Moral Responsibility Is Impossible: Some Arguments To Consider

Hey Gardeners,

My name is Brian Parks, I’ve been posting sporadically here on GFP for a few months now. 

Anyway, I’ve written a paper on moral responsibility (taking the pessimist anti stance) with some ideas that I’d like to introduce to the group.  I was hoping that you all might be so kind as to read the paper (or just briefly skim parts of it) and share reactions/comments/criticisms.  Maybe we can get a discussion going.  I’m in a different field, so I haven’t had the opportunity to bounce any of the ideas off of philosophers yet.   

Here is the abstract to the paper (the PDF link is at the end of this post):

In this paper, I defend The Basic Argument, Galen Strawson’s argument that ultimate moral responsibility is impossible. I begin by recasting the argument into a rigorous form that resolves a minor problem associated with the original version. I then support the argument with a thought experiment—called the ‘self-switching’ scenario—in which I ask the reader to imagine switching places with another human being and making decisions from inside that human being’s psychological perspective. Appealing to Rawlsian principles, I argue that we cannot reasonably assert that another human being genuinely deserves punishment for a decision that we ourselves do not deserve unless our assertion passes the ‘self-switching’ test: that is, unless there is some relevant sense in which the decision would have turned out differently if we were to have made it under identical internal and external circumstances. I conclude that because the ‘self-switching’ test cannot be satisfied on any account of human agency, that we cannot reasonably assert that any individual genuinely deserves any punishment. I end the paper by addressing the criticisms of Fischer and Ravizza, Clarke, and Bernstein.

Here are some quick highlights not mentioned in the abstract that you all might find interesting/though-provoking:

Section 3 (p.10)

I attack compatibilist accounts of moral responsibility with the following argument.  If determinism is true, then it is always true that “if you had been in the exact condition as person X, and he had been in exactly your condition, then you would have done exactly what person X did, and he would have done exactly what you did.”  I argue that if this statement is true, then it just doesn’t make sense to specifically blame person X for what he does (or to specifically blame you for what you do), or to say that he genuinely deserves a punishment that you don’t deserve (or to say that you genuinely deserve a punishment that he doesn’t deserve).  Such an approach, I argue, basically amounts to the pot calling the kettle black (an approach that we would not take from a state of perfect impartiality--i.e., Rawls' original position). 

Section 4 (p.16)

I address John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza’s attack on the principle of transfer-of-non-responsibility (TNR).  I formulate a preferred version of TNR,

(III) Let S1, S2, S3, … ,Sn refer to all of the states of affairs that have caused S.  To be morally responsible for S, one must be morally responsible for at least one of S1, S2, S3, … , Sn, OR for the fact that they have caused S in this case. 

I show how (III) can withstand their attacks.  I then argue in favor of TNR using the aforementioned concept of ‘self-switching.’

Section 5 (p.17)

I address Randolph Clarke’s criticism of Strawson’s argument.  I attack his integrated agent-causal account of free will, and then I introduce a manipulation scenario to clarify the attack. 

The manipulation scenario goes like this.  Suppose that God puts a radio-controlled neurochemical device in your brain that allows another person, Eric, to control your desires and beliefs.  I ask, would you be ultimately responsible for your behavior in such circumstances?  I argue that the intuitive answer is no (for all intents and purposes, Eric could get you do anything he wants), but that Clarke’s account forces him to answer yes. 

I then take the manipulation case further to attack all libertarian accounts of moral responsibility, or more specifically, to show that they are just as vulnerable to manipulation arguments as compatibilist accounts. 

Here’s how I make the argument: 

Suppose, in the scenario, that Eric wants to get you to kill person A.  So he manipulates your desires and beliefs in a certain way.  If determinism is true, then (in theory) he can guarantee, through proper manipulation, that you will kill person A.  But if indeterminism is true, then he can’t make that guarantee.  There will always be a non-zero probability that, when the time comes to make the decision, that you will decide not to kill person A.  But this doesn’t matter, I argue, because if you don’t choose to kill person A the first time through, all that Eric has to do is steer you into a situation where you have a chance to kill person A again (or person B, or person C, it doesn’t really matter).  In other words, all he has to do is recreate the scenario (or a similar scenario) over and over again.  Eventually, with enough tries, you are going to kill someone.  And when you do kill someone, it will have been a free choice (just as free as any other choice), and therefore you are going to be ultimately responsible for it (on a libertarian account). 

The larger point, then, is this:

Any manipulation argument that can successfully invalidate deterministic accounts of moral responsibility can do the same for indeterministic accounts. The only difference between deterministic manipulation and indeterministic manipulation is in how many times it takes to get the desired result. In deterministic manipulation, the desired result is guaranteed to happen the first time through; in indeterministic manipulation it is guaranteed to happen the nth time through, let n go to infinity.

Section 6 (p.22)

I address the position of Mark Bernstein, who attacks Strawson’s argument by suggesting that it might in fact be possible to be causa sui.  I argue that Bernstein misunderstands what a causa sui is, and so I take the opportunity to clarify what that term means. 

This is what it means:  a causa sui is an agent who engages in an action that creates the very motivations (or reasons, or personality traits, or mental nature, etc.) that led to that same action. 

I perform action X.  Action X has the effect of generating reason R in my mind.  But wait: somehow, reason R was the reason I performed action X!  (Strange Loop, per Hofstadter) 

I go on to argue that Strawson is wrong: a causa sui of this sort would not be capable of moral responsibility. 

I explain all these things more clearly and precisely in the essay.

Anyway, please take a minute and skim whatever parts of the essay interest you, and let me know what you think.  Feedback would be greatly appreciated.  Here is the link:

http://people.consolidated.net/gptravel/umr_no_possible_bdp.pdf

Comments

[Kip]

Brian,

It will probably not surprise you or anyone here to say that I loved your paper.

Your switching idea is brilliant, and raises a point that I have been wanting to talk about here at the Garden:

Compatibilists and incompatibilists seem to have different notions of personal identity (and its essentials).

In particular, compatibilists seem to think that more of a person's aspects (and PFs) are essential to that agent's personhood than incompatibilists do.

To see what this means, consider what I expect to be the most common compatibilist reply to your paper:

"Brian, you say that I can switch places with Steve in every internal and external respect. But this is non-sensical. At that point, you haven't switched me with Steve, you've killed me and made a new Steve!"

