Determinism and OurSelf-Conception

randolph clarke

Florida State University

The essays collected in John Fischer’s My Way develop and defend his

views on a wide range of issues concerning human agency. In much of

this work, Fischer tells us, he is motivated by ‘‘the idea that our basic

status as distinctively free and morally responsible agents should not

depend on the arcane ruminations—and deliverances—of...theoretical

physicists and cosmologists’’ (5). In particular, ‘‘our personhood, as we

currently conceive it (in its essential form), and our moral responsibil-

ity, conceived robustly to include a strong notion of ‘moral desert’ of

blame and harsh treatment, should not depend on whether or not cau-

sal determinism is true’’ (6). Fischer thus aims to show the ‘‘resiliency

of our fundamental conception of ourselves as possessing control and

being morally responsible agents’’ (6).

Despite this motivating idea, Fischer’s conclusions leave several

important aspects of our ordinary conception of our agency hostage to

determinism. Further, there is significant tension between certain of his

views. I’ll suggest that our self-conception might be resilient in some

ways that receive little emphasis from Fischer, and that it might need

alteration in some unacknowledged respects.

I

How are we to understand Fischer’s claim that our status as free and

responsible agents shouldn’t hinge on whether determinism is true?

Interspersed with his expressions of this idea are several rhetorical

questions meant, I think, to convey the thought that it’s utterly implau-

sible that our responsibility could so depend. He asks, ‘‘How could the

discovery that the laws of nature have 100 percent probabilities associ-

ated with them, rather than 98 percent (or 99 percent, or 99.9 percent,

and so forth) make us abandon our view of ourselves...as morally

242 RANDOLPH CLARKE

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responsible agents in control of our behavior?’’ (5-6). The ‘should’ in

his statements of the motivating idea, I gather, expresses both the dubi-

ous character of such dependence and the desire to work out an

account on which responsibility doesn’t so depend.

But note that the observed implausibility doesn’t uniquely recom-

mend a defense of the compatibility of responsibility and determinism.

The sense that determinism wouldn’t make a difference is shared by

theorists who take responsibility as we ordinarily conceive it to be non-

existent or impossible whether determinism is true or not. The implausi-

bility, then, might equally motivate an effort to work out a revised

conception of what it is to be responsible, or, more radically, a concep-

tion of the ethical that dispenses with responsibility. One might find the

resulting view less desirable, but it’s unclear what, at this point, desir-

ability has to do with it.

II

On the conception of responsibility that Fischer aims to preserve,

to be morally responsible for one’s behavior is to be an apt target forwhat Peter Strawson called the ‘reactive attitudes’—and certain associ-

ated practices—on the basis of it. The reactive attitudes include resent-ment, indignation, hatred, love, gratitude, and respect. The associatedpractices include moral praise and blame, and reward and punish-

ment. (106)

Fischer sees ‘‘a strong notion of ‘moral desert’ of blame and harsh treat-

ment’’ (6) to be part of this conception. Strawson apparently took the con-

nection to lie within the reactive attitudes themselves, some of which—

indignation, for example—he characterized as inherently retributive.1

It is moral responsibility so conceived that, according to Fischer,

requires as its freedom-relevant component only a type of control—

guidance control—that is compatible with determinism. One line of

support that he offers for this claim sets out what he takes to be ‘‘the

intuitive picture behind moral responsibility’’ (114). As Fischer sees it,

what we value in valuing responsible agency is a type of unimpaired

self-expression, whereby the significance of any individual deed depends

partly on the narrative structure of one’s life. ‘‘Our lives are stories.

And in performing an action at a given time, we can be understood as

writing a sentence in the book of our lives’’ (116). ‘‘What is expressed

by an agent in acting is the meaning of the sentence of the book of his

life’’ (116).

1 Peter Strawson, ‘‘Freedom and Resentment,’’ in Gary Watson, ed., Free Will, 2nd

edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 72-93, pp. 90-1.

BOOK SYMPOSIUM 243

There is a conception of moral responsibility with which this picture

of agency as self-expression fits rather well, but that conception differs

from the one advanced by Fischer. One core notion of responsibility is

that of attributability: to be morally responsible for something, in this

sense, is for that thing to be attributable to you as a basis for moral

appraisal of you. As some writers see it, the appraisals that are thus

warranted are principally judgments that one has certain moral excel-

lences or faults that have been expressed in one’s thought or behavior:

that one is kindhearted, or stingy, or considerate, or thoughtless. That

certain of our actions are unimpaired expressions of ourselves is argu-

ably sufficient to ground responsibility understood in this way. The

appropriateness of reactive attitudes—particularly if they are retributive

in nature—and the moral desert of harsh treatment seem to be another

matter, one that arguably calls for further, and perhaps a different kind

of, defense.

