A Meta-debate Question: Must Theories of Moral Responsibility Appeal to Intuition?

This past year, I’ve been giving a paper arguing that cross-cultural differences in intuitions and attitudes about moral responsibility are deep enough to make it unlikely that there’s a principled way of establishing the truth of theories of moral responsibility (including skeptical ones). At the last conference (ROME in Boulder), I got a couple of comments along the following lines:

“I’m not interested in anyone’s intuitions or beliefs, I’m interested in the nature of moral responsibility. Your project doesn’t tell me anything about that.”

These comments confuse me because every theory of MR that I’m familiar with appeals to intuition about key principles and cases. So how is it possible to investigate the nature of moral responsibility and at the same time claim to be “not interested” in people’s intuitions?

Consider:

Incompatibilists tend to employ two principles to justify their theories: (1) the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) and (2) the ‘Transfer of Non-Responsibility’ (TNR) principle. Some argue directly for the intuitively plausibility of these principles (e.g van Inwagen’s “Direct Argument”, Galen Strawson’s “Basic Argument”), and others describe specific cases in which an agent is intuitively not morally responsible and then argue that there is no relevant difference between those cases and all instances of determined behavior (e.g. Pereboom’s Four case argument, Mele’s “zygote argument” in a way..). “Generalization strategies” can’t get off the ground unless the reader shares with the author the intuitions about the moral responsibility of the agents in the original cases. Readers who don’t share those intuitions won’t arrive at the incompatibilist conclusion. So the two main strategies for defending incompatibilism seem ultimately appeal to intuition.

Now look at compatibilist counterexamples. If I want to insist that unmanipulated Jones is not morally responsible because he can’t do otherwise, I’m not making a logical or factual mistake. I’m just going against what seems like a dominant intuition. Same with Fischer and Ravizza’s Erosion counterexamples. Susan Wolf’s counterexample to the Deep Self View—Jojo, son of evil dicator Jo the First—is an explicit appeal to a controversial intuition: the judgment that Jojo is not MR for his cruel behavior because of how he was raised. One Prof. in the Boulder conference told me that he ran a study with his students and found that most students believed that Jojo was MR, just not as much as someone who had been raised differently. And compatibilist theories rely on the reader’s all-things-considered intuition (or considered judgment) that the theory has provided sufficient conditions for fair assignments of blame and praise, punishment and reward.

How about Strawson-style theories that base their analyses of MR on actual practices? At first glance, this might seem like a promising candidate of a theory that lacks an appeal to intuition. But it seems to me that the practices themselves are based on just the kind of intuitions that philosophers in the first two categories are appealing to. When Strawson says that we don’t resent someone who accidentally breaks a vase (or something) in our living room, this absence of resentment or “excusing condition” seems to be grounded in an intuition (not universally shared incidentally) that you are not blameworthy for unintentional acts that do not show ill-will on the part of the agent. (Indeed, if you were resentful at the moment of the accident, it’s exactly this kind of intuition that would make you calm down and realize that it’s not the agent’s fault that your vase broke.)

So two questions: First, does anyone know of a theory of MR that doesn’t appeal to intuition to justify an essential premise or principle? And (2), if not, is there any way to investigate “the nature of MR” without appealing to the intuitions of your audience? What, in absence of such an appeal, would count as the truth-makers of the key principles?

(Also, any references that address this topic would be much appreciated!)

Comments

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tamler,

I'm not aware of anything in particular in the literature (though I am a bit behind these past two years) that speaks directly to your question.

However, I am very confident that one can ground one's arguments on values proper without appealing to the secondary intuitions that pull us toward those values.

For example, I firmly believe that there are two major competing values that people generally believe to be in play when they think about FW and MR. I refer to them as the "value of definition" and the "value of expression". (I also believe that the "value of change" plays a minor, though important role, but it isn't necessary to mention in order to flush out my points here.)

I believe that all incompatibilists put more emphasis on the value of definition, and that all compatibilists put more emphasis on the value of expression. This seems to cut beneath the cloud of intuition quite effectively.