Incompatibilists tend to not think like that. I tend not to think like that. But compatibilists might think like that.

[I consider this a "charitable" explanation of compatibilism, because I think the objection is quite defensible and respectable. In contrast, consider an uncharitable explanation: that compatibilists think of personal identity just like we do, but maintain their compatibilist views because of wishful thinking (regarding their own free will) or a desire for bloodthirsty punishment of others (regarding others' free will). The latter is an uncharitable explanation (but, of course, explanations are not false just because they are uncharitable).]

Consider a human version of Theseus ship: start with full blown Kip. Suppose a mad scientist starts gradually stripping me of my PFs or psychological attributes. My love of free will philosophy, gone. My love of film noir, gone. My love of Radiohead, gone. And so on, all the way done. Suppose he strips away my psychological attributes until I have practically no interests or desires, but just sit there and stare and hum.

Let's call this desire-less, character-less, unfortunate soul Kip-zero. In contrast, let's call my present self Kip-full.

Is Kip-zero still Kip? On a continuity theory of personal identity, yes. Personally, I'm not sure if the continuity sense is the only important one. I think "personal identity" is a fuzzy concept that works well enough until we consider boundary cases like the one I just described. So I would consider it undefined whether Kip-zero is still Kip.

More important, I think, is: is that continuity sense of personal identity the *relevant* sense for the purposes of attributing praise and blame? And here I think the answer is yes. The real world, in which I started off a zygote and gradually became who I am today, is not relevantly different than taking Kip-zero and gradually restoring him to Kip-full.

Return to Kip-zero. We can make Kip-zero anybody we want (psychologically). We can make Kip-zero into John Fischer. We can make him Manuel Vargas. We can make him anybody, just like we can make Theseus ship any other ship.

Suppose we make Kip-zero into Kip-full. Suppose this new Kip-full goes out and murders some one, in virtue of being Kip-full. The question is: is this new Kip-full morally responsible for the murder?

My overwhelming sense is: no. Not morally responsible, because it was just luck that the new Kip-full became Kip-full instead of John Fischer-full, or Manuel Vargus-full. And I don't see any relevant difference between this scenario, and the real world in which we all grew up.

What seems to be happening is that compatibilists punish PF's per se. They regard PFs as being essential aspects of persons, and it is in virtue of these essential aspects that it is fair to punish.

In contrast, incompatibilists seem to regard PFs as accidental aspects of persons. You can strip them away, and build them back up.

The Kip-zero thought experiment helps me see this, because it shows that consciousness and sensory awareness---the personal aspects that do the suffering---are independent of the desires to give to charity or murder the innocent---the aspects that do the choosing. There’s no essential link between the two. But, if this is true, why make the consciousness part suffer through punishment, just because of what the PF part did? On this line of thought, which is very intuitive to me, the parts of our selves that do the feeling, and suffering, are effectively hijacked by the parts of our selves that do the moral choosing.

The upshot is this: when you whip a murderer, you’re not whipping the characteristics of a murderer. Those characteristics don’t feel a thing. No, you’re whipping the poor bastard who happens to have these characteristics.

Maybe that’s the only way to stop the murderer. Fine. Maybe chemotherapy is the only way to stop cancer. But, in that case, we need to start thinking of punishment as more like chemotherapy, than the just desert for someone’s wrongdoing.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Brian,

It would seem that your concept of "self-switching" fails to capture the distinction between (1) S-being-morally-responsible-for-X and (2) S-being-held-morally-responsible-for-X-by-S2 (you seem to conflate all responsibility statements into the second category).

Here's a basic counter example to "self-switching" being a problem for (1): a world with exactly one morally responsible agent. If self-switching is a requirement for (1), then such a world is logically impossible (as you would have us believe). However, you've given us no independent reasons to accept that premise, and no defender of responsibility would accept it without a strong argument.

Thoughts?

[Brian Parks]

Kip,

Huge thanks for the feedback. We’re definitely on the same wavelength.

As for the issue of personal identity, I think you hit the nail on the head. It is an issue that is enormously relevant to both the compatibilist-incompatibilist debate and to the MR debate in general. I look forward to discussing it.

I agree that a compatibilist’s best line of response would be to argue that the self-switching example is absurd: specifically, that if God/Nature were to change your state to perfectly match that of John Fischer, and vice-versa, that both of you would die and give rise to new entities. We would have new-Kip and new-John. Old-Kip and Old-John would no longer exist.

The implication is that Old-Kip is inextricably linked to his state in a way that prevents a person from meaningfully asking the question, “what if Old-Kip were to take on a different state?” Old-Kip with a different state is not Old-Kip.

Here’s how I would respond:

For the idea of moral responsibility to have any practical application, then Kip(t) would have to be the same person as Kip(t+dt) in the limit dt --> some small number.

Otherwise, punishing Kip would amount to punishing one person, Kip(t+dt), for the crimes of another, Kip(t).

But if Kip(t) is inextricably linked to his state, then Kip(t+dt) cannot be identical to Kip(t), because Kip is constantly changing state, at least in small respects. One minute Kip is tired, the next minute he’s hungry, the next minute he’s drunk, the next minute he’s asleep, and so on. These changes take the form of well-defined physical changes in the state of his organism, including his brain.

So if Kip is inextricably linked to his state, then not only is the self-switching scenario out the window, but so is the concept of moral responsibility altogether. It becomes a completely useless concept.
If Kip can grow from a toddler to an adult, and be the same Kip, if he can get drunk and be the same Kip, if he can have a life-changing experience and be the same Kip, then why can’t his brain take on the state of John Fischer’s brain and he be the same Kip? The difference is a matter of degree. There isn’t any non-arbitrary way for a compatibilist to say “OK wait, now that’s just too much of a change for a person to undergo!”

If we want to press the issue, God/Nature could make the change gradually. He could change things in Kip’s brain node by node, neuron by neuron, over a period of many many years. At what point would Old-Kip die and give rise to New-Kip?

But regardless, if Kip is inextricably linked to a bad set of PFs, then he’s simply unlucky for the fact that he is who he is. To blame him for the fact that he has those PFs would be to blame him for the fact that he is who he is.

You say: “What seems to be happening is that compatibilists punish PF's per se. They regard PFs as being essential aspects of persons, and it is in virtue of these essential aspects that it is fair to punish.”

I think this is really well put.

