Agency, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility

Andrei Buckareff, Carlos Moya, Sergi Rosell, Andrei Buckareff, Carlos Moya, Sergi Rosell

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137414953
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Ética y filosofía moral

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in problems related to human agency and responsibility by philosophers and researchers in cognate disciplines. The present volume brings together original contributions by leading specialists working in this vital field of philosophical inquiry. The contents represent the state of the art of philosophical research on intentional agency, free will, and moral responsibility. The volume begins with chapters on the metaphysics of agency and moves to chapters examining various problems of luck. The final two sections have a normative focus, with the first of the two containing chapters examining issues related to responsible agency and blame and the chapters in the final section examine responsibility and relationships. This book will be of interest to researchers and students interested in both metaphysical and normative issues related to human agency.

Part I

Metaphysics of Agency

1

The Argument from Slips

Santiago Amaya

Between perception and action there are close parallels.

Perception, for example, is said to have a success element. If a person sees an object, then the object must be in front of her. Something similar seems to hold in the domain of action. If someone acts for a reason, then her action must be reasonable in the light of what the person intends.

In both domains there are illusions. In perception, these refer to episodes where things don’t appear to normal subjects the way they are. In action, they refer to situations in which competent and willful agents fall short of acting as intended. Further, from the perspective of subjects and agents, illusions are indistinguishable relative to their successful counterparts.

To account for their indistinguishability, perception theorists have introduced perceptual experiences. These are supposed to be the common factor shared by perception and illusion. The idea constitutes the core claim behind the argument from illusion, which Hume famously proposed to challenge a naïve form of realism in perception. This parallelism also extends to the domain of action. Or so I argue in what follows.

The focus of this paper is slips. A slip is a common kind of mistake, which is like an illusion, but in the domain of action. As we shall see, between the slip and the successful action there is also a common element. Briefly, both involve a competent attempt to execute an intention. Thus, in the domain of action an argument similar to the argument from illusion can be given. The argument challenges a widespread view about action inspired by Wittgenstein, which by analogy, I shall call ‘naïve rationalism’.

The paper begins by recounting Hume’s argument. Then I present the main ideas behind the naïve rationalist view, sketching one prominent version of it originally due to G. E. M. Anscombe. With this in mind, I introduce slips and present the argument based on them. In the end, I discuss a pair of objections analogous to some common objections raised in the perceptual case. Their discussion helps sharpen some of the main points of the debate and illuminates the general picture of action that emerges from it.

1 The argument from illusion

Philosophers of perception are familiar with the argument from illusion, at least since Hume’s formulation of it in the last pages of the Enquiry (1748/1975: XII, 1. 118). Hume introduced the argument to criticize what he took to be a naïve form of realism about perception and to suggest how awareness of the problems intrinsic to such realism would raise skeptical worries:

The mind has never anything present to it but its perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connection with their objects. The supposition of such a connection is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning. (XII, 1. 119)

Ever since, different versions of the argument have been propounded, mostly to defend a variety of positive conclusions regarding the nature of perception – for instance, to defend sense-datum theories (Ayer 1969; Robinson 1994). Here, however, the argument will be taken in its purely negative form. As such, it is meant to show that, contrary to the kind of realism Hume was criticizing, objects and state of affairs are not directly perceived.¹

The argument starts from the existence of illusions. An illusion is a perceptual episode that involves error, in the sense that the perceived object appears different from what it really is. The error is not due to the perceiver having false beliefs: it is a perceptual, not a doxastic error. Further, from the subject’s perspective, illusions and genuine perceptions are supposed to be indistinguishable. In the absence of background information, the person under the illusion is not normally in a position to know of her being subject to it.

Now, to the extent that illusions are indistinguishable, perception is supposed to involve two elements. This, at least, is the core of the argument. First, there is a perceptual experience, which is the common factor with perception and which accounts for the indistinguishability of illusions. Second, there is the correct determination of that experience by a mind-independent object or state of affairs. It is by virtue of that determination that having the experience counts as a genuine episode of perception and not as an illusion.

