Strawson: What is at Stake?

Strawson provides the basic argument, which is meant to show that true moral responsibility is impossible.  In short, because we are not responsible for how we are, we are not responsible for what we do.  He thinks that any compatibalist notion of moral responsibility will be too weak.

But why should we care if I cannot be in control of every single thing about myself?  Why does it matter if there are some things that I do or some ways that I am that I do not control?  Well, Strawson reminds us of the notion of heaven and hell.  Hell is a place of eternal punishment.  Heaven is a place of eternal reward.  If we are not completely responsible for who we are or what we do, then it seems like no person will ever really deserve heaven or hell!  In order to be deserving of either eternal punishment or eternal rewards, it seems like there must be absolute moral responsibility for actions.  And as Strawson points out, absolute responsibility for what we do depends on absolute responsibility for who we are.  Since we don't control everything about ourselves (where we were born, what family morals we were brought up with, etc.), we cannot be truly responsible in a way that makes us deserve either heaven or hell.

3 Responses to the Basic Argument

Strawson talks about three basic kinds of responses to the Basic Argument.

1.  The compatibalist response will be to say that moral responsibility does not require that a person is completely in control of how they are.  In other words, one can say that moral responsibility is compatible with my inability to completely shape who I am.  Strawson responds to this by saying that such responsibility is not 'true' moral responsibility.

2.  The libertarian will simply deny that what I do is determined by who I am.  Some actions are indeterministic, according to Kane.  Strawson replies that in such a case, the indeterministic nature of my actions only makes them more random.  This randomness also seems to conflict with the notion that I am morally responsible.

An alternate libertarian objection would be simply to deny that determinism is true.

3.  The phenomenological response will be so say that it feels like there is some self, S, that can act independently from all the contingent facts about myself.  In other words, no matter what my pre-existing personality, character and motivations are, my 'self' can still choose to act independently of these facts.  Strawson responds by saying that in reality, this 'self' is dependent upon your character, personality and existing motivational structures.

Shame vs Guilt

Shame is a feeling we have about the judgments of other people. Guilt is a feeling that accompanies a judgment about ourselves. We can feel shameful for the acts of others, but guilt is a feeling we have about our own acts. For example, I can feel ashamed about my brother if he goes to jail for a crime. I do not feel responsible for his actions, but I feel shame for them. Or I can even feel shame about my own actions even if I do not think I have done something wrong. Say I voted for Ron Paul in a recent election. I may think that I did the right thing, but I may realize that others think I acted incorrectly. I may feel ashamed about my actions even if I do not feel guilty. Guilt is the emotion that is connected with moral responsibility because guilt is a feeling about the wrongness of my own actions.

Strawson: The Basic Argument

Strawson presents what he calls The Basic Argument, which is supposed to show that moral responsibility is impossible.  The argument goes like this:

1.  You do what you do because you are the way you are.

2.  To be truly morally responsible for what you do, you must be responsible for the way you are.

3.  Since you can't be responsible for the way you are, you can't be truly responsible for what you do.

4.  To be truly responsible for the way you are, you must have intentionally brought it about, which is impossible.

5.  If you intentionally brought about how you are, you must have first had a certain nature that allowed you to intentionally choose to be a certain way.

6.  In order to be truly responsible for how you are, then you must be responsible for the 'certain nature' that allowed you to choose.

7.  If you could intentionally bring about a certain nature, then you must have already had a prior nature that allowed you to choose the 'certain nature' that allows you to choose the way you are...

The problem is that if you try to explain your behavior in terms of your own choices, you must also appeal to a capacity for choice that must be present before your choices are made.  For each choice, there must be the ability to make that choice.  So if you want to explain behavior in terms of choice, you always must introduce a capacity for choice-making.  Doing so leads to an infinite regress.

The main point is that humans are not causa sui.  In other terms, human are not the ultimate causes of themselves.  It seems like true moral responsibility requires that we are causa sui.  Because we are not the ultimate causes of ourselves, we cannot be truly morally responsible.

Van Inwagen vs. Frankfurt

Frankfurt attempts to argue for compatibalism.  He wants to show that moral responsibility and determinism are compatible.  In order to do this, he shows that a classic incompatibalist thesis, PAP, is false.  PAP is the principle that states that you are morally responsible for an action only if you could have done otherwise.  Frankfurt provides thought experiments that are meant to show that there will be times that a person is morally responsible even if he or she could not have done otherwise than they did.

Van Inwagen wants to defend incompatibalism.  He thinks that there is a principle better than PAP that is not vulnerable to the kind of counterexamples that Frankfurt provides.  Van Inwagen's new incompatbalist principle is PPP: you are morally responsible for a something only if you could have prevented that thing from happening.