The Buddhists, and more recently the third wave behavioral therapists (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, and so on) actually use this concept in their approach to psychotherapy. They try to teach the patient to refrain from identification or attachment with the content of the mind.

Here’s an example. Suppose that I plugged a person into Wegner’s brain-o-vision thought experiment and uploaded all of the person’s thoughts and feelings onto youtube for the world to see. (Brain-o-vision is basically a fictional machine that you buy at Walmart and that displays what is presently going on inside your mind on a screen for others to see).

Naturally, the person would not be happy about this. He or she would be embarrassed. As human beings, we tend to feel that we ‘own’ the inner content of our minds in some essential sense, that it belongs to us and is our moral responsibility. So when other people observe or are exposed to the content of our minds, we feel ashamed (particularly when the content is bad).

This is especially true for people with anxiety, OCD, depression, and, of course, more extreme stuff. If they were put on brain-o-vision, they would be extremely ashamed. There is a lot of guilt, remorse, regret, self-hatred and so on associated with having psychological problems like that, because the individual naturally feels that she owns the content of her mind, that it is her creation, and that it therefore belongs to her and reflects on her, and that she deserves things because of it.

This idea makes progress extremely difficult. So the Buddhists try to chip away at it by emphasizing that the mind—the thoughts, feelings, and so on that a person experiences—is just a part of the universe, like any other. If anything owns it, the universe owns it. It is governed by the same laws of cause and effect that govern the universe. There is no need to feel specifically responsible or blameworthy for its content (or consequences), any more than you would feel responsible or blameworthy for any other part of nature (the flower blooming, the earth spinning, the bug crawling, a hurricane).

So instead of looking at a thought, or a feeling, or a weird obsession, or a compulsion, or a mistake, as something to be ashamed of, the Buddhists try to get the patient to look at it in a more 'enlightened' way, like you would look at a storm, or the planets in revolution, or a quantum event, or whatever. It’s just nature in motion, arising and falling away. Nothing more. Nothing to get too worked up about, or to sink into, or to attach to.

This is what the Buddhsists mean when they deny that there is such a thing as a ‘self.’ The idea of a ‘self’ (i.e., an agent or homunculus that independently moves things or creates things) is just a convention, an arbitrary way of partitioning the collection of ‘stuff’ that constitutes the universe. It can be useful, but it can also be harmful, and where its harmful, they say let go of it.

Hey man, thanks again for the feedback.

[Brian Parks]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the feedback and for taking the time to read the essay.

You say: “It would seem that your concept of "self-switching" fails to capture the distinction between (1) S-being-morally-responsible-for-X and (2) S-being-held-morally-responsible-for-X-by-S2 (you seem to conflate all responsibility statements into the second category). Here's a basic counter example to "self-switching" being a problem for (1): a world with exactly one morally responsible agent. If self-switching is a requirement for (1), then such a world is logically impossible (as you would have us believe). However, you've given us no independent reasons to accept that premise, and no defender of responsibility would accept it without a strong argument.”

I think I see your point. I went back and added an ‘if’ condition to premise (iii) so that the argument will be silent on the case of a world with only one agent. To make sure I understood your point, though, let me know if you still see a problem:

(i) If individuals can be ultimately responsible for their choices, then, given the facts of human history, there is at least one individual X who is ultimately responsible for some choice C and who, in virtue of having freely chosen C, genuinely deserves some punishment P.

(ii) There is at least one individual Z who does not deserve P.

(iii) If there is at least one individual Z who does not deserve P, then X can only genuinely deserve P if:

(iii.a) Z would not have freely chosen C if he had been in the exact same internal and external circumstances as X, and

(iii.b) The fact that Z would not have freely chosen C is not entirely a consequence of random, unguided chance.

(iv) The requirements of (iii) cannot be satisfied.

(v) Individuals cannot be ultimately responsible for their choices.

So (iii) is agnostic on whether a world with one agent is a world in which that agent can be morally responsible.

The main point in the argument is this. If Person X commits a bad action, Person Z cannot reasonably blame person X if it is true that she would have done the same thing if she been in the same internal and external circumstances as X. Put differently, person X and person Z cannot deserve different things if they would have acted in the same manner under the same circumstances.

The justification for this point is Rawlsian/Kantian. To deny it would be to privilege the location of person Z over that of person X. It would be like Z saying “Yeah, I would have done exactly what you did if I were in your shoes, but I can still blame you and punish you because I’m lucky enough to not be in your shoes; being in your shoes is fortunately something that I will never have to worry about.”

A person would only take such an approach if they already knew what shoes they occupied. If they didn’t know, they would be a bit more cautious (or so I think).

A compatibilist can still reject the notion and say that you can reasonably blame someone for something that you yourself would have done (kind of like when you’re yelling at the driver in front of you for doing things that you do when you drive lol). But I find that to be quite a counter-intuitive conception of moral responsibility to endorse. If a compatibilist disagrees, then we will probably just have to agree to disagree.

Thanks again Mark for your valuable comments.

[Brian Parks]

Mark, after reading your post again, I realize I forgot to address the first point you made.

You say: "It would seem that your concept of "self-switching" fails to capture the distinction between (1) S-being-morally-responsible-for-X and (2) S-being-held-morally-responsible-for-X-by-S2 (you seem to conflate all responsibility statements into the second category)."

I conflate them rhetorically at certain points, but in the formal argument, you will see that they are not conflated. The principle is this: X and Z cannot deserve different things for their actions if they would have acted in the same way under the same circumstances. The argument refers to what each of them deserves, not to whether it is justified for one of them to blame/punish the other (although we might as conflate the two, I would argue, because a person deserving something is precisely what makes it justified to blame/punish that person).

[Brian Parks]

Mark, one more point about conflating (1) and (2) that I wanted to make. If, in a minimum scenario, all I manage to convince a compatibilist of is (2), that it is not justified for a person to blame/punish anyone else, then that would be the practical equivalent of convincing them of (1), that no one deserve blame/punishment. There may be a philosphical distinction b/t (1) and (2), but there isn't a practical one. What do you think?

[Matt King]

Hi Brian,

I think the Rawlsian line is novel - but I want to pick up on Mark's line of critique.

You write: "The principle is this: X and Z cannot deserve different things for their actions if they would have acted in the same way under the same circumstances."

This looks to me like a well-rehearsed point about moral luck. The intuition being pressed here is: who am I to blame S, the Hittite slave owner, say, when I likely would have done the same thing were I in those circumstances? (Rosen discusses this thought in his paper on culpable ignorance).

