Control Over Sources of Actions
Mirja Pérez de Calleja
1 Introduction
According to Harry Frankfurt, how the sources1 of an action were formed and maintained is
irrelevant to whether the action exhibits free will.2 His position implies that I may kill my best
friend freely even if the desires and beliefs that lead me to do so were implanted in me last night
through hypnosis without my consent. Frankfurt’s is a minority position among free will theorists,
although it is surprisingly difficult to argue against it other than by appealing to the counterintuitiveness of its results. I will argue against it by offering cases which illustrate the counterintuitiveness of its results - which is, admittedly, not much more than just assuming that Frankfurt’s
position is wrong. But even assuming that the history of the sources of an action matters to whether
the action is free, it would be interesting to know why it matters, and which are the conditions this
history must meet for the action to be a candidate of free action. In this paper, I will argue for three
1
As I am construing them, the sources of an intentional action are, roughly, the character traits, principles,
values, beliefs, desires, etc. in the causal antecedents of the action by virtue of which the action counts as
intentional. Some of these sources may be unconscious and even inaccessible by the agent’s conscious
thought, but they are all the kind of thing over which critical reflection is in principle possible.
2
I am construing free will as the control condition on moral responsibility: the capacity to exercise
whichever amount of rational control over our intentional actions that is necessary and sufficient for being
morally responsible for these actions (and perhaps also for being responsible for other suitably related bits of
behavior). The relevant notion of moral responsibility here is not a utilitarian notion, on which practical
reasons are in principle enough to justify blaming and punishing agents, but a desert notion, on which the
only thing that makes it appropriate to blame an agent is that she deserves to be blamed, independently of the
consequences of blaming her. One may contend that free will is impossible, and so that moral responsibility
construed in the relevant way is never instantiated, but defend that it is appropriate or justified to blame and
praise - punish and reward - agents, because this practice has beneficial consequences. If one took such a
position, one would still count as claiming that the kind of moral responsibility which is relevant in the free
will debate is impossible. (For a position along these lines, see Pereboom 2001.)
1
theses related to the history of sources of free intentional actions, in a way that is intended to be
neutral regarding whether free will is compatible with determinism.
The first thesis I will defend is that, contra Frankfurt, how the sources of an action were
formed and maintained is relevant to whether the action exhibits free will. I will motivate this
simply by offering examples of actions for which it seems unfair to blame the agent, but where all
the intuitively responsibility-undermining features of the case concern the history of the action’s
sources. The second thesis I will argue for is that one plausible historical condition on free will is
the following: for being a free agent, one must have a normal amount of indirect rational control
over the development of a sufficient amount of one’s beliefs, desires, principles of action, values,
commitments, and the like. Finally, I will defend this control-centered historical condition from
Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument for the impossibility of moral responsibility.
2 History Matters
An idea shared by many compatibilists and incompatibilists 3 is that there are two kinds of threats to
the free will and responsibility exhibited4 by an agent’s A-ing at t: threats to the agent’s control over
whether, given the motivational state she is in briefly before t, she intentionally A-s or she
intentionally refrains from A-ing; and threats to the agent’s control over her being in the
motivational state she is in briefly before t. The idea is that one may fail to be responsible for A-ing
at t either because one does not sufficiently control whether or not one A-s, or because one does not
3
A compatibilist is someone who thinks that free will is compatible with determinism, and incompatibilism
is the view that free will is incompatible with determinism. Determinism is the thesis that, at any instant
(except perhaps the first instants in the history of the universe), the past up to that moment together with the
laws of nature are compatible with exactly one future. If determinism is true, at any moment in time, only
one future is nomologically possible (i.e., compatible with the past and the laws). Indeterminism is the thesis
that determinism is false.
4
Of course, only agents exercise free will and only agents are morally responsible. However, according to
usage that has become common, an action A exhibits free will and responsibility if and only if the agent A-s
freely and is morally responsible for A-ing.
2
sufficiently control one’s having certain beliefs, desires, tendencies, and so on at the time in
question (or both).