Remember Jones and Black.  Jones has decided to assassinate the president, and Black has put a device in Jones' brain that will make him kill the president even if he decides not to go through with it.  This is supposed to show that PAP is false, since if the reason why Jones does what he does is because he wants to (and not because he is forced to), then we would hold him morally responsible even if he could not have acted otherwise.  But when we apply PPP to this case, the tension seems to be resolved.  Jones could not prevent himself from killing the president,  so he is not morally responsible for this action.  This is supposed to be a principle that is not disproven by a case like Jones and Black.

According to PPP, moral responsibility requires the possibility to prevent states of affairs from obtaining.  So if determinism is true, then there are no states of affairs that can be prevented.  So there is no state of affairs for which anyone is responsible.

Frankurt responds that to talk about the ability to prevent things as a condition for moral responsibility (as states in PPP) is to stop talking about free will.  Frankfurt says that free will only has to do with what actions I perform with my body---the consequences that arise as a result of my actions are irrelevant to my free will.

Personal Reaction vs. Evaluation

PERSONAL REACTION simply states feelings, preferences	EVALUATION gives reasons for beliefs
I think Locke is wrong about personal identity.	…because personality traits are more important for defining a person than memories are.
Parfit is right about survival being more important than identity.	…because identity is a strict mathematical concept. It does not make sense to apply the concept of strict numerical identity to persons because persons are not the kinds of things that tend to have strict numerical identity.
I agree with Frankfurt about moral responsibility.	…because sometimes you do not have the ability to do otherwise, but this is not why you do what you do. If the reason why you perform an action is because you want to, then you are morally responsible.
I feel like Van Inwagen successfully defends Incompatibalism.	…because if determinism were true, then there would be no state of affairs that you could prevent. And if you can’t prevent something from happening, you can’t be morally responsible for it. Moral responsibility for something requires the possibility of preventing that thing from happening.

No True Scotsman Informal Fallacy

The no true Scotsman fallacy is an informal fallacy. A fallacy is an example of bad reasoning. Formal fallacies deal with the structure and form of an argument. Arguments that use informal fallacies may have logically valid structure, but they still represent bad habits for thinking.

The no true Scotsman fallacy takes its name from an example like the following:

1. No true Scotsman would put sugar in his tea.

2. Peter puts sugar in his tea.

3. Therefore, Peter is not a true Scotsman.

Again, notice how this argument follows a logically valid form (modus tollens)

1. If someone is a true Scotsman, then he does not put sugar in his tea (If P, then ~Q)

2. Peter puts sugar in his tea (Q)

3. Therefore, Petere is no true Scotsman (~P)

So what is problematic, or fallacious about this argument? The argument relies on a very narrow definition of what a ‘true Scotsman’ is. To show the problem, imagine the following exchange:

Bob: All Californians love Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Jay: But I hate Arnold and I am a Californian!

Bob: Well, you’re not a true Californian, then!

In the above exchange, Bob has not given reasons to support his claim (All Californians love the Schwarz). Rather, Bob attempts to argue just by narrowing the definition of the subject about which he is talking. He's not giving reasons to support his claims; he's just trying to make his claim more narrow to make it sound legitimate.   

This informal fallacy is relevant because we should ask if this is all that Frankfurt is doing when he responds that Van Inwagen isn't talking about 'real' free will.

Vocab from Van Inwagen

Free Will Thesis: Some human beings have free will. In other words, at least some humans have the power to (are able to) act otherwise than they do act.

Hard Determinism is the view that our actions are determined by external factors and that the truth of determinism is incompatible with free will. The hard determinist denies that there is any free will.

Soft Determinism is the view that our actions are determined by external factors but that the truth of determinism is compatible with free will. In other words, determinism and free will are compatible.

Libertarianism is the view that we do have free will and that free will in incompatible with determinism. In other words, the libertarian denies that determinism is true.

To say that a state of affairs obtains just means that some event or state happened. A state of affairs is a fact, or a situation that exists in the world. The phrase is just another way of saying that something happened.

Determinism and Music

Simon and Garfunkel's "Patterns" is a song that considers the possibility that our lives are controlled by structures and patterns that we cannot control.  Incompatiablism is the view that such a situation would be incompatible with moral responsibility.  In other words, if your life is controlled by factors beyond your own control, you cannot be morally responsible for anything.

PAP vs. PPP

Frankfurt's goal was to argue that determinism and moral responsibility are compatible.  He attempted to prove this by showing that PAP is false.  PAP is the principle that you are morally responsible for your actions only if you could have done otherwise.  PAP is a classic way of stating that incompatibalist thesis.  In other words, PAP means that moral responsibility and determinism are mutually exclusive.  By using thought experiments (Jones and Black) to show that PAP is false, Frankfurt attempted to defend the thesis of compatibalism: determinism and moral responsibility are compatible.