For instance, incompatibilists could doubt the veracity of Jojo's MR due to an impediment to define himself that his upbringing might have had on him. Or, compatibilists could doubt the veracity of Jojo's MR due to an impediment to express himself that his upbringing might have had on him.

Moreover, I believe it is possible to argue quite effectively against the legitimacy of the "value of definition", with arguments similar to Galen Strawson's. However, the "value of expression" seems much harder to dislodge.

So, an incompatibilist who absconds the "value of definition" and yet does not become a promoter of the "value of expression" would naturally become a skeptic about FW and MR.

I don't know if that way of looking at things could be helpful to anyone else, but it has certainly been useful in my own experience.

[Alan]

Just a thought: how about a Chalmers-like approach? Are beings conceivable that (i) are free, (ii) are morally responsible, but (iii) are devoid of intuitions (work in some purely physicalistic/computationally decidable fashion a la zombies)? If such beings are conceivable, and maybe along the familiar two-dimensional lines, at least we could admit for such beings that there is no need to base MR on intuition. It's at least one potential way to put one boundary on the issue.

[Cihan]

Alan,

I think you may be misunderstanding Tamler's point. The idea is not that you need intuitions to be MR - the idea is that every argument about free will appeals to intuitions.

So revising your thought experiment a little bit, I think the right experiment to think of would be: Imagine beings who have no intuitions about free will - is it possible to convince them one way or another?

At this point, I feel Vonnegut quote (also quoted by Tamler in his Strawson interview is apt):

“If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by free will. I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”

—From Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

[Matt King]

Hi Tamler,

Suppose we have two groups of people. Group A has one set of intuitions and Group B has a different set (they need not be entirely different - but they differ significantly).

Now take any theory T - how might we evaluate it? Well, we might wonder whether it's correct, of course. One traditional test has been to see how well it captures/explains our intuitions. (I believe Doris, et al. have a paper exploring this strategy and their claims about variantism).

Now, there's two important points to note. First, even if a theory T captures *all* of our intuitions, this wouldn't show that T is "grounded" on the intuitions. And such a result wouldn't tell us much about the "nature" of responsibility, I take it.

Second, the capturing of the intuitions is only relevant to the extent that such capturing is a desiderata for a theory. If we don't care whether a theory captures our/their intuitions, then those intuitions, and the differences between two sets of intuitions, don't seem particularly significant. This last point is better supported, I think, the better we get at explaining why particular groups might have the intuitions they do.

[Justin Coates]

And (2), if not, is there any way to investigate “the nature of MR” without appealing to the intuitions of your audience? What, in absence of such an appeal, would count as the truth-makers of the key principles?

Does anyone really think that our intuitions are the truth-makers of general principles? I mean, when I read a Frankfurt case I think to myself, "oh yeah, alternative possibilities aren't required for moral responsibility," but I don't take that judgment to be the truth-maker for the principle: moral responsibility doesn't require alternative possibilities. The truth-maker for that principle, whatever it may be, is something that is independent of my mind in a way that my intuitions about specific cases are not.

But as someone generally sympathetic with your concerns, perhaps we could just revise (2) by asking how, in the absence of an appeal to intuitions, would we access such principles.

[Tamler Sommers]

Thanks everyone!

Brief responses--

Mark, Ok, but what grounds those values? You write:

"For instance, incompatibilists could doubt the veracity of Jojo's MR due to an impediment to define himself that his upbringing might have had on him."

What could justify this doubt about MR due an impediment to define oneself because of one's upbringing? Anything besides intuition?

Alan,

I think Cihan makes a really nice point--the key question here is how those intuitionless creatures could possibly know whether someone was morally responsible or not. How could they assess, say, the soundness of Susan Wolf's argument for the Deep Self plus Sanity view?

Of course, you're right that there might be a fact of the matter about MR that they had no access to. But if that's the case, then the MR debate becomes sort of futile, no?

Cihan,

Great point! I like that idea a lot.

Matt,

You write:

"First, even if a theory T captures *all* of our intuitions, this wouldn't show that T is "grounded" on the intuitions. And such a result wouldn't tell us much about the "nature" of responsibility, I take it."

