Anger with Agent-Involving States of Affairs

Here’s something that’s happened quite a few times at talks at which I argue that moral anger (i.e., moral resentment and indignation) is threatened by free will skeptical considerations – University of Arizona last weekend was a case in point. Someone will say that nothing about free will skepticism challenges anger with impersonal states of affairs, such as the picnic’s being rained out or the car battery’s dying, and then propose that nothing about free will skepticism threatens anger with agent-involving states of affairs either. So even if it’s agreed that being angry with an agent because of the bad thing he’s done is out, anger with bad agent-involving states of affairs would still be in the clear.

A worry about this proposal is that anger with impersonal states of affairs seems unstable. You’re initially angry that the car battery died, but my sense is that this fairly quickly turns into different sorts of negative emotional attitudes, like frustration and disappointment. One feature of this sort of anger is that it disposes the angry person to look for some agent to be angry with – the people at the car shop who should have noted the problem, or the person responsible for taking the car for a check-up. When no fitting agent can be found, the anger tends to turn to emotions like frustration and disappointment. Anger with states of affairs seems ephemeral, and maybe this is because it only makes sense when it’s directed at an agent.

Another worry is whether anger with agent-involving states of affairs can be distinct at the emotional level from anger with the agent. Take Manuel’s (2005) character Jeff the Jerk, the middle level manager who callously fires his workers. A free will skeptic, intent on living in accord with her view, says to him when it’s clear to Jeff that she’s angry: “Jeff, I’m not angry with YOU for being such a jerk, but I am angry THAT you’re such a jerk.” That there would be such a distinction at the emotional level seems implausible. One might respond by arguing this is just a function of the epithet-concept ‘jerk,’ since it would seem to be strongly agent-focused, and so not readily state-of-affairs-focused. So imagine instead that the free will skeptic says to him: “Jeff, I’m not angry with YOU for being so callous, but I am angry THAT you’re so callous.”

This statement might be true, but I’d say the attitude is unstable, and will tend to change either into an emotion like frustration or disappointment or else into anger with the agent. So my tentative verdict is that anger with agent-involving state of affairs isn't a promising alternative for free will skeptics.

Agree or disagree?

Comments

[Robert Allen]

That's right, Derk, when you are angry you are looking for someone on whom to pin the blame: the person responsible for your plight, who deliberately or thoughtlessly caused you to suffer. Who would have thought that one's target could be a SOA? Only agents have attitudes and intentions and it is those that can really ________ one off. It isn't so much that something harmful was done, that someone's conduct proved detrimental. You could almost overlook the offending party's action, but for the fact that he had been arrogant, callous, or foolish- it was no accident. That is why in the above example one doesn't get angry with the car, but thinks straightaway of the mechanic or the manufacturers or the seller. Or consider Job. He wasn't angry over an unfortunate turn of events. It was God Almighty with whom he became indignant. Once you become a FWS you abdicate your philosophical right to get angry with others, which, pace Spinoza, would not be a good thing, since studies have shown anger focuses the intellect. With no one to hold responsible for your misfortunes, including you yourself, you are left with a diffused sense of chagrin. (One cannot HOLD responsible a SOA, nor BRING it to account.) '______ happens', as the bumper stickers says; but sans responsible agents it would be pointless to look for answers in the freely willed purposes of others, even if they are involved in bringing about one's misfortune. I for one would find such a world view deeply unsatisfying.

[Bruce Waller]

