papers presented at the american philosophical association pacific division meeting 1993 || ability...

Ability and Responsibility for OmissionsAuthor(s): Randolph ClarkeSource: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the AnalyticTradition, Vol. 73, No. 2/3, Papers Presented at the American Philosophical Association PacificDivision Meeting 1993 (Mar., 1994), pp. 195-208Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4320472 .

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RANDOLPH CLARKE

ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR OMISSIONS

(Received 15 September 1993)

Most philosophers now accept that an agent may be responsible for an action even though she could not have acted otherwise. 1 However, many who accept such a view about responsibility for actions nevertheless maintain that, when it comes to omissions, an agent is responsible only if she could have done what she omitted to do.2 If this Principle of Possible Action (PPA), as it is sometimes called, is correct, then there is an important asymmetry between what is required for responsibility for actions and what is required for responsibility for omissions.3

However, I argue here that PPA is in fact false. It has been advanced on the basis of an insufficiently varied group of examples. Examination of a broader range of cases shows that responsibility for an omission sometimes is, and it sometimes is not, undermined by an inability to have acted. In Sections II and III, I offer two alternative principles to PPA governing ability and responsibility for omissions.

1. INTENTIONAL AND UNINTENTIONAL OMISSIONS

I begin by marking a distinction between omissions that are intentional and those that are not.4 We have an intentional omission when someone intends not to A, she does not A, and her not A' ing results, in a nondeviant way, from her intending not to A. A quite typical case of an intentional omission occurs when an agent refrains from performing an action of a certain type. Tina decides not to reach out her hand to rescue Tom when she sees that he is about to fall from the balcony. She forms an intention not to reach out her hand, and she does not reach out her hand. Her not reaching out her hand results, in a nondeviant way, from her intention.

Philosophical Studies 73: 195-208, 1994. ? 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.



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The expression 'in a nondeviant way' is needed here for the same reason it is needed in an explication of intentional action. To illustrate, Tina might intend to keep her hands in her pockets instead of reaching out for Tom; and it may be that she does not reach out her hand, and that her not doing so results from her intention. And yet it may still be the case that her not reaching out her hand is not intentional. For the realization that she intends to let Tom fall may so shock Tina that she gasps and covers her mouth with both hands. In such a case, the agent's omission results from her intention, but it does not result in the expected way from that intention. I cannot say what the nondeviant way is, when it comes to omissions; however, I trust that we have some intuitive grasp of the notion.

When an agent refrains or forbears from doing something, as in the first example involving Tina, it is sometimes said that she performs an act of omission. Not only is her omission intentional, but it is also an intentional act. However, not all intentional omissions are acts of omission, refrainings, or forbearances.5 Ulysses had himself tied to the mast so that he would not respond to the call of the Sirens. He intended that he not respond, he does not respond, and his not responding results in the way he expected from his intention. However, his omission, though intentional, is not a refraining, and that seems to be because, when he hears the Siren call, he tries his damnedest to respond to it.

Exactly what distinguishes acts of omission (or refrainings) from other intentional omissions is itself an important philosophical question, and one to which a considerable body of literature has been devoted.6 However, that is an issue with which I need not concern myself here. The question whether responsibility for an intentional omission requires that the agent could have done what she omitted to do will have the same answer whether the intentional omission is an act or not. That is because one can be responsible for a refraining only if one is responsible for a certain fact that results from one's intention, viz., the fact that one does not perform the action in question; and the same is true of responsibility for an intentional omission that is not a refraining.

When we ask about responsibility for an intentional omission, there are three things about which we might be asking. First, we might have in mind responsibility for the decision, or the formation of the



ABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR OMISSIONS 197

intention, not to perform an action of a certain type. Second, we might be concerned with responsibility for a certain fact that results from that intention, viz., the fact that the agent does not perform an action of a certain type. Finally, we might be concerned with responsibility for the fact that the agent's not performing that action results, in roughly the intended way, from the agent's intention.