Usually, it is agreed that one controls whether or not one A-s in a way sufficient for
responsibility only if, in virtue of the causal strength of the relevant desires, one’s mental capacities,
conscious and unconscious tendencies, and so on, one is suitably disposed to intentionally refrain
from A-ing provided one finds one has a very good reason to refrain.5 Irresistible desires (including
compulsions, phobias and traumas) are a paradigmatic example of threats to one’s control over
whether or not one intentionally A-s. 6 Incompatibilists additionally require that it be nomologically
possible for one to intentionally refrain from A-ing up to some time briefly before one actually A-s.
On the other hand, many authors agree that one sufficiently 7 controls one’s having the live
options 8 one has at the circumstance in which one A-s, only if the relevant desires, beliefs, character
traits, commitments, principles, values, deliberative strategies, conscious and unconscious
tendencies, etc. have had a normal or acceptable history. A minimal requirement that this history
must meet, according to all accounts which say that an action’s history is relevant in this way (i.e.,
according to all historical accounts of free will and responsibility) is that it must lack intuitively
responsibility-undermining influences, such as severe manipulation, brainwash, indoctrination,
hypnosis, and the like.
I contend that the history of the sources of an action - i.e., how the relevant beliefs, desires,
and tendencies were formed and maintained - matters to whether the action exhibits free will. I
5 All
6
this applies to mentally sane adult agents.
Coercion and threats are another factor which is widely thought to be sufficient to undermine the agent’s
capacity to act with free will in deciding whether or not she A-s, although coercion and threats do not affect
the agent’s capacity to respond to reasons in the way in which irresistible desires do.
7
Sufficiently for being responsible for A-ing.
8
I am understanding the agent’s live options at a certain situation to be the actions she thinks she has good
enough reason to perform at the circumstance at issue. Akratic actions are live options, but crazy actions
such as cutting one’s hand off because it’s itching are not.
3
think this is the case simply because postulating that only non-historical features of actions (such as
lack of irresistible desires, reasons-responsiveness, and so on) are relevant to free will would have
the consequence that people would count as responsible for actions for which it is far from our
ordinary responsibility-ascription practices to hold them responsible.
Consider the following cases: an agent who has been hypnotized without his consent to kill
his best friend, in such a way that he is unable to become aware of the fact that something is not
working properly in his mind; an agent who has been brainwashed or rigorously indoctrinated to
acquire certain beliefs about God, certain values, and certain principles of action, in such a way that
she has never had the opportunity to critically evaluate these beliefs and principles; and a sweet,
kind old woman who has spent her life self-shaping her character to be kind and virtuous, in whom
an evil neuroscientist has surgically implanted (without her consent or knowledge) a strong desire
to kill her neighbor and the values and principles of a psychopath. 9
It seems that, if these agents perform the actions that they have been manipulated (or
brainwashed, or indoctrinated, or hypnotized) to perform, they are not responsible for doing so. We
would not blame these agents anymore than we would blame agents who were forced to act as they
did by, say, death-threat. Admittedly, it is trickier to cite examples from everyday life - cases lacking
any science-fictional features - to illustrate that there is a historical condition on responsibility. But
it seems clear that, if sience-fictional manipulation of the most severe kind (that is, manipulation
which guarantees that, if she can, the agent will act in the given way) precludes the agent’s
responsibility altogether, but everyday cases of manipulation (such as brainwashing and
indoctrination) do not, this is simply because real cases are not as pure as fictional ones. Real
victims of brainwashing and indoctrination are not as clearly in the hands of the manipulators as
fictional victims are. First, we do not know exactly how real people get to be brainwashed or
indoctrinated, so it is more difficult to exempt them from blame altogether if they do something
9
This last example is from Mele 2009, 166-69.
4
terrible as a result of manipulation. Moreover, we often suspect that, in various points along the
way, they could have chosen to be more critical or reflective, or at least to escape their situation, or
to empathize with their victims (in the case, say, of people who are brainwashed into terrorism).
