Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. LXXXVI No. 2, March 2013© 2013 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC

Pr�ecis of Making Sense of Freedomand Responsibility

DANA KAY NELKIN

UC San Diego

We have an unshakeable sense of ourselves as free and responsible agents. Andyet we can easily be made to question whether we are in fact free and responsi-ble—by sophisticated philosophical arguments, apparently simple generaliza-tions from cases in which we are clearly not free and responsible, disturbingexperimental results in psychology and neuroscience, and more. In MakingSense of Freedom and Responsibility, I defend a simple and, I believe, naturaltheory that responds to the great variety of challenges to the idea that we arefree and responsible, and offer a mutually supporting account of our conceptionof ourselves as agents. In so doing, I present a picture of our “sense of freedomand responsibility” in two different senses: an account of freedom and responsi-bility, and also an account of our sense of ourselves as free and responsible.

There are at least two ways in which these two projects are linked. Oneis that a very popular approach to our sense of ourselves as free agentsinterprets that sense in a very particular way—namely, as a commitment tothe idea that we can choose among multiple undetermined options. Thisinterpretation in turn has been used to motivate a particular picture of free-dom itself, one that requires that the world be indeterministic in order foragents to be free. So figuring out exactly what our sense of freedom is—that is, what our conception of ourselves is, and why we have it—can havesignificant implications for the debate about the nature of freedom, and, byextension, about the nature of responsibility, for which freedom has oftenbeen thought to be a necessary condition.

A second way that the two projects have been linked can be traced backto Kant and Reid among others, and concerns the task of answering theskeptic about freedom. As Kant wrote, “Now I say that every being whichcannot act in any way other than under the idea of freedom is for this veryreason free from a practical point of view.”1 The suggestion is that the

1 Kant [GW 448].

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necessity of thinking of ourselves as free entails that we really are. Reidtook a somewhat more cautious but still bold approach, writing that “Thisnatural conviction of our acting freely, which is acknowledged by manywho hold the doctrine of necessity, ought to throw the whole burden ofproof upon that side… .”2 For both Kant and Reid, the discovery that wemust think of ourselves as free is a step in answering the skeptic (for Reid,a complete shift of the burden of proof, and for Kant, a decisive refutation—at least if we confine ourselves to conclusions within the practical pointof view). In the book, I argue that our sense of freedom does present theskeptic with an explanatory burden (though not the entire burden), and Ibelieve that what we learn about our own sense of ourselves can offerimportant insights into the nature of freedom and responsibility. And this isone of the main tasks in this book.

In the first part of the book, I focus mostly on responsibility, and thenreturn to the connection between responsibility and freedom in the last threechapters. There is a variety of notions of responsibility, and the one that Ifocus on here is the concept of moral responsibility, specifically of the sortrequired for deserved praise and blame. I explore the concept of responsibilityin question in some detail in chapter 2, and conclude that the notion is one of“accountability,” so that when one is morally responsible in this sense itmakes sense for others to make moral demands of one. In this way, it is a dis-tinct notion from that of “attributability,” according to which one is responsi-ble in the sense that moral fault is properly attributed to agents, and agents’actions are appraised as being either virtuous or vicious.3 For attributing afault to an agent of this kind does not entail that the one with the moral faultis deserving of blame in a sense that makes demands appropriate.

I begin in chapter 1 by setting out and motivating a view of responsibilitythat I call the “rational abilities view”. Put simply, people are responsiblewhen they act with the ability to do the right thing for the right reasons, or agood thing for good reasons. The ability in question in turn has two compo-nents: the ability to recognize good reasons for acting and the ability totranslate those reasons into decisions and actions. The appeal of the view ismanifested across a wide range of our practices and judgments. For example,we believe that human beings gradually acquire responsibility as they gradu-ally acquire rational abilities, and that those who are severely mentallyimpaired are exempt from responsibility for their actions.

