Some thirty years ago, Galen Strawson advanced the following argument for
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
There is an argument, which I will call the Basic Argument, which appears to prove that we cannot be truly or ultimately morally responsible for our actions.
This is like having a method of cat impersonation which appears to prove that you are the King of Sweden. The appearance is deceptive. Either you are the King of Sweden or you are nothing of the sort. There is an objective verification method of a 'zero knowledge' sort. In other words, when I find out I'm not the King of Sweden- because the Swedish embassy tells me to fuck off- no extra knowledge becomes available to me about the making of cat like noises because even great virtuosity in that field of activity can't alter the brute facts of the case. The same is true of moral responsibility. No argument or cat like noise you advance can alter whether it does or does not arise.
According to the Basic Argument, it makes no difference whether determinism is true or false.
It is certainly true that whether or not we are the King of Sweden or whether or not we are morally responsible are questions wholly unconnected to whether determinism is true or false.
We cannot be truly or ultimately morally responsible for our actions in either case. The Basic Argument has various expressions in the literature of free will, and its central idea can be quickly conveyed. (1) Nothing can be causa sui - nothing can be the cause of itself.
But a guy- like Napoleon- can crown himself Emperor. One can certainly cause changes in oneself- e.g. by shaving one's head. Why can't we cause ourselves to be or not be morally responsible for something? After all, we can kill ourselves or exit a particular jurisdiction.
(2) In order to be truly morally responsible for one's actions one would have to be causa sui, at least in certain crucial mental respects.
Which is in fact the case. I can take moral responsibility for certain things which are under my control- at least in certain crucial respects. For example, I can think kind thoughts about a person I dislike.
(3) Therefore nothing can be truly morally responsible.
Or, if we subscribe to hylozoism, everything can be.
In this paper I want to reconsider the Basic Argument, in the hope that anyone who thinks that we can be truly or ultimately morally responsible for our actions will be prepared to say exactly what is wrong with it.
Terms like 'morality' and 'responsibility' are solutions to coordination games. They are useful to human beings- and some dogs but few cats- but philosophers, sadly, are wholly useless unless they are cats or can make cat like noises of an entertaining or informative type.
I think that the point that it has to make is obvious, and that it has been underrated in recent discussion of free will - perhaps because it admits of no answer. I suspect that it is obvious in such a way that insisting on it too much is likely to make it seem less obvious than it is, given the innate contrasuggestibility of human beings in general and philosophers in particular. But I am not worried about making it seem less obvious than it is so long as it gets adequate attention. As far as its validity is concerned, it can look after itself. A more cumbersome statement of the Basic Argument goes as follows. (1) Interested in free action, we are particularly interested in actions that are performed for a reason (as opposed to 'reflex' actions or mindlessly habitual actions).
We are not interested in free actions unless they are useful or novel in some enlightening manner.
(2) When one acts for a reason, what one does is a function of how one is, mentally speaking.
No. There is no functional relationship mathematically speaking because there is no unique element in the codomain which is being mapped on to.
(It is also a function of one's height, one's strength, one's place and time, and so on. But the mental factors are crucial when moral responsibility is in question.)
If moral responsibility really is in question then there is no deterministic relationship between successive mental state.
(3) So if one is to be truly responsible for how one acts, one must be truly responsible for how one is, mentally speaking -at least in certain respects.
That does not follow. I am not responsible for being human. I am responsible my acts as a human.
(4) But to be truly responsible for how one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects, one must have brought it about that one is the way one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects.
No. True responsibility may be like the gift of grace or an emergent property or else a predicate which applies by reason of a set of protocols being satisfied.
And it is not merely that one must have caused oneself to be the way one is, mentally speaking.
It is not possible to cause oneself to be whatever it is feasible for oneself to be, mentally speaking. I am capable of speaking Russian but a Russian speaker would have to teach me how to do so. Similarly, some external agency can cause us to acquire moral responsibility.
One must have consciously and explicitly chosen to be the way one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects, and one must have succeeded in bringing it about that one is that way.
Why? This is an arbitrary stipulation. If the appeal is to the mathematical notion of a function then the argument fails because there is no functional relationship here whatsoever.
(5) But one cannot really be said to choose, in a conscious, reasoned, fashion, to be the way one is mentally speaking, in any respect at all, unless one already exists, mentally speaking, already equipped with some principles of choice, 'P1' - preferences, values, pro-attitudes, ideals - in the light of which one chooses how to be.
Why not? We make conscious, reasoned, choices all the time about all sorts of things. True, my decision to be a Russian speaker has not borne fruit but this is also true about most decisions to be anything at all, mentally speaking, including the rather Zen like state of 'being who one is'. This is because whatever we are in ourselves, mentally speaking, is not specifiable, or indeed knowable, to ourselves- at least not in words. Perhaps there is some mathematical code which represents our consciousness which could be uploaded to some Galactic computer. But that seems a distant prospect.