Therefore, it may be impossible to cite a real case of manipulation where it is clearly
inappropriate to ascribe any responsibility to the agent. But it seems as clear as anything to me that
our dispositions to blame and praise mentally sane adults, or to react to them with resentment,
gratitude, and so on, are at least mitigated regarding actions involving brainwashing and
indoctrination. These cases illustrate, I contend, that there are what we take to be clearly
responsibility-undermining possible influences in the history of sources of actions. 10
3 Indirect Rational Control
There are numerous historical accounts of free will. Some require that the agent be able (in the
author’s preferred sense of “able”) to freely shape her character and motives in various significantly
different ways; for instance, one must be able to make oneself into a generous or selfish person, into
a kind or violent person, and so on. 11 Other accounts require merely that one acquire at least central
beliefs, desires and character traits through a process which does not bypass one’s capacity for
critical evaluation.12 All historical accounts of free will are based on the idea that severe
10
However, this is not as clear or intuitive to everyone as it is to me. On Frankfurt’s account, a person acts
freely if and only if he “has done what he wanted to do, ... he did it because he wanted to do it, and ... the
will by which he was moved when he did it was his will because it was the will he wanted.” (See Frankfurt
1971, 19.) But one may in principle actively endorse a desire - i.e., want that a certain desire that one has be
the desire that moves one into action - as a result of severe manipulation. Therefore, Frankfurt’s account
implies that severe manipulation does not in itself undermine free will. Frankfurt acknowledges that his
theory has this implication, but he does not seem too troubled by this; in any case, he does not try to
accommodate the apparent counter-intuitiveness of this implication. I am not claiming that Frankfurt’s
position is obviously wrong, nor that I have provided a compelling reason to abandon it.
11
This is Kane’s view in his (1996).
12
This is Mele’s view in his (1995).
5
manipulation, hypnosis, rigorous indoctrination since early childhood, and the like, undermine
responsibility even if they do not produce irresistible desires and even if they do not involve open
coercion or force; and the historical conditions these accounts offer are intended to rule out at least
clear cases of responsibility-undermining histories of actions’ sources.
In this section, I will offer one plausible historical condition on free will. I will grant that
other ways of construing this condition are equally plausible. My main aim in this paper is to
defend my preferred historical condition from Strawson’s Basic Argument for the impossibility of
moral responsibility, which I will present in the next section.
It is controversial whether people are responsible only for their actions, or also for at least
some desires, beliefs, attitudes, dispositions to react emotionally in certain ways, values, principles
of action, deliberative strategies, and the like. I will remain neutral on this issue.13 In any case, it is
clear that we do not control our acquiring, maintaining and ceasing to have beliefs and desires in the
same way in which we control our intentional actions. We cannot choose to acquire or cease to have
a belief or a desire. Moreover, we typically are not aware of most of our desires and beliefs; and,
arguably, some of our desires and beliefs are very difficult to bring into consciousness.
However, it seems equally clear that we do exercise some kind of control over our having
certain desires and beliefs rather than others. Again, I will remain neutral on whether or not the
control that a normal agent 14 exercises over her desires and beliefs is sufficient for being
responsible for having these desires and beliefs. I claim only that one is responsible for an
13
It is clear that some people sometimes do blame and praise others for their racist, or sexist, or intolerant
attitudes even if they do not consider whether or not people can be in control of their attitudes. But this in
itself does not show that people deserve to be blamed or praised for their attitudes, beliefs, and desires, even
if whether they have or lack them is beyond their control.
14
In this context, a normal agent is an agent who has not been brainwashed, or severely indoctrinated, or
manipulated, or hypnotized, to have certain beliefs and desires.
6
intentional action A only if one had a normal amount of control over the process through which one
acquired and maintained the desires and beliefs 15 in virtue of which one intentionally A-ed.