Note, too, that it isn’t only in our actions that we may be said to

express the meanings of sentences in the books of our lives. In our feel-

ings of envy and anger, our longings and opinions, we do so as well.

Such non-voluntary attitudes can result from reasons-responsive pro-

cesses as surely as can actions, and we can assess persons on the basis

of these attitudes as well as on the basis of their actions. It would be

an awfully unrevealing autobiography that told us only what voluntary

actions its author performed.

A restriction of basic or underived moral responsibility to actions,

then, or to actions and omissions to act, requires more than the self-

expression picture to motivate it. If I understand him correctly, Fischer

does want to so restrict basic responsibility. The restriction might be

justified given a conception of responsibility that associates it tightly

with desert of overt treatment of various sorts. But, as I’ve suggested,

responsibility so conceived requires more than unimpaired self-expres-

sion as its ground.

III

Fischer contrasts this self-expression picture with one of difference-

making. On the latter view, ‘‘an agent is morally responsible for his

behavior only if he makes a difference to the world in so behaving’’

(111). It isn’t enough, on this view, that things would have gone differ-

ently had one done otherwise; rather, ‘‘moral responsibility requires the

ability to make a difference in the sense of selecting one from various

paths the world could take, where these various paths are all genuinely

available to the agent’’ (111). If difference-making is what we value in

morally responsible agency, then responsibility (of the sort we value)

244 RANDOLPH CLARKE

requires that we’re at least sometimes able to do other than what we

actually do. But since determinism arguably precludes our ever having

such an ability, our status as responsible agents would seem to hinge

on whether determinism is true.

Fischer’s reply here appeals to Frankfurt cases, in which subjects do

certain things on their own but would have been made to do those very

things if they hadn’t done them on their own.2 Such agents lack abili-

ties to do otherwise of the sort required for this kind of difference-mak-

ing. But since these agents can nevertheless be responsible—in the way

that we value—for what they do, difference-making of this sort isn’t

required for moral responsibility.

I’m convinced by Fischer’s argument on this point. Nevertheless, I

think it’s part of our ordinary conception of our agency that we do

make a difference in this way to how the world goes. We generally

think that there are certain things that happen that might not have

happened, and certain things that don’t happen that might have hap-

pened, and that in performing actions that it was open to us not to

perform, we sometimes make a difference to which such things happen.

We tend to think that history is replete with this sort of contingency,

that major historical figures have made big differences in this way to

how human history has gone, and that we ourselves have made smaller

but nevertheless morally significant such differences.

In accepting that determinism would preclude our ever being able to

do otherwise, Fischer leaves this aspect of our self-understanding hos-

tage to determinism. Is what is thus left vulnerable of any importance?

Shortly after I first read Fischer’s paper contrasting difference-mak-

ing with self-expression, I passed a church sign that said, ‘‘Be a Differ-

ence-Maker.’’ While I can’t be sure the writer had in mind the kind of

difference-making Fischer examines, I do think we place a value on

this. Indeed, some claim to value it independently from any connection

it might have to moral responsibility, and hence even if it isn’t required

for responsibility. After remarking that his interest in free will doesn’t

stem from a concern about responsibility, Robert Nozick writes: ‘‘What

is wanted is that we be free to choose among options that differ signifi-

cantly in value, or at least in value profile—in kinds of values they real-

ize, if not in total value score. We want our decisions to make a value

difference.’’3

2 Harry G. Frankfurt, ‘‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,’’ in Watson,

op. cit., 167-76.3 Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1981), p. 312.

BOOK SYMPOSIUM 245

Perhaps we shouldn’t see such a thing as particularly important.

After all, if we always acted in Frankfurt-type conditions, we would

never make such a difference in our decisions or other actions. But

since the ensuring conditions of such scenarios would be unknown to

us and would exert no influence on what we did, perhaps it shouldn’t

matter to us if they’re present.

