The research of Tversky and Kahneman, and the development of behavioral economics, dealt a severe blow to the “rational man” model in economics and the always implausible view that the economic activities of people are in accordance with rational calculation of their best interests. Though obviously it is quite different from the rational man view in economics, philosophers have a long tradition – stretching back to Plato and Aristotle – of emphasizing and sometimes glorifying human rational capacities. There are wonderful exceptions, of course (David Hume and Annette Baier spring to mind); but there is no question that reason and the remarkable powers of human reason have played a huge role in philosophical thought, as well as in contemporary views of free will (think of Harry Frankfurt, Gerald Dworkin, Susan Wolf, and Dana Nelkin, to name just a few outstanding examples). My question is this: What impact should the sort of research done by Tversky and Kahneman and many others have on our understanding of free will, and does that research require us to rethink our conception of free will? For example, Kahneman compares our conscious reflections to a rider on an elephant (the elephant being our nonconscious thought); the rider mistakenly believes he or she is controlling the direction of the elephant, when the rider is in fact operating more as a director of public relations providing justifications for whatever the elephant decides to do. Thomas Nadelhoffer and Tatyana Matveeva have a marvelous paper on “Positive Illusions, Perceived Control and the Free Will Debate” in Mind & Language, 2009, which describes the very important positive illusions (as researched by Shelley Taylor and others) that play a key role in our behavior and our psychological well-being (in contrast to our common belief that we are always better served by accurate beliefs).
Our capacity for careful deliberative thought (what Kahneman calls system two thought) is not nearly as impressive as we had imagined; and the limited capacity we do have is influenced by our “need for cognition” and our sense of “cognitive self-efficacy,” neither of which is under our rational control. John Doris has done a splendid job of covering the extensive research in situationist psychology, which shows that seemingly trivial environmental influences (such as finding a coin in a pay phone) can have a huge impact on our behavior without our conscious awareness of its influence. One need not subscribe to Dan Wegner’s epiphenomenalism to acknowledge the importance of his work for showing how often we are deceived by our conscious thought processes (for example, believing that we are exerting conscious control when we are not, and vice versa). And many more examples could be noted, without mentioning the work of Libet (to which Al Mele has posed strong challenges) and the research on priming (at least some of which has recently been questioned). Of course it is possible to reject the legitimacy of some or all of this research: some philosophers are skeptical of situationist psychology; and Mark Young has a nice paper (available online, not sure it has been published yet) in Philosophical Psychology which challenges some of the research on positive illusions.
But my question is not about the legitimacy of such psychological research, but about its implications. Gregg Caruso’s book very forcefully describes some of those challenges for libertarian views; and the implications may go much further. For example: Charles Taylor suggests that it is always within our power to think harder about our deep values, even when we do not; if Kahneman (limits on system two thinking) and Haidt (on the powerful force of deep value “intuitions”) and Bandura (on influences on self-efficacy) and Baumeister (on the effects of ego-depletion for sustained careful thinking) are right, then we do not have such a power. When Frankfurt’s “willing addict” reflectively deliberates on his higher-order desire to remain addicted, is that reflective deliberation actually transparent to the addict, or are there forces at work of which the addict knows nothing? Susan Wolf’s inspiring account of freedom as the capacity to accurately track the True and Good: does that require rational powers that are mythic rather than psychologically plausible? In short, if we count this enormous body of psychological research as plausible, will that mean the demise of a “rational man” model in philosophy and free will? Would if have effects on philosophy as far-reaching as those in economics?
June:
Neil Levy is a Research Associate at the Oxford University Institute for Science and Ethics. Professor Levy specializes in free will and moral responsibility, and empirical approaches to ethics. He has published widely on many topics in philosophy, including bioethics, applied philosophy, continental philosophy and free will. He is the author of 4 books and over 50 articles in refereed journals. His most recent books include Neuroethics (2007) and Hard Luck: How Luck Undermines Free Will and Responsibility (2011).
July:
Eddy Nahmias is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department and the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University. He specializes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, free will, moral psychology, and experimental philosophy. He is currently working on a book, Rediscovering Free Will: Autonomy and Responsibility in the Age of the Mind Sciences (OUP forthcoming). He also recently co-edited Moral Psychology: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Wiley-Blackwell 2011) with Thomas Nadelhoffer and Shaun Nichols.
August (2013):
Carolina Sartorio is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. She received her PhD from MIT in 2003 and taught previously at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has published articles on causation, moral responsibility, agency, and free will, and is currently working on a book manuscript, entitled Causation and Free Will, where she develops a compatibilist, actual-sequence view that emphasizes the connection between causation and freedom.
