Abstract
Against its prominent compatiblist and libertarian opponents, I defend Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument for the impossibility of moral responsibility. Against John Martin Fischer, I argue that the Basic Argument does not rely on the premise that an agent can be responsible for an action only if he is responsible for every factor contributing to that action. Against Alfred Mele and Randolph Clarke, I argue that it is absurd to believe that an agent can be responsible for an action when no factor contributing to that action is up to that agent. Against Derk Pereboom and Clarke, I argue that the versions of agent-causal libertarianism they claim can immunize the agent to the Basic Argument actually fail to do so. Against Robert Kane, I argue that the Basic Argument does not rely on the premise that simply the presence of indeterministic factors in the process of bringing an action about is itself what rules out the agent’s chance for being responsible for that action.
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Notes
As Richard Sorabji points out (1980, pp. 234–238), the view that an agent can be responsible for his act only if he is responsible for the arche—the origin and explanation (Kane 1996, p. 34)—of that act is Aristotelian. The arche, for Aristotle, must be up to the agent if that agent is to be responsible for the act (1999, p. 38; 1114a14-22).
Here is what Kane actually says. “[T]o be UR for an action, an agent must be responsible for anything that is a sufficient reason (condition, cause, or motive) for the occurrence of that action” (2002b, p. 407). I changed the wording around a bit in order to prevent the reader from thinking that Kane is demanding that an agent must be responsible for all the conditions—even all the necessary ones—that make up the sufficient condition for an action happening. See, normally we would list the following as some of the necessary conditions that make up the sufficient condition of, say, Tom punching his wife: being alive and having arms. Typically we say that if x is the sufficient cause of y, then the presence of x is enough to bring about y. Clearly Tom desiring to punch his wife is not enough to complete the action. He must also be alive and have arms. But if we take what Kane says strictly, then he would be saying that Tom does have to be responsible for being alive and having arms in order to be UR for punching his wife. Such a notion of UR is unduly demanding. More importantly, it is a notion of UR to which Kane does not ascribe, as will become clear by the following example he gives to explain what it takes to be UR.
Let me put Kane’s UR condition more rigorously. To be UR for an action, an agent must meet two conditions; Kane’s UR condition, in other words, is composed of two minor conditions: (i) the responsibility condition and (ii) the ultimacy condition. Here is Kane’s formulation of (i): “the agent is personally responsible for E’s [(an event or state)] occurring in a sense which entails that something the agent voluntarily (or willingly) did or omitted … either was, or causally contributed to, E’s occurrence and made a difference to whether or not E occurred.” Here is Kane’s formulation of (ii): “for every X and Y (where X and Y represent occurrences of events and/or states) if the agent is personally responsible for X, and if Y is an arche (or sufficient ground or explanation) for X, then the agent must also be personally responsible for Y” (2002a, p. 35).
So you see, as Michael McKenna points out, meeting the UR condition for this choice, that is, being responsible for having this character and these motives from which this choice follows, requires also meeting the alternative possibilities (AP) condition, that is, requires that the agent could have done otherwise with respect to at least some of the earlier choices and actions that formed this character and these motives (2009, p. 8). For more on how meeting the UR condition requires meeting the AP condition in this way, see what Kane says in Fischer et al. 2007, pp. 18–32.
These descriptions articulate the notion of UR quite well. Even so, I will continue articulating it in different ways as the paper unfolds.
I will not distinguish between an action being ultimately up to an agent and an action being freely chosen by an agent. But of course, as Clarke points out, “an agent in a Frankfurt scenario might not have a choice about whether she performs a certain action, but it might still be up to her whether she does” (2005, p. 20n13).