But I think this places too much weight on the counterfactual. Why does X deserve blame for having killed Y? Well - because he's responsible for having killed Y. It matters little, it seems to me, that Z would have killed Y, if similarly situated - even less if we'd have to make Z just like X in order to guarantee it. X is blameworthy regardless.

Moreover, it seems reasonable for Z to blame X, at least in cases where Z is far enough away from X. It's one thing for a notorious car thief to blame someone for stealing his own car (an example of Pete Graham's); it's quite another for *me* to blame someone for stealing my car (since I'm not a car thief). There's all sorts of scenarios I can imagine in which I would steal a car - but these seem pretty remote possible worlds. And I don't see how it's "just a matter of luck" that I'm in the actual world, rather than in one of them.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Brian,

In my original comment (2) should have been stated as (2*) "S-being-held-morally-accountable-for-X-by-S2". However, the difference in meaning of (2) and (2*) is probably negligible as you seem to have latched on the to right idea.

It is the distinction between moral accountability and moral responsibility. I believe Mele has a good deal to say about that distinction, and if I recall correctly, so does Watson.

And there are cases that still present a problem for "self-switching" such the criminal who believe that he should be held morally accountable for his crimes (there are plenty of them) -- these criminals have walked in their own shoes, and often recognize that if they could go back, that they would most likely end up in the same place, and still believe they deserve punishment for being the kind of person that they are.

The problem with attacking moral accountability is that the truth of moral accountability claims do not stand on their own. They are made true by the facts of moral responsibility. Moral responsibility claims take that form of "MR(S, X)", and moral accountability claims take (minimally) the form "S2 knows that MR(S1, X)".

Your argument amounts to the same thing as epistemological non-realists who argue that in order to know P, one most know that one knows P, which results in a vicious infinite regress. The non-realists takes that regress as a sign that knowledge is impossible, while the rest of us take that as a sign that knowing that one knows is obviously not a necessary condition for knowledge.

See the similarity?

If moral responsibility is not only possible but actual, then at least some moral accountability claims are *true* and it is possible that some of them count as genuine knowledge.

Since the epistemic constraints are very real (I think "self-switching" plays a role here), we *ought* to leave the vast majority of punishing in the hands of well trained individuals who are not biased by involved affections (sounds a lot like a judicial system, doesn't it?). If that is true, then we as individuals are often not going to be in virtuous epistemic situations that would allow us to justly render either blame or praise. In the case of blame, most would agree that it is too great a burden to leave to the indivual. In the case of praise, most see it is permissible to render praise to someone who does not deserve it, and thus it can be left in the hands of the individual.

In other words, I think there is a very long history of sensitivity to the issues you are concerned with baked into every modern (and most every ancient) legal system I can think of.

[Ryan Lake]

I also don't see the plausibility of tying responsibility to whether you would act the same in the same circumstances as another person. Don't we sometimes recognize that that actions of others are wrong (and that they are blameworthy) while acknowledging that we might commit the same actions if we were in their shoes?

[Paul Torek]

Kip writes:

In particular, compatibilists seem to think that more of a person's aspects (and PFs) are essential to that agent's personhood than incompatibilists do.

To see what this means, consider what I expect to be the most common compatibilist reply to your paper:

"Brian, you say that I can switch places with Steve in every internal and external respect. But this is non-sensical. At that point, you haven't switched me with Steve, you've killed me and made a new Steve!"

I'm a compatibilist and I endorse this message.

Many people seem to believe, essentially, that none of a person's personality features are essential to their identity. Such a view is only comprehensible, IMHO, if one thinks of a person as a Cartesian ego or similar. I don't believe there are any such things as Cartesian egos, and I suspect most MR skeptics don't think so either. Which leads me to wonder just what the heck is going on here.

[Paul Torek]

Correction: change "that none of a person's personality features are essential" to "that none of a person's personality features or physical features are essential".

[Brian Parks]

Matt, thanks for your comments and for reading the paper.

“This looks to me like a well-rehearsed point about moral luck.”

Right. It’s not a new point. Strawson builds his case around it: if determinism is true, then responsibility hinges on luck.

What I’m trying to do with the self-switching example is frame this point in a way that breaks down the intuitive plausibility of common compatibilist responses.

One such response goes like this: ‘To say that determinism makes responsibility hinge on luck is to say that determinism takes away your choice about how you will act. But determinism does no such thing. You can have a choice about how you will act even though your actions are determined.’

But the point is that if determinism is true, then there is nothing special about that choice. I could replace you with Charles Manson, Hitler, Buddha, Jesus Christ, or anyone else, and they would make the exact same choice.

People should have their merits judged on an equal footing, should they not? Well, if determinism is true, and I put you and Charles Manson on an equal footing in terms of your circumstances, I will get the same results across the board. So why do you and Charles Manson merit different things?

“The intuition being pressed here is: who am I to blame S, the Hittite slave owner, say, when I likely would have done the same thing were I in those circumstances?”

But on determinism, it’s not just that you are likely to have done the same thing, it’s that you are guaranteed to have done the same thing. The dynamical laws of our universe are not compatible with you-the-Hittite-slave-owner behaving differently from he-the-Hittite-slave-owner.

“But I think this places too much weight on the counterfactual. Why does X deserve blame for having killed Y? Well - because he's responsible for having killed Y. It matters little, it seems to me, that Z would have killed Y, if similarly situated”

Two questions.

First, what precisely do you take the statement “X is morally responsible for Y” to mean here? We need to precisely define that term. If pressed, I would define it to mean “X deserves something in virtue of Y.” On that definition, the statement “X deserves blame for having killed Y because he’s responsible for having killed Y” says nothing at all.

Second, why do you think it matters little that Z—and every other person in the universe—would have acted in the same way as Y if they had been similarly situated?

Think about it. Suppose you’re stranded on a desert island. A dangerous bug is buzzing around the crowd and decides to bite… you. As a result, you develop a neurological disorder that makes you irritable and dysphoric. You become a huge burden on your fellow islanders—you’re always negative, always complaining, detracting from the group mission, and so on. Naturally, they get angry with you and judge you for the way you are conducting yourself. Does it make a difference that they would be acting just like you if the bug had decided to bite them instead of you? Of course it does.

The point is intuitively obvious. It’s even embedded in our natural way of speaking.

