A Micro Essay on Free-will and Moral Responsibility

Free-will and Moral Responsibility

– In this essay I shall attempt to explain the problem of moral responsibility, the reason why it is a problem, and the implications of this problem. Except in passing, I will not mention the assorted proposed solutions to this problem, and I will explain my personal preference regarding the best solution to the problem only very briefly, no doubt leaving many openings for attack.

Before proceeding to an explanation of the “problem” of moral responsibility, I should briefly explain the significance of “moral responsibility” in general.

I. What is Moral Responsibility?

The explication of this concept could take us far afield and consume easily a volume, but for the sake of brevity and simplicity I shall attempt to explain “moral” responsibility by comparing and contrasting it with another, entirely different sense of responsibility – causal responsibility.

Suppose that John’s house burns down. The Fire Marshall is called in to determine the cause of the blaze, and the investigation reveals that the fire was started by a lightning strike. In this case we could say that lightning is “responsible” for the fire, but clearly we do not mean that lightning is morally responsible for the fire. It is not even clear what it would mean to say that a bolt of lightning is “morally” responsible for something. When we say that lightning is responsible for the fire, we mean “causally responsible,” i.e., the lightning is what caused the fire.
But now suppose that the Fire Marshall determines that the fire is the result of arson. In this case we want to say that the arsonist is causally responsible for the fire, but we also want to say something more.

We had to let the lightning off the hook for the harm it had done, but not so in the case of the arsonist. We want to hold the arsonist responsible for his actions; we want to make him pay, we want to hurt him back. And, moreover, we want to feel justified – morally justified – in hurting the wrongdoer back. “Moral responsibility” is what allows us to attach blame to the wrongdoer, and blame is what allows us to feel ok about hurting him back.

II. What is the Problem of Moral Responsibility?

The “problem” of moral responsibility is adumbrated by the distinction we were forced to make above, between “causal” and “moral” responsibility. At least as responsibility is commonly understood, causal responsibility is a necessary but insufficient condition for moral responsibility; i.e., the fact that a person P is causally responsible for some event E* is, in itself, not adequate to establish that P is morally responsible for E*.

The reason causal responsibility is not adequate to establish moral responsibility is that there are various excusing or justifying conditions which may mitigate or eliminate moral responsibility. For example, if P did in fact set fire to John’s house, but setting the fire was the result of a non-negligent accident, we do not hold P morally responsible for E*. Or, P may have set the fire intentionally, but it was necessary to do so because all the zombies were trapped inside. Or, P may have razed the house on orders from a commanding officer in a legally declared and conducted act of war.

 Read This Micro-essay On Moral Motivation

Given the possibility of such excusing or justifying conditions, how is it possible to determine when no such mitigation applies in a particular case? One strategy might be to go through all possible excusing or justifying conditions and eliminate them one-by-one. While this might actually be the fairest strategy, it is not practical, especially since there is no necessary limit to the number of possible excusing conditions.

As a consequence, we would prefer a relatively succinct condition – a minimally sufficient condition – which, when satisfied in combination with causal responsibility, would be sufficient to establish moral responsibility. But what might a minimally sufficient condition for moral responsibility be? There may be many ways to answer this question, but the way it has been, in fact, historically answered is: Free-will.

III. What is “free-will”?

What, exactly, is free-will? I do not think it would be overly extreme to say that nobody can answer that question, except in the vaguest generalities. Free-will inherits its popularity from the role it plays in Christianity and Islam, where it discharges God of all responsibility for evil in the world that He created. But – aside from the function it serves in keeping God free of sin – it is extremely difficult to describe or explain exactly what free-will is, or how it works.

To the best of my somewhat limited understanding, free-will is a means (apparently unique to humans) of causing things to happen without, in turn, having been caused to cause those things to happen. Say what?

Suppose that, for any event in the universe E*, E* has a cause. This seems a reasonable assumption. Notice that such an event, E*, has no control or influence over what causes it; how could it? E* doesn’t exist until its cause, C*, has ceased to exist qua efficient cause of E*, and C* has exhausted itself as the cause of E*.

Now, among the assorted things in the universe, there are human actions and human beliefs, and – as things in the universe – these actions and beliefs must also have causes. But what are the causes of human actions and beliefs? It seems reasonable to assume that, like anything else, human actions and beliefs are caused by what came before them in some causally connected sense. In effect, one might say “the environment” caused E* (the brain and the individual’s personal history are, for present purposes, considered part of the “environment”).

But, if the environment caused E* and E* has no control over the environment (because the environment pre-exists E*), then clearly E* did not cause itself, nor did E* have any control over the environmental conditions which did cause it.

But – on the traditional understanding of moral responsibility – this will never do. Why not? Let us suppose that there is a person – Sam, or “S” for short – who was causally responsible for E*. What do we need in order to make a plausible attribution of moral responsibility toward S regarding E*? We cannot say that S’s environment caused E* and just leave it at that, because S has little or no control over his environment. So, instead, we have to attribute a “power” to S, and this power is what (since the time of Saint Augustine) has been called “free-will.”