We are disposed to exempt people from blame for acting in a certain way (at least to some
degree, and depending on the details of the case), if we learn that they acted as they did as a result
of a brain tumor, or powerful hypnotic suggestion, or brainwashing, or severe indoctrination. I
suggest that what is responsibility-undermining in these histories is that the agents at issue do not
have sufficient control over their having or lacking some tendency, belief or desire that leads them
to act as they do:
First, if we are indeed responsible for our desires, beliefs, and tendencies, it is plausible to
think that, just as ascribing an agent responsibility for an action involves ascribing her a certain
amount of control over the action, ascribing an agent responsibility for her desires, beliefs, and
tendencies involves ascribing her some measure of control over these factors of her mental
constitution. But even if we are not responsible for our desires, beliefs, and tendencies, what is
common to all clearly responsibility-undermining histories of actions is that they preclude normal
control over the desires, beliefs, and tendencies which are relevant for the action. The hypnotized
agent in the example above (see p. 4) does not actively participate in his acquiring the desire to kill
his best friend (say, by considering reasons to kill him and reasons not to kill him, weighing these
reasons according to criteria on which he can critically reflect, and so on); due to hypnosis, he has
lost the capacity to even realize that the desire in question is crazy. The indoctrinators who, let’s
assume, guarantee that the agent in the second example (see p. 4) acquires the given worldview,
values, and principles of action, have intentionally made certain information unavailable to the
agent, lied to her about explanations of many facts, emotionally manipulated her in various ways,
and so on. Even if she acquires the beliefs and values in question through reflection, this reflection
15
And attitudes, character traits, values, principles of action, deliberative strategies, and the like. When I talk
only of beliefs and desires, it is to make my sentences less unpleasant.
7
is biased from the beginning, through no fault of her own. Finally, the sweet, kind old woman who
is surgically implanted a strong desire to kill her neighbor and the values and principles of a
psychopath is passive regarding the beliefs, desires and tendencies which dispose her to
intentionally kill her neighbor, in the sense that these factors of her mental constitution have not
arisen from her reflections and decisions; indeed, they are radically opposed to the beliefs, desires
and tendencies that she has embraced all her life. Perhaps there are other explanations for why the
agents in these examples are not responsible for the actions they perform as a result of
manipulation, but I think this explanation in terms of control is at least as plausible as any other.
However, it is necessary to explain what it is to control the process by which one acquires
and maintains one’s beliefs, desires and tendencies. Paradigmatic exercises of control are exercises
of control over intentional actions. But one cannot control whether one feels like having an ice
cream in the way in which one can control whether, given that one desires ice cream, one decides or
tries to have ice cream. To make sense of control exercised over tendencies, desires, and beliefs, I
will understand this kind of control as indirect rational control, in opposition to the direct rational
control which we exercise over intentional actions.
Roughly, direct rational control is the control one exercises in shaping one's action (the
content and approximate time of the action one performs) in the light of one's reasons, or in guiding
one's action by one's reasons. On the other hand, one has indirect rational control over the sources
of an action in so far as one’s past exercises of direct rational control contributed to the formation
and maintenance of these sources, in the way in which they do in normal cases which lack
manipulation, indoctrination, and so on. In other words: one has indirect rational control over a
belief or desire in so far as one’s past unconstrained 16 intentional actions contributed to one’s
acquiring and maintaining this belief or desire, and no manipulation, indoctrination, or the like
16
An intentional action is unconstrained if and only if the action is performed in the absence of irresistible
desires, force, threats, and so on.