Notice how much more powerful the goal of the BA becomes after this revision of what it takes to be UR. Now not only is the BA endeavoring to show to be impossible what Strawson, following Kane, calls “UR”. It also is endeavoring to show to be impossible a notion of responsibility that Kane and Strawson personally think is not demanding enough (to be called “UR”)—a notion of responsibility I am here saying that Strawson would be willing to call “UR” only for the sake of the argument. Whereas what it takes for an agent to be UR for A according to Kane and Strawson’s view of UR is that the crucial portion of the sufficient reason for A happening has a buck-stopping (buck-printing) source in the agent, what it takes for an agent to be responsible for A according to this weaker sense of UR is that any one of the influences—no matter how infinitesimal and indirect—that helped bring about A (and thus is some portion of the sufficient cause) has a buck-stopping (buck-printing) source in the agent. Since many people, I suspect, would think that this standard for what counts as being responsible for A is too low, the effect of taking down this less demanding sense of UR is (i) to underscore that the BA does not take down an unduly demanding notion of responsibility (contrary to what many people believe), and (ii) to show that no reasonable sense of responsibility is immune to the BA. And please, do not think that the BA is only as strong as I have depicted it thus far. Be prepared to see, throughout the course of this paper, that Strawson is willing to give up, for the argument’s sake, even more assumptions about what is required of an agent if that agent is to be UR for A.
Unless at one point one of those MCs pops up from nothing, in which case he is not UR for it anyway.
Even if we said that God somehow could get around that problem that even the existence of a self-caused being is not enough to ground UR, human agents are not God. Hence, there is no ground for their UR. However, perhaps one may be able to make an argument as to how our souls are essential attributes of God or something, such that they are self-caused along with God and that we, qua these souls, are UR for our actions.
I can express the BA quickly as follows. A is a function of my MC. If I am to be UR for A, my MC must be a function of another, presumably prior, MC of mine. And so on back through a regress that is possible to stop only if at some point one of my MCs is self-caused, which is impossible or of no help.
In Fischer’s defense, however, perhaps his misunderstanding, which realize is a misunderstanding of the notion of UR, stems from that one somewhat misleading description Kane gives for what it takes for an agent to be UR—that one description I brought up earlier in the paper (see footnote 2).
I address this last example particularly to Hurley. See, Hurley (like Fischer) is incorrect if she thinks that the BA assumes one can be UR for the fruits of one’s talents only if one is UR for one’s talents, which is what she would appear to think given that when she emphatically notes “people deserve the fruits of their talents even though they don’t deserve their talents” she seems to think she’s criticizing the BA (2000, p. 253).
Like any sensible person, Strawson knows that to have control over A’s occurrence, which we usually say the agent must if A is to be up to him, is (at least usually) going to mean having control in relation to and yet in spite of disruptions (gravity, wind, competing motives, friction, and so on) that can either be up to us or not—disturbances that actually end up often being at the same time enablements.
Showing that it is a false dichotomy to say that either Betty acts based on the way she is or else she acts based on something alien might do much in the way of thwarting the BA. But I just do not see how there can be any other option.
As Pereboom explains the Leibnizian view, “the agent’s reasons (made up of beliefs and desires) constitute only one part of the causation of a free decision, since they may incline but do not all by themselves cause the agent to choose. The agent’s causation of a choice constitutes the remaining part” (2001, p. 66). Recall that this was in fact the view I used to depict (in Sect. 1) how the first grader can still be a candidate for being UR for A even though the reasons that ground and incline A are not up to him. The reader should note that this is called the Leibnizian view only because Leibniz uses the phrase “inclining without necessitating”. The reader should not think that Leibniz himself held such a view of agent-causation.
“In the production of a rational decision for which the agent is morally responsible, the agent-cause would be a mental causal factor distinct from the reasons, and even a mental factor in the causal explanation distinct from the reasons. Yet the causal role of the reasons and that of the agent-cause would be interdependent.”
One could always argue, I guess, that the regress is not diachronic, but rather synchronic, in which case it does not carry the agent back to a point in time where he was clearly not UR (such as the point when the agent was first conceived). The regress being synchronic does not seem to help things, though. For, in this case, the agent is UR for MC E because he is UR for the higher-order, but not temporally prior, MC D; and he is UR for D because he is UR for the even higher-order, but not temporally prior, MC C; and so on. While we are not heading back to a point in time at which the agent is clearly not UR, there is still never a source of UR unless one of these MCs is self-caused, which is impossible.