This power of free-will has very unusual characteristics; it allows S to cause things without S, in turn, having been caused to cause them. In other words, free-will gives S the power of being an uncaused cause, a prime mover, that which can move or act or set things into motion without, itself, having been caused or moved or set into motion; somehow S can summon (magically, as it were) actions into being without S having in any way been caused to do this by any precedent event in the natural universe.

Traditionally, such power has been limited to the divine creator whom Aristotle called the prime mover, uncaused cause, etc. It seems rather odd to be attributing such a divine superpower to S, a mere mortal; why would anyone imagine such an attribution to be even remotely sensible?

IV. Responsibility and Control

In cases of non-moral, or simply causal responsibility, we assume that no one was responsible for an event (e.g., the lightning bolt). What “no one being responsible” for an event has come to mean – and there is at least 2,500 years of history behind this – is that no person was in full control of what happened. No person was in full (or any) control of the lightning bolt, but some person was in fact in control of pouring the gasoline and lighting the match in the case of arson.

In effect, “being morally responsible for E*” has come to mean “being in control of E*,” and this control must be absolute, because if it is not, then that portion of E* which was not under S’s control might prove to be a mitigating or excusing circumstance in S’s “moral” responsibility for E*. That is to say, if S’s control of E* was not absolute, then we might have to let S off the hook, and indeed, criminal law often does allow for such mitigating circumstances.

At this point, upon reflection, one might be tempted to ask, “How can any human being be in ‘full control’ of anything?” And, of course, the obvious answer in a world of quantum randomness is that he/she cannot be in full control of anything—not his/her own emotions, moods, thoughts, actions, or much of anything. But if this is true, if human beings are actually rather powerless in the face of nature, then how can we attribute moral responsibility to anyone? It is at this point that the superpower, free-will, comes into play. Free-will, allegedly, does give mortal human beings full control over at least one thing, and that would be precisely the actions for which we (society) hold them morally responsible.

If one is beginning to smell a bit of circular argumentation here, that is not the least problem with free-will. If it weren’t already bad enough that we are attributing a godlike superpower to those whom we call “moral agents,” there is also the problem of trying to find empirical evidence for the existence of such a superpower. It gets worse. If we allow the simple and apparently reasonable premise that “everything in nature has a cause,” it quickly becomes impossible to give even so much as a logically coherent description or explanation of what free-will is supposed to be or how it is supposed to work – unless we are content to admit into our personal ontology the existence of godlike superpowers.

But wait. Why on earth would virtually everyone from St. Augustine until the very recent past be willing to accept the existence of such a clearly counterintuitive godlike superpower?

V. Responsibility and the Right to Punish

While there may be more than one answer to this question (e.g., getting God off the hook for the existence of evil), perhaps the most socially significant response is that, if S is responsible for E*, then we (society) are justified in punishing S for his action (arson, in our hypothetical case). Why? Because S could have done otherwise; S had it within his power to refrain from doing E*, or to do something altogether different than E*. Moreover, it would seem that, if we deny the existence of this godlike superpower “free-will,” then we cannot hold anybody responsible for anything – and what then?? Do we simply allow murderers, rapists, and arsonists to roam the streets? That would certainly seem rather unpleasant.

For as long as history has been recorded it has been thought that the appropriate response to illegal or immoral behavior (at least if it rises to a certain threshold) is to punish the wrong-doer. Why has this been considered the appropriate response? Presumably because, by punishing wrong-doers, we deter further occurrences of the wrong. Let’s think about this for a moment.

We have been punishing wrong-doers since before the existence of recorded history in order to deter wrong-doing, and yet wrong-doing – all these millennia later – still persists. Something isn’t working somewhere. Christianity comes with a neat, built-in explanation for this: We are fallen, sinful, and can’t help ourselves. So we are destined to be punished for something we can’t help, over which we have no control. But wait. If we have no control over our sinful natures, doesn’t such punishment violate the very tenets of justice?

Given the rather large amount of data which seems to demonstrate that punishment does not deter immoral behavior – and the growing body of evidence that punishment actually seems to increase or exacerbate criminal behavior – one might rather logically ask, “Why do we insist on continuing something which clearly doesn’t work?” Perhaps our motives are not quite as pristine as the desire to deter immoral behavior. Perhaps our real motives are revenge, vindictiveness, and even sadism. The urge to hurt back when one has been hurt, and the very powerful drive to act out of rage, are certainly understandable, but that doesn’t make them right. Only free-will can do that. Hence the importance of the godlike superpower throughout history…, that, and the fact that we, as societies, were not (until very recently) positioned to do much besides punish immoral behavior.

VI. Free-will and punishment

The fact that free-will licenses punishment, right up to the level of capital punishment and (in some places and times) torture, is evinced by this rather simple syllogism:

1. If S has free-will, then S is responsible.
2. If S is responsible, then S can be punished.
Therefore:
3. If S has free-will, then S can be punished.

