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John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998. Pp. viii + 277.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Paul Russell
Paul Russell*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia Vancouver, BCCanadaV6T 1Z1
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Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 2002 , pp. 587 - 606
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Copyright © The Authors 2002

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References

1 My thoughts on this book have benefited from discussions with Bob Bunn, David Zimmerman and other members of a free will seminar given at UBC during the Winter term of 2000. A visit and pair of lectures given at UBC by John M. Fischer the same term further helped this process along. I am also grateful to colleagues who attended a symposium on this subject at the Canadian Philosophical Association meeting at Quebec City in May 2001 for their friendly and helpful comments.

2 A prominent example of the classical position can be found in R.E. Hobart, ‘Free Will as Involving Determinism and Inconceivable Without It,’ in Bernard Berofsky, ed., Free Will and Determinism (New York: Harper & Row 1966), esp. 72-3

3 Harry Frankfurt, ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,’ Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969) 828-39; reprinted in John M. Fischer, ed., Moral Responsibility (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986); Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984)

4 Dennett, Elbow Room, Ch. 6. Hereafter Elbow Room is abbreviated as ER, and Responsibility and Control as RC.

5 Fischer and Ravizza say that they ‘are not committed to any sort of ‘reification’ of the mechanism; that is, we are not envisaging a mechanism as like a mechanical object of some sort. The mechanism leading to an action is, intuitively, the way the action comes about; and, clearly, actions can come about in importantly different ways’ (RC, 38n.).

6 A further difficulty here concerns the notion of ‘mechanism individuation’; cp. RC, 40. Fischer and Ravizza state that it is simply a presupposition of their theory ‘that for each act, there is an intuitively natural mechanism that issues in action, for the purposes of assessing guidance control and moral responsibility’ (RC, 47). They deny, however, that this commits them to ‘a stringent view of ‘‘same kind of mechanism’’ (according to which sameness requires sameness down to microdetails)’ (RC, 52n.).

7 Contrast, for example, the case of a person who is acting on the basis of an ‘irresistible desire’ with someone who is simply ‘weak-willed.’ The compulsive will continue to act in the same way no matter what reasons are provided for refraining from the conduct. The weak-willed person, although not strongly reasons-responsive, will nevertheless refrain from the conduct when presented with some relevant set of sufficient reasons (RC, 43, 48).

8 This general problem is discussed in some detail in R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1994), esp. 183-90, 199, 201-13. Wallace considers the ‘bipartite’ objection that ‘what matters to responsibility is not only the possession of the requisite general ability [i.e. reasons-responsiveness], but also the opportunity to exercise that general ability in the particular circumstances of action’ (208). I am not persuaded by Wallace's effort to deal with this objection, but the difficulty is taken up and addressed.

9 Cp. Dennett, Elbow Room, 66.

10 See, e.g., C.A. Campbell, ‘Is ‘‘Freewill’’ A Pseudo-Problem?’ in Berofsky, ed., Free Will and Determinism, esp. 131-5; and Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996), Ch. 8 and 9

11 This example comes from David Zimmerman, ‘Acts, Omissions and ‘‘Semicompatibilism,’’’ Philosophical Studies 73 (1994) 209-23.

12 Kane, The Significance of Free Will, Ch. 5. See also Richard Double, ‘Puppeteers, Hypnotists, and Neurosurgeons,’ Philosophical Studies 56 (1989) 163-73; and Ish Haji, Moral Appraisability (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998), Ch. 6.

13 Kane, The Significance of Free Will, 67

14 The historical view of moral responsibility is analogous, Fischer and Ravizza claim (RC, 178-82), to the historical account of justice that is defended by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974). I discuss this analogy further below.

15 The reference to the role of reactive attitudes in this context draws on P.F. Strawson's ‘landmark’ essay ‘Freedom and Resentment,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962), 187-211; reprinted in John M. Fischer and Mark Ravizza, eds., Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1993). Fischer and Ravizza explain the Strawsonian view as holding that ‘being morally responsible is being an appropriate candidate for the reactive attitudes’ (RC, 7).

16 The ‘subjectivist’ approach to moral responsibility, as Fischer and Ravizza point out, is defended at length by Galen Strawson, Freedom and Belief (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1986), esp. Ch. 13 and 15.

17 Harry Frankfurt, ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’ Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971) 5-20; reprinted in John M. Fischer, ed., Moral Responsibility. Gary Watson, ‘Free Agency,’ Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975) 205-20; reprinted in John M. Fischer, ed., Moral Responsibility.

18 Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, 197-8; Dennett, Elbow Room, 33-8

19 Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Ch. 7, sect. 1

20 G.A. Cohen observes that the foundation of Nozick's (Lockean) theory of justice is the ‘thought that each person is the morally rightful owner of himself’ (Cohen, ‘Self-Ownership, World-Ownership, and Equality,’ in Frank S. Lucash, ed., Justice and Equality Here and Now [Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986], 109).

21 This is a variant, I believe, of a familiar set of problems in Aristotle's ethical theory. Aristotle is committed to the view that moral agents are responsible for the character traits that they acquire, because there is a distinction to be drawn between (early) conduct that shapes character and (mature) conduct that expresses it. Critics point out, however, that a sharp distinction of this kind is hard to defend. Beyond this, during the early stages of moral development, when character is being shaped, the agent's choices and deliberations are conditioned by factors that they do not control. See, e.g., W.F.R. Hardie, Aristotle's Ethical Theory, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980), 175.

22 It is worth noting that mechanisms that provide agents with the power of ‘regulative control’ do not generate worries about implantation of the kind that the reasons-responsive mechanisms involved with guidance control encounter. Let us suppose that it is possible to implant a mechanism that supports regulative control in an agent (call it a ‘regulative control mechanism,’ or RCM). The fact that a RCM is implanted will not trouble the incompatibilist, because implantation as such will not compromise the agent's ability to exercise regulative control. Moreover, although a mechanism has been implanted, this does not make it possible to control the agent by means of this process. On the contrary, since the agent retains regulative control, the source or historical origins of the RCM is irrelevant to the way that the agent actually exercises this mechanism in the specific circumstances. What this shows is that incompatibilist worries about the implantation of reasons-responsive mechanisms are reducible to worries about the importance of being able to control how the mechanism is actually being exercised. If these concerns are satisfied — as they are in the case of RCM — incompatibiists could set aside the ‘history’ of mechanism acquisition as irrelevant to their concerns.

23 Kane, The Significance of Free Will, 67-8

24 The ‘hard compatibilist’ can, of course, reject the claim that moral responsibility is ‘essentially historical’ and still accept the ‘subjectivist approach’ to moral responsibility. More specifically, the hard compatibilist may agree that it will not suffice for moral responsibility that the agent's actions issue from a reasons-responsive mechanism unless the agent also sees himself as agent and as a fair target of reactive attitudes (i.e. understood as time-slice properties). What the hard compatibilist will deny, however, is that an agent who satisfies these conditions through a process of implantation cannot be morally responsible because he does not ‘own’ the mechanism that issues in action. In general, Fischer and Ravizza fuse the (distinct) claims concerning ‘subjectivism’ and ‘history’ very tightly in order to defend their ‘soft compatibilist’ position regarding implantation problems. There is, nevertheless, scope for separating these two claims more sharply in a way that would allow compatibilists to accept the ‘subjectivist approach’ without endorsing an ‘historical’ account of moral responsibility.