Now, it would clearly be a mistake to regard responsibility for making a certain decision as responsibility for an intentional omission. On a given occasion, an agent may be responsible for the former without being responsible for the latter. And supporters of PPA and the asymmetry thesis have clearly not been concerned with responsibility for decisions not to act in a certain way. For such decisions are actions, and if the ability to do otherwise is not required for responsibility for actions, then that ability is not required for responsibility for these decisions.

The focus of concern, I believe, has sometimes been responsibility for the agent's not performing a certain action and sometimes responsibility for the agent's not performing that action as a nondeviant result of her intention. The latter focus is appropriate where what is at issue is responsibility for a refraining, for a refraining is an act, and an act includes its active component. Consequently, when I ask about responsibility for a refraining, I will be concerned with responsibility for a complex state of affairs of the sort I have described here. With other sorts of intentional omissions, my concern is with responsibility for the fact that results from the decision or intention, the fact, that is, that the agent does not perform an action of a certain type.

Many omissions are not intentional. They are not preceded by and do not result from a decision or an intention not to perform an action of a certain type. Rather, they may result from an agent's simply forgetting that she intended to do something in particular, or from its not even occurring to her to perform an action of a certain type.

We are, nevertheless, sometimes responsible for unintentional omissions. Sometimes when an agent forgets to do something, she should have remembered to do it, and she is blameworthy for forgetting. When Sam forgets that he promised to babysit little Freddy, he may deserve blame for not showing up to keep his promise. Sometimes when an agent does not even think to do something, she should have thought



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of it, and we can appropriately blame her for not thinking of it. When it does not occur to Sue that today is Bob's birthday, Bob might have a legitimate complaint against her for her not wishing him a happy birthday.

The basis of responsibility for unintentional omissions is the fact that they result from things we intentionally do. Sam intentionally makes the promise and commits it to his faulty memory rather than write it down. His failure to keep his promise results from his earlier intentional actions. In the extreme, unintentional omissions result from traits of character for which an agent may be responsible. Sue has always paid little attention to what would please those close to her, and consequently she has become a rather thoughtless person. Her failure to wish Bob a happy birthday results from her earlier, character-forming actions.

Responsibility for intentional omissions, too, is based on or derived from responsibility for actions. In this case, however, the action in question is usually the decision or the formation of the intention not to perform a certain action.

Responsibility for an omission, then, is never direct or underived. With the exception of refrainings, responsibility for an omission is indirect or derived; it depends on responsibility for an earlier intention or an earlier action or actions.7 In the case of refrainings, responsibility for the omission is generally conjoint.8 It depends on responsibility for the formation of the intention from which one's not acting results, and one may be directly responsible for forming such an intention. But responsibility for the refraining depends as well on responsibility for a fact that results from that intention, viz., the fact that one does not perform the action in question; and responsibility for that resulting fact can only be indirect. Responsibility for the refraining as a whole is generally a conjunction of this direct and indirect responsibility.

2. DOUBLY INDIRECT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OMISSIONS

In some cases, an agent may be responsible for an omission even though she could not have performed the action in question. Here is a rather mundane illustration. Jim has been drinking; now he is quite drunk.




He gets in his car and drives down the road. At an intersection a child runs out in front of him. The alcohol has slowed his responses. Crucial milliseconds pass during which it does not register with Jim that he should hit the brakes.9 By the time it does, it is too late. A normal driver would have been able to respond in time, and normally Jim would have been able. Now, however, he is unable to react in time, and he hits the child.

Jim, it seems to me, is responsible for not hitting the brakes in time. This is so even though he was unable to respond in time. Thus, PPA is false.

Now, it might be objected that Jim was able earlier to refrain from drinking, and that hence he was able, earlier, to ensure that later, should be have to, he would be able to respond promptly to an emergency. However, this objection cannot be sustained. Jim's earlier drinking might have been overdetermined in the manner made famous by Frank- furt's examples. In that case, Jim decides on his own to drink and go on drinking. He is responsible for his drinking. Yet had he not been going to decide on his own to drink so much, someone who was monitoring his mental life would have intervened and made him make that decision (and carry it out). As it happened, the observer did not intervene at all; there was no need to. Jim is responsible for his drinking even though he could not have refrained. And he is responsible for his resultant failure to stop in time to avoid hitting the child, even though he was unable to stop in time, and even though he was unable earlier to ensure that he would later be able to respond quickly. Thus, PPA cannot be rescued by appeal to Jim's earlier abilities.