The logic is impeccable, but the empirical credentials are lacking. Not only do we find no evidence of free-will, not only is it impossible to describe or explain it in a coherent (non-supernatural) manner, but punishment very plainly does not work – and we have the whole of human penal history as testimony to this fact. But again, if we do not punish wrong-doers, what do we do? Simply let them run free? Of course not. Society has a duty to protect its members from those who violate the law and/or the dictates of morality. But how is society supposed to fulfill this duty without punishing? The answer is through Rehabilitation, which, properly understood, may involve some elements of punishment (such as confinement or social quarantine), but which does not involve the infliction of pain or suffering on the wrong-doer simply for the purpose of “collecting the wrong-doers debt to society” or, to call it by its right name, “getting even.”

Etiquette vs Morality: Is Morality Relative Or Universal

Rehabilitation can be better understood on the model of a medical (or psychological) treatment, or on the model of re-education, or both. However, the problem of “rehabilitation” is too vast for consideration here, and besides, it is necessary to confess that – at this time – we do not have sufficient understanding of human psychology or neurology to work out a fully formed theory of rehabilitation. However, I do not see this as a significant problem, because I do not see humanity surrendering its penchant for punishment anytime in the near future. One thing at a time.

VII. Responsibility without Free-will

The problem we have posed here, however, is the question of whether or not – in a world without free-will – it makes any sense to talk about moral responsibility. There are many psychological determinists (i.e., thinkers who deny the existence of free-will) who maintain precisely this point; i.e., without free-will there is no such thing as moral responsibility [see, e.g., Waller, Bruce N.; “Against Moral Responsibility”; MIT Press, 2011]. This claim raises a rather significant question: Should we jettison “moral responsibility” altogether? Is such a thing even possible? And, if not, why not? Can we explain, account for, or attribute “moral responsibility” without the godlike superpower of free-will?

The problem of moral responsibility is an interesting one, and it is really the last thread by which the old, magical, metaphysical concept of “free will” still hangs. This persistent thread endures because we think that responsibility is a function of control: In order to be responsible for my actions, I must control them. If determinism is true and I have little or no control over my behavior, then I am morally responsible for nothing. This idea – that there is “no moral responsibility” – is so knee-jerk horrifying that we are extremely reluctant even to consider it.

However, I think this way of reasoning about moral responsibility is deeply flawed. The assignment of moral responsibility need not, and in fact does not, have anything to do with control. To see this, consider a case in which you and I are playing chess, and we’ve never played before. I make several wrong moves which might be the result of cheating, or which might occur simply because I’m a neophyte at the game and don’t know what I’m doing. Now, you want to determine whether I am cheating, or merely a raw beginner. How will you determine whether or not I am cheating?

Does my “control” of my actions figure into your thinking at all? I’m willing to bet that, under normal circumstances, questions of “control” will not even enter into your queries. Is it not rather the case that you might observe my behavior and, if you’re being surreptitious about it, ask subtle questions concerning my motives or strategies? In effect, you are not looking for causes (or their absence), you’re trying to ascertain what I know. Of course, we do draw causal connections between knowledge and action; but, in my view, these connections are entirely natural, can be naturally explicable, and neither justify nor require a supernatural free-will nor anything whatsoever that is supernatural. I believe that blameworthiness and creditworthiness can be determined without ever raising issues of control or free-will.

I think moral responsibility is a function of knowledge, not of control. The salient question is not, “What caused what?” but rather, “Who knew what, and when?”

VIII. Morality, Responsibility, and Epistemology

Dismissing free-will does not entail dismissing moral responsibility. There is a chasm of difference between discussing the justice/injustice of punishment or rehabilitation and arguing for/against the existence of “free-will.” One conversation does not, or should not, in any way touch upon the other. In fact, metaphysical discussions of free-will can be extremely misleading; they tend to frame questions of morality and moral responsibility in the completely alien and inappropriate context of causal (or “counter-causal”) metaphysics.

Discussing moral phenomena is more like discussing games than discussing natural (or supernatural) phenomena. Morality is first and foremost an interpersonal skill; it is not a power and it is not (primarily) a theory. One can learn and master a skill without ever concerning oneself with the underlying causes, metaphysics, or theoretical explanations. I have been riding a bicycle for a very long time without understanding or caring about the causes or the physics involved.

Moral responsibility, I conclude, is not a metaphysical issue. It is an error – albeit a very ancient and common error – to attempt to reduce moral responsibility to metaphysical speculations on natural vs. supernatural causes, or to issues of control. Rubbish. Moral responsibility – and I think prolonged reflection will confirm this assertion – is entirely a matter of who knew what, and when he/she knew it. Lack of knowledge, or the cognitive inability to know, would then constitute excusing conditions, which, in fact, they very commonly do.

The execution of severely retarded people illustrates a disturbing example of conditions under which the “inability to know” has been ignored. Be that as it may, I conclude that free-will is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the existence of moral responsibility, and that denying the existence of free-will has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on issues of moral responsibility.
Except that it does leave God holding the bag for the existence of evil….

James J. Pearce