DISQUS

Yeah, I don't know Will. The pink and blue; the shakily drawn star; the line shaded font. It's all a little twee, the way the opening sequence of Juno is just a little twee. It can work for some, but I'm not sure it's in keeping with the general ethos of the blog.

Also, using IE, I keep getting "Stack overflow at line: 353." I don't know enough about computers to know what that means.

Bill,

I get iffy around claims to represent 'traditional morality.' I don't know whether this means the peculiar institution of rules and interdicts, or whether we're talking about sets of virtues, or what. In any case, claims about what 'traditional morality' is are never more than second-order beliefs. And we are not very good at forming second-order beliefs.

My argument was intended to sketch a conception of agency which is consonant with our first-order moral/ethical beliefs and practices. And my claim was that at this level, our traditional beliefs and practices are very much independent of determinism. The truth of determinism (and I don't know if determinism is true) may shatter some second-order moral beliefs, but it does not touch moral practice and first-order moral beliefs. If this is right, then Ponnuru is wrong to say that physicalism or reductionism is incompatible with actual moral practice. (I do think eliminativism does, but that's a different kettle of fish.)

The only place I diverge greatly from traditional morality is in rejecting the revenge impulse to re-balance the moral scales downward. I prefer a compensatory view of justice which would balance the scales by leveling up as best as possible the state of the victim. But this is at best a side issue.

In any case, I think you're right about over-staying, but I would be glad to continue the discussion elsewhere. Via electronic mail, I can be reached at kyle (my last name is the handle I'm using) the mail service run by google.

Ok, let's start with the easy one first:

Njorl (12.14): Yes, and we call those people imprudent. Or tourists.

Bill and cg make a reasonable point about 'could have done otherwise,' but I am not convinced. Let me explain why. But first, Bill, I never said I found Ponnuru an annoying thinker. What I said was that the argument he made drives me crazy. He was not the first to make it, and he won't be the last. The argument is what concerns me. I have no opinion one way or the other of Ponnuru as a thinker, for I seldom read what he writes. Ponnuru does, however, claim that physicalism makes morality incoherent; which is a skyhook analogous to Dostoevsky's argument, but with a different hook and thus a different bogeyman.

Bill's claim, if I've read him right is:

An action is blameworthy (praiseworthy) only if the action is wrong (right) and if the agent could have done otherwise.

The first point in response is this: only agents are praise- or blameworthy. Actions can be right or wrong, good or bad, prudent or imprudent. We blame/praise agents for actions. Praise and blame attach to agents in virtue of their actions, because actions are manifestations of the agents' dispositions/character.

So your claim could now be: An agent is blameworthy only if her action is wrong and she could have done otherwise.

This seems right, provided we locate the proper sense of CDO. Surely there are cases (which cg points to) where an agent could not have done otherwise, and we exempt the agents from blame owing to extenuating circumstances or the fact that there was nothing they could have done.

Here's why I think reason-responsiveness and capacity to learn give us the right sense of CDO.

An agent's reason-responsiveness is the agent's disposition to make some fact a reason for action. Dispositions can be thought of as probabilities. So, an agent's disposition is the probability that some fact will constitute or comprise a reason for action for some agent. An agent is more or less reason-responsive depending on how high or low the probability is that she will make some fact a reason for action. Probabilities can, of course, shift according to circumstance. I am more likely to say something unkind to someone who's being an ass if I have not had sufficient sleep, or if the person has a history of being an ass (and I have had to keep my mouth shut several times before). What I end up saying may or may not be excusable, depending on the severity of the circumstances (how much of an ass, how little sleep, how unkind were my words, etc.). If the probability that I murder the ass is so easily affected, however, there is something wrong with me. I should be said to have an inferior set of dispositions, I would be a bad person.

The capacity to learn is the capacity for these probabilities to change over time depending on the information and feedback the agent receives. Treating agency, along with consciousness, as a process, we have to realize that it is a non-ergodic process. The structures of individual agency change constantly, there is no guarantee that any state will recur, and there is no clear connection between our beginning state and our present state. The non-ergodicity of the process and structures of agency negate the possibility of any sort of reductive determinism (by which I mean genetic or cultural determinism). An agent's dispositions/character/structures of agency are the product of her unique learning history (including her actions and the feedback received) as that has acted on and transformed an original, underdetermined, set of genetic predispositions.

In a sense, one's present set of dispositions is noncaused. This does not mean that there are no sufficient causes for the present state of the structures of agency. Rather, it means that there is nothing (or no set of things) we could isolate by means of subjunctive conditionals (counterfactuals) as the necessary cause(s) of one's present state. Not, that is, without jeopardizing personal identity. That is, we might say 'if only I had been born to rich parents (or, French), then I would be a much better person.' Chances are (depending on remoteness of the possible world in which the antecedent of the conditional is true) that the referent of 'I' in the consequent of the conditional could not in any sense be said to be you.

