AnthonyAdams45

At least one previous writer has suggested that choice is necessary for responsibility. At least one other writer has suggested that choice is sufficient for responsibility. I would like to suggest that in common usage, choice plays no essential role in responsibility.

Imagine watching a football game where your selection of plays made prior to each snap was identical to the plays actually run. That is to say, you chose a play from the playbook, and that was the play run. Are you responsible for that play being run? Of course not. And why not? You were not a cause of the play's being run. Causing an event is sufficient for being responsible for an event, choosing the event is not.

Further, should I ask "Who is responsible for changing the cat litter?" I am not asking "Who freely chooses to change the cat litter?" as quite likely no one chose that chore, but rather had it assigned to them. Instead I am asking "Who is supposed to cause the cat litter to be changed?" So here we see choice isn't even necessary for responsibility.

Keith Russell

Anthony:

Cute, but not effective.

You separate choice from cause, and say that choosing is not a cause.

Your argument, though, is circular. You say that choosing is separate from cause, then you say that choosing is not cause. (But it's redundant and circular to say that a thing which is separate from another things, is 'not' the other thing.)

You haven't shown that choosing isn't causing, you've only claimed that it is not.

Keith.

AnthonyAdams45

Keith:

Of course your agonizing over the proper use of your time has a determined outcome, that is, a series of causal reasons led to your conclusion. Do you not "choose" the course of action which seems best to you? Had some other course seemed better, wouldn't you have chosen that one? Cost/benefit analyses, your description of your reasoning process, are almost always understood as determined by the factors pertinent to the decision making process.

Do not let the "meat puppet" analogy get in the way of understanding determinism. To say that your actions are determined is not to say they are determined by others, or by some greater force. Rather, it is to say that whatever occurs is the effect of earlier influential events, from choosing colors and composition because of an admiration of some older artist to genetic inheritence from some unknown ancestor.

AnthonyAdams45

But look at the football example: I chose the play, but did not cause it to be run. I am neither coach nor quarterback nor divinity. So despite my choosing the play that was actually run, I did not cause it, and am not responsible for it. The point being, if you do not cause an event, even if you chose it, you cannot be responsible for it.

AnthonyAdams45

Now to directly answer the question:

Any teleological moral theory need not ask for the source of the good outcome, but rather only that the outcome be good; the goodness or badness of the outcome then is not so judged based on motive, but rather on some value of the outcome itself, eg, creates more happiness than misery.

Therefore, freedom is not necessary for a teleological moral judgment to be assessed, and so even in a determined world, moral judgments have meaning and can be made.

Keith Russell

Anthony, you said:
"Do not let the "meat puppet" analogy get in the way of understanding determinism. To say that your actions are determined is not to say they are determined by others, or by some greater force. Rather, it is to say that whatever occurs is the effect of earlier influential events, from choosing colors and composition because of an admiration of some older artist to genetic inheritence from some unknown ancestor."

This explains the 'no free will' position better than anything I've ever read.

Thanks,

Keith.

bd-from-kg

Kip:

1. Punishment and moral responsibility

The last important question regarding my sequence of “moral propositions” regards the relationship between 6 and 5 – that is, between “Smith should be punished for killing Jones” and “Smith deserves to be punished for killing Jones”. As you point out, the first does not actually entail the second: it is possible that a person (or other entity “should” be punished even though he may not be “deserving” of punishment because he is not morally responsible. The examples you gave were puppies, robots, and toddlers.

I have to admit that I hadn’t thought sufficiently about this point. It is indeed true that it is often justifiable to punish entities which are not moral agents, and who therefore do not “deserve” to be punished. And it’s no good to say that the term “punishment” is not applicable in such cases, because it is routinely applied to them. So you’re right: 6 does not entail 5.

Before proceeding, it may be worthwhile to point out two things:

(1) This objection has nothing to do with the original question. If adults have free will, there is no reason whatever to suppose that toddlers don’t. Being able to choose freely is not a magical ability acquired at a late age. When little Jimmy decides not to hit Sally (who is playing with his toy train) because he knows he’ll be punished, he is just as sure that he is choosing freely - that he “could have done otherwise” - as an adult would be under similar circumstances. Moreover, the reasons for thinking that he should not be punished if he “could not have acted otherwise” are exactly the same (so far as I can see) as they would be for an adult.