Given this, the challenge to naïve realism follows. In holding that perception is direct, the naïve realist is claiming that the things perceived are constitutive of the kind of mental state that perception is.² In their absence, one would be in an altogether different mental state. Yet, if the above proposal goes through, this doesn’t seem to be the case. According to it, perception essentially involves having some kind of experience. But, as illusions seem to suggest, an experience of that kind can occur, even if those properties or state of affairs do not obtain.

As I said, the argument from illusion might be taken to help establish various positive conclusions about perception. But, strictly speaking, these do not follow from it (at least, not from the version of the argument considered here). In particular, to conclude that perception is not direct is not to state that one perceives the external world by virtue of perceiving an experience, or to postulate an inner object with the perceived characteristics. Both of these theses, which are admittedly suggested in Hume’s quotation above, evidently require additional argumentation.³

By contrast, the claim that perception is indirect is more modest. Briefly put, it amounts to saying that perception involves having experiences that are world involving and yet not settled by world.⁴ They are world-involving, in the sense that they involve an encounter with objects and state of affairs in the world. But they are not settled by it because the objects and state of affairs encountered need not be those that would make the experience veridical.

2 Naïve rationalism

According to naïve realists, perceptual episodes are constituted by mind-independent objects and states of affairs. In this respect, their view contrasts with other realist views in perception: most notably, with standard causal accounts. For the latter, perception involves a causal relation between an experience and the things perceived. And whereas that relation makes the experience count as perception (as opposed to, say, a hallucination), being extrinsic it is not one of constitution.

Many philosophers have endorsed an analogous position in relation to action. Although it has never been explicitly characterized as such, one can find versions of it in some contemporary accounts of action inspired by Wittgenstein. The view, which can be called naïve rationalism, is centered on the role reasons play in the determination of action.⁵ Ultimately, it boils down to the claim that, in so far as actions are done for reasons, those reasons are constitutive of them. As in perception, the view is about constitution and success: the successful episode (action) is held to be constituted by those things in terms of which its success is defined (the reasons).

Naïve rationalism contrasts with causal approaches to action. The latter typically characterize actions (to be precise, intentional actions) as events or behaviors appropriately caused by reasons. To be sure, the causal aspect of these accounts can be and has been developed in different ways.⁶ For the present comparison, however, what is essential to note is that, in so far as causal approaches take reasons and actions to be metaphysically separate existences, the constitution claim that defines the naïve rationalist point of view clearly diverges from them.⁷

Historically speaking, traces of naïve rationalism can be found behind the logical connection argument defended by philosophers of action of the 1950s–60s. This is the argument that explanations by reasons are not causal because actions and reasons are logically connected. A. I. Melden (1961), one of its most vocal supporters, emphatically denied that intentions and motives existed independently of the actions they explained. Rather, he thought they were aspects of the action, whose mention made explicit its connection to the context in which it happened and to the agent performing it. This is why he thought reason explanations were not causal. For him, the logical connection between reasons and actions was a manifestation of their metaphysical non-distinctness.

More recently, action theorists following G. E. M. Anscombe have proposed a more sophisticated version of the view.⁸ The cornerstone of their account is her famous dictum that practical knowledge is the cause of what it understands (Anscombe 1963: §48). As with many other key passages of Intention, much could be said about this one. What is important here though is Anscombe’s idea that the relation between practical knowledge and its objects, which are the agent’s intentional actions, is exactly the opposite of what that relation is like in the case of speculative knowledge. Whereas to count as knowledge speculation must match its objects, in the practical case the onus of the match is supposed to be on the action.

Let me explain. As Anscombe’s interpreters have pointed out, it would be a mistake to understand ‘cause’ in her dictum as causal theorists of perception or action use the term (Hursthouse 2001, Paul 2011, Ford, Hornsby & Stoutland 2011: 18). Instead, the appeal to causation is meant to invoke what is sometimes referred to as Aristotelian formal causation. Roughly speaking, a thing’s formal cause is not something that exists independently of it. It is something that constitutes it in the sense of being a part or an aspect of it, which makes it the thing it is. Think, for example, of the way the form of the statue and the statue itself are related. The former is not a separate existence (as Platonists would say). It is an aspect of it that determines the kind of object the statue is.