I think this is true for some theories. In debates over, say, group selection vs. individual selection in evolutionary theory, we don't proceed by examining the intuitions of various cultures and individuals about Darwinian natural selection. And even if everyone shared the intuitions, that wouldn't tell us anything about how natural selection works.

But, that's because we have other accepted methods for evaluating theories in biology. In the MR debate, it seems that people DO proceed by appealing to intuition. So unless someone proposes another method for discovering the nature of MR, it seems we're stuck with this one, right?

Justin, when you write:

"Does anyone really think that our intuitions are the truth-makers of general principles? I mean, when I read a Frankfurt case I think to myself, "oh yeah, alternative possibilities aren't required for moral responsibility," but I don't take that judgment to be the truth-maker for the principle: moral responsibility doesn't require alternative possibilities. The truth-maker for that principle, whatever it may be, is something that is independent of my mind in a way that my intuitions about specific cases are not.

But as someone generally sympathetic with your concerns, perhaps we could just revise (2) by asking how, in the absence of an appeal to intuitions, would we access such principles."

I think that sums up the case very well. Maybe this is an epistemological question: how could we access principles about moral responsibility without consulting our actions. And wouldn't that still make the remark "I want to know about the nature of moral responsibility but I don't care about people's intuitions" bizarre or incoherent?

[Kevin Timpe]

Tamler,

Quick question. Which other areas of philosophy, if any, do you see as being similar to the debates about MR in the sense that they (apparently) need to appeal to intuitions? What, if any, areas of philosophy are more like biology in your comment above in the sense that they have other (non-intuition based) methods for discovering truth?

OK, so that's probably 2 questions. But they are related. Thanks.

[Alan]

Don't want to press issues here--but with all due respect, my point was parallel to a Chalmers' point--not about epistemology of MR, but to the conceivability of the metaphysics of MR. I just wanted to suggest one parameter of conceivability on that. If intuition is not a necessary condition of *being* MR, then that plausibly affects epistemic arguments about intuition and MR. If the reality of the earth's spin relative to the sun accounts for the apparent movement of the celestial sphere, then the relevance of our intuition that the earth is static and it is the sky is moving to the matter of the movement of the heavens becomes moot.

[Tamler Sommers]

Alan,

Isn't pressing issues what the Garden is all about?

I didn't mean to dismiss your point in my enthusisasm for Cihan's revision of your thought experiment, and maybe I'm misunderstanding you. I wasn't claiming in the original post that our intuitions are an essential feature of the nature of moral responsibility. I was suggesting that we have no epistemological access to this nature--whatever it is--without appealing to our intuitions Even if you're right about the boundaries, it still seems impossible to investigate the nature of moral responsibility and at the same time not care about anyone's intuitions. Or at any rate, no one has yet suggested a method that proceeds in this manner. Does that seem right?

Kevin, good question, someone asked me something along those lines at ROME, and I wasn't too happy with the answer. What makes biology different is that we have a settled method (the scientific method) for investigating questions in that area. But the epistemological principles that ground the scientific method itself are justified in part by an appeal to intuition. So I'm not sure any area of philosophy escapes this completely. This is a familiar move in metaethics, right?--arguing that there is no clear distinction between moral and scientific investigation, both are ultimately grounded in our all things considered judgments via wide reflective equilibrium...

But there's still a difference between biology and moral resposnibility, it seems to me. The settled methodology for investigating questions of moral responsibility--at least, if you look at the theories--is to directly appeal to the intuitions of your audience. There's no buffer in the form of the scientific method.

The other difference is that there seems to be more agreement about epistemological principles than there is about principles relating to moral responsibility (although someone like Steve Stich might disagree...)

[Tomkow]

Tamler,

I posted an argument for compatiblism on this very blog only a couple of weeks ago which does not in the least rest on intutions. See:

http://gfp.typepad.com/the_garden_of_forking_pat/2008/07/is-the-burden-o.html#comment-123849936

[Alan]

One more try--I was just too tired last night to post more than a brief reply. And I am trying to avoid long posts anyway so I won't waste your time.