Derk, another wonderful post, on a very challenging subject (within that larger exasperating subject of reactive attitudes and when they are legitimate). As an impassioned believer in free will, I can’t speak for free will skeptics; but as a moral responsibility skeptic, I take Robert’s concerns very seriously. I agree that the loss of anger would be a significant loss, and that trying to transform this into anger about “states of affairs” is not very satisfying (when I’m angry at Jeff the Jerk, I’m angry at him, not some state of affairs in which he happens to exist). Perhaps we could do without this anger, though I doubt it; Galen Strawson suggests (I think it’s in the great interview Tamler did with Galen in Wizard) that some people at a very advanced stage of being might be beyond feeling anger; but I don’t know any such persons (perhaps because I hang out with too many philosophers), and I certainly have not reached that stage of enlightenment, nor do I expect to do so in this life cycle. It seems to me appropriate to feel anger at Jeff for his callously cruel behavior; and if someone does NOT feel such anger, I would suspect that the person doesn’t really see anything wrong in Jeff’s behavior (and if Joe, who is treated in this vile manner by Jeff, does not become angry, I would worry about Joe’s self-image and self-respect). So it seems perfectly legitimate to feel such anger (and in any case, justified or not, I don’t think we are going to eliminate it from human animals). But the question then becomes: how should we REGARD that anger? Should we take it as a justification for blaming/punishing Jeff? And that seems to me a different question altogether (and one that a moral responsibility denier can answer negatively while still feeling strong anger and not wishing to eliminate that emotional reaction). Consider this case. Arthur is in a deeply committed personal and sexual relationship with his partner, and as part of that commitment Arthur strongly believes he should remain monogamous and resist any temptation toward sexual dalliance with anyone else. Yet Arthur still feels strong sexual desires for other attractive persons; and Arthur would be very distressed if he LOST that strong sexual desire (if he no longer felt such desire for attractive others, he might well feel no desire for his partner). So Arthur feels the desires, and he recognizes their value; but he thinks it would be profoundly wrong to act on those desires. Might I feel strong anger at Jeff, and value that anger, without feeling that the anger should guide my behavior toward Jeff? The anger may be very important in motivating me to try to prevent such abuses of others, and so I would be very concerned if I felt a waning of my anger at the purposive mistreatment of others. But supposing that it justifies punishing Jeff – though I certainly FEEL like punishing Jeff – is a different matter.

[Justin Capes]

Bruce: is the following possible on your view? I am justifiably angry at Jeff for what he did but I can't legitimately blame Jeff for his action.

[Bruce Waller]

Yes; in fact, I think it's quite common: happened to me practically every day during the Bush administration. People sometimes purposefully do terrible things, and that makes me angry (DON'T get me started on sequestration). What do you think? And since Derk started all this with his very interesting question, I'm eager to know if he finds the justifiable-target-of-anger/not-morally-responsible distinction plausible, or even coherent.

[V. Alan White]

I'm unsure what the value of self-reporting is on the matter of anger and FW, but here is Einstein on the topic from a recording "My Credo" from autumn 1932:

"I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words, "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills," accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper."

But then again, this is just months from the installation of Hitler as Chancellor in 1933. No idea if he his changed his mind, though I know of no biographer (not Pais, whom I consider authoritative) who reports that Einstein was subject to fits of anger.

[Derk Pereboom]

Here’s how I would answer Bruce’s question. On one cognitivist position about moral resentment and indignation having such a reactive attitude essentially involves as a component a belief that its target basically deserves to be blamed for an action. On this conception, it would be irrational for a free will skeptic to have such an attitude, since she also believes that no agent basically deserves to be blamed for any action, and thus she would have conflicting beliefs. Ted Honderich (1996) rejects the position that having a reactive attitude essentially involves having any such belief, and, more generally, he advocates a noncognitivist position about these attitudes according to which they do not essentially involve having any beliefs at all. Still, he accepts that having a reactive attitude is nomologically connected with a belief about responsibility; if one loses the belief in an agent’s (basic-desert) responsibility, it’s psychologically impossible to persist in having the associated reactive attitude. So on Honderich’s position a free will skeptic’s having a reactive attitude would result in irrationality for the reason that it conflicts with a belief nomologically connected to the attitude.

I like the cognitivist option. On the view that seems most plausible to me, the attitudes of moral resentment and indignation include the following two components: anger targeted at an agent because of what he’s done or failed to do, and a belief that the agent deserves to be the target of that very anger just because of what she has done or failed to do. An attitude does not count as resentment or indignation if it lacks these features. Animals and young children have attitudes similar to resentment and indignation that don’t feature these cognitive components, but they don’t count as resentment and indignation. My sense is that whenever I am morally resentful or indignant, I retain the basic desert-involving belief, despite my conviction that no agent ever basically deserves to be blamed. On such occasions I’m irrational because I have conflicting beliefs.

