The Retreat of Reason Part 9 pdf

higher-order stance is actually adopted towards it. There is a case for saying that the

adoption of such a stance of accepting or rejecting a desire as effective is a form in which

a latent internality or externality manifests itself.

The account here proposed of compulsive desires is in some respects like that of Gary

Watson’s, which views such desires as being “more or less radically independent of the

evaluational systems of these agents” (1975: 220). But while I (roughly) regard what is

best as (implicitly) relative to some set of intrinsic desires, as that which fulfils them,

Watson may well take an objectivist view of values. He sees evaluations as a source of

desires (1975: 211), as something from which desires spring or arise (1975: 208). They are,

however, not the only source of desires, on his view. As was noted in Chapter 12, Watson

presents a dualistic picture of the self, according to which reason—within the province

of which the making of evaluative judgements lies—constitutes one source of desire

and appetite the other. One problem with this dualism is to explain why desires spring￾ing from reason should be authoritative relative to desires having their origin in the

appetitive part of the self: why should one try to overcome the latter desires (cf. Piper,

1985: 178–81)?

But supposing that we construe what is at present of value for A as what would fulfil

her present, intrinsic desires, how can we then explain the occurrence of compulsive

desires, that is, overruling desires that are contrary to what she sees as best? We have already

accounted for a similar discrepancy in cases of weakness of will by maintaining that one

can temporarily overlook some of one’s dispositional reasons that are relevant enough to

be episodically represented. This will, however, not do when it comes to compulsive

desires, for here one is fully conscious that the compulsive desire runs counter to one’s

best reasons: as has been remarked, this desire is experienced as an external force drag￾ging one in an undesirable direction. None of this is true of the akrates who is momentar￾ily oblivious of the fact of acting contrary to his best dispositional reasons. If it had

occurred to him at the crucial moment that he was about to act against his best reasons,

he would have resisted this, because he would then episodically represent these reasons.

The compulsive subject cannot do this, I suggest, because the compulsive desire is so

strong that its objective monopolizes attention. He is currently aware that he has better

reasons that point in the opposite direction, but, owing to the strength of his compulsive

desire, he fails to spell out or fully and vividly represent to himself what the contents of

these reasons are. Therefore, they are prevented from taking their proper effect.

It is true of the weak-willed agent that he possesses dispositional reasons such that,

if prior to the situation in which the weakness took place, he had vividly represented

these reasons to himself, he would have been able to recall them at the crucial moment,

and if he had done so, he would have refrained from falling victim to akrasia. In this

sense, the akrates could have avoided being weak. Punishing or blaming the akrates could

have the effect of strengthening his motivation to take such precautions in the future.

Therefore, there is a forward-looking justification for holding the akrates responsible.

In contrast, the agent who is in the grip of a compulsive desire could not have resisted this

desire: however vividly he represented his reasons before the onset of the compulsive

desire, he would fail to retrieve them after its onslaught. In view of the strength of the

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Compatibilist Freedom of Will 401

desire, the content of the compulsive desire exercises such a hold on attention that

thoughts of nothing else can gain a foothold. Hence, it would be useless, from a forward￾looking point of view, to punish or blame this agent.

An illustration might be of assistance. Hark back to an example of akrasia given in

Chapter 13: A takes a painkiller when a severe pain sets in, although, as she realized

beforehand, she has better reasons not to. Here it was assumed that if A had prepared

herself for the possibility of backsliding by trying to impress on her mind that she

must not later fail to think of certain salient reasons, she would not have succumbed to

the temptation to inject the painkiller. This is the import of the claim that A could have

abstained from this act. Suppose, however, that the pain had been excruciating, so intense

that however great an effort A would have made to think of something else, she would

have failed. Then it would not help; whatever precautions she had taken to facilitate the

future representation of her best reasons, she would still have failed to represent them

with sufficient vividness for them to take proper effect. That is, A’s desire to get rid of the

pain is irresistible, and she cannot avoid acting on it.

To sum up: in order for A’s causing p to be a responsible act it is necessary that it not

be done out of a compulsive desire to cause p. It is, strictly speaking, not necessary that

the desire that A acts out of on this particular occasion be resistible (not irresistible), but

it is necessary that, as a rule, the desire out of which responsible agents act be resistible

or sensitive to the agents’ reasons. Otherwise there could not be a forward-looking justifica￾tion of the R–P practice. The argument here is analogous to the one presented in the last

chapter as regards condition (2) of responsibility. But let us for the time being eschew

these complications and concentrate on the conditions at a particular time of action.

Since we are concerned only with a sufficient condition of responsibility, we can rest

content with (3*) given above.