Consider,

You: “I got really mad at John.”

Me: “I don’t blame you.”

The expression “I don’t blame you” amounts to “If I had been in your shoes, I would have done what you did—I would also have gotten mad at John.” The implication is that you don’t deserve blame for getting mad at John because any reasonable person in your circumstances would have gotten mad at John in the same way that you did.

If determinism is true, then the expression “If I had been in your shoes, I would have done what you did” is always true, without exception. That’s a super big deal as far as moral inquiry is concerned. Nobody ever says to Hitler, “If I had been in your shoes, I would have done what you did” – but if determinism is true, then it’s an indisputable fact.

If you disagree, then try this out. Every time you get mad at someone, remind yourself that if you had been in their shoes, you would have done exactly what they did. See if this practice makes you more inclined to blame them or less inclined to blame them.

“Even less if we'd have to make Z just like X in order to guarantee it. X is blameworthy regardless. Moreover, it seems reasonable for Z to blame X, at least in cases where Z is far enough away from X.”

I find this point interesting. Why do you think being ‘far enough away’ matters? Again, your comment here seems to suggest that desert can be a function of location, as in 'Sure, if nature had placed me in your circumstances, I would be doing exactly what you’re doing. But nature didn’t place me in your circumstances. In fact, she placed me far away from your circumstances.' And? So what? I don’t see the relevance.

Mark,

“It is the distinction between moral accountability and moral responsibility.”

I’ll accept that distinction, but I don’t see how it poses a problem for the argument.

There are two ways to frame the main premise in the argument:

(1) I can’t reasonably blame you for doing what I would have done if I were in your shoes and

(2) You and I can’t deserve different things for how we behave in a given circumstance if we would have behaved identically had that circumstance been the same for each of us.

If we frame the argument in terms of (1), then your distinction becomes relevant. But (2) makes no mention of moral accountability, i.e., of whether it is permissible for me-the-hypocrite to hold you accountable for doing what I myself would have done. So I don't see a problem.

“And there are cases that still present a problem for "self-switching" such the criminal who believe that he should be held morally accountable for his crimes (there are plenty of them) -- these criminals have walked in their own shoes, and often recognize that if they could go back, that they would most likely end up in the same place, and still believe they deserve punishment for being the kind of person that they are.”

Again, if the argument is referenced to (1), then a self-blamer poses a problem. But not if the argument is referenced to (2).

If a criminal realizes that others would have behaved in the exact same way as he did if they had inherited his genes/environment/circumstances, and if he nonetheless thinks he genuinely deserves things (pain, suffering, etc.) that they don’t. then by (2) he’s just wrong (and unnecessarily self-denigrating).

“Your argument amounts to the same thing as epistemological non-realists who argue that in order to know P, one most know that one knows P, which results in a vicious infinite regress. The non-realists takes that regress as a sign that knowledge is impossible, while the rest of us take that as a sign that knowing that one knows is obviously not a necessary condition for knowledge. See the similarity?”

Actually, I’m not sure I do.

It makes perfect sense to refrain from placing requirements on knowledge that would lead to epistemological non-realism, a position that is both self-defeating and uncontroversially absurd.

But the pessimist position about moral responsibility is neither self-defeating nor absurd. The requirements that it puts on moral responsibility should be evaluated on their own terms, not by a modus tollens.

Ryan,

“Don't we sometimes recognize that actions of others are wrong (and that they are blameworthy) while acknowledging that we might commit the same actions if we were in their shoes?”

Yes, but the point is comparative. If the other person deserves blame for the fact that he did them, and if it is true that we would have done them if we had to confront the same circumstances, wouldn’t we deserve some blame too?

You can judge Charles Manson for his actions. But make sure to judge yourself as well, if it is in fact true that the only thing that prevented you from choosing to do exactly what he did was the fact that nature decided to put you in your initial life circumstance rather than in his.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Brian,

At best your point about (2) reads to me as either (P) "if I weren't me, but were in fact Charles Manson, then I (Charles Manson) would deserve blame for the murders I had committed" or (Q) "If I was both myself and Charles Manson, then I would deserve blame for the crimes I had committed". Both (P) and (Q) are obvious truisms (on the presumption of moral responsibility), but (Q) seems a bit absurd (multiple personality disorder, perhaps?).

However, it seems like you want to get us to agree to a principle like (R) "if S weren't S1, but were in fact S2, then S1 would deserve blame for the crimes S2 had committed" (where S1 = my current self and S2 = Charles Manson), which is straightforwardly absurd.

You say that your argument can survive without (1)... So, would you care to restate your argument without premise (1)? For as long as you leave premise (1) in there, the prior criticism still sticks.

As I see it, self-switching fundamentally involves two agents, moral responsibility fundamentally involves one agent, and moral accountability fundamentally involves one or more agents (a criminal can reasonably hold himself blameworthy for his own crimes). So, I'm hard pressed to think of a way to apply self-switching outside the scope of moral accountability since it seems to require at least two agents.

[Brian Parks]

"At best your point about (2) reads to me as either (P) "if I weren't me, but were in fact Charles Manson, then I (Charles Manson) would deserve blame for the murders I had committed" or (Q) "If I was both myself and Charles Manson, then I would deserve blame for the crimes I had committed". Both (P) and (Q) are obvious truisms (on the presumption of moral responsibility), but (Q) seems a bit absurd (multiple personality disorder, perhaps?)."

How did you get those from (2)?

I'll try rephrase less ambiguously,

(2) "You and I can’t deserve different things for how we behave at a given time if you would have behaved identically to me and I would have behaved identically to you if I had been in your circumstances and you had been in my circumstances at that time."

The argument remains the same as in the previous post,

(i) If individuals can be ultimately responsible for their choices, then, given the facts of human history, there is at least one individual X who is ultimately responsible for some choice C and who, in virtue of having freely chosen C, genuinely deserves some punishment P.

(ii) There is at least one individual Z who does not deserve P.

(iii) If there is at least one individual Z who does not deserve P, then X can only genuinely deserve P if:

(iii.a) Z would not have freely chosen C if he had been in the exact same internal and external circumstances as X, and

(iii.b) The fact that Z would not have freely chosen C is not entirely a consequence of random, unguided chance.

(iv) The requirements of (iii) cannot be satisfied.

(v) Individuals cannot be ultimately responsible for their choices.