According to Anscombe, practical knowledge bears precisely this kind of relationship to the actions of which it is about. In this regard, it is very much unlike speculative knowledge, which is supposed to be derived from its objects. To the extent that practical knowledge shapes what the agent does, her intentional actions do not exist independently of it. They are not, say, events waiting to be known by her. Rather, her actions have a teleological structure, which is essential to them – it always makes sense to ask why and how they are performed. And that structure is not given to them by something extrinsic or external. Instead, it is built into them by virtue of being displays of the agent’s practical knowledge.

It is here that naïve rationalism comes in. For Anscombe, as for the action theorists following her, intentional actions are not always done for reasons. Also, one can do things basically, in the sense that one can do them, and not be able to say how one does them. Yet, whenever an action is either done for a reason or is not basic, the action has a rich teleological structure. By virtue of it, some descriptions apply to it and some do not apply. Importantly for present purposes, such a structure is supposed to be constituted by the agent’s reasons, as embodied in the considerations that she would invoke were she asked to explain why she does the action or how she does it.⁹

As an illustration, consider Anscombe’s famous pumping example. As she notes, what the man does there can be correctly described in various ways: ‘pumping water into the house’, ‘poisoning the inhabitants’, etc. According to the view under discussion, however, those descriptions only count as correct descriptions of what the man did, to the extent that they articulate the reasons for which he acts. That is, setting aside the movements of the man’s body or their mere consequences in the world, there is no available description of his action except by introducing his reasons. He does what he does in order to poison the inhabitants; he does it by pumping water into the house, etc.

With this, we can go back to Anscombe’s dictum. To claim that in the domain of practical knowledge the onus of the match lies on the agent’s actions is not, in the light of what has been said, merely to define a condition for successful action, say that one’s actions ought to match one’s reasons for doing them. It is, further, to build its success conditions into the very nature of the action. In short, in so far as actions have essentially a teleological structure of means and ends, this structure is given to them by the way the agent’s reasons are articulated. It is the latter that makes actions what they are: namely, doings about which it makes sense to ask why and how they are done.

3 Slips

Whereas illusions have played a major role in philosophical discussions about perception, in action theory they have hardly been discussed. For the most part, theorists have focused on successful episodes of agency. Whenever they have discussed errors, the cases discussed tend to involve mistakes due to ignorance or akrasia. Or they tend to refer to mistakes that occur because of the agent’s lack of ability. In other words, the mistakes discussed tend to be those that we make as believers or desirers, or that prevent us from acting as agents. There are not the mistakes that we make qua agents.¹⁰

Illusions, however, are common in the domain of action too. One can easily recognize this, thinking back on one’s own experience. By illusions, I refer here to situations in which well informed, willful, and competent agents fall short of acting as intended. Their lack of success is not necessarily traceable to their having false beliefs or lacking the relevant information. And their mistakes are inadvertent in the sense that, to realize what they did wrong, agents need to step back and reflect on the larger context.

Consider, as prime examples, slips.¹¹ These are familiar occurrences. You call your partner by the name of your child. Or, heading home, you wind up driving by habit to your old place. Surely, you know the name of every family member. You know as well that you just moved to a different neighborhood. Yet, without even noticing it, you end up acting contrary to what you intended then.

Some slips are caught almost as soon as they happen. You realize that you just blurt out the wrong name. Often, however, it takes a while to notice them. As you sit behind the wheel approaching the wrong driveway, it slowly dawns on you that you are not where you are supposed to be. Either way, until the mistake is caught, everything seems to go seamlessly. From your perspective as the agent making the mistake, it is action as usual.

In general, slips can be characterized as a type of performance mistake. In them, the error does not lie with the judgment or the decision of the agent but with the way these are carried out. In the slip, in fact, you normally intend to do things that would be judged acceptable all things considered: say, to get home after a hard day’s work. And you normally act motivated by those things without an inkling of hesitation. In those respects, the mistake does not impugn your judgment or the quality or strength of your will.

Further, sli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part I  Metaphysics of Agency
• Part II  Responsibility and Luck
• Part III  Responsibility and Blame
• Part IV  Responsibility and Relationships
• Bibliography
• Index