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Are we morally responsible for our actions?
By: Ben

What does it mean for someone to be morally responsible for his actions? One could say that someone is morally responsible for his actions if it is appropriate to make a moral assessment of his action. Examples of such assessment might include praise, blame, resent, punishment etc. If it considered appropriate to, for example, punish or reward someone for a given action then they can be considered morally responsible.

In some cases one may not be considered morally responsible. Suppose that Bill wants to hit someone and decides to hit Fred. Under normal circumstances we might consider Bill morally responsible for hurting Fred but there are other factors to consider.

1) Bill may not be in control of himself, perhaps because he is insane or through addiction to drink of drugs. Perhaps we might hold Bill partly responsible for an addiction but not totally.

2) Bill may have been influenced by social factors outside of his control. He may have been indoctrinated by a religious cult to the point where he could not be considered morally responsible for his action.

3) Bill’s childhood experiences and his genetic make-up, both of which he had no control over, could have predisposed him to acquiring a violent nature. Can we hold him responsible for these traits?

4) It is also possible that Bill is not an agent to which moral responsibility can be applied. For example if Bill is a child or an animal.

These examples do not outline definite cases where Bill is not morally responsible but they illustrate situations in which an agent (me) might hit another person (you) but would not be considered morally responsible. I may be physically responsible (I cannot deny that I hit you) and possibly legally responsible but since a moral assessment of my actions may not be appropriate then it is possible that I would not be held morally responsible.

What then are the criteria for an agent to be held morally responsible for an action. Some suggestions from philosophers include:

An agent is morally responsible if:

1) He was free to perform the action and free not to. A by-stander in the ‘Bill hitting Fred’ case would not be held responsible if he was tied up.

2) He was free to choose to perform the action and free to choose not to.

3) The action does not entirely depend on factors outside of him. E.g. social factors

4) The action does not entirely depend on factors that are not under his control. E.g. genes

5) The actions flows from a character for which he is responsible. E.g. childhood trauma may produce a character trait for which the agent would not be responsible.

Suppose then that these criteria are fulfilled when I hit you. There are no external influences, I am free to act and free to choose to act. Am I now responsible? This is where philosophers begin to disagree.

Central to the debate of moral responsibility is the issue of free will and determinism. If my actions are determined can I be held morally responsible for them? Some philosophers believe that the question of moral responsibility relies on whether determinism is true or not, while others, such as Galen Strawson, argue that it makes no difference.

In his essay, “The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility”, Strawson argues that we can never be truly morally responsible for our actions and that this applies whether our actions are deterministic or not. He begins by setting out what he calls the Basic Argument which he then modifies throughout the essay.

1) It undeniable that one is the way one is, initially, as a result of heredity and early experience, and it is undeniable that these are things for which one cannot be held to be in any way responsible (morally or otherwise).

2) One cannot at any later stage of life hope to accede to true moral responsibility for the way one is by trying to change the way one already is as a result of heredity and previous experience. For both the particular way in which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of one’s success in one’s attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and previous experience.

3) Any further changes that one can bring about only after one has brought about certain initial changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by heredity and previous experiences.

According to Strawson, therefore, who we are is determined by factors outside out control, namely our genetics and our early childhood experiences. If we attempt to shape ourselves we will still be influenced (determined) by those initial factors for which we were not responsible. This seems to account for a purely deterministic view of our being but what about an indeterministic one which Strawson claims does not affect his argument? He continues:

“…It is absurd to suppose that indeterministic or random factors, for which one is ex hypothesi in no way responsible, can in themselves contribute in any way to one’s being truly morally responsible for how one is.”

Strawson is saying that we have just as little control over indeterminate factors affecting our actions and nature as we do over determinate ones. How then can we consider these indeterministic factors as supportive of a morally responsible agent? Or as Strawson puts it,

“Granted that the truth of determinism rules out true moral responsibility, how can the falsity of determinism help? How can the occurrence of partly random or indeterministic events contribute in any way to one’s being truly morally responsible either for one’s actions or for one’s character? If my efforts of will shape my character in an admirable way, and in so doing are partly indeterministic in nature, while also being shaped […] by my already existing character, what am I not merely lucky?”

Strawson is not arguing that we cannot change ourselves, he is claiming that people cannot change themselves in such a ways as to be come truly or ultimately responsible for the way they are and hence for their actions.

Now that Strawson believes he has established that one is not responsible for how one is, he develops his Basic Argument to claim that how one acts follows from how one is. Therefore, if one is not responsible for how one is it follows that one is not responsible, morally or otherwise, for how one acts. His modified arguments runs:

1) You do what you do because of the way you are

2) To be truly morally responsible for what you do you must be truly responsible for the way you are – at least in certain crucial mental respects

3) You cannot be truly responsible for the way you are, so you cannot be truly responsible for what you do.

As was argued in the previous version of Basic Argument, an agent cannot be truly responsible for the way he is because “nothing can be causa sui – nothing can be the cause of itself.” Strawson quotes Nietzsche who said, “The causa sui is the best self contradiction that has been conceived so far.”

Returning to our original question it is clear that Strawson believes I am not morally responsible for hitting you because I did what I did because of the way I am, and the way I am was determined by factors that were directly or indirectly out of my control. But what about those who believe I am responsible? How do they differ from Strawson and what is his reply to them? Two such responses come from compatabilism and libertarianism & ‘agent causation’.