So (iii) is the controversial premise, and it follows from (2) as stated. No mention of accountability.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Now I'm more confused... Is it your desire to present a reductio against moral responsibility? Consider your first claim: there actually exists a person that is morally responsible for something, and your conclusion: no one is responsible for anything. The conclusion does not follow from the premises, and therefore cannot be a valid deduction.

Assuming you had a reductio in mind, let me try to shore up the pieces...

It seems you are in favor of a principle like this: if it is possible that agent S is MR for A'ing in context C at time T, then it must also be possible that a doppleganger, S2, for S exists that despite sharing S1's internal states, could refrain for A'ing in context C at time T.

If we ponder that principle for a moment... it becomes clear that it further reduces to this principle: if it is possible that agent S is MR for A'ing in context C at time T, then it must also be possible that in context C at time T S could have refrained for A'ing.

Low and behold... we've found a round about way of arriving back at the principle of alternate possibilities!

Did I miss anything?

[Brian Parks]

"Now I'm more confused... Is it your desire to present a reductio against moral responsibility? Consider your first claim: there actually exists a person that is morally responsible for something, and your conclusion: no one is responsible for anything. The conclusion does not follow from the premises, and therefore cannot be a valid deduction."

My first claim is not that "there exists a person who is morally responsible." It's that "if UMR is possible, then there is a person who deserves P." The statement is a conditional.

I go on to show that there is no person who deserves P... ergo, UMR is not possible.

So the deduction is valid. It's not a reductio, it just uses the logic: A --> B, ~B --> ~A.

As for PAP, the argument has PAP as a consequence (as should be expected--after all, it's an argument against compatibilism). But it's not just a restatement of PAP. It's built on another principle, specifically:

"You and I can’t deserve different things for how we behave at a given time if you would have behaved identically to me and I would have behaved identically to you if I had been in your circumstances and you had been in my circumstances at that time."

The justification for the principle is that desert/merit/MR should not be entirely function of circumstance. It should be a function of what an individual adds to his circumstances. If you and I would behave exactly the same on self-switching, then this means that we essentially add the same things to our circumstances, and therefore we deserve/merit/MR the same things.

BTW, I think PAP is a highly plausible principle. And I think that it can overcome FSCs without much trouble. Here's what I would argue:

PAP: "To freely-choose-C, it must be possible for an individual to not-freely-choose-C."

Now, I would respond to the forthcoming FSC like this:

(a) If I get Frankfurt-Intervened-Upon-So-As-To-Choose-C, then I'm not-freely-choosing-C.

(b) So, if I can get Frankfurt-Intervened-Upon-So-As-To-Choose-C, then I can not-freely-choose-C.

(c) An individual in an FSC who is intuitively free can determine whether or not they will get Frankfurt-Intervened-Upon-So-As-To-Choose-C.

(d) Thus, an individual in an FSC who is intuitively free can not-freely-choose-C.

(e) Thus, an individual in an FSC who is intuitively free can freely-choose-C (IAW PAP).

Note that (e) is the result required by intuition, so all is well.

What do you think? Does it work?

[Mark Smeltzer]

Ah, thank goodness. I knew I must have missed something. It's almost like I read your point three times, yet managed not to really read what you were saying... Good thing I'm the only one who does that! Or else there would certainly be a lot of repeating going on.

p.s. I hope someone out there appreciates satire.

p.p.s. I still think this amounts to little more than a pointless restatement of PAP. Pointless for two reasons: (1) anyone who accepts PAP has a means to reject the core premise (if people can choose to do otherwise it follows that they don't have to follow in the other person's footsteps, even when wearing the other person's shoes), and (2) anyone who rejects PAP also has a means to reject the core premise (if people don't need to be able to choose otherwise it follows that *some* causal chain brought them to the place to perform the act in question and the issue at hand is whether it is a responsibility undermining casual chain -- from there the "insider's" perspective may shed light on that question, but it wouldn't necessarily go one way or the other in every case as you suggest).

Who's left? I guess the non-realists might see something of interest here (c.f. Kip's enthusiasm), but then they didn't need the argument anyway...

[Cihan]

Brian,

I haven't read the paper (I've only read the comments) but I think you may be getting at something.

For instance, we don't blame people who break down under torture because "anybody would have done the same". Perhaps, we also withhold morally reactive attitudes if we think the wrong doer was strongly tempted because we would have done the same, too. If your paper makes use of this kind of intuition, then I would say it should strike a chord with everyone.

My worries, though, are more about whether you can imagine being someone else. How can I still be me and yet futhermore, be under the exact same circumstances as, say, Henry Nyquist? I would be Henry Nyquist simpliciter in that case.

I see that I am not doing a very good job of explaining. See Velleman's related discussion of his childhood memories here: http://www.amherstlecture.org/velleman2006/index.html

[Matt King]

Brian,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Two quick points:

1. Unrelated to anything I've said before, I think some might press Kripkean claims about necessity in response to your notion of "self"-switching. If Kripke's right, then it's a necessary fact about *me* that I came from the sperm and ova I did. To be exactly like Hitler, say, would involve coming from the sperm and ova *he* did - which is to say, being Hitler, not me anymore.

2. You write: "The expression “I don’t blame you” amounts to “If I had been in your shoes, I would have done what you did—I would also have gotten mad at John.” The implication is that you don’t deserve blame for getting mad at John because any reasonable person in your circumstances would have gotten mad at John in the same way that you did."

I'm not sure this is the implication. At least, the implication doesn't follow from our practices. Just because we do do something (not blame certain individuals in certain circumstances) it doesn't follow that we're justified or correct in doing so. To assume otherwise would be to assume our practices track the world infallibly.

But I take it you mean that the *best* explanation of why we don't blame individuals in the sorts of cases you cite is that we think they don't deserve blame (on account of "if I were in their shoes" thoughts). So here's an alternative explanation: we don't blame because we think we ought not to blame them, because it would be hypocritical of us to do so. But this would only imply that there are a range of reasons against blaming - only some of these need be relevant to an agent's actual blameworthiness. Consider that a joke can be funny even if I ought not laugh at it. But it's surely plausible that the correctness (or appropriateness) of my laughing depends on its funniness, not only whether I ought to laugh (all things considered). Similarly, I think that blame is appropriate when the agent is morally responsible for something bad, irrespective of other reasons that may weigh against my actually blaming someone.

And I think this explanation fits your cases. After all, we tend to say things like, "I don't blame him" or "I can't blame you for trying" - not, "He's not blameworthy...".

