NOV 30

27: NOV 30. Limits on Responsibility and The "growth of knowledge" argument

Assigned

• Sapolsky, Chapter 16: Biology, the Criminal Justice System, and (Oh, Why Not?) Free Will (580-613) (Part Two 598-613)

• Henrich, Joseph, "Hell, Free Will, and Moral Universalism" from The WEIRDEST People on Earth p. 146-148, (2)

• Over the next few classes, try to watch some of these:
• Some videos/websites about prisons and incarceration:

• Prison Policy Initiative Prison Policy Initiative]: A good up-to-date overview of prison facts and some popular myths about the US prison system. Updated to 2023!
• The Atlantic, data visualization on incarceration of African Americans [1]
• Data visualization on mass incarceration. [2]
• Norwegian prison, [3]
• US Supermax prison, “Red Onion” [4]
• ”When kids do hard time,” Wabash Prison, [5]

In-class

• Some limits on Ultimate Moral Responsibility
• How can anyone be a compatibilist?
• How should we treat people who make mistakes?

Some argument against Ultimate Moral Responsibility

Lines of argument regarding individual moral responsibility:

• 1. Strawson's Impossibility Argument.

• We cannot be "ultimately" responsible for how we are. What follows from his argument?

• 2. Mele's Self-modification argument and the "Benji" response.

• We can self-modify, but some of our ability to do that is not up to us.

• 3. Growth of Knowledge argument - Sapolsky (604-605)

• The more we learn about human behavior, the harder it is to make retributive punishment and "end in itself".

Lines of argument at the social and cultural levels:

• 1. Knowledge of the social determinants of crime and dysfunctional behavior.

• The more we know (also a growth of knowledge argument) about SES and the "epidemiology of crime" the harder it is to blame people absolutely and, hence, retributively.

• 2. Cultural evolution and the evolution of the idea of free will.

• While we feel certain about free will, that certainty might also be a product of cultural psychology (Henrich).

Some arguments for retaining strong intuitions about Free Will

• 1. All of this "growth in knowledge" isn't terribly predictive of individual behavior. It may still be me who determines whether I follow the patterns predicting by knowledge of behavior.

• Hard to use science in court to say that someone "didn't do it."

• 2. We have strong intuitions that we are the authors of our actions and people do typically accept responsibility for rule breaking.

How Can Someone be a Compatibilist?

• Agency as a source of causal powers for normally competent individuals

• Even if determinism is true, normal human beings have agency. Agency is a causal power. The ability to control ourselves and affect the world around us.
• Agency includes our ability to "do what we want"; even if we lack ultimate powers to determine what we want.
• Agency is our capacity to control outcomes and take ownership of some of actions.
• A normally competent agent (NCA) can learn the expectations of their society and conform to them.

• Free will looks less mysterious if you focus on our "agential capacities," rather than determinism. Consider these "ordinary language" statements. How is "choosing" and "free will" being used differently in each case? Is this way of talking "compatible" with determinism?:

• I may choose to take up painting as a hobby.
• My grandmother had a big influence on me and that's why I chose to become a doctor.
• I cannot choose to become a concert violinists at this point in my life.
• I can choose whether or not I get ready for class.
• I have no choice, I have to turn you in to the police.

• I can't choose not to love you, but I can't see you any more.
• I've decided I don't love you any more. (aww...)

• Parent to child: You can do anything you put your mind to. (Yeah, right.)
• Parent to child: You need to try harder.
• Parent to (older) child: You're doing fine. Just keep that up.

• Note: We often talk about an action being "ours" even when we say we are determined or influenced to do that action. Perhaps physics is the wrong place to look for free will?

• Problem: What sort of approach to punishment does this compatibilist picture support?

Sapolsky, Chapter 16: Biology, the Criminal Justice System, and (Oh, Why Not?) Free Will (580-613) (Part Two 598-613)

• But does anything useful actually come of this?

• Grounds for skepticism about using neuroscience in the courtroom: Stephen Morse. Neurolaw sceptic, ok with M’naugton, but thinks cases are rare. Reviews valid criticisms he makes: 1. Juries might overvalue neuroscience images, 2. Descriptive vs. Normative.

