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Control, responsibility, and moral assessment

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Abstract

Recently, a number of philosophers have begun to question the commonly held view that choice or voluntary control is a precondition of moral responsibility. According to these philosophers, what really matters in determining a person’s responsibility for some thing is whether that thing can be seen as indicative or expressive of her judgments, values, or normative commitments. Such accounts might therefore be understood as updated versions of what Susan Wolf has called “real self views,” insofar as they attempt to ground an agent’s responsibility for her actions and attitudes in the fact (when it is a fact) that they express who she is as a moral agent. As such, they seem to be open to some of the same objections Wolf originally raised to such accounts, and in particular to the objection that they cannot license the sorts of robust moral assessments involved in our current practices of moral responsibility. My aim in this paper is to try to respond to this challenge, by clarifying the kind of robust moral assessments I take to be licensed by (at least some) non-volitional accounts of responsibility and by explaining why these assessments do not in general require the agent to have voluntary control over everything for which she is held responsible. I also argue that the limited applicability of the distinction between “bad agents” and “blameworthy agents” on these accounts is in fact a mark in their favor.

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Notes

  1. Robert Adams (1985) was one of the first to seriously question volitional accounts of responsibility. For other recent defenses of non-volitionalism, see Scanlon (1988, 1998); Sher (2005, 2006); and Smith (2000, 2005).

  2. Wolf discusses what she calls “Real Self Views” in Chapter 2 of Wolf (1990). Gary Watson and R. Jay Wallace have both discussed Wolf’s view at length in their own work. See Watson (1996), and Wallace (1996), pp. 52–62.

  3. For a recent critique of my own account on these grounds, see Neil Levy (2005). For similar claims, see Blum (1980), p. 189; Slote (1992), pp. 120–124; and Wallace (1996), pp. 126–127. Justin Oakley draws a distinction between assessments that presuppose responsibility (blameworthiness and praiseworthiness) and assessments that do not (estimability and disestimability), and argues that we can be subject to both forms of appraisal on the basis of our attitudes (in particular, for our emotions). In order to be subject to the former assessments, however, we must have made or culpably failed to make voluntary efforts to cultivate our emotional dispositions. See Oakley (1992), chs. 4 and 5. For a similar view, see Sankowski (1977), p. 838.

  4. Wolf (1990), p. 44.

  5. This is the central objection Levy (2005) raises against non-volitional accounts.

  6. Smith (2005). For related discussion and defense, see Smith (2000) and (2004).

  7. I say appropriate “in principle” because whether it would be appropriate “in fact” for any particular individual to make such a demand will often depend upon contextual factors that have nothing to do with a person’s responsibility for the action or attitude in question. I explore these issues further in Smith (forthcoming, 2007).

  8. Levy (2005) provides an explicit statement and defense of this volitional view.

  9. In his critique of non-volitionalist accounts, Levy (2005) provides a similar, but slightly different, account of what it means to say that an agent is morally responsible: “To say that an agent is morally responsible (for an act, omission or attitude) is to say that the Strawsonian reactive attitudes are justified in relation to her with regard to that act, omission or attitude,” p. 2. I have two minor concerns about this formulation: first, this formulation suggests that an agent is morally responsible only for those actions or attitudes that in fact warrant a reactive attitude (hence only for those actions/attitudes that justify attitudes of esteem or indignation or some other reactive attitude). But this would mean we are not morally responsible for most of our boring, neutral, everyday actions, actions that do not warrant any particular reactive attitudes on the part of ourselves or others. We don’t want an account of moral responsibility that implies that we are only morally responsible for those actions/attitudes that in fact warrant either praise or blame. Thus openness “in principle” to moral appraisal (or to the Strawsonian reactive attitudes) is what matters. Second, the question of whether a Strawsonian reactive attitude is “justified” in a particular context might involve considerations that have nothing to do with the agent’s responsibility and blameworthiness (e.g., we might think that someone who shares a fault with the agent might not be “justified” in feeling indignation toward her, yet that seems irrelevant to the question of whether she is in fact responsible and blameworthy for the thing in question). For this reason, I think it is less problematic to formulate the notion of what it is to be morally responsible for some thing in terms of whether the person is open, in principle, to moral appraisal on account of the thing in question, rather than in terms of whether a Strawsonian reactive attitude is justified. I don’t think this affects anything of substance in the debate between volitionalism and non-volitionalism.