I take it the line I'm pushing here is what you referred to as the "practical" upshot of the argument - that maybe we shouldn't be blaming people as much as we do (if ever). Perhaps - but one can think this for reasons entirely apart from considerations of what the right theory of responsibility is (e.g., utilitarian or virtue theoretic justifications).

I've gone on much too long already - good discussion.

[Kip]

Mark,

"Pointless" is a little harsh.

If PAP is a contested proposition (not everyone may be so decided about its truth), then the fact that some argument results in asserting, or denying, PAP shouldn't make (by itself) that argument pointless. Rather, the argument may provide independent grounds, or focus on previously-underemphasized intuitions, to reach its conclusion. That is, an argument can result in asserting PAP without relying on PAP to provide its only motivational or rhetorical force.

That said, let me elaborate a little on why I like the self-switching argument.

I've long felt that "there but for the grace of God go I" expresses an exquisite moral truth, which captures the essence of incompatibilism. Smilanski's "we are merely the unfolding of the given," charms me the same way. I doubt whether these statements have any pull on compatibilists. But my attitude is sort of "if those statements don't, in and of themselves, immediately persuade you of the important point incompatibilists are trying to make, then *nothing* will." It's hopeless. The statements say all that really needs to be said.

And, as I've mentioned before, non-realism about free will expresses nothing but an empathy too extreme for most (or so it seems to me). Sympathy for the devil. The importance of empathy is reflected in that statement "there but for the grace of God go I"---effectively putting yourself in the other person's shoes.

So, I regard Brian's self-switching example as relying on the empathizing emotions that incompatibilists seem to feel in this context (and perhaps feel too much, if incompatibilism is false), more than a principle like PAP. But maybe I am wrong about this.

Note that the phrase "there but for the grace of God go I" raises, within its mere nine words, the riddle of personal identity. If that person is going there, how could I be going there? I'm different than that person: he has the brain of a murderer, and I have the brain of an upright compatibilist in good standing with the community.

And just as it probably pushes the argument too far, to say that Charles Manson and Kip might have been the same person, because every aspect of our "Psychological Forces" (PF) is accidental, so too would it be unfair to say that a person with a murderous-PF a shade stronger than the murderous-PF in me is therefore a different person---even if that shade makes the murderous difference.

I'll add with one last observeration (because I find this topic fascinating, and really getting to the heart of what interests me about free will): not only might a person's body-except-brain and continuous consciousness be the same (as I discuss above), while PFs change, but so too might memories---and memories seem to be intimately related to personal identity.

For example, imagine that mad scientists kidnap me and replace my PFs with murderous ones, while keeping my memories the same, and my body-except-brain the same. Am I still Kip? Clearly, I am in one sense, and I am not in one sense. "Personal identity" doesn't seem well defined enough to decide the question. The important point here is that the self-switching experiment need not require replacing every atom of X's body with every atom of Y's. One need only tweak the other's brain, to replace a sufficient number of PF's, while leaving memories, etc., largely intact.

[I don't want to speak too quickly, because the interaction between memories and PFs is complicated, as Dennett notes in his critique of Mele, etc. (see Freedom Evolves). This is one of several ways in which Dennett's writing on free will, even if not terribly rigorous, is brilliant.]

But it seems to me that the sense in which I am the same person is the relevant one here, for reasons I can't articulate yet. The statement "there but for the grace of God go I..." just seems so obviously true to me. Maybe I need more self-control.

[Brian Parks]

Paul,

Kip: "Brian, you say that I can switch places with Steve in every internal and external respect. But this is non-sensical. At that point, you haven't switched me with Steve, you've killed me and made a new Steve!"

You: “I'm a compatibilist and I endorse this message. Many people seem to believe, essentially, that none of a person's personality features are essential to their identity. Such a view is only comprehensible, IMHO, if one thinks of a person as a Cartesian ego or similar. I don't believe there are any such things as Cartesian egos, and I suspect most MR skeptics don't think so either. Which leads me to wonder just what the heck is going on here.”

You bring up a valid concern. I address it in the paper, so if you’re interested, I recommend you take a look.

I would ask, do you believe there is such a thing as a ‘self’? If so, what exactly do you think it is? My own personal hunch is that if we realistically pursue that question, the prospects for MR will become all the more bleak.

Briefly, I would say this. It’s at least plausible that Cartesian egos—i.e., subjects of conscious experience—do exist, and that they are literally identical to material entities inside brains. Strawson makes an excellent case for this thesis in his work on pansychism (the only viable form of physicalism, IMHO). Interestingly, he goes so far as to argue that Descartes was not a hard-line dualist as many often assume.

If there really is such a thing as a ‘self’ or ‘I’ (physical or mental), then it makes perfect sense to ask the question: how would I behave if the content of your present experiences, as well as your personality dispositions, were made to match mine? Why would this question not make sense?

Certainly, there isn’t any obvious reason to think that I would die, or that I would become you, or that we would become the same person. Or is there?

Whatever we decide on that question, the important point is that there is at least a metaphysical framework on which the thought experiment makes meaningful sense. Whether that framework turns out to be true is beside the point: we can be charitable and cooperate with it to glean the larger non-metaphysical, moral theme that the example is trying to express.

[Brian Parks]

Cihan,

“My worries, though, are more about whether you can imagine being someone else.”

You’re right, you probably can’t. But maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe evolution didn’t design us to be capable of fully empathizing (with others, or with our past selves), and so we fail to properly appreciate the supreme importance of circumstances.

“How can I still be me and yet futhermore, be under the exact same circumstances as, say, Henry Nyquist? I would be Henry Nyquist simpliciter in that case.”

Could you have the name Henry Nyquist, have a body like his, and think and feel exactly what he’s thinking and feeling right now? Would your being in such a state make you literally the numerically same person that he is right now? I don’t see any obvious reason to think so. You would be a replica of him. But the subject of the experiences would still be you.

I’ll admit that there are tensions. Personally, I’m skeptical of talk of an ‘agent’, ‘self’, or ‘I’, as a real metaphysical entity that endures through time. But if we pursue that sort of skeptical line, where is it going to lead? You have to have an agent or a self to have moral responsibility.

Personally, if I were pressed, I would say this: there is no ‘self’ in the sense of a substance or thing that continues numerically through time, but there are experiences produced by a brain that are tied together by memory. Thus emerges the experience or illusion of an enduring ‘self’. But notice that this makes the notion of MR nonsense.