Clarke could always affirm, though, something such as that the timeless being has a nature prior to these MCs. In this case, it would not be odd to say that the being is timeless even though its MCs play out in time.
To be sure, one could try to deny that one is not UR for one’s being, even though one exists eternally. One could commence by noting that while God is an eternal being, it is repugnant to say that He is not UR for his actions. In response to this, though, while perhaps there is a way to argue that God is UR for his actions insofar as it was somehow up to him whether he existed by his essence, the existence of the eternal human agent clearly was not up to that agent. For surely if we are invoking God, we want to say that the human agent was the “result” of God. And I do not make this point in order to say that this—namely, the fact that the human soul is a result—actually means that the soul, contrary to hypothesis, is not eternal. I am willing to admit (although it is likely preposterous to do so) that it is still, despite being the result of God, an eternal uncaused-causer. The only way this could be, though, is if the human soul is an aspect of God and thus is an eternal uncaused-causer insofar as it is an (essential) aspect of The eternal uncaused-causer. But even so, and even if I make the concession that it was up to God to have Himself exist, it still cannot be up to the human soul to have itself exist, which means the human soul cannot be UR for A. Even though I am making all these concessions, I just would be going too far if I were to say that the human soul, in this case, had the power of deciding whether to exist or not. To say this is to say something absolutely absurd: that the soul has the power to negate God. It is to say this because, as an aspect of God (by hypothesis), it only exists because God does. In the end, even if God’s existence is somehow up to God, such that God is UR for what He does, the human soul as an essential aspect of God is not UR for what it does qua human soul, only qua God, which is not good enough for Clarke.
One could try to resist the implication that one is not UR for being an eternal uncaused-causer another way. One could say, as someone like Hurley might, that something being counterfactually up to an agent is a genuine way for that agent to be responsible for that something (cf. 2000, pp. 250–251). How might this help us? Well, in this case we would say that while it was not in fact up to the human soul (or God for that matter) whether it existed or not, it could still be responsible for itself if it is the case that it would have chosen to be the MC that it is if such a choice were open to it. The problem with this, though, is clear. One only would have done something from the basis of the way one is. So to be UR for something one would have chosen were one able, the MC based on which one makes this hypothetical choice must be up to one. If, in our specific case, the MC based on which one would have chosen to have the MC that was not up to one is the same as the MC that is not up to one, then clearly it is not up to one. If, however, the MC based on which one would have chosen to have the MC that was not up to one is a different MC, then a regress ensues. It fails either way, then. (This would thus be how Strawson would respond to Hurley’s claim that counterfactual responsibility is not an incoherent responsibility the way that causal responsibility, in taking the agent back (through the regress) to a time when it was clearly not responsible, is (cf. p. 254). As I have shown, Hurley is wrong: counterfactual responsibility is equally incoherent as the usual causal responsibility.)
Positing the agent-self, Clark argues, “does not help answer why the agent did what she did; the reasons-explanation that cites the desires and beliefs that caused the action does that. Perhaps citing the agent, or citing causation by the agent, helps answer not a why-question but a how-actually question: how did it come about that the agent performed that action? But in any case, agent causation does not interfere with the event-causal explanation of the action, for agent causation does not interrupt or divert the ordinary causal route from reason to action. The explanation that cites the agent’s reasons is in no way false or incomplete as a rational explanation, even if it does not tell the entire story about what causally produced the action, and even if it does not reveal that a certain necessary condition of the agent’s having acted with a certain variety of control as fulfilled” (pp. 49–50).
One must be UR for this MC even if it is only an inclining MC (that somehow fully explains A).
Despite how it may appear, then, β does not pick out the situation where the inclining reasons that explain A are not up to Tom and yet he is still UR for A for the reason that his agent-self, hovering above these inclining reasons, brought A about based on its own up-to-it MC. If β picked out such a situation, then it would just be an instance of α. For that would mean Tom is UR for A for the reason that he is UR for the MC from which A flowed—specifically in this case, that Tom is UR for at least some sliver of the agent-self MC that brought A about in light of an inclining, not-up-to-one MC.