8
intervened in this process. And, in general, one has enough control over one’s character and motives
to be a free and responsible agent only if one has an intuitively sufficient amount of indirect rational
control over one’s central character traits, beliefs, desires, and the like. 17
What threatens the direct rational control we exercise in making a decision suit deliberation,
or an action suit one’s overall set of relevant reasons, are things like irresistible desires,
compulsions and phobias, unconscious reasons or tendencies competing with our exercise of
practical reason, force, threats, and so on. When we are subject to these influences, we act
voluntarily; and it may be that, as far as introspection tells us, we act with a normal amount of
control over our action. But in fact we are not exercising enough direct rational control over our
action for being responsible for the action. On the other hand, lack of sufficient indirect rational
control over the sources of an action (for the action to exhibit free will and responsibility) results
from intuitively responsibility-undermining influences on the history of the sources of the action,
such as brainwashing or severe indoctrination, certain kinds of hypnosis and manipulation, brain
tumors, and the like. The more irresistible the desires - the more ingrained the beliefs, the stronger
the tendencies - produced in these ways, the more our indirect control is undermined.
For example: Imagine I made a decision on a desire that was implanted in my brain by an
evil neuroscientist 5 minutes before, without suspecting that I had an alien desire. If that desire was
not irresistible, and other things being equal, the control I exercised over my decision (what I am
calling direct rational control) was the same I would have exercised had my desire had a normal
history. And yet, I am contending, my control over the decision was inferior to the control I would
have had if everything had been normal, in a way which is intuitively relevant for responsibility.
To sum up, I contend that factors such as severe brainwash, manipulation, rigorous
indoctrination from early childhood, and the like may constitute responsibility-undermining
17
How much of this control we must have over how many of these aspects of our motivational set is
something I could only speculate about. I think intuitions about cases are relevant in settling this issue, if it
can be settled at all.
9
influences in the following way: they may make it the case that an agent’s beliefs, desires,
tendencies, principles of action, and so on be unsuitable to lead to free actions. This is true whether
or not there is such a thing as responsibility for beliefs, desires, emotions, tendencies, and so on.
Even if we are responsible only for actions, there is a certain control we must exercise over the
process by which we acquire and maintain our beliefs and desires, if the actions which issue from
these beliefs and desires are to be candidates of free and responsible actions.
I believe that normal agents typically perform many intentional actions which intervene in
the development process of their character and motives, and that, as long as a sufficient amount of
these actions are performed free from manipulation, irresistible desires, threats, and the like, this
gives them sufficient control over their character and motives to exhibit free will in performing the
actions they perform.
On the other hand, I do not think it is plausible to postulate that one has enough control over
one’s character and motives only if one intentionally made a difference as to whether one became
selfish or generous, racist or not racist, and the like. Only a few people make a difference, through
intentional actions, to whether or not they become selfish, racist, sexist, religious, liberal, and so on.
There is a difference between (a) contributing, through intentional actions, to the process by which
one acquires a certain character trait, principle of action, value, belief or desire; and (b) making a
difference, through these intentional actions, to whether or not one acquires the given character trait,
principle, value, belief or desire. The latter is, I contend, not necessary for responsibility, because,
for the great majority of people, a huge number of character traits, principles, values, beliefs and
desires are such that they could not have avoided acquiring them (in any relevant sense of “could
have”). There is a difference between being brainwashed or rigorously indoctrinated to acquire a
certain ideology, and growing up in an environment which strongly fosters a certain ideology, but
being given proper education and information to develop one’s own critical stance on the ideology
at issue. Even if, say, the son of a Southern Baptist pastor has practically no chance of becoming a
10
Buddhist diving instructor in Sri Lanka, as long everything proceeds normally, he will be suitably in
control over this - suitably active in the process that makes him such that he never even considers
becoming a diving instructor.
4 Control over Sources Is Not Inconsistent
My preferred historical condition on free will requires exercises of direct rational control in the
formation and maintenance of (at least some) tendencies, beliefs and desires that play a role in the
etiology of actions. My aim in this paper is not to defend that this historical condition is better than
others, but to defend that it is a consistent condition, against Galen Strawson’s argument for the
impossibility of moral responsibility.
4. 1 Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument
Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument for the impossibility of moral responsibility has very fervent
defenders and equally fervent opposers. I will try to show that one may acknowledge what makes
the argument so compelling (or at least so compelling to some), without falling in the infinite
regress built by the argument. The argument goes as follows:
(1) When one acts intentionally, one does what one does in the light of certain beliefs, desires,
tendencies, and so on.
