The Problem of Determinism

Strawson’s renowned article does not set out just to define a concept of moral responsibility explicitly. At the beginning of FR he wonders what the true concern of the thesis of determinism might be. He admits up front that he does not have a clear idea about what determinism actually is.45 _{He continues}

however: “perhaps we shall see that the question can be answered without knowing exactly what the thesis of determinism is” (FR, 11). It is a comment on the discussion of the determinism vs. free will debate and how it relates to moral responsibility in general at a time when it was thought that conceptual analysis could solve the apparent contradictions between the phrases in the supposed ordinary language (see ibid., 1).

The reason for Strawson's success is in part to do with the free will problem or, more accurately, that Strawson's article provides the keys to circumvent it. Before Strawson, questions about responsibility were focused on the sort of fact-value discussions that were favored by the logical positivists for one. The proponents of determinism focus on the seemingly impossible nature of responsibility assessments as facts as these were considered to be moral statements with values at their heart (moral statements, according to the logical positivists, who were emotivists by default, do not have logically determinable truth-values).

Strawson follows this initial formulation with his classification of the disputants into optimists and pessimists depending on the attitudes that the writers hold toward the acknowledged possibility of the veracity of the determinism thesis (ibid. 2-3). The issue between the “optimist” and “pessimist” stances is the most striking, as Strawson writes, in cases of retribution as well as moral condemnation and approval. For the pessimist in particular, the schism between the determinists and libertarians is crucial. While the division concerns the age-old question about the origin of actions, he diverts attention toward emotions such as “resentment, forgiveness, [and] love”.46 _{(Ibid. 5.) According to Strawson it's not important to discuss whether}

45

A possible distinction that Strawson alludes to could be that between physical determination and theological determination. Beginning from Campbell 1951 and onwards, a growing number of commentators feel that the whole debate on free will and determinism is misleading, and that it really does not contribute at all to the philosophical investigation into the nature of responsibility (see Smiley 1992). The theme is however so pervasive that it has to be acknowledged in connection with responsibility and it should be noted, especially if a writer has a specific stance on the issue. Therefore, when relevant and clear, the position of the author on the compatibilism-incompatibilism divide will be stated, but a more extensive analysis of what the division implies is left to another occasion.

46 _{For examples of philosophy of emotions from the pre-Strawson era, see Schlick 1966, Nowell-}

Smith 1948, Campbell, C.A. 1951 & Austin 1956-7. Strawson also refers to La Rochefoucauld, whose ideas are discussed in Christopher Tilmouth’s Passion’s Triumph over Reason, which is a very interesting intellectual history on the rise of the philosophical interest in the emotions. (Tilmouth 2010, 273, 300, 304-305.)

the statements above are facts or not, but rather what motivates the claims based on the sentiments that we have in connection with responsibility assessments. These motivations consist, according to Strawson, of emotions such as resentment, anger, gratitude and praise, etc. He explains that these attitudes are crucial to our capacity to distinguish between those who qualify as responsible persons and those who do not, and are non-responsible agents.

Michael McKenna and Paul Russell’s book Free Will and Reactive Attitudes: Perspectives on P.F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” (2007) contains articles related to the influential essay by Strawson.47 _The

introductory essay describes “Freedom and Resentment”, originally published in 1962, as being:

among the most important and influential of the contributions produced during this period. [- -] On one side, it must be viewed from the perspective of the “classical” free will debate as it was generally understood around the middle of the twentieth century. On the other side, we need to consider “Freedom and Resentment” in terms of the critical responses and debates that it has generated. (McKenna & Russell 2007, 1.)

Strawson’s goal was ambitious in aiming to resolve the problem of determinism. The classical free will debate, he argues, can be described in terms of this problem. Determinism in this context is usually as thought about as follows: “everything that happens in the world—including all human thought and action—is subject to causal laws and this involves the necessitation of effects by antecedent causal conditions.” (McKenna & Russell 2007, 1.)

If this is true, and all of our actions are necessitated causally, free will and moral responsibility appear to be impossible. The trouble is that free will and moral responsibility require causally necessitated actions. This leads to the situation in which no matter what our interpretation of the condition of determinism is – true or false – the ideas of free will and moral responsibility become logically untenable. (McKenna & Russell 2007, 2.)

