Blame, desert and compatibilist capacity: a diachronic account of moderateness in regards to reasons-responsiveness

Abstract

This paper argues that John Fischer and Mark Ravizza's compatibilist theory of moral responsibility cannot justify reactive attitudes like blame and desert-based practices like retributive punishment. The problem with their account, I argue, is that their analysis of moderateness in regards to reasons-responsiveness has the wrong normative features. However, I propose an alternative account of what it means for a mechanism to be moderately reasons-responsive which addresses this deficiency. In a nut shell, while Fischer and Ravizza test for moderate reasons-responsiveness by checking how a mechanism behaves in a given time slice across other possible worlds, on my account we should ask how that mechanism behaves in this world over a span of time – specifically, whether it responds to reasons sufficiently often. My diachronic account is intended as a drop-in replacement for Fischer and Ravizza's synchronic account.

Keywords:

• responsibility
• capacity
• compatibilism
• blame
• punishment
• retribution

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Frederic Gilbert and Walter Glannon for their input into the first draft of this paper; to Neil Levy and Allan McCay for detailed feedback on a later draft; to John Fischer for his comments on the main thrust of this paper's argument; to Maureen Sie for creating the opportunity for me to respond to John Fischer at a workshop she organised in 2011; and to two anonymous referees for their constructive criticism and helpful suggestions.

Notes

The theory discussed in this paper was originally developed by two authors – i.e. Fischer and Ravizza – in their book Responsibility and control: A theory of moral responsibility (1998). However, much subsequent development and defence of this theory seems to have been undertaken by John Fischer, and so for this reason (and for the convenience of a shorter reference) in this paper I refer to Fischer, though references cite the respective authors.

Technically, I am oversimplifying how “mechanism” should be understood in Fischer's framework. After all, he writes thatalthough we employ the term “mechanism”, we do not mean to point to anything over and above the process that leads to the relevant upshot; instead of talking about the mechanism that leads to (say) an action, we could instead talk about the process that leads to the action, or the “way the action comes about”. (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 38)Given the context though, presumably these processes will be implemented in some kind of “hardware” – e.g. brain hardware – and thus it is in this sense that Fischer's account gives mental capacities physical form.

Rather than, for instance, ones implanted in our brains by a nefarious neuroscientist without our knowledge, consent and acceptance.

Elsewhere I argue that the word “responsibility” refers to a range of different ideas (Vincent 2010, 2011c), but in this paper I focus mainly on just one of them.

The next three paragraphs are borrowed from (Vincent 2011a) with minor modifications.

This refers to the ownership condition, added to deal with “manipulation cases” like that described in Note 3 above. Agents must “take responsibility” for implanted mechanisms before they can be responsible for actions that issue from them (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 207–39).

This refers to the tracing condition (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 49–51). A typical example is someone who becomes drunk and then does something wrong. Although the mechanism from which their proximate action issued may not have been reasons-responsive, their responsibility would be traced back to their earlier blameworthy exercise of agency (i.e. becoming drunk). For problems with tracing see Dimock's (2011) and Benchimol's (2011) recent papers.

If the action is non-moral then no reactive attitude may be appropriate.

For clarity of exposition, I set aside complications introduced by justifications, excuses and whether they are responsible for their own incapacity. Fischer says surprisingly little about how acting from one's own moderately reasons-responsive mechanisms – i.e. why possessing the right capacities – is meant to legitimise the attribution of blame. Thus, the above is a sketch of my own understanding of the relationship between blame and capacity (Vincent 2011c, 21–3). More recently, together with Tognazzini (2010) Fischer discusses blame while assessing Michael Otsuka's incompatibilist Principle of Avoidable Blame, according to which “[o]ne is blameworthy for performing an act of a given type only if one could instead have behaved in a manner for which one would have been entirely blameless” (Otsuka 1998, 688). However, this sheds little light on Fischer's views about the relationship between blame and capacity since avoidability only partly overlaps with the notion of capacity.

I am indebted to Gert-Jan Lokhorst for pressing this point upon me until it sunk in.

I do not have strong views about what the precise span of time should be for the purpose of such assessments. I mention the person's lifetime purely for demonstrative purposes.

I say sub-agents (rather than non-agents) to accommodate the idea that agency can be compromised and that it might come in degrees, rather than being something that people either have or lack. This reflects the fact that although responsibility is in some ways a threshold concept, in other ways it is something that comes in degrees.