Incompatibilism and Prudential Obligation
- Incompatibilism and Prudential Obligation
Take determinism to be the thesis that for any instant, there is exactly one physically possible future (van Inwagen 1983, 3), and understand incompatibilism regarding responsibility to be the view that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. Of the many different arguments that have been advanced for this view, the crux of a relatively traditional one is this: If determinism is true, then we lack alternatives.1 If we lack alternatives, then we can't be morally responsible for any of our behavior. Therefore, if determinism is true, then we can't be morally responsible for any of our behavior. The second premise is a version of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP): persons are morally responsible for what they have done only if they could have done otherwise. This principle, in conjunction with the assumptions that responsibility requires control, and that this control consists in the freedom to do otherwise, provides the vital bridge from the initial premise to the skeptical conclusion. Some incompatibilists, joining ranks with various compatibilists, have sought to reject this principle by invoking so-called 'Frankfurt examples.'2 These examples purport to show that [End Page 385] an agent can, for instance, be morally blameworthy for doing something despite not being able to do otherwise so long as the conditions which render her unable to do otherwise play no role in bringing about her action (Frankfurt 1969). So, lack of alternatives, it is concluded, fails to undermine responsibility.
Assume (even in the face of controversy) that Frankfurt examples do indeed establish that moral responsibility does not require our having alternatives. In this paper, I argue for another incompatibility thesis. I defend the view that lack of alternatives threatens a different species of normative appraisal: without alternatives, nothing can be prudentially obligatory, right, or wrong for a person. In short, absence of alternatives undermines prudential obligation. Even those incompatibilists who believe that alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility should find this result of interest. This result should be of especial significance to incompatibilists (such as Derk Pereboom) who believe that though determinism undermines moral responsibility, it leaves intact many other sorts of normative appraisal that are disassociated from moral praiseworthiness and moral blameworthiness (Pereboom 2001).
I Prudential Obligation
Prior to adumbrating an account of prudential obligation, I begin with two assumptions. First, I deploy an incompatibilist (or 'strong') conception of alternatives. In what follows, unless otherwise specified the term 'alternatives' refers to strong alternatives: given exactly the same past and the laws of nature, you could have chosen or done other than what you in fact chose to do or did do.3 One should find nothing amiss with appealing to strong alternatives if one seeks to explore what incompatibilists who accept this conception of alternatives should say about determinism's impact on prudential obligation. Second, I assume that determinism does indeed efface such alternatives.
Prudential obligation has frequently been conceptualized in this way: At each moment of choice the agent confronts a set of alternative possible acts. Each of the alternatives in an agent's alternative set is such that its agent is able to perform it. The alternatives are also 'incompatible' in that the agent cannot perform any two of them together. In addition, [End Page 386] the set of actions is 'exhaustive' insofar as the agent will have to perform at least one of them. Finally, all the members of the alternative set are 'timewise identical' — the time at which any member of the set would be performed, if it were chosen, is the same as the time at which any other would be performed, if it were chosen.
On this standard account, it is also assumed that for each alternative there is an outcome; the outcome is what would happen if the alternative were performed. Each outcome has a value for the agent. On one view, this value is determined by how good or bad that outcome would be for the agent. The 'agent-utility' of an action is equal to the net value for him of the outcome that would result if the action were performed. An act is prudentially obligatory for...
