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PH1102E

Week 2

Determinism, indeterminism, and moral responsibility

I. Review of key concepts

A. Moral responsibility

B. Determinism

1. Versus fatalism

2. Laplace’s demon

II. Strawson’s argument

A. Basic strategy

B. Is determinism compatible with moral responsibilty?

1. Argument for determinism/responsibility incompatibilism

2. Humean objections, Strawsonian replies

C. Is indeterminism compatible with moral responsibility?

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I. Moral responsibility and determinism

A. Moral responsibility

Definition: You are morally responsible for doing X if by doing X, you give others a GOOD reason for

thinking well or badly of you.

Notice the word “good.” (Even if the Gestapo officer thinks well of you for turning over the Jewish

family, he has no good reason to think well of you; his reason is the bad one that your action facilitates

the Nazi program of genocide.)

B. Determinism

1. Definition

Every event has a prior cause (except for the very first event, if there was a first event).

2. Contrast with fatalism

Determinism and fatalism have this much in common: according to both, your present and future

behavior is decided in advance by factors out of your control. (For determinism, these factors are

past states of the universe combined with the laws of physics. For fatalism, the deciding factor is

Fate.) But determinism and fatalism differ in one very crucial respect. According to fatalism, your

future behavior is decided by forces that will make you do the things you will do regardless of

whether you want to do them. But according to determinism, your future behavior is decided by

forces that will make you do the thing you will do by making you want to do them.

Fatalism is a cosmic conspiracy theory. Determinism is not.

Determinism says that a thousand years ago, it was already inevitable that you would enroll in

PH1102E, because it was already inevitable that you would desire to enroll in PH1102E, and

inevitable that nothing would prevent you from acting on that desire.

Fatalism says that a thousand years ago, it was already inevitable that you would enroll in PH1102E

even if you had no desire to do so, and even if you had a strong desire not to enroll, and even if I had

no desire the offer the module.

3. Laplace’s Demon

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that we live in a deterministic universe. In our universe,

then, one thing follows from another in a strict causal sequence. This means that if you know the

position of every ball on a pool table, and know the precise strength and angle at which the player

will strike the que ball, you can, in theory, deduce exactly how all the balls on the table will move, as

well as what their final resting position will be. You could deduce all this using Newton’s laws of

motion.

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Likewise, if you could somehow learn the exact location and momentum of every molecule of in a

drop of ink that you let fall into a glass of water the moment before it enters the water, and the

location and state of motion of every molecule of water in the glass, you could predict, with perfect

accuracy, exactly what the cloud of ink would look like one second, two seconds, three seconds, ten

seconds, a minute, an hour later.

Likewise, if you could somehow figure out the exact present location and state of motion of every

molecule in the Earth’s atmosphere, and the exact physical relationship between each of these

molecules and the particles making up the Earth’s oceans and land masses, as well as the Sun and

the moon, you could, in theory, by applying the laws of physics, figure out exactly where each of

these molecules would be one day, or one week, or one hundred years from now. You would be the

ultimate meteorologist.

Likewise -- still assuming the truth of determinism -- if you knew the exact current position and

trajectory of every particle in the universe, including the atoms that make up living things like us,

you could use the laws of physics to predict, infallibly, the exact location and trajectory of all these

particles one second from now. And then you could apply the same laws again to predict the

location and motion of all the matter in the universe two seconds from now, and then three

seconds, and so on and on, as far into the future as you like.

In a famous thought-experiment, Pierre-Simon de Laplace asks us to imagine that there really is a

being who knows the location and state of motion of every particle in the universe. This has come to

be known as “Laplace’s demon,” although there’s nothing particularly demonic about it.

Anyway, suppose that this demon has existed for a very long time -- thousands of years. Thousands

of years ago, it knew the position and state of motion of every particle in the cosmos. By successive

applications of the laws of physics, the demon was able to predict -- with complete accuracy -- the

position and state of motion of every particle in the world today. In particular, the demon has

known for thousands of years, and knows right now, exactly what the particles making up our

bodies are going to do two minutes from now. And what makes it possible for him to know this is

determinism. He can predict what our bodies will do a minute and a half from now, simply because

given the events that are taking place in our bodies and environment at this moment, and given the

laws of physics, it is inevitable that we will be doing certain things a minute from now.

4. An experiment

Let’s do a quick experiment. In a moment, I’m going to count to three. When I say “three,” I want

each of you to raise a hand -- either your left hand or your right hand. The Laplacean demon already

knows which hand you are going to raise (or that you aren’t going to raise a hand, or that you are

going to raise both of them, if you choose not to cooperate). He has known it for thousands of years.