September (2013):
Gunnar Björnsson is a Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Umeå University and a Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg. He is also the Principal investigator of Responsibility in Complex Systems, a project financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and Moral Motivation: Evidence and Relevance, a project funded by the Swedish Research Council with participants from the universities in Gothenburg, Umeå and Lund. His research focuses on naturalized accounts of moral, conditional, counterfactual, and causal thinking and associated issues in the philosophy of language. Two of his recent publications on moral responsibility are "The Explanatory Component of Moral Responsibility" and “A Unified Empirical Account of Responsibility Judgments."
October (2013):
Manuel Vargas is Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of San Francisco, where he has taught courses in philosophy, psychology, Latin American Studies, the Honors Program in the Humanities, the St. Ignatius Institute, and the School of Law. Vargas is the author of Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (OUP 2013). With John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, and Derk Pereboom, he co-authored Four Views on Free Will (Blackwell 2007). With Gideon Yaffe, he is co-editor of Rational and Social Agency: Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Bratman (OUP forthcoming). Vargas' main philosophical interests include the nature of moral agency, thephilosophy of law, Latin American philosophy (especially historical work on race and identity), and questions of philosophical methodology.
November (2013):
Tamler Sommers is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston. His research focuses primarily on ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of law (with an emphasis on issues relating to free will, moral responsibility, punishment, and revenge). Sommers has recently published two books: A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind the Curtain (McSweeney’s Press 2009) and Relative Justice: Cultural Diversity, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility (PUP 2011).
December (2013):
Joseph Keim Campbell is Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at Washington State University. His research interests include metaphysics, epistemology, history of modern philosophy, and philosophy of science. Professor Campbell recently published Free Will (polity 2011) and he has also co-edited several collections for MIT Press.
January (2014):
No one is scheduled!
February (2014):
Randolph Clarke is Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. His research focuses primarily on human agency, particularly intentional action, free will, and moral responsibility. He has also written on practical reason, mental causation, and dispositions. In addition to publishing Libertarian Accounts of Free Will (OUP 2003), Professor Clarke is presently working on a book about omissions—which he explores from the standpoints of agency, metaphysics, and ethics.
The Philosophy Graduate Student Association (PGSA) of Florida State University is now accepting submissions for their graduate conference on free will, moral responsibility, and agency.
The conference will take place at Florida State University on October 11 and 12, 2013. Keynote speakers will be:
Those interested in submitting high quality papers related to free will, moral responsibility, or the wider notion of agency should email their submissions to fsupgsa@gmail.com. Papers addressing the relationship between scientific developments and free will are also welcome. Papers should fulfill the following criteria:
Along with the paper, please also submit a cover page with the following information:
The deadline for submissions is August 15. We will notify those whose papers have been accepted by September 13.
For questions or further information, please contact Kyle Fritz (kgf10@fsu.edu), Dan Miller (djm09@fsu.edu), or Robyn Waller (rar09h@fsu.edu).
Why is it so strange for philosophers to separate free will from moral responsibility? John Fischer does so; but then, sadly, he takes the wrong turn, and rejects free will while keeping moral responsibility: from my demented perspective, that’s a classic philosophical case of throwing out the baby while keeping the bathwater (though it still seems to me that John continues to give fabulously inventive and instructive arguments that support and elucidate free will). So his misguided allegiance to moral responsibility notwithstanding, John has led the way in arguing that free will and moral responsibility are distinct issues. So why is it that there is such reluctance among philosophers to examine the free will and moral responsibility questions as separate issues? I can understand why some traditional libertarian views (such as Pico della Mirandola’s and C. A. Campbell’s) connect free will with moral responsibility; after all, their accounts of free will are specifically designed to make sense of moral responsibility.
But leaving those aside, why should contemporary compatibilists believe that their free will views must match up with moral responsibility (they certainly make no appeals to contra-causal powers or God-given powers to make ourselves either beastly or godly)? Why shouldn’t we think that Frankfurt’s higher-level reflectiveness is a very important elucidation of free will, but that it fails as an account of moral responsibility? Why shouldn’t we think that various levels of reasoning are very important to a more robust account of free will, but fail as grounds for moral responsibility?