[Brian Parks]

Mark,

“I still think this amounts to little more than a pointless restatement of PAP.”

I disagree. It comes at the issue from a different angle, the angle of equality. It primes the intuition that people should be judged on equal terms.

Again, consider:

(P) You and I cannot genuinely deserve to receive different judgments (i.e., praise or blame) for how we behave at a given time if it is true that you would have behaved identical to me and I would have behaved identical to you if you had been in my circumstances and I had been in your circumstances at that time.

(PAP) To genuinely deserve judgment (i.e., praise or blame) for a choice, it must have been possible for you not to make that choice.

(P) is not a restatement of (PAP). It comes at the matter from the angle of equality, which is sometimes a more intuitively forceful and powerful angle.

A good example I would give where (P) is more helpful than (PAP), and where it poses more frustrations to the pro-MR position, would be Strawson’s preferred example of heaven-and-hell judgment. According to the Christian tradition (which I was raised in, and I imagine that you were as well), God provides ultimate retribution to individuals at the end of their lives based on how they live. Suppose, then, that Charles Manson stands before God at the final apocalypse to receive his ultimate dues. To make the situation interesting, suppose that his notorious character traits emerged as a result of insertion-deletion polymorphisms on genes 5HTTLPR, 5HTTLP7, and 5HT333Q, and that those polymorphisms, along with the condition of the rest of the universe at his conception, predicted to a high degree of accuracy—or, in a deterministic universe, to perfect accuracy—that he would choose to murder people.

To defend Manson, one might claim something to the effect of (PAP). The claim would certainly be persuasive—I’m not suggesting otherwise. But it gets even more persuasive when we bring in (P).

To see what I mean, suppose that Mother Theresa happens to be standing right next to Charles Manson at the final apocalypse, and that God is getting ready to give her her ultimate dues as well. Suppose that Mother Theresa’s altruistic character traits emerged as a result of insertion-deletion polymporphisms on genes 3HTA48, FHTZ334, and 5H739Q4, and that those polymorphisms, along with the rest of the conditions of the universe at her conception, predicted to a high degree of accuracy—or, in a deterministic universe, to perfect accuracy—that she would become a self-sacrificing humanitarian.

In determining their final dues, would it be enough for God to simply ask whether Mother Theresa chose to live a good life, and whether Charles Manson chose to live an evil life? Of course not. Intuitively, the question that needs to be asked is: How would Mother Theresa have chosen to live had she been the one to inherit polymorphisms on 5HTTLPR, 5HTTLP7, 5HT333Q? How would Charles Manson have chosen to live had he been the one to inherit polymorphisms on 3HTA48, 4HTZ334, 57739Q4?

If the answer to that question is that Mother Theresa would have chosen to become a violent murderer, and that Charles Manson would have chosen to become a self-sacrificing humanitarian, then how could Charles Manson deserve to go to Hell while Mother Theresa sits in Heaven?

Now, just imagine a compatibilist God responding, “Well... it doesn’t matter that the course of their lives was set from their conceptions. The point is that they freely chose to live those lives, so they are responsible. That’s why Charles Manson genuinely deserves agonizing punishment, and Mother Theresa deserves blissful reward.”

I think most of us would agree that that would be a completely ridiculous response. But it would be exactly the compatibilist response.

What (P) does is it brings certain strong intuitions about equality and fairness into the fore. It forces the compatibilist to reject those intutions or give up desired conclusions. In this way, it allows the non-realist to illustrate the shallow and ad-hoc nature of compatibilism (to borrow Smilansky’s terms.)

Given that you are a theist with compatibilist sympathies (or at least seem to be), I would be interested to hear how you would respond to this question: How can Charles Manson deserve blame (and Hell) and Mother Theresa deserve praise (and Heaven) if it is true that Mother Theresa would have necessarily lived the exact same life as Charles Manson, and that Charles Manson would have necessarily lived the exact same life as Mother Theresa, had they been placed in opposite circumstances to each other?

Seriously, though, do you not feel the intuitive force of what I’m trying to say in (P)?

[Paul Torek]

Brian,

In my correction, I revised my complaint against the notion "that none of a person's personality features are essential to their identity", because I forgot to mention physical features alongside personality features. Technically, I myself don't think that any personality features are essential to a person's identity. I subscribe whole hog to John Perry's view that whatever-it-is that explains ordinary psychological continuity, is the foundation of personal identity. And what thus explains, is a set of physical features of the brain. However, like Parfit, I hold that moral responsibility (like other moral qualities and relations) fails to track personal identity in some cases. Indeed, that's why I reject Parfit's analysis in favor of Perry's: Parfit needs to realize that since personal identity is not what matters, the motivation to look for identity amongst the psychological facts is greatly reduced. Those facts are what matter, but we need not look for identity there.

The implications for your argument are the following. Yes, it's possible in principle that Paul Torek could still exist even if all my personality traits were gone and those of Henry Nyquist were substituted. But it's not possible that there could be a responsibility tie across that gap. It would be a case of "merely technical" personal identity: identity without any of the usually associated moral goodies (or baddies). The thought experiment makes sense in that it describes a conceivable scenario, but all your thunder is stolen away by the journey to that scenario.

[Tom Clark]

Brian wrote:

Now, just imagine a compatibilist God responding, “Well... it doesn’t matter that the course of their lives was set from their conceptions. The point is that they freely chose to live those lives, so they are responsible. That’s why Charles Manson genuinely deserves agonizing punishment, and Mother Theresa deserves blissful reward.”

I think most of us would agree that that would be a completely ridiculous response. But it would be exactly the compatibilist response.

I share your incredulity, but compatibilists presumably have good reasons to think this isn't a ridiculous response. On Fischer's view, for instance, Manson's agony is deserved because he was (likely) fully determined to exercise guidance control in such a way as to cause the death and suffering of others. I find myself completely baffled by this inference, which is why I'm always looking for a clear, easily graspable argument that gets us from determinism (or lack of contra-causal agency) to desert. Despite all of Mark S's patient explications, I'm still unable to share the compatibilist's confidence that reactive attitudes should hold sway in what might well be a block universe. I guess I need my incompatibilist blind spot filled in – then I’ll be able to celebrate, or at least tolerate, Manson’s suffering since I’ll have seen he deserves it.