Creepy, isn’t it?

OK, are you ready? Have you decided which hand to raise?

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There’s still time to change your mind. Of course, if you do change your mind now, that too is

something that Laplace’s demon has foreseen. After all, he knows exactly what is going to happen in

your brain too. He has also foreseen that you would change your mind again at the last second in a

pointless attempt to falsify his prediction, if that’s what you are in fact going to do.

Let me give you a little more time.

If you want, you can flip a coin and let that decide which hand you raise: heads right, tails left.

Naturally, Laplace’s demon knows exactly how the particles constituting the coin are going to

behave, and so already knows that the coin is going to land heads (if that is indeed how it is going to

land).

Alright. Here we go. On the count of three:

ONE. TWO. THREE!

OK, very good.

Whatever you did -- including not doing anything, for you metaphysical rebels out there -- you were

destined to do it in advance, since long before you were born. You were destined to do it, in the

sense that your action and the deliberation and choice leading up to it had to take place just as they

did, given that things were as they were thousands of years ago. At least, this is true if we live in a

deterministic universe.

However, none of this changes the fact that which hand you raised depended on which one you

chose to raise. Suppose you raised your right hand. Well, determinism doesn’t change the fact that if

you had chosen to raise your left hand instead, that’s what you would have done. It’s just that you

were destined to choose to raise your right hand, just as much as you were destined to raise it.

II. Strawson’s argument

A. The overall argument

S1. If we live in a deterministic world, we are not morally responsible for anything we do.

S2. If we live in an indeterministic world, we are not morally responsible for anything we do.

S3. We must live in either a deterministic or an indeterministic world.

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S4. Therefore, we must not be morally responsible for anything we do. (from S1, S2, and S3)

S3 is true by definition, since “indeterminism” is just defined as the negative of determinism:

determinism says that every event has a prior cause, indeterminism says that not every event has a prior

cause. (Note that this is different from saying that every event does not have a cause. Indeterminism is

the view that some events are uncaused, not that all events are uncaused.)

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So let’s focus on S1 and S2. (By the way, I’m using “S” for Strawson.) If Strawson is entitled to these

premises, then he is entitled to his striking conclusion as well.

B. Is determinism compatible with moral responsibility?

(I.e.: is S1 actually false?)

Some philosophers -- very many, actually -- believe that determinism and moral responsibility can co-

exist. These philosophers are aware that at first glance, determinism seems to leave no room for moral

responsibility, but they argue that if you think it through carefully, you’ll see that there’s really no

conflict between the two.

Strawson disagrees. He thinks that there is an irreconcilable conflict between determinism and moral

responsibilty. His argument for this is as follows:

1. Argument for determinism/responsibility incompatibilism

Here is an argument that S1 (the first premise of Strawson’s overall argument) is true (I’m labelling

the steps of this argument with “C”s for “control”).

C1. If we live in a deterministic world, then each action we perform is an effect of events that

occurred before we were born, and over which we had no control.

C2. We are not morally responsible for the effects of events that are out of our control.

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S1. So, if we live in a deterministic world, we are not morally responsible for anything we do.

(follows from C1 and C2)

C1 is uncontroversial; it more or less follows from the definition of determinism.

But why should we accept C2?

David Hume, for one, thinks we should not accept it. (And many philosophers following Hume have

agreed with him that C2 is false, or at least doubtful.)

2. Humean objections/Strawsonian replies

Humean: “The fact that we live in a deterministic universe doesn’t mean that we never have desires

or make choices. Desires and choices are events that take place in our heads (or minds). Like other

events, they have causes (assuming that we live in a deterministic world), but that does not call their

existence into question.

So the fact that we have desires and make choices (mental decisions, etc.) is fully compatible with

the fact (if it is a fact) that we live in a deterministic, clockwork universe. What’s more, determinism

is also compatible with the fact that these desires and choices often cause us to act in certain ways.

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For instance, a little while ago, you had a desire (and made a choice) to raise your right hand; this

desire or choice caused you to raise your right hand. The choice was the cause, the action was the

effect. Determinism doesn’t conflict with this, any more than it conflicts with the fact that the

motion of the moon causes the tide to rise or fall: cause -- effect.

So even in a deterministic universe, we can do things because we want to do them and choose to do

them.

Well, what more do you want? Surely, if we have the ability to do things out of choice or desire, we

have the ability to do things for which we are morally responsible -- things that might give people

good reasons to think well or ill of us.

