Arguing about moral responsibility

Outside applied ethics and neuroethics, I work in philosophy of agency, specifically on the interlinked topics of free will and moral responsibility (interlinked because I, like most participants in the debate, understand free will, if it exists, to be the power we have to act in a way that makes us morally responsible for our actions). I defend a very unusual position in the free will debate, which I won’t get into now. But one feature it shares with some others (a relatively small minority) is that it holds that we don’t have free will, in the sense defined, and therefore we are not morally responsible for our actions (or for anything else). In this post, I want to address a common criticism of my argument, and of other arguments for the same conclusion. The criticism, roughly, is this: you are arguing for a radical revision of our beliefs and our practices: the overturning of a central component of our conception of ourselves and one another. But arguments for radical revisions of common sense must meet higher standards than arguments for less radical conclusions. As the stakes go up, so do the argumentative standards.

We need to distinguish two different ways in which the stakes might go up: theoretical and practical. Suppose I argue for the view that the world only exists as long as it is being observed in some manner. That would constitute a pretty radical revision of our common sense view. But it would be an entirely theoretical revision: it wouldn’t any difference to how we go about dealing with the world. On the other hand, an argument for the view that the Norse gods are the only true gods would constitute both a theoretical and a practical revision in common sense. We would rationally be required to act differently (to sacrifice to Odin, perhaps).

Clearly, holding that agents are never morally responsible constitutes both a theoretical and a practical revision to common sense. Now it would seem that the second kind of revision is more important; the stakes going up going practically has a more significant impact on the argumentative standards than the stakes going up theoretically. So far as theory alone is concerned, we ought to follow where the argument leads, no matter how radical the revision in our former beliefs. 

So we need to concentrate on the practical reforms required by accepting the claim that people are never morally responsible. What would the costs be of giving up the idea of moral responsibility? The obvious place to start is with the criminal justice system. People often object that we can’t just throw open the doors of the prisons or allow people ‘to get away with murder’. But scepticism about moral responsibility does not commit anyone to either of these courses of action. Punishment has four different possible justifications: deterrence, rehabilitation, public protection and retribution. Only the last is directly threatened by moral responsibility scepticism: we can still lock up people to deter others, to protect the public and to give them the skills they need to live without harming others. We are not committed to closing the prisons or shutting down the courts. However, we are committed to doing things differently. Most prisons around the world are far harsher than can be justified if people don’t deserve to be treated badly in consequence of committing crimes. In fact, many prisons are far harsher than can be justified on any remotely plausible theory of moral responsibility, but there is little doubt that scepticism about moral responsibility would require us to treat prisoners far better than rival views. We would have no justification for making life behind bars any more uncomfortable than would be justified by deterrence,rehabilitation and public protection. Now, there is strong evidence that the probability of being detected has a deterrent effect, and  reasonable evidence that length of sentence has a deterrent effect with regard to some crimes, but the evidence suggests that harshness of treatment in prison actually increases recidivism without having an effect on deterrence. Might it be more expensive to keep inmates in decent conditions than in harsh? Perhaps in the short term, but there are likely to be benefits. The most effective way of preventing crime is by giving people a stake in society: treating them decently while they are incarcerated, together with giving them genuine skills and opportunities, is likely the best way to reduce recidivism. We might be able to incarcerate people for shorter times (we can certainly incarcerate far fewer people), thereby saving money while reaping social and economic benefits. Moral responsibility scepticism may indeed require significant alterations in our criminal justice system, but these alterations are at least as likely to be beneficial as costly. More empirical work on this question is needed, but one possible upshot is that we can turn the criticism back on those who make it: given the costs of continuing to believe in moral responsibility, aren’t arguments for retaining the concept required to meet higher standards than those for scepticism?