The conflicting state for free will and moral responsibility in connection with determinism leads to the skeptical conclusion that there is no room for this concept. The two rival points of view are borne out of this situation. The classical compatibilist position and the variations of incompatibilism refer to this dilemma: compatibilism states that causal necessitation can co-exist with determinism. Classical incompatibilists vary in the strategy they use to

47 _{In addition to these, their co-authored introduction is one of the best introductions to Strawson’s}

best-known article as well as his thought. The essay is divided into three parts titled: “I. The Classical Debate and the Dilemma of Determinism”, “II. Strawson’s “Reconciling Project” and the Naturalistic Turn” and “III. Critical Themes Concerning “Freedom and Resentment”. This structure is also followed loosely here.

advance their arguments.48 _{The idea of forward-looking, utilitarian moral}

responsibility is dismissed by the incompatibilist, but accepted by the compatibilist. Campbell, for example, who McKenna & Russell refer to, noted that while our conduct can be altered by means of punishments and rewards, responsibility itself is not limited only to these (see Campbell, C.A. 1951). This is because animals and children can be observed to react similarly to punishment and reward, without them qualifying as moral agents.

The incompatibilists take hold of this, as they criticize the compatibilists for not having a sufficiently “deep account of moral responsibility”49_.

Strawson adds the considerations of desert and identification of the “will with the act”, and the observation that the emphasis expressed in these viewpoints can lead to attempts to disprove the thesis of determinism. The

48 _{As a group, incompatibilism includes the polar opposites of the metaphysical libertarians as well}

as hard determinists. Cross-referencing the stances on determinism and free will reveals a possible explanation for this :

Free will is true Free will is false

Determinism is true Soft determinism / compatibilism Hard determinism

Determinism is false Libertarianism Soft incompatibilism

The debate has mostly to do with underlying worldviews of the authors and mostly these do not directly influence the actual events that need moral consideration. Thus, the incompabilists are a group consisting of both libertarians and hard determinists: Metaphysical libertarians claim that determinism is false, and that free will is an actuality and is at the heart of morality. Thus any moral decisions are ultimately connected to the agent or the person who decides to act. The libertarian stance runs into trouble when confronted by empirical evidence against the capacity for these rational decisions. Hard determinists on the other hand adhere to determinism and absolve all the potential for moral responsibility of an individual. According to libertarians, moral responsibility requires that the choice between alternate courses of action be made by the agent herself. This would mean the falsity of the condition of determinism. On the other hand, the hard determinists maintain that the reality is completely determined, and as such even the practice of blaming is questionable on the grounds that the agents are unable to affect anything (See McKenna & Russell 2007, 3 & Waller 2011). Most people find the resulting demands made by the hard determinists, such as abolishing moral responsibility, difficult to accept (see Waller 2011). Finally there is the group of moral skeptics and “agnostics”, who do not consider the question to be relevant. (FR; see also the Stanford encyclopedia article "Compatibilism" by M. McKenna 2004).

49

The optimist account according to Strawson is defined by an objectifying attitude toward action within societies. He continues that they tend to point to the evidence about their function and to the fact that there is no evidence in punishment practices that would imply that the thesis of determinism is false, and that as a result they are content to accept the circumstances. He also sketches out one of the common arguments made by the pessimists, i.e., incompatibilists, against the point above in the following steps: 1. Just punishment and moral condemnation are practiced in any given society; 2. This implies truth of moral guilt. 3. Moral guilt implies moral responsibility. 4. Moral responsibility implies free will. 5. Free will implies the falsity of the thesis of determinism. 6. Thus, the thesis of determinism is false. (FR, 2.) When all of these arguments are taken together, the result is uncomfortable, as the pessimist stance depends on the truth of 6.

incompatibilists (of the libertarian variety) thus tend to emphasize the control aspect of the moral agent that, as the originator of the action and that the moral desert of the agent, needs to be more prudentially accounted for. The incompatibilist claims that the agent must have the capacity to choose between alternative actions. This, on the other hand, would mean that determinism could not be true. (McKenna & Russell 2007, 2-3.)