I conclude that C2 is false. We are morally responsible for some effects of events that took place

before we were born. This is because some of the effects of such long-ago events are also effects of

our own choices and desires, and, as such, are things for which we may bear moral responsibility.”

Strawsonian: “I agree that determinism is compatible with the existence of desires and choices. I

also agree that determinism is compatible with the fact that we often act out of desire or choice.

But I don’t see how this alone is enough to make us morally responsible agents. The bird who stole

your fruit, after all, acted on its desire to eat the fruit. But you don’t think it is morally responsible

for its action.”

Humean: “I grant that the capacity to act on one’s desires is not enough to guarantee a capacity for

morally responsible behavior (the bird is a case in point). Not just any desire- or choice-driven

behavior with a good outcome merits praise, and not just any desire- or choice-driven behavior with

a bad outcome deserves blame. The agent must also intend the good or bad outcome; he must

believe and desire that his action will have the outcome. But if an agent’s action is backed up by an

intention (as opposed to a mere urge, as in the case of the bird), then we may hold him morally

responsible for his action.”

Strawsonian: “So your view is that a person can be morally responsible for something he does,

provided that what causes him to do it is one of his own intentions.”

Humean: “Yes.”

Strawsonian: “But when a person forms an intention to do something, he is already performing a

kind of action: an inner action of intention-formation.“

Humean: “True.”

Strawsonian: “But then, according to you, he is morally responsible for forming this intention -- for

performing the inner act of intention-formation -- only if he forms the intention intentionally. That

is, he is morally responsible for intending to do X only if he intends to intend to do X. By the same

token, he is responsible for forming this second intention (the intention to intend to do X) only if he

forms it intentionally; i.e., only if he intends to intend to intend to do X. And so on, ad infinitum.”

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Hume: “Yes, this is an impliction of my view.”

Strawson: “But no one can form an infinite number of intentions! In fact, most people cannot even

form an intention to intend (much less an intention to intend to intend).”

Humean: “Well, we might not be able form these kinds of higher-order intentions explicitly, but we

do sometimes form them implicitly, for example when we choose role-models. If I choose, say,

Ghandi as my role-model, my intention is to live like Ghandi. And living like Ghandi involves, among

other things, adopting a pacifist world-view, which one can adopt only if one desires, chooses, and

intends not to promote political ends by violent means. So, by choosing Ghandi as my role model, I

do, in effect, intend to intend to avoid violent solutions to society’s problems.”

Strawsonian: “OK, maybe I was too hasty when I said that we cannot form second-order intentions.

But still, even if I can form a second- or even a third-order intention in the way you suggest (by

choosing a role-model, or a religion, or a group of friends), there’s really no way that I, or any other

human being, can form an 18th-order intention, and no way that any being can form an infinite-

order intention.”

Humean: “That’s true.”

Strawsonian: “But then, at some level, every one of us has intentions that he or she does not intend

to have. In fact, if you think about it, all of our actions are ultimately grounded in intentions (of

some order) that we do not intend to have, and for which we are not, according to you, morally

responsible.”

Humean: “Yes, that’s correct.”

Strawsonian: “But then how can we be responsible for the actions that flow from these intentions?

How can it be reasonable to think ill (or well) of someone for an action that ultimately results from

historical factors over which he has no control, and that would have taken place regardless of his

intentions and desires?”

Humean: “The fact that all human action has its ultimate sources in events that predate the human

race doesn’t mean that we can’t hold people responsible for what they do. It can be reasonable to

praise people for the good they do, because that can encourage them to do more good. And it can

be reasonable for blame or chastise people for the harm they do, because that can discourage them

from doing more harm. This is perfectly consistent with determinism.”

Strawsonian: “Certainly it is consistent with determinism. But the question of whether people are

morally responsible for their actions is not the question of whether we have good reasons to praise

them or blame them. Nor is the question whether it is reasonable for us to hold people responsible

for their actions, in the sense of punishing or rewarding them for what they do.

When it comes to moral responsibility, the question is whether we have good reasons to think well

or ill of people for their actions -- to think well or badly of them, not necessarily to speak well or

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badly of them, or to threaten them with punishment, or to promise them rewards. And it seems to

me that as long as people’s actions arise from factors that they cannot control, I have no good

reason to think well or badly of them for what they do, even though I may still have good reasons to

praise, blame, reward, or punish them for what they do.

Think of it this way: it is reasonable to prune and fertilize trees because doing so discourages them

from producing bad fruit, and encourages them to produce good fruit. But this does not make it

reasonable to think well or ill of the trees. I fail to see how people are different from trees in this

respect, if determinism is true.”