The idea that what bestows responsibility is the possession of certainrational abilities is manifest in the judgments of responsibility codified ina variety of legal systems, as well. To see how, consider the insanitydefense. According to the Model Penal Code, an ideal system of laws

2 Reid 1788/1983, 344.3 See Watson (1996) for these terms and discussion.

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proposed by the American Law Institute, insanity is defined as a lack ofsubstantial capacity to control one’s behavior. In turn, substantial capacityis defined as “the mental capacity needed to understand the wrongfulnessof [an] act, or to conform…behavior to the…law.” The idea is that peopleare not responsible for their actions when they lack either the capacity tograsp reasons for acting (or not acting, as the case may be) or the capac-ity to translate those reasons into action (or omission). (One can see thehistory of the legal debate as an attempt to capture both cognitive andvolitional abilities to respond to reasons.) In general, when we find outthat someone lacks a capacity for recognizing reasons or cannot controlher behavior in light of them, we are tempted to excuse her actions.Otherwise, in both legal and non-legal contexts, we tend to hold peopleresponsible for their actions.

A number of philosophers have recognized the importance of rationalcapacities to responsibility. For example, some defend the idea that generalrational capacities are required for responsible action (but not necessarilythe ability to exercise them on each particular occasion one is responsible).R. Jay Wallace, for one, writes that “what matters is not our ability to exer-cise our general powers of reflective self-control, but simply the possessionof such powers…” (1994, 183). And according to John Martin Fischer andMark Ravizza’s influential view, one must act on a mechanism that isresponsive to reasons (1998). But few defend what I see as the more literalreading of the claim that one must be able to do the (or a) right thing forthe right (or some good) reasons. Susan Wolf is a notable exception, articu-lating what I believe is a view implicit in many of our practices, includinglegal ones. According to Wolf, one must “have the ability to do otherwise”,that is, to exercise one’s general rational powers in cases in which one doesnot do so (1991).

One of the striking features of the rational abilities view is a certainasymmetry: it requires the ability to do otherwise when actions are not per-formed for good reasons or are not good, while not requiring the ability todo otherwise in the case of good actions performed for good reasons. Inchapter 1, I motivate the asymmetry partly by appeal to our asymmetricpractices of blame and praise. As the legal and moral practices justdescribed indicate, we tend to base our judgments of blameworthiness onthe supposition that agents could have acted well instead. And I introducecases in which we continue to praise those who respond to the very press-ing reasons for making a great personal sacrifice, even when we learn thatthey cannot have done differently. Still, the asymmetrical implications ofthe view make it vulnerable to criticism from almost everyone who hasentered the debate, including both those who argue that the ability to dootherwise is always required for responsibility and those who argue that itnever is. Thus, the rational abilities view must be defended from two

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diametrically opposed directions, and I set out to do this in chapters 2 and3, respectively. In chapter 2, I begin by addressing arguments primarilyfrom incompatibilists (those who take determinism to be incompatible withfree and responsible action). These arguments conclude that the ability todo otherwise is required for responsibility when it comes to both praisewor-thy and blameworthy actions. The ability to do otherwise has been thoughtessential for several reasons, including its connection to fairness of blame,its connection to one’s being the ultimate source of one’s own action, andbecause it has simply seemed true. Consider here the highly influential andtraditional fairness argument in favor of the claim that the ability to dootherwise is required for responsibility. The idea is that it would be unfairto blame people, and so impose sanctions on them, for performing actionswhen they could not do otherwise. Interestingly, this argument focuses onlyon blameworthy action, and a parallel argument concluding that people arenot responsible or praiseworthy if they lack the ability to do otherwise isnot as compelling. It seems that the fairness argument concerning blame-worthiness is simply assumed to generalize to responsibility in general.Thus, it might seem that this sort of appeal to fairness is in fact tailor-madeto support an asymmetry. But things are not so simple. To see why, wemust first distinguish between two different notions of fairness, a personalone that concerns fairness to the target of blame considered in isolation, andan impersonal or distributive one that concerns the fairness of a distributionof blame or burden over a population. An example helps to bring out thisdifference: it is a coherent and familiar position (if not necessarily correct)that the death penalty is not unfair “in principle” to those who are rightlyconvicted of certain crimes, while it is unfair in its application because evenif some who “deserve” it receive it, there is a kind of distributive, or inter-personal, unfairness. Although the traditional argument invokes the personalsense of fairness, Watson (1996) offers in its stead an argument that appealsto the distributive notion of fairness to conclude that praiseworthy actionsjust as much as blameworthy ones require the ability to do otherwise. Iargue that this line of reasoning does not succeed either, and that at mostwhat it shows is that there is a very general unfairness in the distribution ofthe qualities that make us responsible agents in the first place, and not anunfairness in the distribution of appropriate praise on the rational abilitiesview. I conclude that there is no special problem of fairness that arises forthe rational abilities account’s implications for praiseworthy action.