Van Inwagen thinks that Frankfurt has not successfully argued for the compatibalist thesis.  Van Inwagen thinks that PAP can be replaced with a better principle: PPP.  The Principle of Possible Prevention states that you are morally responsible for a state of affairs only if you could have prevented it from obtaining.  In other words, you are morally responsible for something only when you could have prevented that thing from happening.  PPP has the benefit that it cannot be proven false by thought experiments such as Jones and Black.

Unconscious Bias: Possibly Preventable?

Today in class, the question came up whether we are responsible for the biases we hold and the stereotypes we have about people.  In many cases, these things are unconscious or subconscious.  This might seem to create a problem for whether we can prevent these attitudes. 

Here is a link to the Harvard Implicit Association Tests.  These tests are meant to measure what you unconscious, or implicit, biases are.  By definition, an implicit bias is a bias you have that you are not even aware of.  We might think that acknowledging our own biases is necessary in order to prevent those biases.  Test yourself and see what biases you haven't prevented yourself from acquiring!

Free Life?

In Dan Wilson's "Free Life", he notes that 'we got these lives for free'. He also asks, "What you gonna spend your free life on?" Is he simply making a play on words or does he take it for granted that we are free? Also, as we read the Van Inwagen, it is further clarified that "free will" (according to the Free Will Thesis) simply means the ability to have acted other than you did act. What other definitions for "free will" are there?

Determinism: A Tralfamadorian Perspective

In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five there is a race of aliens called the Tralfamadorians. Tralfamadorians do not experience time in a linear way (like we do). Tralfamadorians have access to each moment at all times. In this short youtube clip, Vonnegut explains the Tralfamadorian perspective on terrible things like war. I post this as a connection to other material. In this novel, there is a deterministic portrayal of the universe, and this does seem to absolve moral responsibility in certain ways.

Doctrine of Coercion and PAP

PAP is the principle that you are only morally responsible for your actions if there was an alternate possibility for your actions. In other words, moral responsibility requires that you could have acted differently than you did act. Frankfurt thinks that PAP gets some credibility from its association with the Doctrine of Coercion (DoC). DoC is the principle that if you are coerced into doing something, then you are not morally responsible for that action. In other words, coercion and moral responsibility are mutually exclusive. Coercion means being forced to do something, either by physical force, threats or intimidation. Frankfurt thinks that DoC is true. He also thinks that many people believe PAP in part because they think that DoC is just a more particularized version of PAP. In other words, Frankfurt thinks that being coerced is just one way of being unable to act otherwise. Frankfurt clarifies that the reason why we excuse someone when they were coerced is because the coercion is the reason why they acted as they did. But DoC can be true even if PAP is false. Frankfurt provides thought experiments meant to show that there are instances when a person lacks any alternative possibilities for action and yet that person is still morally responsible. A person is excused from moral responsibility only if the coercion or the inability to do otherwise are the only reason why a person acted as they did. Frankfurt then offers up a revised version of PAP, according to which you are morally responsible for you actions if you acted that way only because you could not do otherwise.

Jones and Black

Frankfurt has a series of thought experiments designed to show that PAP is false. We are to imagine Black, an evil genius who is capable of making terrible threats and even of physically controlling the brains of others. Jones has decided for his own reasons to perform some action, such as assassinate the president. After Jones has already decided to do this, Black tries to make sure that Jones will indeed perform this action. In a mild case, we can imagine that Black is merely threatening Jones with something that no reasonable person would want to happen (e.g., Black threatens to murder Jones if he does not kill the president). In an extreme case, we imagine that Black is actually in control of Jones's brain. Depending on how Jones responds to Black's coercion, in some cases Jones will still be morally responsible for his actions even though he could not have done otherwise. Jones 1 is an unreasonable man. He is completely non-responsive to the threats. He continues to perform his action regardless of what threats Black makes. Jones 2 is completely overwhelmed by the threat. Even if he wanted to do the action in the first place, he is so afraid of the threats that they motivate him to perform the action even if he did not have his own reasons for doing so. Jones 3 is a reasonable man. He is responsive to the threats; he takes them seriously. But he still performs the actions for his own reasons. Frankfurt says that Jones 3 is a perfect example of someone performing an action that he had to do, but he is still morally responsible. The important question is whether the coercive force was the reason for his action. In the case of Jones 2, the coercion was certainly the reason for his actions, so he is not morally responsible. But Jones 3 did not act as he did BECAUSE of the coercion. Rather, Jones 3 acted because of his own reasons, so we still hold him morally responsible.