  10. Watson himself does not address this question, and I do not know whether he would endorse this extension.

  11. This understanding of the nature and purpose of moral appraisal did not originate with Smart, of course. David Hume’s denial that there is any “deep” difference between the appraisal of natural abilities and the appraisal of moral qualities in Book III, Part 3, Section iv of A Treatise of Human Nature involves a similar understanding of moral praise and blame: “Men have observ’d, that tho’ natural abilities and moral qualities be in the main on the same footing, there is, however, this difference betwixt them, that the former are almost invariable by any art or industry; while the latter, or at least, the actions, that proceed from them, may be chang’d by the motives of reward and punishment, praise and blame. Hence legislators, and divines, and moralists, have principally applied themselves to the regulating these voluntary actions, and have endeavour’d to produce additional motives for being virtuous in that particular. They knew, that to punish a man for folly, or exhort him to be prudent and sagacious, wou’d have but little effect; tho’ the same punishments and exhortations, with regard to justice and injustice, might have a considerable influence.” See Hume (1739, 1978), p. 609. Hume places less emphasis on this utilitarian aspect of his theory in Appendix IV of his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals although he still insists that there is not a deep distinction to be drawn between virtues and talents, vices and defects. See Hume (1751, 1975), pp. 312–323. For other defenses of this view, see Schlick (1939); and, more recently, Daniel Dennett (1984), ch. 7.

  12. Smart (1961) thinks that blame should be “just as dispassionate as dispraise of a woman’s nose,” p. 305. Indeed, a large part of the motivation for Smart’s paper, it seems, is to combat what he sees as the pernicious assumption that “righteous indignation is an appropriate emotion in certain circumstances” (p. 291). There is some irony, therefore, in his own righteous indignation toward those “pharisees” who continue to “judge” others in spite of the alleged metaphysical facts of the matter.

  13. I defend this view more fully in Smith (forthcoming, 2007). For a similar view about the importance of distinguishing judgments of culpability and actual blaming responses, see the introduction to Fischer and Ravizza (1993), pp. 1–41. According to what they describe as a modified Strawsonian theory, “judging whether and to what degree to praise or blame someone involves a set of considerations over and above the base assessment that the person is rationally accessible to this sort of reaction,” p. 19.

  14. In the case of positive moral appraisal, the claim is that the person has gone “above and beyond” what is morally required of her in some area. To praise someone as “generous” or “thoughtful,” for example, is to claim that she regularly or in some particular instance has given extraordinary attention to the needs and interests of others in her attitudes and actions.

  15. This view of what differentiates “deep” moral appraisal from mere unwelcome descriptions has been defended by Scanlon (1988), who claims that “Adverse moral judgment...differs from mere unwelcome description because it calls for particular kinds of response, such as justification, explanation, or admission of fault,” p. 171. See also Scanlon (1998), pp. 271–272. This feature of negative moral appraisal is more difficult to extend to its positive analogue, but I think we can say something like the following: positive moral appraisal, though it does not itself address a demand to its target, by its nature involves an acknowledgment that the agent has exceeded in some way the legitimate moral demands that apply to her. This is still very different from mere positive description, because it implies activity of some sort on the part of the agent in question.

  16. Wallace (1996) makes a strong case for the claim that moral demands can only be directed at states that can be directly controlled by the reasons expressed in moral principles, and that this condition is not met when it comes to particular states of emotion or feeling. See pp. 131–132. As I suggest in the text, I think the requirement that an agent have “direct control” over anything legitimately subject to moral demands is too strong

  17. For an excellent discussion of these issues, see Sher (2005).

  18. Adams (1985) calls failures of this sort “cognitive sins,” and discusses a number of helpful examples of such failures, pp. 17–21.

  19. Indeed, this is how Levy responds to an example I gave about forgetting a friend’s birthday: “[I]f there was nothing she might reasonably have been expected to do, which would have made her recalling her friend’s birthday more probable, then she [is not responsible]” Levy (2005), pp. 12–13. In a footnote he acknowledges that the thing I might reasonably have been expected to do cannot be “to have remembered my friend’s birthday,” for that is precisely the claim that is in dispute here. But it seems to me that this is precisely what the demand comes to in this case: As a friend, it is reasonable to expect me to remember my friends’ birthdays (and not simply to do things to make it more probable that I will remember my friends’ birthdays). And, in any event, there seems to be an infinite regress looming in this direction: what if I fail to remember to do the things that make it more probable that I will remember my friends’ birthdays? Am I responsible for this only if there were things I might reasonably have been expected to do which would have made it more probable that I would recall to do the things necessary to make it more probable that I will recall my friends’ birthdays? And, if so, where does this regress end?

  20. It could be that Wallace is working in this passage with an implicit assumption about the substantive content of morality—namely, that moral demands apply only to intentions or actions, and therefore that we cannot be open to moral criticism for our beliefs and other attitudes. But this would beg the question against Scanlon, and it is not supported by anything he says in this passage. He does, however, argue for this position later on in his book, where he claims that moral obligations apply only to choices expressed in action. See Wallace (1996), pp. 127–136.