Coercion and Acting of One’s Free Will

There are further considerations bearing on ascriptions of responsibility. I have in mind

considerations to the effect that the agent was forced orcoerced to act or acted under duress.

Coercion can be ‘physical’. Suppose that a stronger man pushes me off the pavement,

with the result that I knock over a bicyclist. Then I am certainly not responsible for having

knocked over the bicyclist (at least not if I have done nothing to provoke the man to force

me off the pavement). It is not hard to understand why this is so. For even if I can be said

to have acted in some sense when I knock over the bicyclist, I obviously do not act inten￾tionally or knowingly. In other words, condition (1) suffices to explain why there is no

responsibility here. So we need not waste any time on physical coercion.

We should rather focus on cases in which the agent’s will is subjected to coercion.

A case in point would be the one discussed in Chapter 4, where a cashier hands over

money to a robber, because he is convinced that the robber will otherwise carry out his

threat and kill him. It seems incontestable that there is a sense of ‘acting of one’s own free

will’ in which it is not applicable to the cashier in this situation. It is not applicable to him

because he acts under duress or is forced or coerced to act as he does by the robber’s

threat. Moreover, it seems plain that the cashier’s behaviour can be described in this fashion

even if he does not act out of a desire that is compulsive or irresistible, but it is true of him

that he complies with the robber’s threat simply because he judges that course of action

to be best for him under the circumstances.

In ‘Coercion and Moral Responsibility’, Frankfurt grants that such an agent could

properly be described as acting “under duress” (1988: 37). In this sense, one is forced to do

something if that is the only reasonable thing to do, if other alternatives would be, as one

realizes, far worse at least for oneself. Under these conditions, however, one could strictly

speaking have willed and performed an alternative action: the effective desire was not

irresistible. Had one’s view of one’s reasons or good been different, one would have acted

accordingly. Now Frankfurt prefers to employ the term ‘coercion’ so narrowly that an

agent is coerced only if his effective desire is irresistible and, more precisely, compulsive.

He stipulates that “coercion, as here understood, may be said to deprive its victim of free

will” (1988: 42 n.)—where “free will” carries the meaning expounded above, namely,

a will that is controlled by one’s second-order volitions. Frankfurt’s reason for understand￾ing ‘coercion’ so narrowly is that this understanding is indispensable if coercion is to

annul responsibility (1988: e.g. 39).

This is true: if ‘coercion’ is so liberally used that the cashier can be described as

being coerced when he submits to the robber’s threat, not because he is seized with an

irresistible or compulsive desire to save his life, but because he sees this course as

the one he has best reasons to choose, then a plea of coercion does not exempt him

from responsibility. However, even if the threat here does not relieve the cashier of

responsibility, it qualifies, as we shall soon see, what he could justifiably be held

responsible for. Thus, the wider sense of coercion has some bearing on responsibility,

and this justifies my taking a closer look at what lies behind this talk of coercion.

Furthermore, since I have already investigated irresistible and compulsive desire, I can

now concentrate on cases of coercion that fall outside the scope of Frankfurt’s

narrow notion.

One difference between a compulsive desire, like the kleptomaniac’s, and the desire

that the cashier is forced or coerced to have is that the cashier is forced to have this desire

only given some other desire that he possesses. The cashier is forced to want to hand over

the money only because he has a desire to hang on to life and, as he is aware, the latter

desire can be fulfilled only if the former state of affairs obtains. So far as the case has

been described, the clerk is, however, not forced to desire to go on living, for this desire

is not presented as being derived from some other desire of his. Hence, if one describes

the cashier as doing what in the present situation will keep him alive, one attributes to

him an action that he executes of his own free will. There is no other threat—for example,

to the effect that the clerk’s children will be tortured to death if he does not submit to

the first threat—which forces him to do what in the present situation will keep him alive.

Nevertheless, he is forced to hand over the money to the robber; this is not anything

he does of his own free will, although it is that which in the present situation will keep

him alive.

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Compatibilist Freedom of Will 403

Against this background, it should be readily comprehensible that coercion does

not remove responsibility, but merely qualifies that for which one is held responsible.

The action for which the clerk is held responsible should not be described as simply

‘handing over the money to the robber’, but as doing this in circumstances in which

this action was necessary to save his life or, in other words, as ‘saving his life at the

expense of giving away the bank’s money’. For it is only in the special circumstances

in which giving money to the robber is a means of staying alive that the clerk wants to

do this action. Of course, blame and punishment might be withheld from the clerk,

because it is agreed that his appraisal of the situation was reasonable, that his life is

indeed of greater weight than the money. But this does not alter the fact that he has

performed an action for which he can intelligibly be held responsible: somebody

who dissents from this appraisal could intelligibly urge that the cashier be blamed and

punished.