PAP and Moral Responsibility

Principle of Alternate Possiblities (PAP): a person is morally responsible for actions only if he or she could have done otherwise. In other words, moral responsibility requires alternative possibilities (AP) for action.

PAP AND INCOMPATIBALISM: An Argument Against Moral Responsibility

1. If Determinism is true, then there are no alternative possibilities for your actions.

2. Determinism is true.

3. Therefore, there are no alternate possibilities for your actions.

This argument can be expressed in the form of modus ponens:

1. If D, then ~AP

2. D

3. Therefore, ~AP

4. If you are morally responsible, then there must be alternate possibilities for your actions (PAP).

5. There is no alternative possibilities for your actions (if determinism is true)

6. Therefore, there is no moral responsibility.

This argument can be expressed in the form of modus tollens:

4. If MR, then AP.

5. ~AP

6. Therefore, ~MR.

Frankfurt denies the truth of Premise #4! His thought experiments are supposed to show that there are situations where there are no alternative possibilities for action, and yet a person is still morally responsible.

Moral Responsibility: Some Basic Terms Defined

Moral responsibility is responsibility for your actions such that you can be held morally accountable. The question of whether you are morally responsible is a question of whether your actions can be judged as morally good or bad.

Questions about moral responsibility often hinge on questions about free will and determinism.

TWO DOCTRINES ABOUT FREE WILL

Determinism: A person’s actions are determined (caused by) external forces.

Existentialism: A person chooses how to act and who to be. Objects may be determined by external factors, but people determine themselves.

TWO DOCTRINES ABOUT MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND FREE WILL

Compatibalism: Determinism and moral responsibility are compatible. You do not need to be the cause of all your choices and actions in order to be responsible for them

Incompatibalism: Determinism and moral responsibility are incompatible. You must be the cause of your own choices and actions in order to be responsible for them.

***Just because you are an incompatibalist does not mean you think that moral responsibility is impossible. But if you are an incompatibalist AND you think determinism is true, then you must deny the existence of moral responsibility.   

Pfizz #1 and Answers

1. What is the problem of personal identity?

How can we say that I am the same person now as I was when I was younger? What does it mean to be a person?

2. What is Locke's solution to the problem of personal identity?

Locke says that the identity of a person is constituted by conscious awareness of autobiographical memories. You are whoever you remember being and whatever you remember doing.

3. Explain the brave officer example and how it proves Locke wrong.

A person, P, may remember an event, A, during the time of another event, B. During event C, he remembers event B but not event A. If memory constitutes personal identity, then A = B and B = C (since at B he remembers A and at C he remembers B). By the law of transitivity of identity, C should be identical to A. Yet this would violate Locke's criterion for personal identity, because at C, he does not remember A.  

4. How did Parfit clarify the problem of personal identity?

Parfit clarifies that theories about what a person is that lead to a violation of the transitivity of identity are not bad simply because they violate the transitivity of identity. Parfit says that when we talk about a person being the same as me, we're not talking about strict numerical identity. Rather, we're talking about something else: survival. Survival requires neither a 1:1 ratio nor an all-or-nothing categorization.  

How Secure Are Memories?

Here is a link to the video from class where Derren Brown convinces Simon Pegg that he's always wanted a red BMX bike (with an explanation afterwards!).

This clip seems to indicate a problem with relying too heavily on memories to serve as a criterion of personal identity.  If our memories can be changed, then how can I say that I am my memory?

This video also raises some questions about moral responsibility.  If we can be controlled by other people, are we responsible for our actions?

Here is the link to Derren Brown's The Experiments: The Assassin.  In this video, you see Derren Brown attempt to brainwash and hypnotize someone into being a sleeper assassin.

In another video, Derren Brown's The Experiments: Guilt Trip, Derren tries to convince an innocent man that he is guilty of a murder that never happened.  This video raises concerns about the reliability of memory and questions about moral responsibility and its relationship to feelings of guilt.

Alternate Possibilities for Actions and Hip Hop

Usually, answers to questions about whether we are morally responsible for our actions depend on answers to questions about whether we control our own lives.

In the track "Positions of Strength", rapper Felix of Heiruspecs contemplates the ways in which our lives are controlled by existing organizational structures. 

Parfit: Identity vs. Survival

Parfit attempts to clarify debates about personal identity by introducing a distinction between identity and survival.  Although traditional theories about what a person is focus on identity, Parfit says that concerns about being the same person as myself are actually concerns about survival.

Follow this link to read another blog post where I discuss this distinction in some detail.

This is another link to a blog post about the contrast between Locke and Parfit