A problem arises when we ask 'are you responsible for your character/dispositions?' Trying to answer this question threatens an infinite regress which seems to threaten the very idea of responsibility. mk intimates something along these lines with the argument that responsibility has to be distributed. Now, in situations where very specific quirks of personality can be attributed to very specific past events, this might work. (Think of, say, Bradley Whitford's character in The West Wing, and the way music would send him into a panic, and how this was a result of PTSD following the attempted assassination.) Failing this, the point is rather that you are your character and dispositions, at least for the purposes of moral evaluation and navigation of the social world. What you are depends on what context we are considering (a doctor treats you as a machine that is either functioning correctly or incorrectly, and tries to figure out how to fix the machine; the government treats you as a vampire bat treats its prey, wanting nothing else than dollars and votes; etc.). And for the purposes of moral praise and blame, you are your character and dispositions and the actions that are manifestations thereof.

What has this to do with CDO? Well, it is likely that 'could he have done otherwise,' cannot mean 'was it possible, at the very moment of action, that he could have done B instead of A?' Such is impossible in a deterministic world, and in an indeterministic world this possibility leaves us with uncaused actions, which agents cannot be held accountable for. Instead, 'could he have done otherwise,' means (something like) 'in light of his dispositions, is there a nearby possible world in which he did otherwise?' Is it reasonable to believe that, had something been minutely different, the agent would have done something different.

Suppose (and now I get to cg's point), a man is driving a car down a residential street and runs over a child. The child ran into the street at the last minute. Could the man have done otherwise?

Well, let's consider some possibilities:

1. If the man had taken a different route, he would not have run over the child.
To make the antecedent true, we have to know why the man would have taken a different route. If the route was his normal one, the only reason for him not to have taken it (in the absence of, say, construction) would be that he knew he would end up running over the child. The man is not omniscient, and there is no way for him (or anyone else) to know the child would run out at that time. This scenario does not interest us.

2. If the man had a faster reaction time, say a reaction time the speed of a cockroach (1/30th of a second) instead of his slow human reaction time (1/3rd of a second), he would not have run over the child.
This clearly does not interest us. Unless, of course, the man knows he has an unusually slow reaction time, in which case it is incumbent on him to drive more slowly than would other drivers, or to avoid driving altogether, as he poses an unacceptable risk to other motorists and pedestrians. Further, there is very little anyone can do to tighten up his reaction time.

3. If the man had been driving slower, he would not have run over the child.
How responsible the man is depends, in this case, on how fast he was driving. If he was doing 50 in a 25, he is surely culpable for having run over the child. Had he been driving the speed limit, we would think him less culpable. If he was driving the speed limit and knew (as it was his normal route) that children often played in or near the street during that time of day, it may have been incumbent on him to have been driving below the speed limit. If he knows the street, it is reasonable to expect him to take precautions. Does he always speed on residential streets, thus inviting a tragedy? Or was his wife whose water had just broken in the car, and this was the only reason he was driving so fast?

4. If the man had been paying attention, he would not have run over the child.
Was the man lighting a cigarette, or fiddling with the radio, or eating, or talking on his cell phone? The less he was attending to driving, the more culpable he is. Is he the kind of person who does not pay much attention to driving, or was this a fluke owing to the fact that he had just spilled hot coffee in his lap?

The point here is that we ask about people's dispositions, wanting to know whether they are ticking time bombs or whether their actions were fluky results of extenuating circumstances. These questions are independent of determinism, and questions about what count as extenuating circumstances, thus exempting or excusing individuals to what extent from praise or blame, are political questions instead of metaphysical.

Further, if the man had been paying attention, driving (below) the speed limit, and there really was nothing he (or anyone else) could have done to prevent his running over the child, he will (as cg notes) feel guilty. The feeling of guilt does not signal some intuition about in/determinism. Rather, it signals that we acknowledge that our actions have consequences, and that our responsibility extends as far out as our causal relevance. The man feels guilt because he has, even non-intentionally, put a harm on the scales (they need not be moral scales; most scales aren't). Even Austin's man who shoots his neighbor's goat by accident knows that he owes the neighbor a new goat. Focusing on punishment and retribution (how much of a harm should we visit on the agent), rather than on compensation and restitution (how much of a benefit is the patient owed) distracts our moral attention. Both punishment and restitution are means to the end of balancing the scales, but one repays a harm with a harm ignoring the harmed, while one restores a harm with a benefit with our attention where it should be (and who really gives a damn about the harmer, unless he is so reckless that he constitutes a permanent unacceptable danger to others).