(2) The distinction between being responsible (i.e., being properly subject to punishment) and being morally responsible is subtle and has few practical implications. In the vast majority of cases a person should be treated the same way for an action that he is responsible for whether he is morally responsible or not.

Still, there is a difference, and occasionally it is a difference that actually matters.

A person (or a puppy, for that matter) is responsible for an act if it violates a rule that really is desirable, all things considered, to have in place, and if he (or she or it) understands (or can reasonably be expected to understand) that it is forbidden – i.e., that he will be punished for doing it. A person is morally responsible for an act if he understands, or can be reasonably expected to understand, the relevant moral reasoning – i.e., the reasons why the act is socially undesirable, or to put it more precisely, the reasons why it would be better, all things considered – i.e., taking all consequences to everyone affected into account – that he not do it. A person who can reasonably be expected to understand this (and who “could” do otherwise in the relevant sense) can justly be not only punished, but blamed or condemned for his act; not only is it right to punish him, but he deserves to be punished.

So when does this make a difference, and why? Well, if someone is capable of understanding not only the concept of “rules” to be followed on penalty of being punished, but the moral justification for the rules, he is capable of understanding that sometimes the rules are wrong. No set of rules, however soundly conceived, can give a “correct” result for every case, and some sets of rules are far from being soundly conceived. A true moral agent can be expected to judge the rules themselves, and their applicability to a specific case, and act accordingly. Thus he will sometimes break the rules because he believes that they are wrong, or not being applied appropriately. In such cases he sometimes should not be blamed or punished – in fact, in some cases he should be praised and rewarded. (There are also cases in which, for practical or prudential reasons, he should be punished for breaking the rule even though he does not deserve to be punished or blamed.)

Contrast this with what we would normally do if a puppy or toddler broke a rule in a situation where, by sheer luck, breaking it was the “right thing to do”. Since these agents are incapable of making such judgments, there is no point in withholding punishment; in fact, doing so would “send the wrong message” that it’s OK to break that particular rule. (Of course, we would probably mitigate the punishment in such a case, especially for a child.)

Conversely, if someone whom we judge capable of judging when the rules should be broken follows a rule in a situation where we feel that he knows, or could reasonably be expected to know, that it would be better to break it, we will be inclined to blame him, and even to punish him (in extra-legal ways) for following the rule.

Thus the standard used to judge the actions of a moral agent are significantly different from those applied to someone (like a toddler) who is merely responsible, but not morally responsible, for his actions.

So the transition from 6 to 5 is valid only in case the agent is capable of understanding the reasons (i.e., the moral justification) for the rule that he transgressed. In the case of murder the reasons are so obvious that very few adults would fail to meet this qualification, but in other cases the number may be larger.

In any case, as I pointed out earlier, this has nothing to do with the question of how it can be just to punish someone for doing something if he “could not have acted otherwise”. Free will (of whatever kind) has nothing to do with the distinction between being merely being responsible and being morally responsible.

2. God and moral responsibility

It should be clear by now that the concept of moral responsibility is intimately tied up with the desirable effects of setting up a system of rewards and punishments. But as always, the desirability of setting up such a system depends on how the consequences compare to those of possible alternatives. If there were ways of influencing people to act in socially desirable ways that did not involve the obvious negative effects of punishment, it would be impossible to justify punishment.

Thus the question of whether someone is morally responsible from God’s point of view is quite different from whether he is responsible from the human point of view. (Here I’m assuming for the sake of argument the God exists.) God, being the omnipotent Creator, could obviously produce desirable behavior in at least two ways that do not involve punishment: He could create people without the desires that lead to antisocial behavior, or with extremely strong altruistic desires that would preclude it; or He could simply prevent people from doing “wrong” things on a case-by-case basis. Neither of these options would infringe on “free will,” properly understood; they wouldn’t even infringe on LFW if such a thing could exist.

So from God’s point of view, no one is morally responsible for doing anything.

It is natural to consider God’s point of view more “valid” or “objectively true” than the human point of view, so if no one could be morally responsible for their actions in God’s eyes it is natural to think that it is objectively true that no one is morally responsible at all. But this is a fallacy, though a very natural one. Being morally responsible (i.e., properly subject to blame or praise) is not an intrinsic property of a person, any more than being valuable is an intrinsic property of a million-dollar bearer’s bond, or being the owner of a house is an intrinsic property of the person who has title to it. In all of these cases we invest the subject with these properties for human purposes.