Humean: “Don’t I have a good reason to think well of someone who intentionally does good things,

if thinking well of him will incline me to promote his interests, and therefore encourage the further

production of good acts? And don’t I have a good reason to think badly of someone who

intentionally does bad things, if thinking badly of him will incline me to thwart his bad-act

production?”

Strawsonian: “If thinking well or badly of his trees inclined a farmer to cultivate them in the most

productive manner, would that give him a good reason to think well or badly of them? Would it give

him a good reason to resent it when his trees didn’t produce as much fruit as he expected, or to feel

grateful to them when they did?”

Humean: “Maybe it would.”

Strawsonian: “You might as well say that he could have a good reason to let himself slip into

madness! But I’m afraid we are losing sight of the central issue here. Personally, the more I see a

person’s behavior as having causes beyond his control, the less I am prepared to think ill, or well, of

him, and the more I tend to think of him as a problem to be dealt with, or a resource to enjoy. If he

does minor harm, I’ll think of him as a pest rather than a jerk; if he does major harm, I’ll think of him

as a public health hazard rather than a moral monster. And to the extent that he tends to give

others pleasure and happiness, or to relieve their pain and suffering, I’ll think of him as a natural

blessing, rather than as an object of admiration or gratitude. Faced with harmful human behavior, I

won’t get mad, and I won’t have a desire to “get even”; I’ll just do what I can to stay out of harm’s

way, and maybe deal with the person as I would a dangerous wild animal (but using more subtle

forms of behavior control).”

Humean: “But you admit that when you are confronted, in real life, with an actual instance of a

person inflicting intentional harm, on a child, say, your reaction is quite different from what it would

have been had the harm resulted from some factor not backed up by intention. You admit that you

react to a situation in which a child gets killed by a virus differently from how you react to one in

which a child gets killed by a violent pedophile.”

Strawsonian: “Yes, I admit it. But these reactions come in the heat of the moment. Later, when I can

reflect calmly on my reaction to the pedophile’s harmful behavior, I judge it (I mean, my reaction) to

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have been unwarranted. In light of philosophical reflection, I see that my reaction to the pedophile

ought not to have been so very different from my reaction to the virus.”

Humean: “Maybe you should put more faith in your initial reactions than in your after-the-fact

philosophical assessment of them.”

Strawsonian: “We seem to be reaching an impasse. As a last attempt to move forward, let me ask

you to consider a thought-experiment that might change your mind.”

Humean: “OK, I’m listening.”

Strawsonian: “Consider the case of Mr. Smith. At first, there’s really nothing special about Mr.

Smith; he’s just your ordinary nice guy -- he has his faults, but nothing major, and certainly nothing

that hints at criminal or psychopathic tendencies. He is a person very much like you or me.

Now, suppose that one day a mad scientist somehow secretly installs remote-controlled electrodes

into Smith’s brain. (Neither Smith nor anyone else is aware of this.) These electrodes allow the mad

scientist to stimulate Smith’s brain in such a way as to cause Smith to have any desire that he (the

mad scientist) wants to Smith to have. It’s not that the mad scientist has any direct control over

Smith’s muscles: the scientist cannot manipulate Smith’s body like a marionette. All he can do with

his remote-controlled electrodes is to cause various desires and other psychological states to arise in

Smith.

One day, Smith goes for a walk along a secluded beach. As he walks along, he encounters an

unattended child. Normally, Smith would stop and ask the child if it was OK, where its parents were,

etc. But on this occasion, the mad scientist remotely activates an electrode in Smith’s brain that

causes Smith to have a sudden strong desire to strangle the child to death. Supposing that he acts

on this impulse and kills the child, are we really to say that Smith is morally responsible for what he

has done?”

Humean: “Surely it is the mad scientist who is to blame in this scenario.”

Strawsonian: “Undoubtedly the mad scientist bears a heavy moral responsibility for his nefarious

actions. But that by itself does not absolve Smith of responsibility -- at least, not according to your

way of looking at things. After all, Smith murdered the child intentionally: he knew what he was

doing, wanted to do it, and did it because he wanted to do it. If acting on an intention is, as you have

claimed, enough to make a person a responsible agent, then it seems we have no choice but to say

that Smith is to blame for murdering the child.