(2) So one is responsible for what one does only if one is responsible for having the relevant beliefs,
desires, tendencies, etc.
11
(3) But one is responsible for this only if one freely chose to have the beliefs, desires, and
tendencies at issue, or if one somehow brought this about intentionally and freely.18
(4) But these prior choices must have been made on prior beliefs, desires and tendencies; and, if
premise (2) is true, one is responsible for these prior choices only if one is responsible for having
those prior beliefs, desires, and tendencies. And again, one is responsible for this only if one freely
chose to have those beliefs, desires, and tendencies, but these prior choices must have been made on
prior sources; and so on ad infinitum.
(5) Therefore, moral responsibility is impossible, because it requires some kind of unintelligible
self-creation of the will.19
The idea behind this argument can also be put as follows: The first choices we make, we
make them on beliefs, desires and tendencies for which we are not responsible, because they are
given to us by heredity, environment, and very early experiences. As a result, we are not responsible
for these first choices, and, consequently, we are not responsible for any choice or action we
perform later in life. Even if, when we are older, we try to change our beliefs, desires and
tendencies, and succeed, this will not make us responsible for our new character and motives and
for the unconstrained actions which we perform from then on, because “both the particular way in
which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of one's success in one's attempt at
change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and experience.”20
18
In (2000), Strawson chooses the expression intentionally bring about. (See Strawson 2000, 150.) In
(1994), he says that “to be truly responsible for how one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects, one must
have ... consciously and explicitly chosen to be the way one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects, and
one must have succeeded in bringing it about that one is that way.” (See Strawson 1994, 6.) And the less
demanding way in which he puts the premise in (1986) is in terms of consciously and intentionally bringing
it about that one is the way one is mentally in at least some relevant respects. (See Strawson 1986, 29.)
19
For different presentations of this argument, see Strawson 1986, 28-30, Strawson 1994, 5-7, and Strawson
2000, 149-151.
20
Strawson 2000, 151.
12
Strawson does not justify premise 2 - i.e., that one is responsible for an action only if one is
responsible for the sources of the action. He seems to find it obvious, and claims that this is “the
kind of freedom that most people ordinarily and unreflectively suppose themselves to possess.”21
(As supporters of premise 2, he cites Kant and Robert Kane,22 whom in turn cites Aristotle,
Plotinus, Bramhall, Reid, and Kant.23)
I think this omission is criticisable. Despite the “So” in the beginning of premise 2, premise
2 does not obviously follow from premise 1. Susan Hurley points out that “intuitions conflict about
whether responsibility is regressive,”24 and that “People generally are regarded as responsible for
what they do when it results from personality traits or tendencies within a normal range and with
normal causes, without attention to whether these traits are genetically influenced or otherwise
unchosen or outside the person's control.”25
21
Strawson 1986, 30. See also Strawson 2000, 149.
22
Strawson 2000, 149.
23
See Kane 1996, 32-35. The claim by Aristotle that Kane mentions is that if a man is responsible for the
evil acts which spring from his wicked character, then he must at some point in the past have formed this
character in such a way that he can be held accountable for doing so. The claim by Bramhall that Kane
mentions is that if we are the way we are because God made us this way, then the ultimate responsibility for
our actions is God’s, not ours.
24
Hurley 2000, 248.
25
Hurley 2000, 249. Hurley concedes that, if responsibility for X requires both choosing X and having
chosen the sources of this choice, then responsibility is impossible. But she argues that, if both of these
conditions are indeed central to our everyday notion of responsibility (as Strawson contends), then we should
revise our view of responsibility rather than holding that moral responsibility is impossible.
13
I agree with Hurley that our responsibility ascription practices do offer clear examples of
blaming and praising without considering how the agent acquired the sources of her action. 26 And I
believe that our responsibility ascription practices do not obviously favor a notion of responsibility
for actions which requires choosing the sources of actions, over a notion of responsibility which
applies even if one has not chosen, in any sense, the sources of one’s actions. So, as I mentioned, I
think Strawson should try to motivate premise 2.