But this is just theoretical irrationality, and Bruce’s and Robert’s posts fuel a strong argument that it may be practically rational to absorb (what I’m claiming to be) the theoretical irrationality that resentment and indignation involve. In response to Justin, an advocate of this view could say that it’s practically rational for me to be morally angry, but the basic desert belief that it involves is false, and thus there’s a good reason for not using it to justify overt blame and punishment. I’ve always been open to the view that moral anger is practically rational despite the theoretical irrationality. But I’m also committed to exploring the option to which Einstein gives voice in Alan’s post, that with some serious effort, a life without the theoretical irrationality that moral anger involves might also become practically rational for us.

[Robert Allen]

Justin & Bruce,

Anyone who is angry at someone without blaming him is putting the cart before the horse. It is because I blame Jeff for his callousness that I am now angry with him. You don't become indignant with those you don't hold responsible for misdeeds. But, having blamed someone, who, for that reason, is no longer in my good graces, I am looking to see him punished.

Bruce,

The analogy with a spouse does not hold. A man solemnly promises fidelity to his wife; that vow is why he eschews affairs, no matter what he happens to be feeling at the moment. It is furthermore nonsense to think that the spark in one's love life somehow depends upon illicit desires. (A man gets married precisely to have someone on whom he can focus his eros, who makes even the thought of being with others repugnant.) They are, thus, psychologically worthless but to the extent that they 'crop up' they provide absolutely no practical reason to do anything but, in the words of Charlie Rich, "take it on home." (On this much we agree.)

Anger is different. If directed at blameworthiness, it is neither base nor psychologically pointless. You yourself say it is a necessary component of self-esteem and a robust sense of reality. Furthermore, as noted earlier, it focuses the mind on bringing about justice. Those at whom we are justifiably angry, i.e., are blameworthy for wrongdoing, deserve to be punished. They are all of a piece.

[David Duffy]

Surely there are many situations where such anger transfers from the individual who committed the offending act to the community or society that made him the way he is?

[Sofia Jeppsson]

Let me give you some relevant input from the dog world (and in this post, I'll talk about showing anger, not merely feeling it inside): Some people think it's okay to display anger towards your dog if she misbehaves. Others think you merely ought to reinforce wanted behaviours while making sure unwanted behaviours are never rewarded (which includes altogether preventing self-rewarding behaviour). I've only seen two kinds of defense for the former idea; firstly people may claim that it's actually impossible to adequately train a dog without threatening/scaring her with angry behaviour now and again, secondly some people claim that dogs, despite having almost no frontal lobes, totally understand right and wrong and know when they've done wrong and so on, and therefore can DESERVE to be blamed. It's either of these two, or both in combination. Never have I seen anyone defend the idea that it's okay to be angry with your dog because it's okay to be angry with and yell at your car when it breaks down.

Even if you think you can have a stable feeling of anger towards your car this seems morally unproblematic since the car isn't hurt by your anger, and there's no question of whether being angry with the car is FAIR towards the car. When it comes to dogs, things are different. If the argument Derk describes works, it wouldn't just show that it's okay to be angry with people even if we don't have free will; it should work equally well to show that it's okay to be angry with dogs, or, say, a severely senile person who behaves in a bad way. But it doesn't seem to work that way.

[Robert Allen]

'But I’m also committed to exploring the option to which Einstein gives voice in Alan’s post, that with some serious effort, a life without the theoretical irrationality that moral anger involves might also become practically rational for us.' Derk

A Plea for Anger:

How in the world could it ever become irrational let alone impractical to be angry with the likes of Hitler? If Einstein wasn't seething at Hitler there was, as you noted, something wrong with him. We won WW2 and, in so doing, defeated real evil because of, as Eisenhower put it, "the fury of our aroused democracy." Athletes require a certain amount of animus to compete successfully. We live in a competitive society. (Sartre: "Conflict is the original meaning of being-with-others.") Why would we want to dispense with something that obviously has evolutionary advantages? You are talking Brave New World stuff here. (How are we going to react to those people who continue to become angry? Won't their recalcitrance make us ... well, angry?) Speaking for myself, my anger has served me well over the years: it has made me work harder at philosophy and apply the proper measure of discipline to my children and students. (I was heartened, but not surprised, to read the reports several years ago linking anger to concentration.) One philosopher's MP is another philosopher's MT. I take the eminent practicality of anger to be good reason to strenuously resist the notion of FWS.