To go even further afield: Why shouldn’t we agree that it is very important to consider alternatives (and they do not have to be mystical contra-causal alternatives) and what they contribute to our enriched understanding of free will (a contribution that Bob Kane makes to the literature) even if we are not convinced that Bob has been successful in establishing grounds for moral responsibility? Or might we agree that Dennett has made a wonderful contribution to our understanding of free will with his emphasis on the psychological importance of “self-making,” and that Manuel Vargas has a most insightful account of the importance to free will of “building better beings,” while being skeptical of the claim that such accounts also support moral responsibility (in the just deserts sense)? For this question I’m not really focusing on whether those free will accounts are or are not successful in supporting moral responsibility; rather, I’m more interested in why it is so rare for philosophers to accept an account of free will (in particular one of the fascinating contemporary compatibilist accounts) while rejecting the view that we also have moral responsibility; or from the other – misguided – direction, accepting an account of moral responsibility while believing we lack an adequate account of free will? That is, why is it so surprising (even incoherent?) to say: I think Frankfurt (or Dennett or Vargas or Nelkin) gives a great account of free will; but I agree with Kane or Shoemaker (or with Pereboom or Levy) when it comes to moral responsibility. Or one might say that Hume and Schlick have it right when it comes to moral responsibility, but Kane has focused on an essential condition for free will (which Hume’s account cannot meet). It seems surprising to me that philosophers don’t mix and match these views on a regular basis. Of course there is a tradition of linking free will with moral responsibility, so that they stand or fall together (a tradition extending from Augustine to Valla, on to Luther and Pico and all the way to Hume and Kant and Campbell and Frankfurt); but surely philosophers are not slaves to tradition. So why shouldn’t we take advantage of the wonderful possibilities of mixing these views?
Hi all, wanted to let you know that VBW episode 21 is now up on iTunes, Stitcher, and our website. Dave Pizarro and I talk about whether students should go into grad school with the tough job market, increased dependency on adjuncts, and the unstoppable world conquering dark arts of Michael Sandel. We also do a brief riff on the now famous sorority sister's email. (I say she's a civil right visionary. Dave disagrees.)
Other recent episodes that may be of interest to Flickerers: Episode 20 with special guest neuroscientist Molly Crockett on brain research and neurobunk. Episodes 15 and 19 where we burn bridges and reveal what bugs us most about our fields. A 2 parter on cross-cultural research in psychology (part 2 with Joe Henrich), and a episode on race relations with special guest Damani McDole. Check them out on our episode page . Hope you enjoy!
Now back to the great Bruce Waller.
Many thanks to Thomas for this opportunity. The chance to pick some favorite ideas to discuss with such a remarkable variety of insightful philosophers is a special opportunity indeed. Thanks also to Thomas for this fantastic blog. It is a wonderful resource, especially for those of us whose meager travel budgets make it a challenge to gather with the faithful. There is no substitute for face to face discussions with persons working on the same subject – but lengthy discussions on “Flickers” have their own special benefits, particularly the extensive points and counterpoints and replies and clarifications. Plus there is the great benefit of finding books and articles I would otherwise have missed – such as Randy’s Clarke’s posting on Michael Frede’s A Free Will. So thanks to Thomas for this blog and this opportunity, and to all those who post at this site. And thanks to Michael for a wonderful six weeks of thoughtful provocative questions, together with incredibly detailed comments on all responses; and especially for providing a “fix” for those of us who were suffering withdrawal during March, when it appeared we would have to wait a full four weeks for a new topic: Justin and I obviously share a profound incapacity for handling delayed gratification. For anyone who hasn’t had a chance to read Mike’s new book, Conversation and Responsibility, it should be at the top of your summer reading list: it is a genuinely innovative approach to understanding moral responsibility, while also placing Mike’s position clearly in the context of other related contemporary developments – which not only elucidates his position, but also provides a helpful map of some of the interesting work now being done along similar lines.
“Ought implies can” has a distinguished philosophical history, and it certainly seems fundamental and obvious; David Copp refers to it as “the Maxim.” There have been fascinating recent discussions of the principle, including the work of Mele, Haji, Copp, Widerker, and others, and Fischer’s commentary on those arguments (in Deep Control). And of course Derk Pereboom recently started a very interesting discussion of uses of ought claims (see the Flickers discussion in February on “Determinism and ‘Ought’ Judgments”). Those discussions are superb, and anyone interested in this topic should consider them first. But I’ve recently been reading some material by psychologists studying “belief in a just world”: research that largely started with Melvin Lerner several decades ago, and now has become quite extensive, and philosophers seem to have shown comparatively little interest in that body of research (I know Neil Levy has studied it, but I haven’t seen many other references by philosophers – though I might well have missed them). It is a rich body of research, and I won’t attempt to summarize it; but among the interesting elements is the study of the effects of our widespread (nonconscious) belief in a just world, particularly our response when an innocent suffers. There is a tendency to conclude that the “innocent” person must not have been so innocent after all; and thus we preserve our comforting belief in a just world – if we do the right thing and play by the rules, we will be safe from severe harm. In looking at this research, is it possible that a dubious (largely nonconscious) “belief in a just world” is one source for our strong belief that “ought implies can”? That is, it would not be just that there are moral obligations we cannot fulfill. But if we set aside our deep belief that the world is just (a belief most of us reject when we consciously reflect on it), then the idea that ought implies can (assuming one is not treating it as definitional) seems much less obvious. It’s not just (not fair) that we have obligations we cannot fulfill; but after all, who really believes that we live in a just world? This seems to me the claim that Bernard Williams is making in Shame and Necessity, when he argues that the ancient Greeks (especially the Greek dramatists, but not Plato) believed that the world is not ordered to match our ethical requirements; and that our considered contemporary view is similar to that of the ancient Greeks. Thus it would make perfect sense to say: Bruce ought to grade the papers he promised his students he would return tomorrow; but because he is profoundly lazy and has puny powers of self-control, he cannot do so; or perhaps, I ought to repay the money you loaned me and that I promised to repay in May, but I cannot because I had financial losses. It’s unfortunate that the world is such that we cannot always meet our genuine obligations, but not really surprising. So: if we believe that we do not live in a just world (God is not in His or Her heaven, and all is not right with the world), does that undercut the plausibility of the principle that ought implies can? The principle would certainly make sense for Kant, who believed that the world must be well-ordered (and in a morally well-ordered world, we could not have a genuine moral obligation that we could not fulfill); but for those who reject any godly or transcendent moral order, and reject the comforting belief that we live in a just world, does the ought implies can thesis remain plausible?