(6) But then to be truly responsible, on account of having chosen to be the way one is,
nobody choses to be who one is because one can always imagine some extra skill or mental capacity.
mentally speaking, in certain respects, one must be truly responsible for one's having the principles of choice P1 in the light of which one chose how to be. (7) But for this to be so one must have chosen P1, in a reasoned, conscious, intentional fashion. (8) But for this, i.e. (7), to be so one must already have had some principles of choice P2, in the light of which one chose P1. (9) And so on.
The principle of choice can be intensional, have zero knowledge verification and be uncomputable all at the same time.
Here we are setting out on a regress that we cannot stop.
Sure we can, with some variety of Martin Lof type theory. A meta-rule may be self similar to what it governs. There's always a way to remove paradoxes if they actually arise
True self-determination is impossible because it requires the actual completion of an infinite series of choices of principles of choice.
Sez who? The fact is self-determination actually happens just as Achilles actually overtakes the tortoise.
(10) So true moral responsibility is impossible, because it requires true self-determination, as noted in (3).
This is an arbitrary stipulation. Also, it is obviously foolish. I may make a false self-determination- e.g. I'm the biological father of x- yet discharge a true moral responsibility to x. The thing happens all the time.
This may seem contrived, but essentially the same argument can be given in a more natural form. (1) It is undeniable that one is the way one is, initially, as a result of heredity and early experience, and it is undeniable that these are things for which one cannot be held to be in any responsible (morally or otherwise).
Fuck off! The thing is eminently deniable. One is the way one is because of oikeiosis. There is a continuum of choices such that selves are not discrete. But all selves associated with an oikos- or indeed a possible oikumene- may be governed by the same principle though what that principle is may not be exactly specifiable save 'at the end of Time'.
It is a fact that we often feel we are held morally responsible for things which we feel we couldn't help. Was it really my fault that I got drunk at the Xmas party and urinated in the punch bowl? After the first few time I get sacked from my job for this offence, everybody in my community might agree that, yes, it is your fucking fault, you fucking tosspot.
(2) One cannot at any later stage of life hope to accede to true moral responsibility for the way one is by trying to change the way one already is as a result of heredity and previous experience.
Why bother 'trying to change the way one already is' unless one wants to be more morally responsible? Also, nothing is added to the collocation 'moral responsibility' by adding the predicate 'true'. On the other hand the qualification 'Nazi' as applied to 'moral responsibility' does greatly alter the informative value of the proposition.
For (3) both the particular way in which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of one's success in one's attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and previous experience.
but that determination may be stochastic and under circumstances of radical Knightian uncertainty. Even otherwise, if anything rises into consciousness, it must be the case that it is under-determined in some important respect. Otherwise, sub sub-conscious operation could deal it more quickly.
And (4) any further changes that one can bring about only after one has brought about certain initial changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by heredity and previous experience.
Not if the brain is a parallel processor
(5) This may not be the whole story, for it may be that some changes in the way one is are traceable not to heredity and experience but to the influence of indeterministic or random factors. But it is absurd to suppose that indeterministic or random factors, for which one is ex hypothes in no way responsible, can in themselves contribute in any way to one's being truly morally responsible for how one is.
This assumes that true moral responsibility can't arise save where all the facts of the case are known. But this is possible only 'at the end of time'. Thus, true moral responsibility is unknowable. Hence any assertion about it is essentially arbitrary. I may say 'true moral responsibility only attaches to wholly autonomous acts.' But I may equally say 'true moral responsibility sodomized true humanitarian concern while pretending to help it recover its cell phone which, by an unfortunate turn of events had become lodged in its rectum. '
The claim, then, is not that people cannot change the way they are. They can, in certain respects (which tend to be exaggerated by North Americans
especially those with a cell-phone lodged up their rectum
and underestimated, perhaps, by Europeans).
unless they have a cell-phone lodged up their rectum
The claim is only that people cannot be supposed to change themselves in such a way as to be or become truly or ultimately morally responsible for the way they are, and hence for their actions.
But that change may occur any way as part of the process of ageing and maturing. Indeed, we don't think very small babies are morally responsible but do think that the middle aged should know better than to insert cell-phones up their bum- more particularly if the cell phone belongs to someone else.
II I have encountered two main reactions to the Basic Argument. On the one hand it convinces almost all the students with whom I have discussed the topic of free will and moral responsibility.
Because those students are as stupid as shit. Also they have stolen your cell phone and have quietly inserted into their bum.
On the other hand it often tends to be dismissed, in contemporary discussion of free will and moral responsibility, as wrong, or irrelevant, or fatuous, or too rapid, or an expression of metaphysical megalomania.
It is based on ignorance of recent developments in mathematical logic.