At this point, it seems that we have support for an asymmetrical treat-ment of blameworthy and praiseworthy actions in the traditional argumentthat, appealing to the personal notion of fairness, supports the need for anability to do otherwise for blameworthy, but not for praiseworthy, action.However, as welcome as the conclusion would be for my account, I arguethat there is reason to doubt that the appeal to personal fairness concerning

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sanctions supports even the requirement of alternatives for blameworthyaction. In the process, I suggest that the connections between blame andpunishment are less direct than is often assumed, while retaining a robustnotion of blame as something that can be deserved. Thus, I conclude thatthe influential appeal to fairness regarding sanctions fails to underwrite ageneral requirement of the ability to do otherwise for both blameworthy andpraiseworthy actions, but also that a rationale for the asymmetrical view willhave to wait.

In chapter 3, I turn to challenges from the opposite direction. Here, ithas been argued that so-called Frankfurt-style cases can be constructed forboth praiseworthy and blameworthy actions, and that these cases thereforeshow that the ability to do otherwise is required for neither. In such cases,an agent acts in the normal way (voting for a particular candidate, orcommitting a murder, say), but someone else (a nefarious neuroscientist,say) is waiting in the wings. If the first agent were to give some sign thatshe is likely to act differently, the second agent would intervene, ensuringin some way that the first agent acts as the second desires. But as long asthe first agent proceeds on her own without showing such a sign, the sec-ond does nothing. Since, intuitively, the first agent is responsible for heraction in such a case, despite the fact that it is ensured that she act in theway she does, such cases are thought to show that agents can be responsi-ble without the ability to do otherwise. Fischer and Ravizza (1992) arguethat such Frankfurt-style cases indeed have this result, and they do so forboth blameworthy and praiseworthy action. If this is correct, it would bea problem for the rational abilities view. By appealing to a particularunderstanding of “abilities,” however, I argue that these cases do not showwhat is claimed of them. In what I call an “interference-free” sense ofabilities, agents retain the relevant abilities in Frankfurt-style cases. At thesame time, the rational abilities view faces a second problem when itcomes to the asymmetrical treatment of cases, and in particular thereseems to be a special difficulty when it comes to determinism. Does therational abilities view in fact imply that we can be responsible for deter-mined actions only as long as they are good and done for good reasons?If so, then that seems problematic. Taking up this second challenge, Iargue that determinism is no more an obstacle to abilities than indeter-minism, at least when not combined with other conditions. Thus, the argu-ment is not complete without consideration of the best incompatibilisttheories that give indeterminism an integral role in a larger theory thatgrounds the ability to do otherwise in a sense relevant to responsibility.

I take on this task in chapter 4 when I evaluate a view that has cometo be known as the “agent causal” account of responsibility, according towhich responsible actions have as their causes agents themselves, ratherthan, as is commonly supposed, events involving agents. The view has a

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long and influential history, and has generally been assumed to be anincompatibilist theory.4 In chapter 4, I consider this view in some depth,develop what I take to be the best version of this sort of theory, and thenshow that there is a coherent compatibilist version of an agent causalaccount of human action. I then question whether the incompatibilistversion (which is incompatible with the rational abilities view) has anyadvantages over a compatibilist version (which is compatible with therational abilities view). In the end, I argue that it does not, and that therational abilities view is unthreatened by the true virtues of agent causalaccounts.

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 together reveal the extensive resources of the rationalabilities view to answer a variety of challenges from both traditional campsin the debate—challenges to treat all responsible action as requiring theability to do otherwise, and challenges to treat all responsible action as notrequiring the ability to do otherwise. However, the question remains: whatpositive reason is there for an asymmetry? Aside from the fact that it is aconsequence of an intuitively plausible view, can anything be said toexplain it?

