How (not) to attack the luck argument

Abstract

The Luck Argument is among the most influential objections to the main brand of libertarianism about metaphysical freedom and moral responsibility. In his work, Alfred Mele [2006. Free will and luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press] develops – and then attempts to defeat – the literature's most promising version of the Luck Argument. After explaining Mele's version of the Luck Argument, I present two objections to his novel reply to the argument. I argue for the following two claims: (1) Mele's reply is either otiose or undermined by his own defense of the Luck Argument from a different objection and (2) Mele's reply turns out to lack the form required to engage the step of the Luck Argument it targets. Having shown that the failure of Mele's novel attack is overdetermined, I close by defending a different (and, I believe, decisive) objection to the Luck Argument – which, as it happens, lurks right under Mele's nose.

Keywords:

• libertarianism
• luck
• freedom
• responsibility
• indeterminism

Acknowledgements

I presented material from this paper at a meeting of the Southwestern Philosophical Society (2006), a meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association (2007) and Southern Methodist University (2007). Thanks to those in attendance for stimulating discussion and helpful feedback. Special thanks to Robert Audi, Brian Boeninger, Neil Levy, Alfred Mele, Jason Rickman, Thomas Senor, Donald Smith, Daniel Speak, Ted Warfield and two anonymous referees.

Notes

Basic (non-derivative, direct) moral responsibility for an act is worthiness of moral praise or criticism for the act that does not depend on or derive from your worthiness of moral praise or criticism for some prior act. Unless otherwise noted, I use ‘responsibility’ as shorthand for ‘basic moral responsibility’.

A caveat: as Randolph Clarke (2004, 52–3) notes, if some of the immediate antecedents of your undetermined act A made your Aing considerably more likely than your not Aing, then citing those antecedents (e.g. a firm belief that Aing would be much better than not Aing, coupled with a strong desire to do what is best) may constitute a correct answer to the question why you Aed rather not Aing. If you think such ‘probable’ undetermined acts do have a complete explanation (as that is defined here), then you should understand TL so that it includes the following claim: (1 + ) You have a significant degree of basic moral responsibility for some of your free acts that were, just before you performed them, about as likely to occur as not. The Luck Argument would then exploit the fact that there will not be a complete explanation of any such ‘non-probable’ undetermined act of yours. Because (a) it is somewhat unclear whether ‘probable’ undetermined acts really do have complete explanations and (b) most (if not all) theorists who endorse (what is here called) TL would also endorse 1 + , I omit discussion of this complication from the main text.

For his presentation of the argument, see Mele (2006, 6–9, 50, 63–4, 70).

Clause (i) follows from the antecedent on the plausible assumption that your being praiseworthy (blameworthy) for an act is an objectively good (bad) thing for you (cf. Mele 2006, 70). (Thanks to an anonymous referee for a comment that led me to add this note.)

I have slightly altered Mele's text so as to make it fit my restatement of the Luck Argument. Nothing important depends on the minor alterations.

Thanks to some anonymous referees for comments that led me to revise and expand an earlier, less satisfactory reconstruction of Mele's Luck Argument.

Writes Mele (2006, 113): ‘Not wanting to be saddled with a questionable species of causation [viz., so called agent causation] for which [I] have no use, [I] opt for event-causal… libertarianism’.

Assuming such a variant is possible, Antti doesn't there try to make the choice he makes (he just chooses). A fortiori, Antti does not freely try to make the choice he makes, and Mele will thus have to say that ‘whatever he chooses, he does not freely choose it’.

It is worth noting that Mele's position on the ‘no preceding effort’ variant of the Antti case reveals that his defense of the Luck Argument from Kane's reply depends on more than just the (relatively) innocuous thought that moral responsibility attaches primarily to certain non-overt mental acts (things like tryings, efforts and choices). For that thought is compatible with the verdict that Antti chooses freely and responsibly in (at least) the ‘no preceding effort’ variant. If Mele were invoking only the indicated thought regarding the locus of moral responsibility, he simply would not be engaging Kane's alleged sufficient condition for free and morally responsible choice. So Mele must have something else in mind here; I offer a plausible suggestion below. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for comments that led me to add this note.)

That is, events with respect to which Antti doesn't exercise what Mele (2006, 76) calls ‘MR freedom-level control’, which is ‘a kind… of control such that to exercise control of that kind is to satisfy all freedom-relevant conditions for basic moral responsibility’.

For what it is worth, I would recommend Mele keep Principle along with his defense of the Luck Argument from Kane's reply, conceding that the defense defeats his own reply as well. For I find Principle quite plausible, notwithstanding the fact that it entails Reductivism is false when coupled with the plausible claim that we're morally responsible for some of what we do. For thorough discussion and defense of a thesis very similar to Principle – as well as an argument from the indicated thesis to the denial of Reductivism similar to the argument of the last paragraph – see Smith and Coffman (forthcoming). See also Pereboom (2001, chap. 2).

I am grateful to some anonymous referees for comments that helped me significantly improve this section's overall argument.

Mele and Robb (1998, 2003) developed and defended the indicated kind of Frankfurt Case in their work. (For any uninitiated readers, Frankfurt Cases are so called because the first such case appeared Frankfurt (1969, §IV).) Notably, the fact that this sort of example elicits a firm anti-3 intuition from some theorists quite sympathetic to the Luck Argument, e.g. Mele himself, suggests that such an example can ground a successful objection to that argument.

Two notes in one. First, I think that certain other ‘indeterministic’ Frankfurt Cases in the recent literature are also counterexamples to step 3 of the Luck Argument. See, e.g. the case Pereboom (2000) calls ‘Tax Evasion’ in his work. Second, I need not take a stand here on the vexed question whether Bob is morally responsible for the more general fact that he decided at t2 to steal Ann's car. For the record, I maintain – pace Mele – that Bob is not morally responsible for that more general fact. For a compelling defense of the view that Bob isn't responsible for the more general fact, see Ginet and Palmer (2010).

Mele (2007) discusses an argument for the incompatibility claim presented by Coffman and Warfield (2007).