[Derk Pereboom]

I think Robert’s point about the motivating force of the fury of our aroused democracy is exactly right. It’s important for us not to rid ourselves of the capacity for such fury. We have the right to harm aggressors in self-defense and defense of others, and we need to have available the kinds of emotions that motivate us to act on that right when doing so is dangerous. Fury is one of them. And fury is much better suited for this role than indignation is. Fury, as I’m understanding it, is an emotion we share with bears and wolves, and has no cognitive content or presupposition or associated belief that involves the notion of desert. If it has associated content, it’s perhaps that there’s a threat to be violently neutralized. That content is not challenged by the free will skeptic’s arguments.

One might argue that indignation is morally preferable to fury in threatening circumstances for the reason that it motivates violently neutralizing only threats who are acting immorally and are deserving of punishment. But several sorts of threats under the purview of the right of self-defense and defense of others do not on any reasonable view deserve punishment. Insane mass murderers are a case in point. And some are not acting immorally, such as rabid animals. Rather than replacing fury with indignation, it would be better to train people to act on their fury only when doing so is justified by the right of self-defense and defense of others. And this is what we in fact do.

[Bruce Waller]

Derk,
Many thanks for the explanation; that’s very helpful. Am still struggling with this issue, but don’t feel obligated to answer all my questions. Your second condition: “a belief that the agent deserves to be the target of that very anger just because of what she has done or failed to do.” Take Gary Watson’s example of Robert Harris, the callous purposeful murderer. I feel angry at Harris because of what he did, and he seems the right target for the anger; but if we accept that as true, does it follow that we must conclude that Harris justly deserves punishment? It seems to me that I can and do feel angry at Harris when I think of the murders (and legitimately so), but it seems quite consistent with that to also believe that Harris does not justly deserve punishment. My anger can be legitimate and adaptive, but without providing grounds for believing in moral responsibility and just deserts. Anger seems such a primitive emotion, I’m not sure that justifying it always makes sense. We feel angry, that’s a natural and almost certainly an adaptive response (if Haidt is correct, we sometimes “feel angry” before we are even consciously aware of our anger); when we are harmed, we feel angry, and we also feel a natural inclination to “pass the pain along,” as Barash says. And that also is an adaptive response. But the tough questions arise when we wonder what follows from that strong feeling; does it give us grounds for supposing that the object of our anger is justly deserving of punishment? Though the response is perfectly natural, we almost all believe that the response of “passing the pain along” by harming someone else when we are harmed is NOT a good moral guide for further action. In this case, I have a feeling that I want to pass the pain along; but do I also BELIEVE that I should pass the pain along? I doubt it; and thus I doubt that I have such a belief in the case of feeling angry and wanting to harm Harris. (Also, if we conclude that Robert Harris is not morally responsible for his cruel purposeful behavior, that is likely to have some mitigating effect on our anger; but I’m not sure that the anger goes away completely in that case.) I agree with Robert that anger can be valuable, and certainly it is an adaptive response (though I suspect that Robert and I strongly disagree on the exact nature of the value in anger); and so I have doubts about your hope that a life without moral anger might be possible for us: I think it is very unlikely (the testimony of some enlightened ones notwithstanding); and even if it were possible, I don’t think it would really be desirable. Maybe if we were more closely related to the bonoboes; but that would certainly not please Robert, because bonoboes have found lots of wonderful uses for sexual relations that go far beyond procreation.
Robert, I always enjoy your posts, though I fear we live in different worlds on some of these issues. One of those issues is whether blame comes before anger; it seems to me that if blame came before anger, then anger couldn’t function as it does for animals like ourselves. Surely we felt anger, long before we came up with a concept of blame. And we need a swift anger response, which often occurs even before we are consciously aware of the threat or harm, and well before we make anything related to blame judgments.