McKenna & Russell claim that a key motivation for the incompatibilists is that compatibilists lose something vital, or “deep” from the concept of agency and responsibility (Ibid. 3). This relates mainly to the demand for a capability of control, meaning that the agent is the one who can select one out of possible courses of action. There is however a danger of simplification here. The stance here is that, while the “deeper” role of agency may be a motivation for an incompatibilist position, this desire for or tendency toward a more complex picture of agency does not necessarily lead to incompatibilism.50 _{There are examples of “deeper” statements that do not fall}

under incompatibilist accounts. The main example of these is Aristotle. For example, according to Sarah Broadie, it would be mistake to call Aristotle a “libertarian”, but she notes that his philosophy can be described as a “proto- indeterminist” philosophy (Broadie 1991, 158). Susan S. Meyer goes a step further, arguing that Aristotle’s view of responsibility,51 _{like Strawson’s, is}

independent of the factual status of determinism, but is not incompatibilist by nature (Meyer 2011). Aristotle’s thought can thus be considered on compatibilist standards.

Strawson discusses his answer to the optimist vs. pessimist debate in FR. The argument between the sides is considered further with the help of additional points of disagreement, concluding in the realization by Strawson that both parties fail to see that the disputants are not exactly talking about the same problem: the optimist stops inquiring at a certain point that logic

50 _{See the work of Bernard Williams on this topic (1985, 1993, 1997) and John Fischer and Mark}

Ravizza’s book (1998), which are discussed here in ch. 4.3.3. Neither, as Eshleman writes, is the division between the two camps necessarily directly indicative of specific views on the concept of moral responsibility any longer: “This general trend of linking the consequentialist conception of moral responsibility with compatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility and the merit- based conception with incompatibilism continued to persist through the first half of the twentieth century” (Eshleman 2014).

51 _{Perhaps the most cited work on Aristotle within this thesis is Susan S. Meyer’s Aristotle on}

Moral Responsibility originally from 1993, reprinted in 2011, which is used first in chapter 5.1.2 to pinpoint the responsibility for the character side of Aristotle’s moral responsibility. However, as it is discussed in the criticism part of chapter 5.2, it is possible that Aristotle never meant to include the responsibility for character discussion within his theory of moral responsibility; rather it seems that side of the concept would only actually matter for moral education, not responsibility. Aristotle’s theory of responsibility is the topic of chapter 5, where Meyer’s argument that Aristotle’s conception does not conflict with determinism, although she also writes that his character-based view would not be a part of that, is discussed.

allows about the effect of freedom, while the pessimist tries to convince others that what is beyond this point has significance. (FR, 4.) According to Strawson the whole dilemma is based on a misunderstanding:

Both seek, in different ways, to over-intellectualize the facts. Inside the general structure or web of human attitudes and feelings of which I have been speaking, there is endless room for modification, redirection, criticism, and justification. But questions of justification are internal to the structure or relate to modifications internal to it. The existence of the general framework of attitudes itself is something we are given with the fact of human society. As a whole, it neither calls for, nor permits, an external ‘rational’ justification. Pessimist and optimist alike show themselves, in different ways, unable to accept this. (FR, 25, see also McKenna & Russell 2007, 7-8.)

Strawson labels the traditional competing viewpoints as optimistic and pessimistic depending on their attitudes toward the possibility of moral considerations in cases where both states of being are considered.52

Optimists claim that whether determinism affects us or not, it makes no difference to the moral choices we make. Pessimists, as Strawson declares, include hard determinists and libertarians alike. These two contradictory positions share, he argues, the negative expectation of morality, as hard determinists deny the possibility of having an effect on one’s action, while the latter group resorts to “obscure and panicky metaphysics”, including conditions in which moral condemnation or punishment is inappropriate (FR, 1-4).