Intuition is a claimed way of knowing. I cited Chalmers because he's the best instance I could think of someone who takes a controversial claim like "zombies are conceivable" seriously by developing a detailed scheme of why that's conceivable. He doesn't just surrender to a claim that the concept of zombies is *intuitively* coherent. So if in a Chalmers-like way we could produce a coherent account of MR that excluded intuitions about belief, values, etc., it would be something potentially important to concerns about the the role of intuitions in ideas of MR. That's what I meant by saying that such a metaphysical claim about intuitions might well have epistemic ramifications about them as well.

For my part I have a pretty high level of skepticism about and distrust of intuition, though at the same time I also recognize the importance of surveying people about such things. But so many times in the past we have seen any number of instances where things were claimed to be intuitive (especially intuitions about values) but on reflection later were probably just expressions of socialization and acculturation.

[Alan]

And I just read your last post Tamler--thanks for that! And please don't get me wrong--you and other Gardeners keep my thinking going--and going--and going like an Energizer Bunny of FW!!

[Tamler Sommers]

Terry,

That's fine, I agree with that argument. But all you've shown with it--as far as I can tell (if I looked at the right argument)--is that it's possible that determinism is compatible with moral responsibility. Compatibilist theories of moral responsibility have to do more than that. They have to provide sufficient conditions for fair assignments of blame, praise, punishment and reward (conditions that are compatible with the truth of determinism). My claim is that no one has provided justification for such conditions--compatibilist or incompatibilist--without appealing to intuition. But maybe you have an argument that will prove me wrong?

Alan,

"But so many times in the past we have seen any number of instances where things were claimed to be intuitive (especially intuitions about values) but on reflection later were probably just expressions of socialization and acculturation."

You're preaching to the choir there! I think that goes on quite a bit in this debate especially. What we think are self-evident propositions about moral responsibility (it must involve control, say) are actually far more culturally local than we imagine

[Cihan]

Tamler,

After some reflection, here are more questions:
(A) Why do you call your view "meta"-skepticism? After all, if every argument makes some appeal to intuitions, isn't the burden on compatibilists/libertarians to show that (1) intuitions are a reliable guide in the FW debate, (2) the intuitive FW exists or it's possible to be MR? (But cross-cultural studies or x-phi work seem to undermine (1).) Absent (1) and (2), the hard incompatibilist wins.

(B) Do you think the reason why there are so varying intuitions about free will has to do with what Kip calls the semantic ambiguity in the concept of FW? That is to say, because FW is so ambiguous/poorly defined/unclear, people tend to disambiguate it by filling the missing bits on their own - resulting in varying intuitions?

However, again I'd disagree that semantic ambiguity of FW would lead to "meta"-skepticism. If you ask me SWAMBATTLE exists, I'd just say that's just meaningless and doesn't exist. If FW is akin to SWAMBATTLE in relevant ways, FW doesn't exist as well.

In your talk at SF, you said your view applied to, say, Pereboom's hard incompatibilism but here, I just see arguments for hard incompatibilism.

(C) Is there an area of (analytical) philosophical inquiry that does NOT make appeals to intuition? Almost, all philosophy I have studied appeals to intuitions in some way. (Isn't every thought experiment essentially an appeal to intuitions?)

(D) Finally, see Matti Eklund's attempt to explain why there are so many conflicting intuitions in the personal identity debate: “Personal Identity, Concerns, and Indeterminacy” The Monist 87 (2004) 489-511. (I hope that's the paper I read - I'm away from home now.) His main idea is that the concept of personal identity is "inconsistent" (in his defined way).

I think motivated by your work on FW intuitions, one could also work out that free will is an inconsistent concept.

[Tamler Sommers]

Hi Cihan,

Good questions. I'll do my best to respond.

