Flickers of Freedom

Very Bad Wizards Ep. 21: Grad School

Hi all, wanted to let you know that VBW episode 21 is now up on iTunes, Stitcher, and our website. Dave Pizarro  and I talk about whether students should go into grad school with the tough job market, increased dependency on adjuncts, and the unstoppable world conquering dark arts of Michael Sandel.   We also do a brief riff on the now famous sorority sister's email.  (I say she's a civil right visionary.  Dave disagrees.)  

Other recent episodes that may be of interest to Flickerers: Episode 20 with special guest neuroscientist Molly Crockett on brain research and neurobunk.  Episodes 15 and 19 where we burn bridges and reveal what bugs us most about our fields.    A 2 parter on cross-cultural research in psychology (part 2 with Joe Henrich), and a episode on race relations with special guest Damani McDole.  Check them out on our episode page .  Hope you enjoy!  

Now back to the great Bruce Waller.

Are Interpersonal Theories of Moral Responsibility Incompatible with Theistic Commitments?

Hi All, This post is related to my last post, although only indirectly.  As most everyone is aware, in theories of moral responsibility there is a divide between two different approaches.  (Of course, I do not mean to suggest that these categories exhaustively capture all contenders.)  The Strawsonian, interpersonal approach treats moral responsibility's nature as essentially interpersonal.  To understand it, we must do so in terms of fitting responses by others standing prepared to hold responsible.  Philosophers in this camp, as I see it, include P.F. Strawson, Jonathan Bennett, Gary Watson, R. Jay Wallace, Paul Russell, Stephen Darwall, and me too (in my recent book *Conversation and Responsibility*).  Ledger theorists, by contrast treat moral responsibility's nature as most fundamentally about the independent facts constituting an agent's being responsible, and the conditions for holding responsible must first satisfy conditions of veracity regarding whether an agent is responsible (was she free? did she know what she was doing?).  The responsibility facts, on this view, can be fully accounted for without the need to make any reference to the standpoint or norms of holding morally responsible. Philosophers in this camp include Jonathan Glover, Joel Feinberg (I think), Michael Zimmerman, and Ish Haji, among, I suspect, many others.  (John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza have suggested that the views might not be exclusive.  That might be correct, but set that aside here.)

One thing that has come to worry me about my own defense of an interpersonal theory, and something that, I suspect will infect other versions of interpersonal theories, is that my theory seems ill suited for certain ways of thinking about a morally responsible agent's relation to God.  I intended for my theory to be neutral as between different accounts of free will's nature (compatibilist or incompatibilist, for instance).  But it seems not neutral here.  The reason is simple: Views like mine, or instead, say, Darwall's, are views in which the one who is responsible and, for example, blameworthy, stands in a relation to those holding morally responsible, as co-deliberators in a moral community.  The members of the moral community are, in a sense, moral equals or co-participants, and one's standing as a responsible agent warrants one to engage with others under the presumption that she too could hold them to account.  But this seems ill-suited for one's relation to God, doesn't it?  Doesn't it seem that a more natural picture of the person who is blameworthy and liable to be held to account by God is better captured on the Ledger model?  On this model, God first knows the independent facts about the agent's responsibility, and the further judgments regarding the suitability of reward and punishment flow from these, but not, as my view would have it, as part of a conversation wherein the one blamed is in some manner entitled to or warranted in responding to those blaming her. 

Thoughts? 

 

Building Better Books

Manuel Vargas's Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility is now available.  Here is the abstract:

Building Better Beings presents a new theory of moral responsibility. Beginning with a discussion of ordinary convictions about responsibility and free will and their implications for a philosophical theory, Manuel Vargas argues that no theory can do justice to all the things we want from a theory of free will and moral responsibility. He goes on to show how we can nevertheless justify our responsibility practices and provide a normatively and naturalistically adequate account of responsible agency, blame, and desert.

Three ideas are central to Vargas' account: the agency cultivation model, circumstantialism about powers, and revisionism about responsibility and free will. On Vargas' account, responsibility norms and practices are justified by their effects. In particular, the agency cultivation model holds that responsibility practices help mold us into creatures that respond to moral considerations. Moreover, the abilities that matter for responsibility and free will are not metaphysically prior features of agents in isolation from social contexts. Instead, they are functions of both agents and their normatively structured contexts. This is the idea of circumstantialism about the powers required for responsibility. Third, Vargas argues that an adequate theory of responsibility will be revisionist, or at odds with important strands of ordinary convictions about free will and moral responsibility. Building Better Beings provides a compelling and state-of-the-art defense of moral responsibility in the face of growing philosophical and scientific skepticism about free will and moral responsibility.

  Congrats to Manuel!

REMINDER: CFA for Conference* in SF on things Free Will-ish

Call for abstracts 

Reference, Conceptual Change, and Free Will

August 9-11, 2013

University of San Francisco

Organizer: Manuel Vargas

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Keynote Speaker:

Shaun Nichols (Arizona) "Free Will and Error"

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Deadline for abstracts: April 15, 2013.