Jim's responsibility for failing to hit the brakes in time is what I will call doubly indirect. Responsibility for an omission is not direct in any case, since it depends on responsibility for an action or actions from which the omission (or part of the omission) results. Responsibility for an omission will be doubly indirect when that responsibility depends on responsibility for having an inability, and when responsibility for having that inability depends, in turn, on responsibility for an action or actions from which the inability results.

Jim bears doubly indirect responsibility for an unintentional omission. Responsibility for an intentional omission can be doubly indirect



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in a slightly different manner. Consider: Pam arranges to have herself given the post-hypnotic suggestion that she refuse to help her housemates paint the porch. She is given the suggestion and intentionally omits to help out. Suppose that the way the post-hypnotic suggestion works in this case is to render Pam unable to do otherwise than comply with it. Pam is responsible for failing to help her housemates, even though she could not have helped them. However, her responsibility for this omission does not depend on her responsibility for having the inability. Rather, it depends on her responsibility for a part of the omission, namely the formation of the intention to refuse to help. And her responsibility that part of the omission depends on her responsibility for earlier actions of which the formation of the intention is an intended consequence.

Pam may indeed be responsible for her inability, since it results from her earlier actions. However, she might be responsible for the omission even if she were not responsible for her inability to do what she omitted to do. Suppose that she does not know that the post- hypnotic suggestion will render her unable to do otherwise than refuse to help her housemates, and that she could not reasonably have been expected to foresee this. Then she may not be responsible for her inability. Nevertheless, she is still responsible for omitting to help her housemates; for her refusal to help is still an intended consequence of earlier actions for which she is responsible.

With neither intentional nor unintentional omissions, then, does doubly indirect responsibility for omission require that an agent have been able to perform the omitted action. I therefore suggest the following principle:

(DIRO) When an agent (i) omits to perform an action of a certain type at a certain time, and (ii) is unable to perform such an action at that time, and (iii) is either responsible for having that inability or, in the case of an intentional omission, is responsible for forming the intention not to perform that action at that time, then the agent's inability does not excuse her from doubly indirect responsibility for the omission.




Cases of doubly indirect responsibility for unintentional omission are common. Curiously, defenders of PPA have failed to discuss them. They have focused instead on what I will call singly indirect or conjoint responsibility for omissions, responsibility that depends only on responsibility for an earlier action or actions, or for the intention that is included in a refraining. I turn now to cases of this sort.

3. SINGLY INDIRECT AND CONJOINT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OMISSIONS

Not all cases of singly indirect or conjoint responsibility for an omission are alike with regard to whether an inability to have performed the omitted action would have undermined responsibility. In many cases, it seems that an agent is not responsible for the omission precisely because she could not have done what she failed to do. In other cases, inability does not excuse the agent from responsibility.

A look at the following four cases reveals, I believe, what distinguishes cases where inability undermines responsibility for omission from cases where it does not. I begin with intentional omissions. The first case is typical of those that have been offered in support of PPA:

1. Joe is strolling along the beach when he sees a child struggling in the water. Joe believes that he can rescue the child with minimal effort and inconvenience, but he decides not to go to the trouble, and he continues walking along the beach. The child drowns. Unbeknownst to Joe, there is a shark patrolling the water between the beach and the struggling child, and had Joe jumped into the water, the shark would have attacked and eaten him.10

We are to suppose here, as in all of the cases, that if we set aside the matter of the inability to perform the action, the agent would be responsible for the omission. The question, of course, is whether the inability itself eliminates responsibility. And we need to be clear that it is responsibility for a certain omission about which we are asking. Joe may well be responsible for having become a man of reprehensible character, for deciding not to save the child, and for not trying to save



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the child. But, it is argued, he is not responsible for not saving the child. After all, he could not have saved the child. Indeed, even if Joe had tried to save the child, he would not have succeeded. 11