Alas, it's once again that time of the month when the torch is passed from one featured author to the next! So, let me start by thanking Michael McKenna for doing an outstanding job stoking the philosophical fires during the month of April. As always, it has been a real pleasure following the discussion threads. That said, I would now like to welcome this month's Featured Author at Flickers of Freedom: Bruce Waller, who is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University. In addition to several textbooks and a variety of journal articles, he has published Freedom Without Responsibility (1990), The Natural Selection of Responsibility (1998), and Against Moral Responsibility (2011). His major interests are examining the implications of contemporary psychological research for questions of ethics, free will, and moral responsibility; developing an account of natural free will that is psychologically and biologically plausible; and beating down the walls of moral responsibility and sowing salt in its fields. Needless to say, I am very excited to see what he comes up with this month for us to discuss here on Flickers!
I also wanted to mention that as things stand, I only have one more Featured Author lined up:
June 2013:
Neil Levy is a Research Associate at the Oxford University Institute for Science and Ethics. Professor Levy specialises in free will and moral responsibility, and empirical approaches to ethics. He has published widely on many topics in philosophy, including bioethics, applied philosophy, continental philosophy and free will. He is the author of 4 books and over 50 articles in refereed journals. His most recent books include Neuroethics (2007) and Hard Luck: How Luck Undermines Free Will and Responsibility (2011).
While I am delighted to have Levy on deck, I don't want his stint to be the last in the series! I hope to send out some more invitations soon. It would be nice to get one or two folks who don't usually blog. So, if you have any suggestions send them along!
Hi All, This post is related to my last post, although only indirectly. As most everyone is aware, in theories of moral responsibility there is a divide between two different approaches. (Of course, I do not mean to suggest that these categories exhaustively capture all contenders.) The Strawsonian, interpersonal approach treats moral responsibility's nature as essentially interpersonal. To understand it, we must do so in terms of fitting responses by others standing prepared to hold responsible. Philosophers in this camp, as I see it, include P.F. Strawson, Jonathan Bennett, Gary Watson, R. Jay Wallace, Paul Russell, Stephen Darwall, and me too (in my recent book *Conversation and Responsibility*). Ledger theorists, by contrast treat moral responsibility's nature as most fundamentally about the independent facts constituting an agent's being responsible, and the conditions for holding responsible must first satisfy conditions of veracity regarding whether an agent is responsible (was she free? did she know what she was doing?). The responsibility facts, on this view, can be fully accounted for without the need to make any reference to the standpoint or norms of holding morally responsible. Philosophers in this camp include Jonathan Glover, Joel Feinberg (I think), Michael Zimmerman, and Ish Haji, among, I suspect, many others. (John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza have suggested that the views might not be exclusive. That might be correct, but set that aside here.)
One thing that has come to worry me about my own defense of an interpersonal theory, and something that, I suspect will infect other versions of interpersonal theories, is that my theory seems ill suited for certain ways of thinking about a morally responsible agent's relation to God. I intended for my theory to be neutral as between different accounts of free will's nature (compatibilist or incompatibilist, for instance). But it seems not neutral here. The reason is simple: Views like mine, or instead, say, Darwall's, are views in which the one who is responsible and, for example, blameworthy, stands in a relation to those holding morally responsible, as co-deliberators in a moral community. The members of the moral community are, in a sense, moral equals or co-participants, and one's standing as a responsible agent warrants one to engage with others under the presumption that she too could hold them to account. But this seems ill-suited for one's relation to God, doesn't it? Doesn't it seem that a more natural picture of the person who is blameworthy and liable to be held to account by God is better captured on the Ledger model? On this model, God first knows the independent facts about the agent's responsibility, and the further judgments regarding the suitability of reward and punishment flow from these, but not, as my view would have it, as part of a conversation wherein the one blamed is in some manner entitled to or warranted in responding to those blaming her.
Thoughts?