[Robert Allen]

Professor Waller,

I was all fired up to read the FW chapter from Consider Ethics with my students tonight at Wayne County Comm. College. But class was cancelled because of a storm, so it seems appropriate that I instead devote the time to responding to your post. Thanks for the compliment.

The concept of blame seems about as primitive as anger itself. All one needs is a harmful, malicious creature and there exists something to be judged blameworthy. How advanced would a conceptual scheme have to be to contain such notions? How long would it have taken for us to begin detecting ill will? (Children are certainly up to blaming.)
The “swift response” to which you refer I would deem 'lashing out' rather than getting angry.

One is upset, fuming even, over rising gas prices. But is one as yet angry? The feeling seems diffuse, unfocused, so as to not qualify as anger, which requires a definite object: one is looking for someone to blame, someone to hold responsible. Is it the retailers or the capitalist bastards? One strongly suspects the latter; one ALWAYS strongly suspects the latter. Then one reads the headline in the WSJ: CBs Raise Gas Prices Because They Don’t Have Enough Money. NOW one knows whom to blame. It is only then that one becomes indignant: ‘Those ________’. At least that’s how it works with me.

Sex is for procreation and strengthening the bond between a mother and a father, in the best interest of their children, who desperately need both a male and a female parent. The bonobos, God bless ‘em, just aren’t the sort of creatures we ought to be taking our cues from.

[Tamler Sommers]

Great discussion everyone. Derk, I'm confused by one thing. You write: "My sense is that whenever I am morally resentful or indignant, I retain the basic desert-involving belief, despite my conviction that no agent ever basically deserves to be blamed. On such occasions I’m irrational because I have conflicting beliefs."

On these occasions, as you say, you're being theoretically irrational. There seems to be two options at this point. (1) You can retain the basic desert belief and call your resentment irrational. Or (2) You can say that your resentment is rational and reject your basic desert belief.

So my question is: What makes you always choose (1) over (2)?

[Bruce Waller]

Robert,
Hope you have managed to dig out from under the snow; it’s a thrill to think of your students reading and discussing something I’ve written – they are indeed fortunate to have such a dedicated, passionate, and insightful teacher. On anger, your point concerning focus makes an interesting distinction – but anger is one of those emotions that seems to almost defy categorization. It does seem to seek an object, but so often that object is not the one that caused the pain (redirected aggression seems almost the rule rather than the exception). But on one point we can certainly agree: God bless the bonobos, indeed.
Derk, I really like Tamler’s question; can’t wait to read your answer.

[Nate]

@ Derk & Tamler,

Instead of saying that resentment / indignation involves a desert-involving belief, why not say that it involves a desert-involving appearance or mere thought? The desert-involving presentation is like the appearance of a "bent" stick in a glass of water.

[Derk Pereboom]

Let me address the great questions raised in the last several posts. A problem with trying to get straight on these issues is that ‘anger’ is too imprecise a term. A few posts back I argued that fury is not called into question by free will skepticism, but indignation is. But both count as species of anger.

The kind of anger that is called into question by free will skepticism is the sort that involves a belief about basic desert as a component, or else, as in Honderich’s view, is nomologically connected with a belief about basic desert. Is all anger with people because of the morally bad things they’ve done like this? What about the immediate pre-conscious response that Bruce mentions, citing Jonathan Haidt?

In their theory of the passions, the Stoics distinguished between the pre-passion, or the presentation of the passion, and the passion itself. In the case of fear, the pre-passion is that jolt you feel when you sense danger. But in their view, the jolt does not count as genuine fear; you only really have fear once you’ve assented to the propositional content that fear involves.The same goes for anger.

I like this view, or something similar. So I’d say that the immediate involuntary jolt you feel when confronted with wrongdoing doesn’t count as indignation, but it’s only when you affirm or endorse a basic desert content that you are actually indignant. So having that involuntary jolt, by contrast with actual indignation, is not challenged by free will skepticism. To address Nate's point, in the Stoics' view the jolt involves only a basic desert thought or presentation, and not an assent to the presentation, and something like this seems right to me. On the skeptical view the involuntary jolt can still be valuable, because it can motivate the right sort of forward-looking response.

