Abstract
In this paper, I distinguish causal from logical versions of the direct argument for incompatibilism. I argue that, contrary to appearances, causal versions are better equipped to withstand an important recent challenge to the direct-argument strategy. The challenge involves arguing that support for the argument’s pivotal inference principle falls short just when it is needed most, namely when a deterministic series runs through an agent’s unimpaired deliberations. I then argue that, while there are limits to what causal versions can accomplish, they can be used to buttress the ultimacy argument, another important argument for incompatibilism.
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Notes
The avoidability requirement has been understood in a variety of ways in the literature. However, these differences won’t concern us here, since the focus of this paper is on alternatives to incompatibilist arguments from the unavoidability of deterministic action.
See especially McKenna (2001, p. 45). In recent work, McKenna presents the following, updated version:
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1.
p is true at time T1, and no one is or ever has been even partly responsible for the fact that p.
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2.
i. p is part of the actual sequence of events e that gives rise to q at T2 (where T2 is later than T1);
ii. p is causally sufficient for the obtaining of q at T2, and any other part of e that is causally sufficient for q either causes or is caused by p; and
iii. no one is or ever has been even partly responsible for the 2.i. and 2.ii.
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3.
Therefore, no one is or ever has been even partly responsible for the fact that q
obtains at T2 (McKenna 2008, p. 364).
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As Fischer puts it, “it is futile to restrict [such a modal principle] to one-path cases…precisely because this would render the principle unable to generate compatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility (which is, after all, the conclusion of van Inwagen’s argument)” (Fischer op. cit., p. 163). For an analogous worry about the so-called consequence argument (an argument one of whose versions is structurally similar to the direct argument, but that purports to establish that determinism rules out the ability to do otherwise, see Warfield (2000) and Campbell (2007).
Shabo (work in progress).
Humean compatibilists have pursued this line against the consequence argument, on the grounds that, if a Humean (or non-constraining) conception of the laws turns out to be correct, which generalizations about human behavior turn out to be laws depends (in effect) on what people actually do. See especially Lewis (1981).
I have focused on real-self theories. But the same point applies mutatis mutandis to other “non-historical” compatibilist accounts. For example, consider the view that we meet the non-epistemic conditions for responsibility when we exercise our normative competence, or general ability, to take moral considerations into account in reaching a decision. (Cf. Wallace 1994.) Such a compatibilist would have to say that someone can be responsible for the decision that results from such an exercise despite her non-responsibility for the fact that the exercise results in this decision. But then it is hard to see how she can be responsible for the fact that the decision comes about. In turn, this makes it hard to see how she can be responsible for the decision itself. I touch on some of these issues in Shabo (forthcoming).
The first explicit defense of the ultimacy rationale is due to Kane (1985). At that point, Kane seemed to see the ultimacy rationale as complement to the traditional, “leeway” (or avoidability-based) rationale, rather than as a rival to it. In Kane (1996), however, he came to see the ultimacy rationale as a replacement for the leeway rationale. (That said, alternative possibilities play an important role in Kane’s account of the conditions for ultimacy responsibility, as I discuss in Shabo forthcoming.) The formulation of the ultimacy argument presented here is due to McKenna (2001, p. 40).
Notice, however, that the former expression is not simply a restatement of the latter. On UO, someone might fail to satisfy the ultimacy condition if her action is a truly random occurrence, or if it issues deterministically from such an occurrence.
Shabo (forthcoming). In the case I have in mind, the neuroscientists boost activity in “self-interested areas” of the brain while suppressing activity in “moral areas,” thereby ensuring that the egoistic implications of the agent’s situation will be salient in her deliberations even as the moral considerations are marginalized. In turn, this deliberative orientation ensures that she acts to further her own interests, at the expense of what is morally right. Yet is she is not subject to an irresistible desire; nor are her agential capacities impaired in any way. Although nothing forces compatibilists to concede that such an agent isn’t morally responsible, they should have no trouble understanding why many will have qualms about blaming her, or why the agent herself—in so far as she is making a good-faith effort to adjudicate her own responsibility—may remain sincerely unconvinced that the neuroscientists’ intervention has no bearing on this question.
In fact, I believe that such a shift may well be underway already, and that it can be traced back at least to Pereboom (1995, 2001), whose influential “four-case argument” uses manipulation scenarios both as a direct challenge to ahistorical compatibilist accounts, and to motivate an ultimacy condition on moral responsibility.
I want to thank an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies for suggesting this response here.
Fischer dubs this position ‘semi-compatibilism.’ According to the semi-compatibilist, the truth of determinism precludes the “freedom to do otherwise” (that is, the satisfaction of the avoidability requirement), but not the existence of moral responsibility. As I am using ‘compatibilism’ in this paper (i.e. to denote the view that moral responsibility is compatible with the truth of causal determinism), semi-compatibilism is a variety of compatibilism.
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Shabo, S. The fate of the direct argument and the case for incompatibilism. Philos Stud 150, 405–424 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9419-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9419-1