So freedom of will in a sense that excludes coercion or duress is not necessary for

responsibility.⁹ Thus no clause requiring this freedom of will need be added to the

three conditions for responsibility so far established. A requirement to this effect can,

however, easily be built into the conditions. Acting intentionally is acting at will or

voluntarily, in one sense. Clearly, acting of one’s own free will or acting voluntarily, in

another sense, entails acting at will. Hence we can incorporate the requirement men￾tioned by replacing (1) by

(1*) A voluntarily causes p,

where ‘voluntarily’ carries the second, stronger sense. This substitution ensures that A’s

responsibility for causing p does not rest on any special circumstances obtaining at the

time of action.

One further matter should be cleared up. I have claimed that the statement that the

clerk is forced or coerced to—want to—hand over the money to the robber presupposes

his having some other desire from which this desire is derived. But obviously, not every

derived desire is one that one is forced or coerced to have, so it must be asked: what dis￾tinguishes derived desires that one is coerced or forced to have? If we let the term ‘the

will’ designate the capacity to form desires, including derivative ones, the problem can be

formulated as follows: when is the will coerced?

The answer was sketched in Chapter 4. Prior to the issuing of the threat, the bank clerk

has both a firm desire not to give the bank’s money to anyone who is not entitled to it and

a firm desire to stay alive. This is possible because until he was threatened these desires

were co-satisfiable. The threat obstructs this co-satisfiability and brings them into con￾flict. Since the desire to go on living is the strongest, the cashier forms a derivative desire

to give away the bank’s money in this situation. Because of his aversion to this conduct, in

view of what it normally brings along, he reluctantly forms this derivative desire. That is

why he is described as being coerced or forced to—want to—hand over the money. As we

saw, offers can be coercive just like threats. If I am strongly averse to eating worms, but do

⁹ This is argued, e.g. by Don Locke (1975) and Slote (1980: 147–9).

so to earn a million dollars, I can be described as being forced to—want to—do this action

in order to earn the million dollars.

In contrast to what is the case as regards the cashier, however, it goes against the grain

to deny that I eat the worm freely or of my own free will. The question why that is so

was earlier left unanswered. I think that the reply is that, whereas a threat makes the

alternatives of action facing the agent worse, an offer improves them. Therefore, all things

considered, the agent welcomes the offer: I welcome the offer to make a million dollars,

because—in spite of the unpleasantness of having to eat the worm—it opens up new

possibilities of living a more fulfilling life. In contrast, a threat restricts these possibilities.

Prior to the introduction of the threat, the cashier could fulfil both his desire to stay alive

and his desire to guard the bank’s money; after its introduction, he can fulfil at most one

of these desires. Hence the cashier regrets the fact that the threat has been issued. My con￾jecture is, then, that one is said to be deprived of freedom of will when one is forced to

form a desire as the result of circumstances (beyond one’s control) that one regrets

obtaining. Being subject to a compulsive desire and being coerced or forced to have a

desire in a sense that entails the negation of freedom of will are then similar in that in

both cases there is in the offing a wish or desire that one be without these desires.

As Slote points out (1980: 143–7), it follows from this account that it is a relative

matter, depending on the variable psychological make-up of subjects, whether or not

some external circumstance eliminates freedom of will. For instance, suppose that, by

repeatedly dwelling on the causal necessity ruling all events in the world, the cashier has

developed an attitude of calm acceptance of everything that happens. As a consequence,

when he is threatened, he does not regret the fact that he is put in a situation where he

must (want to) hand over the bank’s money to a robber; it does not appear to him that his

alternatives of action have been substantially restricted. Then he cannot be said to have

been divested of his freedom of will. It should be noted, though, that this avenue to

freedom opens up only to those willing to pay the price of being attached to few things.

Forward-looking Justification and Mere Conditioning

It is sometimes suggested that a forward-looking justification of the R–P practice reduces

it to a mere conditioning device that has nothing to do with responsibility. For instance,

Susan Wolf argues that to justify rewarding and punishing in this way

is to justify these practices in the same way that we justify the praise and blame of

lower animals—in the same way, that is, that we justify the reward and punishment

of pets, of pigeons in the laboratory, of monkeys in the circus. It is to justify these

practices only as a means of manipulation and training. (1981: 389)

In expounding condition (3) as (3*), I have already gone some distance towards meeting

this objection, for this move reveals this condition to entail that A has to have conceptual

resources to deliberate and form reason-based desires, and this is a power that some of

Wolf ’s “lower animals” certainly lack. It is possible, however, to be equipped with these

404 Rationality and Responsibility