On Tamler’s question: is it possible to have genuine resentment or indignation and reject the basic desert belief? It won’t be helpful to assume that this is impossible just by virtue of the definitions of resentment and indignation. So let’s ask whether it’s possible to have an attitude with the phenomenology of resentment or indignation while rejecting the associated basic desert belief. I agree with what I think Honderich would say about this: once that belief is gone, an attitude with the phenomenology of resentment or indignation can’t persist. The attitude will then turn into or be replaced by a phenomenologically different one – frustration, disappointment, and compassion are possibilities. And at least in my experience, if an attitude phenomenologically like resentment persists, so does the basic desert belief.

[Robert Allen]

‘Fury, as I’m understanding it, is an emotion we share with bears and wolves, and has no cognitive content or presupposition or associated belief that involves the notion of desert.’ DP

I daresay, Derk, that our brave soldiers thought that the Nazis and their allies had it coming. Fury is no different from anger in kind; it is instead the utmost degree of anger, giving way to lesser degrees as memories of the precipitating offense dim. Don't we say 'She is rightly furious at her husband' or 'He incurred her wrath', meaning he is now getting what he deserves?

[Sofia Jeppsson]

Derk, I'm not so sure that you couldn't feel resentment without the basic desert belief. Firstly, some philosophers believe that resenting people for what they've done when they've done wrong shows that you respect them as fellow rational agents rather than regarding them as children or animals. It seems to me that it's perfectly possible to believe this and still actually resent people.

I think it's probably possible too to feel resentment if you're merely convinced that it has consequentialist value. I think this emotion runs pretty deep in a lot of people, so it would take some kind of mental effort to get rid of it... Like, actually focusing on the fact that people (let us assume) lack desert-entailing moral responsibility while thinking about what they've done. A person who's completely convinced about the consequentialist value of resentment may simply not be motivated to get rid of this feeling, and that may be enough for the feeling to persist.

Finally, we must ask ourselves how we define "desert-entailing moral responsibility" - whether it's a purely normative-ethical concept, or if it also entails meta-ethical realism. If you accept an error-theory according to which claims that people deserve this or that refer to a mind-independent moral fact that doesn't exist, this may very well cause you to feel less resentment. However, that belief must be distinguished from a belief in constructivism, expressivism or the like which includes that constructed/expressed morality is REAL and COUNTS.

[Tamler Sommers]

Derk, I'm happy to accept your cognitivist account of resentment. Now as I understood it, you said that feel genuine resentment sometimes in spite of your general skepticism about free will. At those moments, you have the phenomenology of resentment in all its glory. And that's what makes you theoretically irrational. You believe that the target of resentment is blameworthy (by virtue of your resentment) and not blameworthy (by virtue of your skepticism).

Now assuming the cognitivist account is true--or Honderich's view, I don't think it really matters--your resentment will fade if you focus on your rejection of basic desert. But it seems like you also have the option to question your skepticism, given that you felt genuine resentment towards the person, indicating that you deemed him blameworthy. And the more this kind of thing happens, the more reason you might have to question skepticism unless you had some independent reason to distrust your emotions, right?

[Robert Allen]

'I'm not so sure that you couldn't feel resentment without the basic desert belief. Firstly, some philosophers believe that resenting people for what they've done when they've done wrong shows that you respect them as fellow rational agents rather than regarding them as children or animals.' SJ

But my respect for them, Sofia, is based on the belief that they have EARNED, through an improper exercise of FW, my disapproval. They misused their freedom, they were capable of better- now I am going to treat them like adults and hold them responsible. To soften my attitude towards them would be demeaning. But what does my reluctance imply? That I would thereby not be giving them what they deserve.

We say 'He knew he had it coming', expressing our grudging admiration for someone who realizes he deserved to be censured and punished (in contrast with someone acting like a child, looking for sympathy).