  21. When I talk of the different kinds of “significance” that different sorts of normative failings can have, I do not mean to be implying that moral failings are always more serious than non-moral failings. Some moral failings can be quite trivial (e.g., taking an extra item through the express check-out line at the grocery store), while some non-moral failings can be catastrophic (e.g., an engineering miscalculation which results in the deaths of hundreds of people). My point is only that moral failings involve breaches (sometimes trivial) of what we owe to other people, and therefore they have direct implications for our relations with them.

  22. But what would make self-criticism, rather than mere negative self-evaluation, appropriate here is that what is being assessed is something which is, in principle, sensitive to my judgments about reasons, and for which I can therefore reproach myself if I decide that those judgments have been faulty. Contrast this to the negative self-evaluation one might make of oneself on the basis of one’s appearance or lack of hand-eye coordination.

  23. It might be thought here that a demand to “modify” one’s attitudes implies that one must have volitional control over them. But this is a mistake. We cannot modify our attitudes “at will,” though we can re-evaluate the grounds upon which they are held and we may come to see that those grounds are mistaken. In making such an assessment, our attitudes will usually change; but we have not changed them “at will.” For a very helpful discussion of these two different senses of “control” we might exercise with respect to our attitudes, see Hieronymi (2006). For related discussion of the voluntary/involuntary distinction, see Adams (1985), pp. 6–11.

  24. Of course, the values we do and do not care about will have indirect implications for our relations with others, in the sense that they will help determine with whom we want to spend time, and what shared activities are open to us in these relations. And being in close personal relationships can give us moral reasons to take seriously and to try to appreciate the values which our loved ones care about. Failing to make such efforts can be grounds for moral criticism in such cases, but not because we have failed to respond appropriately to the values in question, but because we have failed to respond appropriately to our loved ones.

  25. Here, of course, I am drawing upon Peter Strawson’s influential discussion of the difference between taking up a “participant stance” and an “objective stance” toward an agent. See Strawson (1993), p. 59.

  26. It might be thought that non-volitionalist accounts do not leave any space at all for drawing this distinction. But I think even a non-volitionalist can allow for such a distinction in the sorts of fanciful cases involving “implanted” or hypnotically-induced attitudes. For example, we can imagine a person induced through hypnosis to think “Jones is evil” every time the phone rings, even though Jones is his best friend and he is puzzled by the thought whenever it occurs. In this case, we might say the attitude is “bad” but he is not blameworthy for it. But this is because the “attitude” (if we can call it that) in this case does not really reflect his own evaluative assessment of reasons. It would make no sense to ask him to defend it, because he himself regards it as completely puzzling and unintelligible whenever it occurs.

  27. Watson (1993) devotes an extended discussion to this case in his thought-provoking article “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme.” I am much indebted to his discussion.

  28. After shooting two young men in cold blood, Harris reportedly suggested to his accomplice that it would be amusing if they dressed up as police officers to inform their parents that their sons had been killed (Watson, 1993, p. 132). This is someone who clearly was able to make judgments about reasons (e.g., about what sorts of things would be “fun” or “amusing”), but these judgments gave no weight or significance at all to the lives or well-being of others.

  29. According to his sister, “He told me he had his chance, he took the road to hell and there’s nothing more to say” (Watson, 1993, p. 133).

  30. Notice here that in calling someone “cruel,” we presuppose that she understands that her actions or attitudes cause pain or suffering to others; the “cruelty” comes from the fact that she does not regard this as a reason to act differently (or that she sees it as a positive reason to continue acting as she does). In a very puzzling section of his paper, Levy claims that attributionists in general, and Scanlon in particular, are committed to claiming that agents are blameworthy for actions that cause harm to others even if they had no way of knowing that their actions were causing harm (e.g., if, unbeknownst to us, plants could feel pain, we would be blameworthy for treading on them) (Levy, 2005, p. 9). After all, such harmful acts are “attributable” to them in the relevant sense. But this is a mistake. The attributionist, like the volitionist, can say that an agent is blameworthy for an action or attitude only if that action or attitude violates a moral norm we expect reasonable persons to accept. Since reasonable persons have no reason to think that plants can feel pain, a person whose attitudes and actions reflect this judgment is not “blameworthy” for these things. I think Levy here is conflating questions of responsibility and questions of blameworthiness. Non-volitionists, no less than volitionists, can acknowledge the existence of epistemic conditions when it comes to determining whether a person is blameworthy for her actions and attitudes; these conditions do not seem to be relevant to determining whether a person is responsible for her actions and attitudes, however.

  31. I discuss this point at greater length in Smith (2005), pp. 267–270.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Christine Korsgaard, Richard Moran, and T. M. Scanlon for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also grateful to Rahul Kumar and Sandra Reiter, who provided invaluable feedback on more recent drafts of this material.

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Correspondence to Angela M. Smith.

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Smith, A.M. Control, responsibility, and moral assessment. Philos Stud 138, 367–392 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-9048-x

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