Clarke words the premise in the following way. “When you do what you do because of the way you are, it is not possible for it to be up to you whether if you are that way, in certain crucial mental respects, then you perform that action” (p. 19). Clarke’s wording of the purportedly unstated premise may not seem to be saying what I have it saying in my wording. As I have explained, however, it does. Well, it does at least on the assumption that β, which the purportedly unstated premise is supposed to be a denial of, is actually Mele’s premise that the agent need not be responsible for any factor that contributes to A in order to be responsible for A. β would have to be this premise for Clarke since he assumes that β is not just a version of α, which says that the agent must be responsible for at least some contribution that it makes for bringing A about.
For sure, my plight to convince the libertarian that β is absurd will be ineffectual given that the libertarian merely has faith in β. Now, it could be that Clarke is not dogmatic like this. Perhaps he would not buy into β if he knew that it stipulated that the agent could be UR for the A that flowed from a MC entirely not up to the agent. Indeed, that could explain two things: (i) why he missed the obvious fact that Strawson’s purportedly unstated premise, the denial of β, is in fact an explicit premise in the BA and (ii) why he words the purportedly unstated premise in a very different way than I do, as I noted in footnote 23. But even if this were the case, Clarke is in no better position. For this means that he accepts α. But we know that to accept α is to have the agent be captured by regress.
In fact, just as he concedes to Fischer that it is more than reasonable to suppose that the agent acts on the basis of not-up-to-him factors, he concedes to Kane that indeterminism being involved in bringing A about provides we who judge whether one is UR for A with the most hope that one in fact is (2000, p. 154).
To repeat, if she is UR for A because it issues from her trying, she must be UR for her trying; she “must be responsible for the character and motives [and effort of will (1989, p. 254)] from which [A] issued” (1996, p. 35). Hence she must also be UR for the MC that brought the trying to life. And so on.
Here is a list of some of the assumptions, which I have shown to be false in this paper, about what the BA demands if an agent is to be UR for A: (1) that the agent have total control over all the factors that contribute to A happening (Fischer); (2) that the agent be responsible for everything about his constitution that contributes to A happening; (3) that the agent be responsible for the entire MC that contributes to A happening; (4) that the agent be responsible for the crucial portion of the MC that contributes to A happening (where the crucial portion is that which makes the difference whether or not the action happens); (5) that freedom is a transmitted (rather than emergent) property of an agent (Mele); (6) that A needs to be determined by the agent if the agent is to be UR for A (Clarke); (7) that the presence of indeterministic factors in the process of bringing A about rules out the agent’s chance for being UR for A (Kane); (8) that A needs to be at least nondeterministically caused by the agent if the agent is to be UR for A; (9) that the agent cannot be UR for A if the agent is only counterfactually responsible for A (Hurley); (10) that the agent brought himself—or at least some portion of his MC—about diachronically. Of course, at least some of these—for example (4)—Strawson may personally think must be true if the agent is to be UR. But the point is that the BA does not require them being true in order for it to do its job of showing that UR is impossible, indeed that the extremely weak sense of responsibility that we get when we drop all of these assumptions is impossible.
Unlike what I have done here, Strawson himself puts into practice both his belief that the BA can stand on its own and his sagacious understanding that arguing too vehemently for something even so obviously true as the BA is likely to inspire suspicion in the listener. This means Strawson tends to avoid close and direct engagement with the sometimes muddled and sophistical objections to the BA, choosing instead to find ways to reformulate the BA in ever more sophisticated ways. By not following Strawson’s lead, I hope I did not undo his hard work.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Michael LeBuffe, Hugh J. McCann, the anonymous referees for Philosophical Studies, and especially Alesha Istvan for their help on this project.
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Istvan, M.A. Concerning the resilience of Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument. Philos Stud 155, 399–420 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9578-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9578-0