I am inclined to agree with the verdict in a case of this sort. However, the final claim made, that even if Joe had tried, he would not have saved the child, seems to me crucial. When we consider cases where such a claim is false, I believe that we find counterexamples to PPA. Consider:

2. Joe is strolling along the beach when he sees a child struggling in the water. Joe believes that he can rescue the child with minimal effort and inconvenience, but he decides not to go to the trouble, and he continues walking along the beach. The child drowns. Unbeknownst to Joe, a mad scientist is monitoring his thoughts. Had Joe shown any inclination to decide to rescue the child, the scientist would have intervened and ensured that Joe not make such a decision but instead decide not to rescue the child (and consequently refrain from rescuing the child). The scientist would not have intervened in any other way. As it happened, the scientist did not intervene at all; there was no need to.

Joe freely decides not to save the child; the mad scientist has no impact on Joe's actual deliberative process. To this extent, case two resembles case one. However, here, had Joe decided otherwise, he would have saved the child. The mad scientist had no intention of preventing Joe from carrying out a decision to save the child. If Joe had made such a decision, nothing at all would have prevented him from successfully carrying it out; he would have done so. Any would-be intervention is entirely up-stream from Joe's decision. After the decision is made, the way is entirely clear for him to do whatever he has decided. He is free to implement whatever decision he makes.

Joe's not saving the child, then, depends on his decision in case two in a manner in which it does not so depend in case one. In case two, his not saving the child results from his decision, and had the decision been otherwise, the omission would not have occurred. Since Joe is responsible for his freely made decision here, he is, it seems to me,




responsible for what depends on it in this fashion. Thus, in this second case, Joe is responsible for an intentional omission even though he could not have done what he omitted to do.12

An analogous difference can be found among cases of unintentional omissions. I begin with a case that resembles case one:

3. Sam promises to babysit little Freddy. But Sam forgets. No one makes Sam forget; it just slips his mind. Consequently, he fails to show up to babysit little Freddy. Unbeknownst to Sam, a malevolent busybody is monitoring his behav- ior. Had Sam remembered his promise and started out for Freddy's house, the busybody would have intercepted him and prevented him from going to Freddy's house.

Again, Sam may be responsible for having become a forgetful person, or for forgetting his promise, or for not starting out for Freddy's house, but I am inclined to accept that Sam is not responsible for not showing up at Freddy's house. After all, even if he had remembered his promise and set out to fulfill it, he would not have done so. However, when this counterfactual is not true, when Sam does have the conditional ability that this counterfactual says he lacks, we may have responsibility without ability. Consider:

4. Sam promises to babysit little Freddy. But Sam forgets. No one makes Sam forget; it just slips his mind. Consequently, he fails to show up to babysit little Freddy. Unbeknownst to Sam, a mad scientist is monitoring his thoughts. Had Sam been going to remember his promise, the scientist would have intervened and prevented him from remembering it. The scientist would not have intervened in any other way. As it happened, the scientist did not intervene at all; there was no need to.

Here, again, Sam's not showing up depends on his forgetting; had Sam remembered, nothing would have prevented him from keeping his promise. He would have done so. And Sam is responsible for forgetting. Since his not showing up depends in this way on something for which



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he is responsible, it seems to me that he is responsible for not showing up.

Supporters of PPA have focused exclusively on examples that resem- ble case one.13 With a greater variety of cases, we see that sometimes singly indirect or conjoint responsibility for an omission is undermined by the agent's inability to do what she fails to do, and other times it is not undermined by inability.

I suggest the following principle governing singly indirect and conjoint responsibility for omissions:

(SICRO) When an agent (i) omits to perform an action of a certain type at a certain time, and (ii) is unable to perform such an action at that time, then she bears singly indirect or conjoint responsibility for the omission only if: had she intended to perform that action, and had she tried to carry out that intention, then she would have performed the omitted action.

The suggested principle does not, of course, give us a sufficient condition for singly indirect or conjoint responsibility for omissions. It addresses only the question whether an ability to perform the omitted action is required, and it answers that what is required is a certain conditional ability.

