency. Second-order volitions, he charges, express evaluations only in the sense that they are preferences. See his "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," p. 73, footnote 6, op. cit. His critics, most notably Watson and Susan Wolf, require more for responsible agency.
31. Dennett, Elbow Room: Varieties ofFree Will Worth Wanting, p. 38, op. cit.
32. Such an individual lacks what R. Jay Wallace has termed the "rational powers of reflective self-control." See R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1994), Chapter 6.
33. I recognize that the excusing and exempting conditions may cut across the epistemic and control lines, but shall employ this distinction for the purpose of simplifying the discussion.
34. Wallace classifies phenomena of this sort as excusing one from responsibility rather than exempting one from responsibility in that, while such phenomena do not alter the actor's status as a moral agent, we tend to regard the agent as not having acted with the ill quality of will typical of moral violations. This person is not deserving of reprobation, nor is he one from whom an account of his behavior is expected.
35. This is not Frankfurt's position. It is held by Wolf, among others. See her "Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility," in Schoeman, op. cit., and her Freedom within Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
36. It may be useful to measure the wanton against the classic definition of freedom provided by John Locke. If the wanton has the power "to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of [his] desires; and ..is at liberty to consider the objects of them, examine them on all sides and weigh them with others " then he has a variety of liberty valued by most persons.
37. See Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II,Chapter XXI, Section 48. Dennett uses Locke's definition of freedom to illustrate a variety of control worth wanting in Elbow Room: Varieties ofFree Will Worth Wanting, p. 36, op. cit.
38. Wolf, "Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility
39. Frankfurt introduces the Devil/neurologist in "Three Concepts of Free Action," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. IL (1975), pp. 113-125.
40. This point is argued by Wolf, who contends that the freedom to do other than what reason bids is a kind of freedom no reasonable person would want or need. See her Freedom Within Reason, op. cit. Would the wanton, in his indifference, betray a lack of reason?
41. Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," p. 174, op. cit.
42. One could imagine scenarios in which a "Frankfurt-style" devil-neurologist devises some mechanism by which the actions and choices of an individual are invariably wanton. Note, too, that one who chooses, from a non-wanton state, to become a wanton and who succeeds in her attempt can plausibly be described as a full-blown wanton in much the same way as one who chooses, from a state of freedom, to become a slave can be a genuine slave.
43. Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," p. 72, op. cit.
44. The wanton so described is not unlike the ideal stoic Marcus Aurelius envisions. Of course, if this wanton finds herself caring about which of her desires move her to act she will no longer be a wanton, but a frustrated person, one for whom freedom of will can be a problem.
45. This issue is one I discuss at length in "Ascriptions of Responsibility," American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997), pp. 71-83.
46. Peter Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," Proceedings ofthe British Academy48 (1962), pp. 1-25.
47. Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," pp. 164, 170, op. cit.
48. Frankfurt's account of acting freely (and of wantonhood) is vulnerable to criticisms of the sort I raise for the following reason. Frankfurt wishes to defend a compatibilist account of responsibility that is premised on a purely structural, ahistorical, actual-sequence account of free agency. Frankfurt cannot claim that the wanton who does not identify with any of her first-order desires via a second-order volition, but who could do so, i.e., who has a capacity to form second-order volitions, is a responsible agent. Such a claim would necessitate that his account be modified to include either historical conditions, or modal considerations of the sort that suggest alternative possibilities. I am grateful to a referee for suggesting that I reflect on this point. As a different referee has noted, "the difference between mere and impotent wantons . . . cannot be assessed if we only attend to what [they] actually do for both are equal in this respect. The difference involves whether one has or lacks certain capacities ..andcapacities are modal phenomena