A. It seems to me that MR skeptics like Pereboom and Strawson rely just as much on intuitions to justify their conditions for MR (e.g. Strawson's causa sui condition, Pereboom's control condition). The difference between them and the compatibilists/libertarians is that they argue in addition that these conditions can't be met. But if we don't accept their conditions for MR, it's hard to see why we should accept as a universal truth that no one is ever MR for their behavior. (Believe me, this hurts to say.) So first order skeptics share the burden of showing that intuitions are a reliable guide to truths about MR.

Let me say, incidentally, that I do think that all-things-considered intuitions are the best guide to the truth about the conditions MR. But I think that people will arrive at different conclusions via this method, and that there will be no way to resolve the differences in a principled way. That could still leave one with a relativized view of moral responsibility (compatibilist, libertarian, or skeptic).

B. I think conceptual or semantic ambiguity does account for some of the variation in intuitions about MR. (Incidentally, I'm only talking about MR here, not free will.) But I don't think this ambiguity can explain away all the variation. That's a tough case to make, but I think the evidence supports it.

C. You might be right, see my reply to Kevin. But that's way too big a question for me to even try to answer here.

D. I haven't read that paper, but I can say right now, having done little to no research on the topic, that metaskepticism about personal identity is almost certainly true.

And I do believe our intuitions about MR are inconsistent, but I also think that we have a commitment to making them consistent upon reflection. (See the variantism stuff by Doris, Knobe, and Woolfork for more insight on this question.)

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tamler,

Why do the values in play need to be grounded in order to discuss their logical consequences?

[Tamler Sommers]

Mark,

They don't, as long as you're willing to relativize your theory to a particular set of values. Most theories of MR don't seem to do this, although Fischer and Ravizza's might be an exception (see their remarks on methodology...).

[Paul Torek]

There's a lot of practical pressure for people to come to reasonable agreement about communal moral practices. And not merely pragmatic: this pressure stems from the nature of moral reasoning. In the long run for our interconnected globe, I think, that makes the relativization of MR theory to a particular set of values moot. (And I boldly predict that the resulting agreement will be implicitly compatibilist.)

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tamler,

That's exactly what I have in mind. In fact, one could even adopt the stance of agnostic autonomism and engage that sort of project very fruitfully. I believe a lot of Mele's work falls in that category.

Fischer's theory is certainly aligned with the value of expression. To the point, Fischer has stated that the value of moral responsibility is equal to that of artistic self-expression. The fact that he states his grounding value as an equality allows him to move right along with the rest of his project without having to get distracted with quantifying that value.

In other words, Fischer doesn't engage the question, "How do you ground your grounding value?" He merely fixes a reference and moves on. I like that.

[Tamler Sommers]

I was just reading Michael McKenna's excellent new Phil Review article on the Direct Argument and struck gold for my case in this post. Michael cites this passage from van Inwagen's defense of the argument.

"If the compatibilist wishes to refute the direct argument here is what he will have to do….He will have to produce some set of propositions intuitively more plausible than (B) and show that these propositions entail the compatibility of moral responsibility and determinism, or he will have to offer a counterexample to (B), a counterexample that can be evaluated independently of the question of whether moral responsibility and determinism are compatible." (1983, 188)

Recall that the counterexamples offer to Rule B (otherwise known as TNR) can only work if they are intuitively plausible as well. This seems to be a straightforward appeal to intuition. And van Inwagen is no intuition-mongerer or experimental philosopher!

Terry, I don't know if you're still reading this thread--but if you are, do you still maintain that appeals to intuition aren't an essential feature of the MR debate?

[jon kvanvig]

I think when PvI or anyone talks about what is intuitively plausible, it doesn't commit them to a role for intuitions in defense of theories. Compare: I sometimes walk awkwardly, but that doesn't require the existence of a special kind of walks that are appropriately called "awkwards". In PvI's case, it requires plausible cases of a certain sort, and given what he says about appeals to intuitions, the sort in question will have to do with the obviousness of the cases (maybe to PvI, maybe to him and others).