If you look at the flip-side of resentment, BD is certainly implied. Those towards whom I bear good will, whom I'm inclined to praise, have done something to earn my approval. What might it be? I see them as having properly exercised their freedom, doing right by themselves and others. They in my estimation deserve all the praise that may be forthcoming. So, if what you are saying is true, there is, at the very least, an asymmetry to be explained.

[Eli Weber]

Derk,

I wonder if you could say a bit more about why you regard anger with a state of affairs as unstable. It sounds to me like your view is this:

Anger requires an evaluation of the object of our anger as responsible (perhaps even blameworthy?) But with states of affairs, we quickly see that there is no responsible agent, only an unfortunate set of circumstances. Once this assessment takes place, our anger quickly subsides.

I have a couple of worries here--assuming I've captured your view in the right way. First, you seem to be relying on a particular characterization of anger. But why think that characterization is right? There is substantial empirical work on anger as an aggression response to aversive conditions, which doesn't require the sort of evaluation you seem to have in mind. So I'm worried that what you are describing as anger is a more nuanced derivative of that basic emotion. For example, why not think that what's happening in your car battery example is a case of inappropriate resentment, which you abandon once you evaluate it as inappropriate, and which then gives way to frustration (perhaps a different form of anger?). My point is just that if you see anger at states of affairs as unstable, I'm not convinced that this example is really a case of unstable anger.

My other concern is that there seem to be at least some cases of stable anger involving states of affairs. One example might be that of angry sports fans. There are surely New England Patriots fans who are still angry about this year's AFC championship results, for example, and it seems possible that the object of their anger is the state of affairs where the Patriots lose the game, rather than the players themselves. Perhaps they recognize that the Ravens were simply the better team on that day, but they are still angry about the results, because they see those results as aversive in some way.

[David Shoemaker]

Derk, you say: "[L]et’s ask whether it’s possible to have an attitude with the phenomenology of resentment or indignation while rejecting the associated basic desert belief." I think this is the right question. The answer will depend, though, on what's meant by "phenomenology." If it's really just about "what it feels like from the inside," then I think there isn't really a difference between resentment, indignation, and anger. D'Arms and Jacobson talk about a case of "tenure rage," in which you've been denied tenure for what you think are wrongheaded reasons. You may judge yourself to have been wronged and feel what we label resentment. Then suppose you find out that the reasons for your denial were good reasons. You've no longer been wronged (and you believe this), but nevertheless your anger at the committee persists; it is, in their words, recalcitrant. Do we really think there's some phenomenological difference between those two states? They're both states of anger; it's just that one had an additional judgment (of wrongness) attached, but it's not like judgments *feel* any certain way.

In addition, I think this example cuts against the thought that resentment, once its (alleged) constitutive judgment disappears, will turn into frustration or disappointment. It's still anger, and it still evaluates (unfittingly) its object as angersome, i.e., as a slight.

(It seems as well that there's an important distinction to be maintained between an emotion's having an evaluative object and its having propositional or judgmental content. Anger may evaluate its object as angersome, as, following Aristotle, a slight, without having as a constitutive evaluative *judgment* that its object was a slight. And this is what anger feels like, to me, anyway: it's not just a jolt, but it constitutes an evaluation of someone's attitude toward me as bad, unmitigated by any *judgments* on my part.)

[Derk Pereboom]

Sofia -- on respect and resentment, the connection is often spelled out as Robert does: in my words, you’re showing respect to a person by holding him responsible in the basic desert sense, and resentment has a basic desert cognitive component or associated belief. I agree that resentment presupposes that its target has capacities that make him worthy of respect, but I doubt that this is sufficient for resentment itself showing respect. We can for instance manipulate people in ways that presuppose that they are rational and value good relationships without thereby showing them respect, even though they are worthy of respect for being rational and valuing good relationships. I think that one very clear way to show people respect when they do wrong is to treat them as responsive to moral reasons -- that is, presenting them with reasons why it would be better in the future not to act as they did and to act otherwise instead.