Compatibilism is the belief that we can still be morally responsible even if our actions are determined by causal laws and past states of the universe. Harry Frankfurt argues that “alternate possibilities” are not necessary for moral responsibility and that you can be morally responsible even if you “could not do otherwise”. Frankfurt, in his essay on “Alternate Possibilities” uses an example to illustrate this point.

Black wants Jones to hit a passer-by Fred. Black waits to see what Jones will do. Black has a secret device implanted in Jones’ brain that can make Jones hit Fred. If he had seen Jones had decided not to hit Fred, (Jones blushes when he has decided not to hit someone) he would have activated the device and made Jones hit Fred. In fact Jones wants to hit Fred too and does so; Black does not activate his device.

In this example it was impossible for Jones not to hit Fred i.e. he could not have done otherwise. But surely he is still morally responsible for hitting him? This is an example in which someone is morally responsible even if they couldn’t have done otherwise. But is that the real issue? Perhaps what is more important in this case is choice, rather then whether one carried out the choice. Jones chose to hit Fred, but he could have chosen not to hit Fred. Of course, if he had chosen not to hit Fred, Black would have made him hit Fred anyway. Jones was not able to do anything other than to hit Fred; but he was able to choose other than to hit Fred. Surely then he is morally responsible for his choice to hit Fred, because he could have chosen otherwise?

The point then is that while Frankfurt is arguing that people are morally responsible in determined situations, we can perhaps argue that there is still a ‘flicker of freedom’ which the agent has in his choices if not in his subsequent actions. It is this freedom which makes them morally responsible and Frankfurt’s deterministic responsibility falls down.

Strawson argues that “one does what one does entirely because of the way one is, and one is in no way ultimately responsible for the way one is,” both of which So how can one be justly punished for anything one does?” The compatibilist, says Strawson, can do nothing against this basic objection.

The second objection is libertarian. Libertarians fall under the broader umbrella of incompatibilists – those who believe that freedom and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. Some incompatibilists believe that determinism is true and therefore there is no freedom or moral responsibility while libertarians believe that we do have freedom and moral responsibility and therefore the doctrine of determinism is false.

In his essay “Human Freedom and the Self”, Roderick Chisholm outlines the libertarian perspective on moral responsibility. He uses the example of one man shooting another and says “there was a moment at which it was true, both that he could have fired the shot and also that he could have refrained from firing it”. This claim is in stark contrast to the deterministic point of view which says that the man’s action was already determined by a long chain of causal events over which he had no control. Chisholm and his libertarian supporters argue “at least one of the events that are involved in the act is caused, not by any other events, but by something else instead. And this something else can only be the agent – the man.”

Chisholm differentiates between two types of causal events to explain his argument for freedom of the will. When one event causes some other event, this is a case of transeunt causation, while a case of an agent, as distinguished from an event, causes an event, then we have an instance of immanent causation. These two types of causation are similar to Timothy O’Connor’s differentiation between “event causation” and “agent causation”. Chisholm goes on to explain the application of his definitions saying,

“The point is, in a word, that whenever a man does something A, then (by ‘immanent causation’) he makes a certain cerebral event happen, and this cerebral event (by ‘transeunt causation’ makes A happen.”

By distinguishing these two types of causation, Chisholm is arguing that when we make choices, we make them causa sui, precisely what Strawson said we could not do. If our choices are made in and of themselves in a non-deterministic way then we can accept that our choices were free and therefore should take moral responsibility for how we are and how we act. In our example, Chisholm and his libertarian supporters would be happy to morally assess me for my act of hitting since at the moment before hitting, I still had the choice.

Strawson responds to this libertarian view by asking, “How can the fact that my effort of will is indeterministic make me truly responsible for it, or even help to make me truly responsible for it? How can it help in any way at all with moral responsibility? How can it make punishment – or reward – ultimately just?” Strawson argues that if these ‘immanent causations’ are not deterministic, then they are indeterministic – or random – and that random factors should have no more bearing on moral responsibility than determined ones.

At the end of Strawson’s essay there appears to be some light at the end of his tunnel. Rather than completely deny moral responsibility, he argues that the Basic Argument is something to be seriously considered when deciding the nature of moral responsibility and assessment since it does show that the way we view moral responsibility now does not take the argument into account. He accepts that from a psychological point of view, the idea of free will is real and applicable.

“But the conviction that self-conscious awareness of one’s situation can be a sufficient foundation of strong free will is very powerful. It runs deeper than rational argument, and it survives untouched, in the everyday conduct of life, even after the validity of the Basic Argument has been admitted.”

It seems then that even the staunch believers in the Basic Argument, such as Strawson, accept the need for some sort of practical moral responsibility. It is an undeniable psychological and emotional feeling that we would be foolish to deny. The argument then is, to what extent are we morally responsible for our actions, having taken the Basic Argument into account, and what nature do the actions of punishment and reward now have? With regards to our feelings of resentment, bitterness, anger which can arise from other’s moral actions; do these retain their value and meaning?

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

Bibliography: Galen Strawson, “The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility” from Philosophical Studies, Kluwer Academic Publishers. Roderick M. Chisholm, “Human Freedom and The Self” from The University of Kansas Lindley Lecture. Harry G. Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility”, from Journal of Philosophy Timothy O’Connor, “Agent Causation”, from Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will, OUP Inc.

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