• Morse supports a strong distinction between causation and compulsion. Causation is not itself an excuse. But Sapolsky argues that this still involves walling off a “homunculus” and that’s not plausible.

• Acknowledges an apparent problem. Neuroscience typically can’t predict individual behavior very much. Fictional exchange with prosecutor. 600

• Explaining lots and Predicting Little

• But is the lack of predictive power a problem in the argument? S. works through some cases in which probability of prediction decreases, but no less likely that it could be a case of compulsion. 601

• 602: Important methodological point: There's no less biology in the leg fracture vs. the other disorders, but level of biological explanation is different. Leg fractures are less connected to culture. Behavior is multifactorial and heavily cultural. (Oh god, another Henrich digression. Free will has a history.) Example: how much does biology predict depression? Factors are diverse biological mechanisms, including cultural factors. (But, point is, someone can be disable by depression, just like the leg fracture.)

• Marvin Minsky, “Free will: internal forces I do not understand”. Sapolsky adds “yet”.

• Neat charts showing historic trend to connect social behavior and biology in research journals. 604-605.

• If you still believe in mitigated free will:

• Case of Dramer and Springer and the spiritual explanation for epilepsy. Biblical version with Jesus.
• Sapolsky imagines an Inquisitor (witch burner). Must be puzzled occasionally by fact pattern. Mom has epilepsy.
• Growth of knowledge argument 607-608. read list. Most likely option is that our kids will look at us as idiots about moral responsibility and culpability.

• 608: practical outcomes. Not about letting violent criminals free. On the biological view, punishment can’t be an end in itself (restoring balance). Retributive punishment is an end in itself.

• Brain imaging suggests culpability judgements activate the cool and cognitive dlPFC, but punishment judgements activate more emotional vmPFC. “A frothy limbic state”. Makes sense that punishment is costly. But we need to overcome our attachment to punishment. It is involved in a lot of unjustified suffering.

• Recaps the transition we've made with epilepsy 610.

• Car free will. A kind of reductio argument.

Mistake/Accident Cases

• Generally, we don't hold people equally blameworthy for mistakes and accidents as for intentional wrongdoing.

• Kimberly Potter - police officer who mistook her taser and gun, killing a citizen.
• Amber Guyger - the police officer, off duty, who mistook her neighbor, Botham Jean, for an intruder and killed him.
• A man has a heart attack / epileptic attack while driving and kills a pedestrian. (Consider variations.)
• A man is working two jobs to support a family, nods off at the wheel and kills a pedestrian.
• A man knows his car is close to a dangerous malfunction. When it occurs, he loses control and kills a pedestrian.
• The tragic case of the man who left his baby in a hot car.

Henrich, Joseph, "Hell, Free Will, and Moral Universalism"

• This excerpt from The WEIRDEST People in the World comes in the context of a section on "universal moralizing gods" which characterize the major world religions (though Buddhism requires some discussion). H's theory is that this cultural innovation in religions allows societies to grow, solving the problems associated with living with so many strangers, something our evolved psychology did not really prepare us for.

• The three innovations of moralizing religions are:

• contingent afterlife: how you behave in this life determines your after life or next life
• free will: encouraged followers to believe they could comply with moral code by acts of choice and will.
• moral universalism: moral rules are the same for all people. (Note how this overcomes groupish morality.)

• The rest of the excerpt goes into evidence of the effects of each feature on social life. The research related to free will is at top of p. 148.

• What consequences, if any, does this research have for our thinking about the modern problems of free will and moral responsibility?

• 1. Cultural variants on ways of thinking about agency make (or made, in the past) real differences in social morality, whether or not they are metaphysically grounded. They work to the extent that people can actually think of themselves as having FW and thinking this way changes their behavior. But this can also be oppressive if it overlooks the material conditions needed to develop competence.
• 3. The philosopher's concern with the metaphysical problem of free will is hard to reconcile with the cultural utility of a belief in free will. If a belief in FW motivates better outcomes, why do we care about it's metaphysical grounding? Should we be as-if Libertarians?
• 4. When you tell your future kids "You can do it if you try. Don't let other people control your decisions. What do you want to do with your life?" you may really be motivating them to take up a particular set of values to approach challenges. But notice this is only valuable motivationally. At some point, your parents stopped saying this so much. Instead, "you're doing fine..."