Still, we might sensibly think: we value there being nothing in the

processes that actually issue in our actions that precludes our making

a difference in the indicated way. Ever-present Frankfurt-type condi-

tions are thus not especially troubling. But if determinism precludes

the ability to do otherwise, it precludes something of value, even if it

is compatible with responsibility. One might then prefer to be in a

position to truly say, ‘‘I did it my way, and nothing beyond me deter-

mined me to do it so.’’ To adopt a self-understanding on which we’re

never difference-makers because such claims are never correct is, it

seems to me, to alter in a rather significant way our view of how our

agency figures in the world. Perhaps we must make such a change if

we want to get things right, but we will then make it, I think, with

some sense of loss.

IV

Fischer accepts that we do generally take ourselves to have a freedom

that requires an ability to do otherwise:

We take it that we often...have ‘alternative possibilities’: although weactually choose and undertake a particular course of action, we had itin our power (or ‘could have’) chosen and undertaken a different

course of action.... That is, we assume, in Borges’s phrase, that thefuture is a garden of forking paths. (182-83)

It’s freedom of this sort that is ruled out by determinism, he maintains.

Several writers have argued that in deliberating about what to do,

we must take ourselves to be free in this way. In response, Fischer con-

tends that there’s a point to deliberating even if one doesn’t hold that

one has a plurality of open options. In deliberating, he says, we aim

‘‘to ‘figure out what is best to do’, and to act in accordance with

this...judgment’’ (184). In order to sensibly deliberate about an option,

I needn’t take it to be genuinely open to me, though an epistemic open-

ness might be required—it might be necessary that I not know whether

I’ll choose that option. It will then be sensible for me to deliberate if I

believe that what I’ll do will depend on what I judge myself to have

best reason to do, and that my capacity to make such judgments is

undistorted and unimpaired. Since determinism gives me no reason not

246 RANDOLPH CLARKE

to hold such beliefs, neither determinism nor my acceptance of it poses

a threat to deliberation.

Notice that Fischer’s argument here addresses only what’s needed if

there is to be a point to deliberating. What beliefs we commonly have

in deliberating, and whether we can on a consistent basis deliberate

without believing we have a plurality of open alternatives, are further

questions. Fischer acknowledges, and I agree, that what we commonly

believe about our abilities while deliberating goes well beyond the mini-

mum that’s required if deliberation is to have its point.

We commonly believe that we’re able to do each of the things we’re

considering, that we have a choice about what we’ll do, that it’s up to

us. All this is false, Fischer maintains, if determinism is true. We are,

in that case, commonly deluded about the nature of our agency.

Can we easily give up such beliefs when we deliberate? I’m confident

we can do it on occasion, if, say, we want to be sure not to presume

something that, for all we know, might be false. But whether we can

do it on a consistent basis is another matter. It strikes me that holding

such beliefs when deliberating is at least a very strong psychological

habit. This aspect of our ordinary self-understanding might be resilient

in the following sense: it might give way when pressed upon, but

bounce right back once the pressure is off.

V

What convinces Fischer that determinism would rule out the ability to

do otherwise is the Consequence Argument, the several formulations of

which variously characterize what is said to be precluded, when one

A-s, as the ability not to A, or having a choice about whether one A-s,

or its being up to one whether one A-s. If we accept Fischer’s package

of views, then we say that, given determinism, we’re usually responsible

for what we do, despite the fact that it’s never up to us whether we do

these things, that we never have a choice about that. This can seem

incredible.

Perhaps it shouldn’t strike us as so odd. After all, the lesson of

Frankfurt cases seems to be that you can be responsible for doing

something even though it isn’t up to you whether you do it, or even

though you don’t have a choice about whether you do it.

The difference, of course, is that in Frankfurt cases what ensures

that one does a certain thing need have nothing to do with what actu-

ally brings it about that one does that thing. What remains jarring,

then, is the view that we can be fully responsible for much of what we

do, even though the very processes that bring about our doing

these things preclude its ever being up to us whether we do them. No

BOOK SYMPOSIUM 247

reflection on Frankfurt cases can render this an entirely comfortable

thought.

There are, however, capacities or powers to which one might appeal

to ease the mind on this point. Fisher’s account of responsibility empha-

sizes a certain dispositional property—reasons-responsiveness—that

must be possessed by the mechanism issuing in an action if one is to be

responsible for that deed. Determinism is said to be compatible with

possession of such a property by action-producing mechanisms. But

determinism can also leave agents with unexercised capacities to act,

and even agents in Frankfurt scenarios can retain powers to act that,

it’s ensured, they won’t manifest. Agents with such capacities and

powers can, in some sense of the word, do things they don’t in fact do.