3. Morality in general

Now for some quick comments about a couple of your other statements. You say:

And later:

As you please. But the original point of this thread was a positive argument to the effect that people cannot be morally responsible for their actions in a deterministic world. And the reasoning for this claim was based on the supposedly “self-evident” moral principles of PAP and PUR. I have endeavored to show that these principles (or at least your interpretation of them) is invalid – that is, that not only are they not valid moral principles, but they are logically incoherent. If you now want to say that you don’t accept the concept of moral responsibility anyway, I have no interest in pursuing the matter.

You also say:

If you think that Hume rejected morality, or the idea of moral responsibility, you’re completely mistaken. In reality he devoted an entire book to the subject: <a href="http://www.ncu.edu.tw/~shamyats/hume_epm/" target="_blank">An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals</a>. But his morality was entirely naturalistic. What he rejected as “metaphysical” were notions like LFW and an intrinsic property of “ought-to-be-doneness”.

[ September 21, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

bd-from-kg

Primal:

1. Morality and emotional reactions

You say:

The natural, straightforward interpretation of this is that when you say that an act is “right” you mean that you have a certain emotional reaction to it, and when you say it is “wrong” you mean that you have a different emotional reaction to it.

This is consistent with your earlier statement:

And also with your later one:

But this definition has one glaring problem: it is totally at variance with standard usage. When you say that an act is “right,” you may mean that you have a certain emotional reaction to it, but this is not what the vast majority of people mean by it.

Of course, there is no “objectively correct” definition of anything, but it is not very useful to define commonly used terms in ways that are radically inconsistent with the way most people use them. The purpose of language is to communicate. Communication is impeded rather than facilitated by using common words in nonstandard ways, especially when it is not immediately obvious that you are doing so.

The fact that this usage is nonstandard (to put it mildly) can be demonstrated easily using one of your own examples. Many people favor the death penalty in spite of the fact that their emotional reaction to seeing someone hung or electrocuted would be nausea and horror. Conversely, many people who oppose it do so in spite of the fact that their immediate reaction to learning that someone has kidnapped a young girl, sexually abused her, etc. is “Kill the b_____d!” Similarly, many people who support legalized abortion do so in spite of the fact that their emotional reaction to seeing an actual abortion would be revulsion and anguish, whereas many who oppose it do so in spite of the fact that their hearts go out to the young women who feel compelled to resort to such a desperate, heartbreaking measure.

The fact that there are extended, reasoned debates about the morality of these and many other things would seem to demonstrate pretty conclusively that your definition of “morals” has little or nothing in common with what most people mean by it.

When I pointed this out before, and commented that people are quite often persuaded by reasoned arguments that they were wrong in a moral judgment, you replied:

But in the first place this implies a very different definition of “morals” than the original one. You now seem to be saying that when you say that an act is “right” you mean that you would have a certain emotional reaction to it if you had enough knowledge and understanding. This is a far cry from saying that you have this emotional reaction to it.

And it is clearly inconsistent with some of your own statements. For example:

Not, I note, due to a judgment that you would experience a certain feeling toward the act if you had more knowledge and understanding, but due to your actually having this feeling as a direct result of witnessing or imagining the act.

Moreover, this definition, though closer to standard usage, still differs from it pretty drastically. Thus, advocates of the death penalty are not saying that if others had enough knowledge and understanding they would not react to seeing an actual execution with nausea and horror, and opponents are not saying that if others had enough K&U they would not react to learning that a man had kidnapped and molested a young child with an intense, passionate desire to kill the S.O.B.

No one would deny that moral judgments are often caused by emotional reactions, or by judgments that we would have certain kinds of reactions to certain kinds of acts. But the question is whether what we are judging is merely that we are having, or would have, such an emotional reaction.