As I see it, the force of the question from the conference is in two parts. The first part is whether we need some special mental state independent of some particular kind of strongly held belief or disposition to believe in order to defend a theory. The second part is what the word on the folk on the issue has to do with the first part. Suppose we do need intuitions about MR or anything else in philosophy. Why would the thoughts, ideas, responses of the uninitiated count as that? Why wouldn't it count as, say, the remnants of dead theory instead, or simple lack of reflection about moral responsibility or whatever else one is theorizing about? The responses of ordinary folk might tell us something about the ordinary concept in question, but the force of the objection is that it takes a number of argumentative steps to get from an interest in moral responsibility itself to the idea that the the best theory of it is encoded in the ordinary concept of moral responsibility. There are 20th century historical explanations of how these steps were taken, but turning those explanations into good arguments would need to be done if that's the basis of the connection between MR and the ordinary concept of it.

[Cal Lopes]

Hi all. I'm a no philosopher reader of garden and i appreciate if someone could explain to me the Terry's argument on compatibilism. I didn't understood it. Thanks.

[Tamler Sommers]

Jon, you wrote:

“Suppose we do need intuitions about MR or anything else in philosophy. Why would the thoughts, ideas, responses of the uninitiated count as that? Why wouldn't it count as, say, the remnants of dead theory instead, or simple lack of reflection about moral responsibility or whatever else one is theorizing about? The responses of ordinary folk might tell us something about the ordinary concept in question, but the force of the objection is that it takes a number of argumentative steps to get from an interest in moral responsibility itself to the idea that the the best theory of it is encoded in the ordinary concept of moral responsibility”

You’re right that by itself, finding variation in intuitions among the “uninitiated” isn’t enough to draw the conclusion that there is no principled way of discovering the truth about moral responsibility. But noting the variation is only one step in the argument. Here’s the strategy, let me know if you find fault withy it. First, identify the wide range of intuitions and attitudes about moral responsibility. At the very least, it would be interesting to discover that certain intuitions about MR that we find to be obvious and self-evident are far more culturally and historically local than we ever imagined. Next, try to find out if the different intuitions among the uninitiated are indeed the “remnants of a dead theory.” That’s certainly possible, as you point out. But it’s also possible that people with completely different starting intuitions could become ‘initiated,’ be perfectly rational, and still draw completely different conclusions about moral responsibility, because of the deep differences in where they started. If that’s the case, then it seems that we cannot draw universal conclusions about moral responsibility without begging the question. As I see it, the universalist has just as much of a burden to explain away the variation as I have to show that the variation is deep enough to be unresolvable. But all universalists do is point out that that it’s POSSIBLE that the intuitive differences would be resolved if one side or the other became more rational, better informed, less superstitious etc. Well, yeah, it’s possible. But why should I think it’s plausible? (This is analogous to the debates in metaethics about moral realism. Doris and Plakias have a great paper called “How to argue about disagreement” that outlines a strategy like this in more depth…)

[Andrew Richey]

Being a decade out from school I can't give any citations that speak to the first question, but as to the second one my "intuition" is an emphatic "no", because I don't find it useful to style normative investigations on empirical investigations. Even the verb choice "investigate" is a little suspicious to me. It makes it sound like if we just lift enough fingerprints and get a big enough magnifying glass then we could figure out whom to condemn and whom to praise.

In fact, I see a lot of dueling metaphors getting tossed around here. Are theorists supplicants "appealing to" intuitions? Zoologists trying to "capture" them? Architects trying to be "grounded on" them?

Cihan (and via him, Vonnegut) makes an excellent point, and I like the phrasing of the issue in terms of intuitionless audiences. IMO it's pointless to ask questions about "the nature" of MR the way you'd ask questions about "the nature" of group selection. What you get at the end of the day with an empirical theory is an organized description of experiences that lets you predict the content of future experiences, but what you get with a theory of moral responsibility is an an organized expression of your own psychological willingness to ascribe praise or blame to people that lets everyone else predict the future contents of your judgments, and exhorts others to follow suit.

[Clark Goble]

Have any of you read Jonathan Ichikawa’s paper "Who Needs Intuitions?" It touches on the difference between conceivability arguments and intuition appeals. Even if most arguments have appealed to intuition I wonder how many need do this.