Fischer (245) acknowledges these points, but he doesn’t emphasize

or develop them. Their development might help give us a less unsettling

statement of compatibilism.

VI

To return to the idea of narration, consider the following brief tale.

Several decades ago, a young woman named Callie participated in an

unusual writers’ workshop in the Midwest. Each participant’s assign-

ment was to write a life—not his or her life, but a new one, and not on

paper, but on the fabric of spacetime. Callie was given access to a vast

inventory of frozen human gametes, with detailed information on the

potentialities of each possible combination. She was informed in each

case of a wide variety of possible prenatal influences and their develop-

mental outcomes, the sorts of cognitive and emotional traits that would

result from different types of upbringing, the thoughts, feelings, and

deeds that would be manifested in response to various situations that

could be arranged, and so forth—you get the idea. Callie’s task was to

imagine a human narrative in both general shape and minute detail.

The workshop directors assured her they would see to it that her story

was determined to unfold in reality exactly as she imagined, with her

decision as the crucial determining factor. They kept their word.

(Apparently, the workshop predated human subjects committees.)

At the time, Callie had recently emerged from an emotionally dam-

aging relationship with an initially charming young man who, it turned

out, was a self-absorbed and manipulative creep. She wanted to set out

the life of such a person with sympathy for him but with due attention

to the havoc wrought on others. And that’s what she did.

Her protagonist—I’ll call him S—remains unaware of Callie’s role in

his life. He has roughly the conception of his agency that we have of

ours. He can recognize a wide variety of practical reasons, including

248 RANDOLPH CLARKE

moral considerations. His emotional responses, his opinions, and his

deeds are based on his assessments of his reasons as fully as ours are

on ours, and he takes himself to be equally responsible for what he

does. Reflecting on things he’s done, whether with pride or regret,

S feels that at least he did it his way. Be that as it may, he’s certainly

done it all Callie’s way.

Supposing such a creature to exist, what should we say about his

responsibility for his deeds? It would be dishonest of him to disown his

actions; they’re his. We might sensibly take them to be attributable to

him as bases for assessment of him as, for example, a charming creep.

When S does something apparently untoward, we might regard him as

answerable, in the sense that it’s appropriate for us to call on him to

justify his behavior and, if it can’t be justified, to acknowledge its fault

and resolve to correct it. Certain reactive attitudes, such as disapproba-

tion or disgust, might be appropriate toward S.

What of the arguably retributive attitudes? When S has mistreated

someone, if he then feels guilty, it might be good that he has that

unpleasant self-directed attitude. It would seem fitting, in a way. But

would S deserve to suffer so? And would it be appropriate for us to

take up retributive attitudes toward him? In light of S’s story, we might

doubt that this is so.

What of harsh treatment on the occasions when S commits some

grave moral offense? Would it be good that he suffer this? Does he

have it coming? We might think that he has no complaint against being

so treated, but we might decline to say that justice demands it.

Fischer considers cases similar to this one (e.g. at 230-234). He seems

to take the question of such an agent’s responsibility to be a ‘‘yes or

no’’ matter. We might better take it to be a question of what sort of

responsibility such an agent might bear. We might wish to distinguish

various aspects of responsibility, and we might wish to say that while

some apply to S, others don’t. It’s particularly, I think, a certain type

of moral desert that we might sensibly wish to deny application.

I don’t myself see that it makes a difference to S’s responsibility that

Callie deliberately determined each aspect of his life. My sense of the

case remains the same if we suppose that Callie threw dice to determine

these matters, or that some random process determined in advance

exactly how S’s life would go, or that this was determined in just the

way that the courses of our lives are if determinism is true.

VII

Our ordinary conception of our agency has a number of facets. We

generally take it that we’re morally responsible for much of what we

BOOK SYMPOSIUM 249

do. We also tend to think that we often face a future of plural open

possibilities, and that it’s generally up to us which paths we pursue.

Fischer’s overall position would preserve an ordinary, robust concep-

tion of our responsibility while discarding convictions about our abili-

ties to act otherwise, should determinism be true. I’ve suggested both

that the accepted alteration is rather unsettling and that the combined

view exhibits an uncomfortable tension. I’ve also suggested that there’s

more to say about agential capacities and powers that we might retain

despite determinism, and that some concession might be in order

regarding responsibility. Such a concession might be needed in any

case, for it isn’t determinism that seems to force it, but rather the

recognition that, though genuine agents, we’re also things, moved in

fundamentally the same way that other natural objects are moved.

250 RANDOLPH CLARKE