Yet it seems to me that this is the wrong thing to say. And if it is the wrong thing to say, then it is

equally wrong to say that an ordinary murderer (one who is not in the grips of a mad scientist) is to

blame for his homicidal acts. At least, it is wrong to say this if determinism is true. For if determinism

is true, then the ordinary murder’s desires and intentions arise from forces beyond his control, just

as much as Smith’s do. It is just that in Smith’s case, these forces take the form of a mad scientist,

whereas in the ordinary murderer’s case, they take the form of physical laws combined with events

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in the distant past. But this is not a morally relevant difference -- at least, not as far as the question

of responsibility for strangling the child is concerned.”

Humean: “I think you are moving rather too fast. I mean, I admit that, on my view, not only the mad

scientist is responsible for wrongdoing. I admit that someone is to blame for strangling the child,

since someone intentionally strangled the child to death. But why should we say that this someone

is Smith? Smith would never have done such a thing. To begin with, it is completely out of character

for Smith to have a sudden desire to kill a child (or anyone else for that matter). Furthermore, if he

did somehow find himself having such a desire, he would suppress it, as would any normal person of

good character.”

Strawsonian: “Well, we can suppose that the mad scientist also has the ability to shut down Smith’s

capacity for desire-suppression.”

Humean: “You can suppose that if you like. But now we have even less reason to think that the

person who strangles the child is Smith. It seems to me that what the mad scientist succeeds in

doing in this case is to take the good, kind Mr. Smith, and scramble his mind to such an extent that

Smith ends up getting replaced by a murderous villain who just happens to inhabit the body that

Smith once inhabited. And this new (and dangerous) inhabitant of Smith’s body is, I say, morally

responsible for the child’s murder.”

Strawsonian: “It seems the issue here is one of personal identity. How far can the mad scientist go

in manipulating Smith’s beliefs, desires, choices, etc., without destroying Smith and replacing him

with another person? Who is the “real Smith”?”

Humean: “Whoever he is, it seems pretty clear to me he was not at the scene of the crime, in your

example.”

Strawsonian: “I suppose that we won’t be in a position to settle this matter until we look into the

question of personal identity. I’ve heard that Pelczar is going to cover that later in the semester.”

Humean: “Perhaps we should sit in on those lectures.”

C. Is indeterminism compatible with moral responsibility?

The next time you are trying to decide what to order off of a menu, try to think of your deliberations

-- everything you are thinking, feeling, and doing at the time -- as all being the effects of events in

the distant past. Certain events occurred long, long ago, before you were even born, and these

events have had many effects in the past, and they are having many effects now, including your act

of trying to decide what to order; and your act of reflecting on the fact that your decision, whatever

it turns out to be, will have among its causes events that occurred before you were born; and your

act of focusing on the inner monologue in which you are having all these thoughts; and -- if you can

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pull it off -- your act of focusing on your act of focusing... It’s not an easy exercise; it can induce a

sort of vertiginous and as it were out-of-body experience.

It is hard to see oneself as a product of forces beyond one’s control. It is even harder to see oneself

as unresponsible for any of one’s actions (as convenient as such a self-image would sometimes be).

And, as we have just seen, there are reasons -- not decisive reasons, perhaps, but reasons worthy of

serious consideration -- for thinking that we are not responsible for our actions if, as determinism

implies, everything we do results from forces beyond our control.

Taken together, these considerations make it tempting to try to salvage moral responsibility by

rejecting determinism. This is the strategy of Jean-Paul Sartre and other proponents of what I’ve

called the Radical Will Theory. According to this theory, when I do something for which I am morally

responsible, my action proceeds from an act of will that has no causal history -- an act that is

original-with-me in the sense of having its origins entirely within my own psychology.

Determinism seems to pose a threat to moral responsibility because it implies that everything we do

is caused by events that took place before we were born. This makes it tempting to think that we

could rescue moral responsibility, if only we could find a way to argue that our actions do not result

from events that took place before we were born.

But this is a mistake.

Why does the fact that our actions arise from long-past events seem to absolve us of responsibility?

It is because we have no control over events that took place before we were born. So it is our lack of

control over various causes of our actions that seems to preclude moral responsibility. (I say

“seems” to preclude. Whether it really does preclude it is another issue, over which Hume and

Strawson obviously disagree.) But -- and this is the crucial point -- even if our actions or choices are

undetermined, they still arise from events over which we have no control, namely random events.

So it turns out that indeterminism is no different from determinism, in terms of the prima facie

threat it poses to moral responsibility.

It is in this sense that indeterminism is a red herring in the debate about free will and moral

responsibility. It is a red herring, in that it holds out a false promise of allowing us to construe our

actions as events over which we have a kind of ultimate control -- a kind of control that determinism

rules out.

MWP