In chapter 5, I explain how what has often been taken to be an axiomaticmoral principle, namely, the so-called Ought-Implies-Can principle, can dothis work. The Ought-Implies-Can principle states that if an agent ought toperform an action, then she can perform it. This principle, I argue, under-writes the claim that blameworthy actions require an ability to do otherwise,while it fails to underwrite a similar claim about praiseworthy action. Thereason is that morally blameworthy action requires that one have violated amoral obligation. Thus, morally blameworthy actions require that one couldhave done what one was obligated to do and did not, and in this way anability to do otherwise is required for blameworthy actions. Notably, thereis no sound parallel reasoning for praiseworthy action. Since we are praise-worthy for actions we ought to do (as well as some for which we have noobligation at all), the Ought-Implies-Can principle cannot be combined witha suitable parallel principle concerning praiseworthiness and obligation. Idefend all of these claims, including the Ought-Implies-Can principle itself,in chapter 5. Together with the arguments of chapter 2 against a blanketprinciple of alternate possibilities for all kinds of actions, this chapterconstitutes a powerful explanation and rationale for the asymmetry of therational abilities view.

In chapters 6 and 7 I turn to the question of whether the view developedthus far fits with, or is in tension with, our commitments as rational agents.I address a conclusion that can be found in the work of thinkers as differentfrom each other as Aristotle, Kant, and Peter van Inwagen. It is the thesis

4 One notable exception is Markosian (1999).

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that, as rational deliberators, we manifest a commitment to our ownfreedom. Two questions immediately arise: (i) Is the thesis true? (ii) If so,what exactly are we committed to, in being committed to being free? Inchapters 6 and 7, I provide a positive answer to the first question, and anelaboration of what our commitments come to. In particular, in chapter 6,I argue that insofar as we deliberate about multiple courses of action, weare committed to our own deliberation having the potential to explain whywe perform one rather than the other. And yet this does not thereby commitus to thinking of the world as undetermined. In chapter 7, I argue that wedo presuppose that we are free agents in deliberating in the sense that ouractions are up to us in such a way that we are responsible for them. Thevery nature of rational deliberation—of seeking reasons with a view toadopting and acting on the best (or at least good) ones—is such as to mani-fest a commitment to our freedom in this sense.

In the final chapter, I show how our commitments as rational agents fitwith the rational abilities view developed earlier in the book. On the onehand, in showing that we are not committed to our being undeterminedcauses of our actions, a central motivation for a libertarian position isremoved. On the other hand, in showing that we are committed to our beingfree agents in a sense related to responsibility, we have a challenge to theskeptic. Even if Reid was wrong to think that this insight thrust the entireburden of proof on the skeptic, it is a phenomenon the skeptic must accountfor. Further, the particular nature of the commitment provides strong mutualsupport for the rational abilities view itself.

I then go on to show how the various arguments of the entire book cometogether to provide a coherent compatibilist answer to the skeptic that incor-porates a welcome flexibility on central questions such as those regardingboth deep metaphysical issues involving the nature of causation and thoseregarding the precise emotional abilities humans must have to be responsi-ble agents.

While each part of the book adds to and mutually supports the larger theoryof responsibility and our conception of ourselves as free and responsibleagents, a number of parts can also be seen as free-standing arguments. A com-patibilist who adopts a symmetrical view of responsibility could, for example,embrace the reasoning about agent-causation, while an incompatibilist whoalso adopts a symmetrical view of responsibility could accept argumentsdefending the necessity of having alternative possibilities in blameworthycases. Thus, although the rational abilities view is a natural rival of influentialcompatibilist and incompatibilist views because it shares aspects with viewsof both sorts, the flip side of the existence of so much rivalry is that it canhave something to offer all of those rival views, as well. At the same time,because the parts of the argument are mutually supporting, the whole has thepotential to be genuinely greater than the sum of its parts.

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References

Kant, I. 1785/1981. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. J. Ellington,tr. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Markosian, N. 1999. “A Compatibilist Version of the Theory of AgentCausation”. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80: 257–77.

Reid, T. 1788/1983. Essays on the Active Powers of Man, in Inquiry andEssays, R.E. Beanblossom and K. Lehrer, eds. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Watson, G. 1996. “Two Faces of Responsibility”. Philosophical Topics 24:227–48.

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