It seems quite clear that it is not. Whatever kind of emotion you may adduce as the one we are referring to when we say that an action is “wrong,” it is always meaningful to say, “Yes, I have no doubt that I would have that reaction to an act such as the one you describe, but I’m not sure that it would be wrong.” This is universally recognized as a meaningful statement rather than a nonsensical one like “Yes, that polygon undoubtedly has three sides, but I’m not at all sure that it’s a triangle”. But if saying that an act is wrong meant that one had (or would have) a certain emotional reaction to it, the first statement would be exactly as nonsensical as the second.

[Note: The comments on utilitarianism seem to have no relevance to the subject of this thread, so I’m not going to discuss the matter further.]

2. Science and moral judgments.

You say:

Quite true. But what it can’t do is to provide a foundation for moral principles. Once these are in place, science has a great deal to say about “practical ethics”.

Your extended comments about rape are irrelevant for two reasons. First, I never suggested that rape within the tribe would have any evolutionary advantage. But raping the women of a defeated tribe certainly could, and probably does. (It has been a common practice historically.) Although you commented on this, you didn’t seem to recognize how it affects your argument: rape under these conditions is advantageous in terms of propagating genes; it is socially approved in many societies (probably because of this), but it is immoral. So saying that a certain kind of behavior is moral cannot mean that it has evolved via natural selection because it is advantageous to the group. It may be true that natural selection has produced an inherited disposition to approve of some behaviors that would generally be described as “moral” and to disapprove of some others that would generally be described as “immoral”, but to say that a behavior is “moral” or “immoral” cannot mean that natural selection has produced such an inherited disposition. In fact, the one question has nothing to do with the other. If everyone approves of the institution of slavery it doesn’t follow that slavery is right. If everyone approves of giving preferential treatment to members of one’s own race or tribe, that doesn’t make it right. If mankind has a genetic disposition to fight wars, it doesn’t follow that we should fight wars.

Sociobiology is interesting, but it cannot be used to draw moral conclusions other than practical ones, such as how to make use of, or effectively counter, innate genetic predispositions in guiding our children (and adults, for that matter) to behave in socially desirable ways.

To put the final nails in the coffin of this “moral theory”, let’s consider your statement:

Now this contradicts your earlier definition of morals as “emotional reactions.” A judgment is not the same thing as an emotional reaction. You need to kick this bad habit of “defining” something to be whatever seems convenient at the moment, or claiming that something is true “by definition” without thinking about what this implies about the definition. In philosophy it is essential to be careful about definitions; the entire discussion can turn on them.

But let’s ignore this and consider the statement on its own merits. Aside from the point made above, this idea has some other defects:

(1) It has the same problem as your earlier definition. It is clearly meaningful to say, “Humans evolved to judge such-and-such a type of action as immoral, but is it really?” The fact that this is clearly a meaningful question proves that what we mean by saying that an action is immoral is not that we evolved to judge it as immoral. And if you find the question meaningful (as I suspect you do), it can’t be what you mean either.

(2) To judge that something is moral, we must have some meaning of “moral” in mind. And this meaning cannot be that we judge it as moral. Suppose that you asked some people to judge whether a certain painting is “decidulous” and when they ask what you mean by “decidulous” you replied, “It’s simple. If you judge that it’s decidulous, then by definition it’s decidulous”. Do you think they would find this a satisfactory definition? Have you really defined “decidulous” ?

(3) Evolving standards, well, evolve. That means that certain specific acts (John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, say) were (or would have been) judged moral at one time and immoral at another. If what it meant to say that an act is moral were that it is judged to be moral, it would follow that such acts really were moral at one time and immoral at another; specifically, that at one time the raid on Harper’s Ferry really was right, but that at another time it really was wrong. I can understand the statement that an action was judged right at one time and wrong at another, but I can make no sense of the statement that one and the same act really was right at one time and wrong at another.

What you really want to say, I suspect, is that moral statements are neither true nor false; that they do not express propositions. This is a very different thing from “defining” morality in terms of emotional reactions or of what people “judge”. And it doesn’t solve all problems; if you want to use moral language meaningfully, you still need to give some reasonable account of the actual purpose and function of moral language and relate this to the kinds of things people actually say when they use it. The alternative is to dismiss moral language as meaningless. But in that case there’s little point in participating in a discussion of how it is possible to be morally responsible in a deterministic world.