I think that the Basic Argument is certainly valid in showing that we cannot be morally responsible in the way that many suppose. And I think that it is the natural light, not fear, that has convinced the students I have taught that this is so. That is why it seems worthwhile to restate the argument in a slightly different - simpler and looser - version, and to ask again what is wrong with it... Let me now restate the Basic Argument in very loose - as it were conversational -terms. New forms of words allow for new forms of objection, but they may be helpful none the less. (1) You do what you do, in any situation in which you find yourself, because of the way you are.
No. What you do is affected by exogenous factors. 'Why did you spill my drink?' 'I didn't intend to. That bloke bumped into me and so what I did was accidental.'
So (2) To be truly morally responsible for what you do you must be truly responsible for the way you are - at least in certain crucial mental respects.
No. The pub may have a convention that the person who spilt the drink must buy a replacement even if someone else had bumped into him. The notion of moral responsibility can solve a coordination game and permit exceptions- e.g.if the person who spilt the drink is obviously poor while the drunk who bumped into her is a fellow merchant banker who is celebrating the big bonus you have both received.
Or: (1) What you intentionally do, given the circumstances in which you (believe you) find yourself, flows necessarily from how you are.
There is no necessary connection between how your are (e.g I am suicidal because my wife just left me) and what you do (blow your brains out with the pistol which it turns out has rusted and jammed which is why you end up doing nothing. Then it turns out wifey only left you to go to the supermarket. All's well that ends well.)
Hence (2) you have to get to have some responsibility for how you are in order to get to have some responsibility for what you intentionally do, given the circumstances in which you (believe you) find yourself.
No. Either you have responsibility for how you are or you don't. Getting it or losing it is irrelevant. Still, your probation officer or psychiatrist may discuss with you ways in which you could learn to act more responsibly.
Comment. Once again the qualification about 'certain mental respects' is one I will take for granted. Obviously one is not responsible for one's sex,
That may have been true 30 years ago. Now cis-gender people are looked upon with suspicion and hostility on the better sort of campus.
one's basic body pattern, one's height, and so on. But if one were not responsible for anything about oneself, how one could be responsible for what one did, given the truth of (1)?
By common agreement- which is how language tends to work. I may think of myself as a blonde Californian cheerleader who slays vampires but have to admit I am an elderly South Indian man of a very cowardly and obese type.
This is the fundamental question, and it seems clear that if one is going to be responsible for any aspect of oneself, it had better be some aspect of one's mental nature.
Responsible means 'deemed to be in control of' even if that control is delegated or negligent. The fact is we do have some control over some aspects of our mental nature unless we suffer a mental illness in which case we may be deemed to lack competency and thus not be responsible for our actions.
I take it that (1) is incontrovertible, and that it is (2) that must be resisted. For if (1) and (2)) are conceded the case seems lost, because the full argument runs as follows. (1) You do what you do because of the way you are. So (2) To be truly morally responsible for what you do you must be truly responsible for the way are - at least in certain crucial mental respects. But (3) You cannot be truly responsible for the way you are, so you cannot be truly responsible for what you do. Why can't you be truly responsible for the way you are? Because (4) To be truly responsible for the way you are, you must have intentionally brought it about that you are the way you are, and this is impossible. Why is it impossible? Well, suppose it is not. Suppose that (5) You have somehow intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are, and that you have brought this about in such a way that you can now be said to be truly responsible for being the way you are now. For this to be true (6) You must already have had a certain nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are as you now are. But then (7) For it to be true you and you alone are truly responsible for how you now are, you must be truly responsible for having had the nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are. So (8) You must have intentionally brought it about that you had that nature N, in which case you must have existed already with a prior nature in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you had the nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are ...
This argument can be applied to itself. It is impossible to make an argument re. the impossibility of moral responsibility because there is an infinite regress. However, a type theory can always impose a solution. This may be arbitrary but it is useful and language is nothing but pragmatics.
Here one is setting off on the regress. Nothing can be causa sui in the required way.
Anything can be by arbitrary stipulation. But if determinism is true, only arbitrary stipulations can be made. There is no access to category theoretical 'naturality'.
In practice, we do say things like 'the guy had a moral responsibility not to get drunk before driving his car. Thus, though he had passed out when he caused the accident, he is still morally responsible for the death of the pedestrian.'
Even if such causal 'aseity' is allowed to belong unintelligibly to God, it cannot be plausibly be supposed to be possessed by ordinary finite human beings.
Save if God has so willed.
"The causa sui is the best selfcontradiction that has been conceived so far", as Nietzsche remarked in 1886: it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for "freedom of the will" in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Miinchhausen's audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness ... (Beyond Good and Evil, ? 21).
Once again, by imposing a Type theory, no contradiction obtains. Good enough 'univalent foundations' can always be found for any deontic logic.
No comments:
Post a Comment