Abstract
This essay critically examines Alfred R. Mele’s attempt to solve a problem for libertarianism that he calls the problem of present luck. Many have thought that the traditional libertarian belief in basically free acts (where the latter are any free A-ings that occur at times at which the past up to that time and the laws of nature are consistent with the agent’s not A-ing at that time) entail that the acts are due to luck at the time of the act (present luck) rather than to the kind of agent control required for genuinely free, morally responsible action. While libertarians frequently have tried to rebut the claim that basically free acts are due to present luck, Mele argues for the daring thesis that they should embrace present luck rather than try to explain it away. His strategy is to argue that the assumption of present luck in the decisions of very young children (or “little agents”) does not preclude us from attributing to them a small amount of moral responsibility and that this makes it possible to conceive of moral development as a gradual process in which as the frequency of the indeterministically caused free actions increases, the agents take on greater and greater moral responsibility. In this paper I give several possible reconstructions of Mele’s argument and analyze in detail why none of them succeeds.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The older worry is: If freedom requires indeterminism, free acts are either uncaused or indeterministically caused. If they are uncaused, they are obviously due to chance. If they are indeterministically caused (e.g., by the agent’s desires and beliefs), they are still due to chance since, given indeterminism, with identical factors present the agent might have acted otherwise. But free acts can’t be due to chance.
Mele calls DSLism soft because it rejects the hard-line libertarian view that freedom entails indeterminism. It holds that a legitimate species of freedom and responsibility is compatible with determinism but maintains that the falsity of determinism is required for a more desirable species, which a person may rationally prefer to any provided by compatibilism (2006, p. 103 n. 18). He regards the position as daring because it both embodies the traditional libertarian thesis that moral responsibility presupposes that there are basically free actions (as defined in section 1 of this essay) and also embraces the idea that such decisions entail present luck. DSLism contrasts with an alternative theory of his, namely, modest soft libertarianism, which rejects the traditional libertarian idea that moral responsibility presupposes basically free actions. Also see note 6.
Mele’s theory is a form of event-causal libertarianism that focuses on decisions which, for him, are momentary mental acts (2006, pp. 15, 57).
Mele first raises the issue using a case in which the act is basically free because the agent freely A’s at t and there is a possible world in which at t he freely does not-A. In chapter 3, he extends the argument to other cases of basically free actions (e.g., ones where the act is basically free because there is a possible world in which at t the agent does something other than A, albeit unfreely) and eventually to “basically*” free actions (see note 7). But since these steps do not affect my critique, I discuss only the case at hand.
On the differences between van Inwagen’s and Mele’s versions of the problem, see Clarke (2005, pp. 413–414).
NB. Despite his attempt to solve the problem, Mele is not a libertarian. Although he believes in freedom and responsibility, he is agnostic about whether their requirements are compatibilist or incompatibilist and whether there are any basically free acts. So rather than try to establish compatibilism or incompatibilism, he instead develops the best versions he can of each but is non-committal about which is correct (1995). Ultimately, he constructs two incompatibilist theories, the first of which is a modest soft libertarian view that locates indeterminism not at the time of decision but earlier, in indeterministically caused factors such as beliefs and desires that happen to occur to the deliberating agent. The second is DSLism.
Actually, in developing his theory Mele shifts to the notion of basically* free actions (2006, p. 115), which is designed to accommodate the DSL’s belief that some Frankfurt-style cases are persuasive. But because this is irrelevant to my argument, we can safely pretend that the notion in play is basically free actions.
Referring to adult basically free (actually, basically*—see note 7) Mele says that “in the vast majority” of cases “agents have some responsibility for the relevant practical probabilities,” thus implying that there are exceptions to the general rule that such actions involve conferred responsibility (2006, p. 123).
But not with Pussy Pleaser!.
References
Clarke, R. (2002). Libertarian views: Critical survey of noncausal and event-causal accounts of free agency. In R. Kane (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Clarke, R. (2003). Libertarian accounts of free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Clarke, R. (2005). Agent causation and the problem of luck. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 86, 408–421.
Hunter, S. B., & Smith, D. E. (2008). Predictors of children’s understanding of death: Age, cognitive ability, death experience and maternal communicative competence. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 57(2), 143–162.
Kane, R. (1989). The significance of free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kane, R. (1999). Responsibility, luck and chance: Reflections on free will and indeterminism. Journal of Philosophy, 96, 217–240.
Mele, A. (1995). Autonomous agents: From self-control to autonomy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mele, A. (1999). Ultimate responsibility and dumb luck. Social Philosophy and Policy, 16, 274–293.
Mele, A. (2006). Free will and luck. New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Connor, T. (2000). Persons and causes. New York: Oxford University Press.
Speece, M. W., & Brent, S. B. (1984). Children’s understanding of death: A review of three components of a death concept. Child Development, 55, 1671–1686.
Speece, M. W., & Brent, S. B. (1992). The acquisition of a mature understanding of the concept of death. Death Studies, 16, 211–229.
van Inwagen, P. (1983). An essay on free will. Oxford: Clarendon.
van Inwagen, P. (2000). Free will remains a mystery. Philosophical Perspectives, 14, 1–19. Reprinted in R. Kane (Ed.), Oxford handbook of free will. 2002 Oxford: New York. 158-17.
Acknowledgments
For helpful comments I am indebted to Paul Bassen, Robert Kane, Eddy Nahmias, David Widerker and an anonymous referee for this journal.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Blumenfeld, D. Lucky agents, big and little: should size really matter?. Philos Stud 156, 311–319 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9595-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9595-z