Kip

Bd:

I am convinced that our dispute is one of semantics. Consider these two cases:

1. the final domino in a sequence that knocks over a pin
2. God who sets up the universe so that the dominoes fall over

I claim that, in this situation, God is responsible for the pin being knocked over. However, in a quite obvious, and rather trivial, sense, the final domino (1) is also responsible, if for no other reason than the domino caused the pin to fall. The responsibility of God, however, is different than the responsibility of the domino, and we may say that this is “ultimate responsibility”. This “ultimate responsibility” is practically what I have taken “moral responsibility” to mean.

However, I think that you are using the term “moral responsibility” in a different sense. Your “moral responsibility” seems to be the same responsibility of 1, but perhaps with an extra necessary condition. In particular, you add that:

“A person is morally responsible for an act if he understands, or can be reasonably expected to understand, the relevant moral reasoning – i.e., the reasons why the act is socially undesirable, or to put it more precisely, the reasons why it would be better, all things considered – i.e., taking all consequences to everyone affected into account – that he not do it.”

Suffice it to say that you simply assert this definition and I fail to understand why these conditions of understanding and causation are sufficient. The definition surely does not reference the ability to do otherwise, which is traditionally held to be a necessary condition for moral responsibility.

Nonetheless, I understand exactly what you mean by “moral responsibility”, and agree that this is compatible with determinism, moreover I suspect that you understand that I mean “ultimate responsibility” by “moral responsibility and agree that this is incompatible with determinism.

Thus you also say:

“So from God’s point of view, no one is morally responsible for doing anything.”

The dispute is now merely between who is abusing language and I leave that for others to decide.

The problem arises, not from a misunderstanding of the nature of morality, but my refusal to grant morality the weak definition you wish to apply to it. All that is required for your “clockwork morality” is understanding and causation. Thus you would hold robots who understood the consequences of their actions responsible.

This is not relevant to our dispute, but I felt that I need to call attention that your assumption of "mental causes" dismisses the entire possibility of epiphenomenalism, a doctrine that is obviously true. Instead of "mental" causes I would rather refer to physical causes that correlate with mental sensations. For surely, that my hand is typing these words is a function of my body and brain, and the mental sensation of "willing to type" does not intervene to cause me to type, but is simply associated with that state of my body and brain.

I agree that determinism is not mentioned but I suspect your definition of action may have “snuck” determinism in the argument. Suffice it to say the obvious, that the libertarian maintains the exact opposite of what your definitions entail, that given X, X must choose Y. So, either the libertarian would deny some part of your definitions or simply be contradicting himself. My suspicion is that, although the libertarian agrees that will and action are determined, and that, provided he wills X, X must occur, he reserves the notion of “choice” for a different, more metaphysical domain, in which it is possible that given state X, X may choose either Y or Z. So to "choose" Y is not to "do" Y, or "cause" Y, and therefore not limited to the restrictions imposed upon action or causation. Indeed, one can imagine the (almost comical) notion of a libertarian choosing X without his brain changing at all. Each choice is a sort of metaphysical singularity and the libertarian is perpetually defying the laws of physics.

Allow me to raise a perhaps trivial distinction, one with which I am not sure that even I agree. This is the distinction between requiring the logically impossible and satisfying the logically impossible. It seems to me that, although satisfying the logically impossible is obviously incoherent (you cannot conceive that 2 + 2 = 5), I am less certain that requiring the logically impossible is also incoherent. For example, is the principle “if 2 + 2 = 5 you may have a cookie” incoherent? I can easily imagine someone giving me a cookie according to the principle. I would, quite simply, never get a cookie. No difficulty seems to ever arise because 2 + 2 never does equal 5 and thus the conception of satisfying that condition is never required. You could also imagine a bomb that is set to explode unless a person presses buttons in Detroit and Chicago simultaneously in which case we could say (provided only this person knows) “unless you are both in Chicago and not in Chicago at the same time, the bomb will explode”. I admit that the idea of being both places simultaneously is incoherent, but of course the person never satisfies that condition, so we never have to conceive of it, and the bomb explodes accordingly. Is the principle itself not coherent?

