Against Moral Responsibility

Chapter 16. Is It Possible to Eliminate Moral Responsibility?

16 Champions of moral responsibility can hardly survey the current scene with satisfaction. If Lakatos’s (1970) notion of a “degenerative research program” has any application in philosophy, then the defense of moral responsibility must be its poster child. The sense of desperation in the efforts to shore up moral responsibility is almost palpable, and the enormous variety of distinctly different and conflicting proposals for supporting moral responsibility is powerful evidence of that desperation. The existentialists invoke magical phrases—we responsible persons are “beingfor -itself”—to proudly insist that we make wondrous choices independent of all constraints and conditions. More cautious libertarians offer a similar account, with some trepidation. Roderick Chisholm (1982) affirms that the choices required for moral responsibility are mysterious and godlike, and Richard Taylor (1963) is driven to the same conclusion—which “one can hardly affirm . . . without embarrassment”—concerning the unique and mysterious powers of human choice. Robert Kane is a contemporary libertarian who rejects mystery and relies on quantum indeterminism amplified by chaos; Timothy O’Connor embraces mystery and divine powers. Peter van Inwagen finds libertarian free will inexplicable, but is confident that we have it. Compatibilists are united in their rejection of miracles but divided on almost everything else. Moral responsibility is on a plateau (Harry G. Frankfurt, George Sher, Thaddeus Metz, and Angela M. Smith), and equality is not required. Moral responsibility rests on a foundation of roughly equal talents (Sher) or roughly equal luck (Dennett). Moral responsibility comes when we follow the True and Good (Susan Wolf). We are morally responsible because we make ourselves (Dennett). We are morally responsible because we can always choose to remake ourselves (Charles Taylor). Moral responsibility comes from higher-order Is It Possible to Eliminate Moral Responsibility? 306 Chapter 16 reflective self-approval (Frankfurt, Gerald Dworkin). We take moral responsibility (Frankfurt, Dennett). Moral responsibility requires only guidance control (Fischer)—and not much of it. Belief in moral responsibility is inevitable (P. F. Strawson). These are wonderfully creative theories, but their sheer number indicates their problems. Why Do Philosophers Believe in Moral Responsibility? Its state of philosophical crisis notwithstanding, the moral responsibility system is deeply embedded in our common sense as well as our legal system and deeply entrenched in our natural strike-back emotions. Philosophers are subject to this powerful pull as much as others are, and probably more so, because there are factors that enhance (or from my perspective, exacerbate) our strong natural feeling that we are morally responsible. As psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Fredrik Bjorklund note, philosophers are highly trained in considering alternatives: “If you are able to honestly examine the moral arguments in favor of slavery and genocide (along with the much stronger arguments against them), then you are likely to be either a psychopath or a philosopher. Philosophers are one of the only groups that have been found spontaneously to look for reasons on both sides of a question” (2008, 196). Thus philosophers have a strong sense of choosing among open alternatives , even when their intuitive inclinations settle their actual choice prior to their deliberation. As Robert Wright notes: “The . . . human brain is a machine for winning arguments, a machine for convincing others that its owner is in the right—and thus a machine for convincing its owner of the same thing. The brain is like a good lawyer: given any set of interests to defend, it sets about convincing the world of their moral and logical worth, regardless of whether they in fact have any of either. Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth” (1994, 280). If Haidt and his fellow social intuitionists are correct, our basic moral stances (including our reciprocity/retributive inclinations) are set by strong emotional (or “intuitive”) commitments, and our deliberative processes are called into play to defend our intuitive decisions. Although almost everyone enjoys considerable facility at developing deliberative justifications for moral stances taken prior to deliberation, philosophers are polished pros at that task. Is It Possible to Eliminate Moral Responsibility? 307 There are other factors promoting philosophical allegiance to moral responsibility. Philosophers are chronic cognizers, moving in packs of chronic cognizers. Although I have seen no empirical data on this, my decades of mingling with philosophers convinces me that almost all have a robust sense of internal locus-of-control. Philosophers have a remarkably strong—perhaps even overdeveloped—sense of self-efficacy: why...