Decisions announced by May 15, 2013. 

   

The aim of this conference* is to assemble a small group of philosophers to discuss in-progress work on issues connected to reference and/or conceptual change as it pertains to free will and moral responsibility. (A 'conference*' is something very much like a conference, but not necessarily corresponding to all the significant or even the essential features of widespread conceptions of a conference.) The aspiration is to have a small, workshopy event.

    Potential topics could include, for example: whether one's theory of reference makes a difference to how one thinks about free will and moral responsibility; whether the meaning of free will or responsibility has changed; what constraints determine whether we should accept an error theory of free will; whether cross-cultural or other empirical data suggest that free will or moral responsibility are conceptually fragmented or significantly variegated across societies and times; whether philosophical on free will and moral responsibility should largely preserve folk notions and/or the extent to which they can depart from such notions; how we might settle disputes about what is conceptually essential or not for free will, and so on.

    Anticipated length of papers should be either 20 minutes or 45 minutes. Proposals from early career faculty are especially encouraged. However, philosophers of all career stages, including (advanced) graduate students and not-early-career professors are encouraged to participate. 

    Abstracts should be sent to <mrvargas@usfca.edu> with the subject line indicating "USF FW Event" and either "20 minute" or "45 minute" (as applicable). Abstracts should be roughly 200-500 words.

    Seating will be limited, so if you are interested in attending but not presenting, please contact the organizer in advance.

VBW Episode 13: Beanballs, Blood Feuds, and Collective Moral Responsibility

Fiery Cushman joins us and classes up the podcast in the process.  We talk about his recent paper on beanballs, collective punishment, and collective responsibility.   Towards the end, Fiery comes up with a really interesting proposal about moral responsibility that's definitely worth talking about on Flickers.    We also break down the story that was the subject of this post and discussion a while back.

Available at iTunes, Stitcher, and our website.

 

Perceptions of Having Free Will : Recent Findings in Social Psychology

Much of the social psychology literature has focused on the consequences of believing in free will. This line of research generally likes to show that believing in free will has all sorts of positive implications in terms of prosocial behavior (Baumeister, Masicampo, & Dewall, 2009), less cheating (Vohs & Schooler, 2008) and even better job performance (Stillman, Baumeister, Vohs, Lambert, Fincham and Brewer, 2010). But how are those perceptions formed? are those beliefs stable? are they prone to classic social psycholog biases? are they perhaps contextually bound?

This post is a cross post of a quick summary I did titled "Free Will : Interesting Findings in Social Psychology" which includes some of the recent findings regarding the antecedents of belief in free will and the factors that influence these perceptions. I believe this line of research resembles and is linked to some of what experimental philosphers have been doing on lay beliefs of moral responsibility and intent.

CfA: NOWAR 2 [Moving to the front from Dec. 8]

This is a call for abstracts for the second biennial New Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), to be held in New Orleans, LA at the Intercontinental Hotel on November 7-9, 2013.  Abstracts are welcome on any topic having to do with agency and/or responsibility.  Perspectives beyond just those from moral philosophy (e.g., psychology, legal theory, neuroscience, economics, metaphysics, and more) are welcome.  (To see more about the workshop’s general aims and other details, follow this link.)  More info below the fold.

Discussion of Sarah Buss's Ethics Paper...

...to take place on PEA Soup on Monday.  It will be on Buss's recent paper, "Autonomous Action: Self-Determination in the Passive Mode," which Ethics has made open access here for purposes of this discussion.  See here for the details.  This is a very cool and provocative article, one that lots of Flickerers ought to be interested in.  Come on by and throw in your two cents.

Holding Ourselves vs. Others Responsible

My colleague Antony Aumann and I are wondering if anyone knows of work on a purported asymmetry in norms regarding holding oneself responsible as opposed to holding others responsible. The Christian tradition often emphasizes it, as we see in famous dicta: "judge not lest ye be judged," "take the log out of your own eye before the splinter out of your brother's," etc. Kant and Kierkegaard also both appear to recommend giving others, but not ourselves, the benefit of the doubt.

From what we understand of Kant and Kierkegaard’s position, their reason for recommending going easy on others is that we can't directly infer others' motivations from their actions and we have an obligation to interpret others in the best possible light. What's puzzling is that both appear to accept that we do not infallibly know our own motivations, either. Yet they recommend that we treat ourselves more harshly and thus risk blaming ourselves when we are not blameworthy. 

Suppose someone accepts both that motivations are the proper objects of praise and blame and that our knowledge of our own minds isn't infallible. What resources does such a person have to defend the asymmetry in holding responsible? 

We’re interested in any work that discusses the asymmetry, whether or not it accepts that motivations are the proper target of praise and blame.

 

Nahmias and King in The Philosophers' Magazine

The Philosophers Magazine has two new book reviews:  The first is a review by our own Eddy Nahmias of Sam Harris's "pithy pamphlet" Free Will.  The second is a review by Matt King of our own Tamler Sommers's Relative Justice.