On Eli’s question, I want to reiterate that I don’t want to say that there is a conflict between anger per se and free will skepticism. As I argued a few posts back, fury as I characterize it (and, to address Robert’s concern, this doesn’t map precisely onto the ordinary language use) will be stable in appropriate circumstances given free will skepticism. And fury is a kind of aggressive response to aversive conditions, one that we share with bears, for example. Frustration with states of affairs, like in the Patriots example, would also be stable. What would be unstable are the core negative reactive attitudes: moral resentment, that is, anger with an agent due to a wrong he has done to oneself, and indignation, in the central case anger with an agent because of a wrong he has done to a third party.

Thanks for the clarification, Tamler. I’m a bit wary of the wide reflective equilibrium method, as I indicated in the discussion of the previous thread, but I don’t know if we have a better one. And so I’m going to agree that in the situation as you set it out my resentment gives me some reason to question free will skepticism. As I see it, though, those reasons, and all the other reasons to question it, are outweighed by the reasons to accept it.

[Robert Allen]

"You've no longer been wronged (and you believe this), but nevertheless your anger at the committee persists; it is, in their words, recalcitrant. Do we really think there's some phenomenological difference between those two states? They're both states of anger; ...."

I am having a hard time, David, wrapping my head around this example. How can one remain angry with people having conceded that they did the right thing? Doesn't one's indignation go away once one realizes that one has not been wronged? If angers persists in your example, doesn't that indicate that the tenure seeker is still unsure of the committee's true reasons? Or perhaps the feeling has morphed into something no less painful but different in kind: say disappointment or even bitterness? We are not just 'going off' on people when we get angry. On the contrary, one is usually more than happy to calmly lay out one's reasons for being miffed, asserting just the sort of judgments you claim are missing: 'I was the better candidate; those people are either incompetent or play favorites'. Having evaluated someone's attitude as "bad," am I not judging it to be the same? 'I have a low opinion of the committee.' Does that not mean that I have found/judged them to be wanting in some important respect?

[Sofia Jeppsson]

Robert and Derk: So you're basically saying that I couldn't simultaneously be convinced about Derk's arguments that we lack basic desert, and James Lenman's argument according to which we ought to praise and blame with everything that involves because doing so is a way to treat people with respect as rational agents? Lenman argues that this respect only requires that people have some kind of compatibilist freedom. He does talk about "desert" in his paper, but he seems to mean a different thing by the term than Derk does with his "basic desert", so it doesn't seem to me as if they're contradicting each other.

[Derk Pereboom]

On the thought experiment David cites, Robert’s idea seems right to me – that for the resentment to persist, some belief to the effect that the committee members did something wrong and deserve to be blamed for it will need to be present. When we’re intensely resentful in situations of this kind we’re often motivated to find another basis for blame once one such basis has been undermined. This may be a feature of the phenomenon of blame validation that Mark Alicke (e.g., 1994, 2000) and Thomas Nadelhoffer (e.g., 2004) have studied.

On Sofia’s question about Lenman’s view, I don't think that there's a contradiction between denying basic desert and the claim that treating people as if they deserve blame and punishment shows them respect. But my sense is that blaming and punishing people because they deserve it never shows or expresses respect for them, while it may presuppose that they have capacities that make them worthy of respect. The presupposition could foster the illusion that the blame or punishment itself shows respect.

Well, it’s March 1, and my term as featured author has ended. Thanks to you for all of your thoughts and comments, which were very valuable to me and produced a great discussion!

[Robert Allen]

Sofia,

I concur with Professor Pereboom. The attitude of which Lenman speaks is shallow, more like appreciation than respect, which attaches itself to persons rather than their capacities. I would only add that, having lost considerable respect for a wrongdoer for misusing his freedom, he may earn some of it back in my eyes by properly exercising the same in taking responsibility for and repenting of his misdeeds and acknowledging the fittingness of his punishment, a la Raskolnikov. But, again, it is the way HE uses the capacities making up his freedom that impress me here, not those capacities themselves: 'He has finally made good use of his God-given freedom'.

Thanks Derk for a great month of philosophy! The exchanges were valuable to me as well. I spar with you in absentia every semester when I go over in class the sections from LWFW discussing the implications of HD for friendship and love. I always win, of course; though I make sure to give you credit for writing the book on the subject.