As stated, principle SICRO does not yet characterize a conditional ability that is sufficient for singly indirect or conjoint responsibility even if all other, non-ability requirements for responsibility are fulfilled. For suppose that Sam makes his promise to babysit, and he remembers it for a short period. If he starts over to Freddy's house right away, nothing will prevent his fulfilling his intention; he will simply arrive several hours early. However, he quite sensibly delays his trip to Freddy's house. Later Sam forgets his promise. Unbeknownst to him, the malevolent busybody is now monitoring him and is prepared to intervene to prevent Sam's arrival at Freddy's house, as in case three. Here, there is a time period during which Sam does have the conditional ability required by SICRO, but it seems to me that Sam is not responsible for failing to show up to babysit.




Nevertheless, I suggest that an agent has all the ability necessary for singly indirect or conjoint responsibility for an omission if she possesses the indicated conditional ability during all of some relevant stretch of time. (The relevant stretch of time in a case such as Sam's would be the period during which he ought to have tried to go to Freddy's house.) In any event, it seems clear that the ability to perform the omitted action is not necessary.14

The answer to the question whether an ability to act is required for responsibility for an omission thus turns out to be somewhat complex. For doubly indirect responsibility, there seems to be no ability requirement. For singly indirect and conjoint responsibility, a conditional ability is required. In some cases where an agent lacks the ability to perform the omitted action, she also lacks the requisite conditional ability and thus does not bear singly indirect or conjoint responsibility for the omission. In other cases where an agent lacks the ability to perform the omitted action, she nevertheless has the requisite conditional ability and may bear singly indirect or conjoint responsibility for the omission.15

NOTES

The work that has been most influential in producing this near consensus is Harry G. Frankfurt's "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility," Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969), pp. 828-839. Frankfurt describes cases in which an agent decides on her own to perform a certain action, and performs it on the basis of her own decision, but would have been made to so decide and so act had she not been going to do so on her own. Because of the would-be necessitation, she could not have done otherwise. But because the would-be necessitating force does not actually affect her at all, it does not undermine her responsibility for her action. I discuss a case of this sort in Section II below. 2 John Martin Fischer, "Responsibility and Failure," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86 (1985-86), pp. 251-270; John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, "Respon- sibility and Inevitability," Ethics 101 (1991), pp. 258-278; Peter van Inwagen, "Ability and Responsibility," Philosophical Review 87 (1978), pp. 201-224; Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 165-166.

Sometimes PPA is maintained as a trivial implication of a claim that is made about omissions, namely, that an agent omits to perform an action of a certain type at a certain time only if she could have performed such an action then. See, for example, Michael



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J. Zimmerman, An Essay on Moral Responsibility (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), pp. 23-24 and 92-95. A fully reply to this view of omissions would require a longer paper than the present one; however, a partial reply is that at least some of the cases discussed in Sections II and III below certainly seem to be cases of omission, even though the agents cannot perform the omitted actions. Any theory on which none of these cases count as omissions has, I submit, departed from our ordinary use of that term. In any event, the claim in question is not strictly relevant to my concerns. My interest is with an agent's responsibility for the fact that she does not perform an action of a certain type at a certain time. I argue that an agent may be responsible for such a fact even if she could not have performed the action in question. (Unlike Fischer, Ravizza, and van Inwagen, Zimmerman agrees with this last point, but he insists that the agent's failure to act in such a case is not an omission.)