The PAP is also a principle that requires the logically impossible. Now, I grant that satisfying the condition of choice without desire is incoherent, but I have no difficulty comprehending the principle itself anymore than I have difficulty imagining a job application that requires me to check the options for both "married" and "bachelor". The impossible condition is simply never satisfied and thus moral responsibility is never granted. So, the PAP is not so much incoherent as impossible to satisfy and your dismissal of the PAP is simply an appeal to the impossible. In effect you say “you are asking me to do this, what are you crazy? No one could ever do this! It’s not just me and this world, this is impossible to satisfy ever. Therefore there must be some other principle.”

Indeed, this is exactly what I said when I quoted Flew:

I had disputed because, although what is “preferable” and what “should” be are often the same, the word “should” sometimes has a broader meaning. “Should” can imply, as you use it, the least undesirable option, however, the word should can also imply some heavenly ideal that, although impossible, is nonetheless conceivable. Thus the saying “if humans can only have cancer or AIDS, humans should have AIDS” is awkward because we do not think either of those possibilities (even if they exhaust the possibilities) “should” happen. In particular, the word “should” seems to imply some aspect of “deserving” which preferable does not. I was questioning the step from 6 to 7 because of this ambiguity.

Yes, I agree it should be shut down. I was only questioning the move to the extent that the word “should” implied, as you say it does not, an ideal state of affairs. If that is not the implication, I remove that objection.

Thank you for clarifying the ideas of consequentialism (etc.). I would classify myself as a consequentialist too. Although I am not sure that consequentialism escapes the difficulties you accuse other systems of having. You seem to substitute an “ought-to-be-doneness” with an “ought-to-be-attainedness” and insist upon this distinction, which seems to me, quite trivial.

Yes, you are right. There can be no mix because there is no “ought-to-be-doneness” only “ought-to-be-attainedness”.

What was the “original question”? I was objecting to the original argument, which was yours (about the seven points) and I must say that this objection is not only relevant but fatal.

Also, I am not sure what you mean by “free will”, if not LFW, other than the property a person must have to be morally responsible. In that case, I am not sure how young you mean “toddlers” to be, but I think it is obvious that free will is a function of age. That is why there are different criminal codes for minors, we do not hold children as responsible as adults, etc. You are in the minority on this position (if I understand you correctly, but I often do not).

That is an interesting consequence and only supports my claim that we only disagree about the labels to apply to the same ideas. You now elaborate on your ideas of moral responsibility and responsibility. I understand your ideas well enough but I am not sure I would give them the same labels.

If you will recall, I dropped that argument the moment you called into question the PAP because I do not pretend to establish the PAP and could not defend myself from such an attack. I do not know how to establish any system for moral responsibility. Indeed, after all of this discussion, you have yet to establish any substitute (although you have surely defined a substitute).

What concept of moral responsibility? The one that you defined? Why should I prefer your system to the PAP? Surely not just because the demands of your system are weak enough to allow people to be morally responsible, even granted that everything they do is a function of things they did not choose! Not only is your rejection of the PAP simply an appeal about the impossibility of satisfying the requirements for moral responsibility, but you seem to conjure your own system out of thin air, your personal definitions or popular opinion. You simply assume that a system that can be satisfied is necessarily more legitimate than one that cannot be satisfied and therefore that people are sometimes morally responsible. By doing so, you effectively beg the entire question!

Yes I have already quoted from this wonderful book. Of course, you are technically right. Hume was a compatibilist. He wished to study moral principles like a disinterested observer or scientist and thus his entire discussion of morals is a description of what people do think people ought to do, not what people “ought” to think people ought to do. So, I should distinguish between the “moralities” of the world and the one, legitimate “morality” (or "metaought"). I was only suggesting that we should abandon the idea of morality in the same way that we abandon the idea of religion as "sophistry and illusion", which is not to say that we do not reserve the word religion to describe what others pretend to know. (Hume was a subjectivist too so I am inclined to think he would agree with me).

[ September 22, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]

[ September 22, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]</p>

K

bd-from-kg:

I've been away for a while and haven't caught up on all the posts, but I'll respond anyway. If I'm repeating things that have already been discussed, I apologize.

I don't believe there is a difference between punishing a person (or animal) for practical reasons and holding them morally responsible. Assuming that moral responsibility is something other than an evolved drive is to assign morality some objective value. This is an assertion I would reject flat out. I believe this type of definition of moral responsibility is flawed. In a case where an individual is being punished, what is the distinction between punishment for an individual you consider morally responsible and one that you don't?