One last point about guilt is that guilt is often associated with a searching for what one could have done differently. Guilt prompts us to the examination of possible worlds I explored above. This is a good thing, for this examination can lead to learning, and can alter one's dispositions, making one less likely to, say, speed in the future, and thus reducing the possibility that any more children become road pancakes.

Will, sorry to have posted such a long thing on your blog. I'll start my own soon enough, so I don't take up your space.

err... the capacity to learn (that is, a less than one probability that tomorrow's responses to information are the same as today's responses)...

i snuck a 'not' in there by accident.

The argument Ponnuru makes drives me crazy. It ranks right up there with Dostoevsky's 'if there is no god, everything is permitted,' and with Descartes' 'if there is no god, there is no knowledge.'

All 3 are skyhook arguments. They start with the mistaken premise that some (spooky, wildly improbable) thing X is required for some other thing. This premise is almost always false. In Ponnuru's argument: contra-causal authorship of actions is required for the non-futility of moral reasoning (which in turn is required for free will, which in turn is required for moral responsibility). James above gives a definition which I suppose Ponnuru would accept. (In Dostoevsky's: a guarantee of eternal moral scale-balancing is required for moral imperatives to have meaning. I won't get into Descartes') Then, they give that spooky thing a really nice name--free will, in this case--and hang absolutely everything on it. Remember that Ponnuru makes his argument in the context of, well, trying to argue that theism is necessary for morality to have meaning, so the Dostoevsky example is apt.

Ponnuru's argument is really something like this:

1. There is moral responsibility only if moral reasoning is non-futile. (If there is moral responsibility, morality has a meaning, etc., etc.)
2. Moral reasoning is non-futile only if it is causally relevant to the production of intentional action.
3. The causal relevance of moral reasoning (and other mental operations) to intentional actions is called free will.

We're ok so far. The definition in 3 needs a hell of a lot of refinement, but it works for now. Here's where Ponnuru screws up:

4. A thing or event is causally relevant only if it is not itself caused. (This is contra-causal, prime mover free will.)
5. If determinism is true, then every event is caused.

And then everything follows:
6. If determinism is true, then nothing (except perhaps atoms or sub-atomic particles) is causally relevant (from 4&5)
7. Moral reasoning is futile (or illusory). (from 2&6)
8. Free will does not exist. (from 3&6)
9. Moral responsibility does not exist (from 1&7)

The problem, of course, is with 4. It confuses levels, and elides a distinction between causal relevance and causal efficacy. If determinism is true, then only atoms or sub-atomic particles (or strings or whatever) are causally efficacious. It does not follow that physical objects and events that can be spoken of only at a higher level are not causally relevant. One billiard ball's striking another is causally relevant to the second ball's moving, even if the first ball's movement is itself caused and causally non-efficacious. For if the first billiard ball had not struck the second, the second would not have moved. (In the possible world where, ...) (The paper to read here is Frank Jackson and Phillip Pettit 'Causation in the Philosophy of Mind.' PPR 50 (1990), repr. in their anthology with Michael Smith.)

Eliding the distinction between causal relevance and causal efficacy is eliding the distinction between determinism and fatalism. If fatalism is true, then there is no free will and moral reasoning is futile. But fatalism is the idea that whatever is going to happen will happen regardless of what we do. This is false.

What happens clearly depends on what we do. And what we do clearly depends on what information we are able to acquire and how that information stands for us as constituting or comprising reasons for action. (That is, what we do depends on our reasonings, moral or otherwise.)

The fact that there are three cows loose on Connecticut Ave. is a good reason for me to avoid Connecticut Ave. The traffic will be horrible. But for the farmer who has lost his cows, it is a very good reason to go to Connecticut Ave. to collect them. Similarly, the fact that some action is torture is sufficient, over-riding reason for me not to perform or condone the action. For others, the fact does not have this standing (though it should: they are bad people for not being sufficiently sensitive to the reason-giving status of the fact that an act is torture). Reason-responsiveness and the capacity to learn (that is, a less than one probability that tomorrow's responses to information are not the same as today's responses) are all we need for free will (the causal relevance of mental operations to intentional actions) and moral responsibility. And these are both clearly compatible with determinism.

John Tabin: It's not clear what's especially problematic about thinking there is such a class of people who 'think they believe' things but really don't. If belief is in some sense a propositional attitute that is answerable to the world (i.e. a belief that p should disappear in light of a perception that not p), then those attitudes toward propositions that are insulated from such answerability might not properly deserve to be called beliefs. For example, there is a rational requirement that if one believes p and one believes that p -> q, then one will believe q. However, the argument p -> q, p, therefore q, does not end in 'i believe q' but rather, simply, q. If one does not accept q after having accepted that such an argument is valid, then we cannot allow it to be said that he believes that p.

More simply, there is no special problem about people thinking they want some things when they actually don't. I can't find a reason to suspect the case should be any different concerning beliefs.