Harry G. Frankfurt has argued against PPA in "What We are Morally Responsible For," in L. Cauman et al., eds., How Many Questions? (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1982). His argument is effectively rebutted by Fischer in "Responsibility and Failure." 3 The name 'Principle of Possible Action' is due to van Inwagen; Fischer argues explicitly for the asymmetry between responsibility for actions and responsibility for omissions. 4 The distinction between intentional and unintentional omissions does not divide those cases where responsibility for an omission is undermined by an inability to have acted and those were responsibility is not so undermined. Nevertheless, it is an important distinction to keep in mind; and it is worth noting that, with the exception of Frankfurt, writers on ability and responsibility for omissions have focused exclusively on what I call intentional omissions, and indeed, on a subclass of those, namely refrainings, forbearances, or acts of omission. For discussion of this subclass, see the text below. 5 This point is well made in Chapter Two of Alison G. McIntyre's unpublished doctoral dissertation, Omissions and Other Acts (Princeton University, 1985). 6 See, for example, McIntyre, Omissions and Other Acts, Chapter Two; Douglas N. Walton, "Omitting, Refraining and Letting Happen," American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1980), pp. 319-326; and Michael J. Zimmerman, "Taking Some of the Mystery Out of Omissions," The Southern Journal of Philosophy 19 (1981), pp. 541-554. 7 The sentence in the text here explains what I mean by 'indirect responsibility'. Other authors make additional claims about indirect responsibility with which I do not agree, sometimes because I disagree and sometimes because I do not understand them. Michael J. Zimmerman (An Essay on Moral Responsibility), for example, claims that indirect responsibility is "essentially empty" (p. 8) and not substantial (p. 54). I do not know exactly what he means here. He also claims that "we are at liberty to adopt a variety of positions concerning what we take to be its defining characteristics" (p. 56). We can, he says, without falsehood regard an agent as indirectly responsible for everything that is a consequences of any volition for which that agent is directly responsible. Here I disagree; things we do for which we are directly responsible often have many consequences for which we are not responsible in any way. Finally,




Zimmerman holds that indirect responsibility cannot make a difference with regard to what sorts of reactions an agent deserves. I think that it can make such a difference. 8 I borrow the term 'conjoint' from Michael J. Zimmerman; see his An Essay on Moral Responsibility, esp. p. 60. I say that responsibility for a refraining is generally conjoint, because it may be entirely indirect, as when the agent is only indirectly responsible for forming the intention not to perform the action in question.

Zimmerman holds a volitional view of positive actions, and maintains that only responsibility for volitions is direct; responsibility for actions that include bodily movements resulting from volitions is, in his view, conjoint. I do not know whether a volitional view of action is correct, or whether responsibility for positive actions that include bodily movements can be direct. However, since an agent's not performing a certain action is not itself something that the agent does, but rather at least partly something that results from something that she does, responsibility for a refraining cannot be direct. 9 During the crucial period, Jim does not even try to hit the brakes. Thus, when I say below that Jim fails to hit the brakes during that period, I do not mean that he tries but does not succeed. I mean that he omits to do it. 10 This case is modeled after one in Fischer, "Responsibility and Failure," p. 253. 1 Fischer and Ravizza make this claim in support of their judgment that the agent in a case of this sort is not responsible for not saving the child. See "Responsibility and Inevitability," p. 261. 12 Note that it is entirely irrelevant that, in case one, the would-be intervener is non- human while, in case two, that role is played by a human. To see this, consider a case like case one except that there is no shark; instead, a malevolent busybody is watching Joe and will prevent him from swimming to the child should Joe make any attempt at a rescue. As in case one, even if Joe decides and tries to rescue the child, he will not succeed. Here, as in case one, Joe is not responsible for not saving the child. The relevant difference between cases one and two, then, is the agent's possession of a conditional ability in the latter and his lack of it in the former. 13 An example presented by one opponent of PPA fails to refute that principle precisely because the example is insufficiently detailed to enable the reader to determine whether the would-be intervention would take place before or after the agent's decision not to perform the action in question. Hence we cannot tell whether the example resembles case one or case two. See Robert Heinaman, "Incompatibilism Without the Principle of Alternative Possibilities," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1986), pp. 266-276; the example is on pp. 269-270. 14 Note that the requirement of the conditional ability leaves a sort of asymmetry thesis intact, since responsibility for actions requires no such conditional ability. This asymmetry is not, however, the one for which supporters of PPA have argued. Although I do not know how to explain the remaining asymmetry, I suspect that, since omissions are wholly or partly consequences of actions, we may find an explanation by investigating responsibility for consequences.



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15 Work on this paper began during my participation in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar; I am grateful to the Endowment for funding. Seminar participants and director Peter A. French provided helpful suggestions. For comments on earlier drafts, I wish to thank George Panichas, Michael J. Zimmerman, and an audience at The University of Georgia.

Department of Philosophy University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 USA



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