The pessimist relates to experiencing a negative emotion or a shock, which comes from an assessment made not about the factuality of determinism by itself, but of the perceived callousness of the attitude that the consequentialist (esp. of the economy of threats variety) harbors toward the issue.53 _{In response, the pessimist seeks a relevant insight, which is the}

realization that moral condemnation and moral responsibility as its extension is impossible with a fully objective attitude (without emotion)

52

McKenna & Russell’s assessment of the motivation of the incompatibilist is that the proponents of the stance find the possibility of determinism “depressing or dispiriting”. This motivation is mirrored in Strawson’s description of “pessimists”, the other group he is arguing against, in an analogous way as “optimists”, hold a corresponding attitude toward the thesis of determinism. (McKenna & Russell 2007, 4.)

53

Samuel Scheffler (1992) writes on Strawson’s contribution in his article “Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes and Liberalism in Philosophy and Politics” that the consequentialist compatibilist forgoes the reactive attitudes and thus bases the entire concept of moral responsibility on clinical, objective attitudes, which in turn shocks the pessimist, who relies more on praise and blame. (Scheffler 1992, 312.)

about the agent and the acts, but also that the incompatibilist fumbles by placing her bets against determinism.

Strawson’s contribution to the problem of determinism is found at the end of FR by siding (with conditions) with the compatibilists:

Only by attending to this range of attitudes can we recover from the facts as we know them a sense of what we mean, i.e. of all we mean, when, speaking the language of morals, we speak of desert, responsibility, guilt, condemnation, and justice. But we do recover it from the facts as we know them. We do not have to go beyond them. Because the optimist neglects or misconstrues these attitudes, the pessimist rightly claims to find a lacuna in his account. We can fill the lacuna for him. But in return we must demand of the pessimist a surrender of his metaphysics. […] The optimist’s style of over- intellectualizing the facts is that of a characteristically incomplete empiricism, a one-eyed utilitarianism. He seeks to find an adequate basis for certain social practices in calculated consequences, and loses sight (perhaps wishes to lose sight) of the human attitudes of which these practices are, in part, the expression. The pessimist does not lose sight of these attitudes, but is unable to accept the fact that it is just these attitudes themselves which fill the gap in the optimist’s account. Because of this, he thinks the gap can be filled only if some general metaphysical proposition is repeatedly verified, verified in all cases where it is appropriate to attribute moral responsibility. […] If we sufficiently, that is radically, modify the view of the optimist, his view is the right one. […] When we do remember this, and modify the optimist’s position accordingly, we simultaneously correct its conceptual deficiencies and ward off the dangers it seems to entail, without recourse to the obscure and panicky metaphysics of libertarianism. (FR, 24-25; 27, my emphasis).

Strawson’s concluding answer is that the compatibilist is right, but his position is unacceptable as such. It has to be appended with Strawson’s account of the reactive emotions. (FR, 27.) The skeptical conclusion (i.e., the rejection of both optimist and pessimist positions), according to which the contradiction of free will and determinism making moral responsibility existing in any form impossible, is counter-intuitive. Strawson argues that the moral skeptic only focuses on the “one-eyed utilitarianism” of the optimist and the “inanity” of the libertarian position. He argues that blame is not a pure metaphysical entity, but an actual psychological feature of human beings as well, and rejecting these facts based on the faults of the viewpoints above would be wrong.54 _{(See ibid. 25.)}

54

“Even if we had some theoretical reason to abandon or suspend these reactive attitudes it would be psychologically impossible for us to do this. To do this would involve “adopting a thoroughgoing objectivity of attitude to others” which is something we are incapable of (FR, 27–8/69–70).” (McKenna & Russell 2007, 6, compare also with Prinz 2007.)

The problem of determinism comes to a close in Strawson’s context: the problem appears “irrelevant” after the focus of responsibility has been shifted toward the reactive attitudes (ibid. 21). As stated, this particular conclusion by Strawson has provoked unprecedented discussion on the topic and its effect on the philosophy of responsibility.55 _{However, not everyone has been}

persuaded by his result. Strawson’s conclusion concerning the problem of determinism is followed at this point of the present work, at least for the sake of the argument. This means that even with its problems, Strawson’s solution to the problem is preferable to the continuation of the deadlock. What follows is a detailed, even if not comprehensive presentation of the key concepts in the theory of responsibility found in FR.

55

Eshleman writes about the continuing debate that Strawson’s argument that responsibility ascriptions are oblivious to independent theoretical considerations has not persuaded all of the