However, I do think that what motivates premise 2 is a central feature of our responsibility
ascription practices, a feature that I want to keep in my picture. I just do not think that one needs to
understand this feature in terms of choosing or intentionally bringing it about that one has the
character traits and motives that one has.
Let us concede that responsibility for one’s character and motives is an essential trait of our
everyday notion of responsibility, and that we blame or praise a mentally sane adult only if we
assume that she is morally responsible for possessing the relevant character traits and motives. As I
mentioned earlier, I believe this assumption is very plausible, and in any case I believe in the truth
of an assumption which concerns control rather than responsibility, but which is equally
problematic in the light of Strawson’s argument: that we blame or praise a mentally sane adult only
if we assume that she has exercised a certain amount of control in the process by which she has
acquired and maintained her character and motives. As I said, I am construing this control as
indirect rational control, which one gains in virtue of having exercised innumerable unconstrained
intentional actions which have contributed to shaping one’s character and motives.
26
I do not think that Strawson would deny that sometimes we blame and praise without wondering whether
the person to whom we ascribe responsibility is responsible for the sources of her action. I interpret the Basic
Argument as an effort to make explicit notes which are implicit in our everyday notion of responsibility, but
which go unnoticed because, in everyday life - or at least in everyday blaming and praising, resenting and
thanking behavior, we are usually unconcerned about such subtleties as self-shaping choices. I understand
that this is precisely the aim of the Basic Argument: to make us realize something that we usually do not see
even though it is implicit in our practices: that we cannot meet the necessary conditions of moral
responsibility, as we usually understand it.
14
In what follows, I will consider Mele’s response to Strawson’s Basic Argument, and then I
will offer mine. I will finish this section with some remarks about the apparent arbitrariness of
positing a control-centered historical condition on free will.
4. 2 Mele’s Response to the Basic Argument
In Autonomous Agents, Alfred Mele responds to Strawson’s Basic Argument by offering a
counterexample to the principle that one is responsible for an action only if one is responsible for
the sources of the action. The story features Betty, a six year old girl. Betty, unlike her seven-yearold sister, is afraid of being alone in the basement. She thinks her fear is “babyish,” and she wants
to get rid of it. In order to achieve this, she plans to pay periodic visits to the basement until she
loses her fear. Mele contends that the desires, beliefs and attitudes that led Betty to decide to
eradicate her fear need not have been chosen by her, for us to have the intuition that she is
responsible for this decision: It is necessarily the case that young children's actions do not spring
from sources that they have chosen, but we blame and praise children to a certain degree. Betty is
responsible, in Mele’s view, simply in virtue of the fact that she did not make her decision as a
result of compulsion, coercion, manipulation, deception, or the like.27 Thus, he concludes,
Strawson’s notion of moral responsibility is too demanding to capture the criteria that we use in our
everyday moral responsibility ascriptions.
Mele contends that “The term ‘free’ may be viewed ... as an appropriate default label for any
uncompelled, uncoerced, intentional action of a self-conscious, self-reflective, planning agent: it
may be held that all such actions are free unless there is some freedom-blocking property in their
etiology. Analogous default theses are available at the various main links in the action-producing
chain.”28 And this is roughly the account of free will he gives in Autonomous Agents.
27
See Mele 1995, 224.
28
Mele 1995, 224.
15
In my view, Mele succeeds in providing a case which intuitively falsifies Strawson’s
principle that one is responsible for an action only if one is responsible for at least crucial respects
of the character traits and motives that led one to perform the action. I believe this constitutes a
satisfactory response to the Basic Argument if one has Mele’s view of responsibility-level control
as, in essence, absence of intuitively responsibility-undermining influences (such as manipulation,
brainwashing, compulsion, coercion, and the like).29
However, this response leaves unchallenged the following idea: that one is responsible for
A-ing only if one, at some point, chose or decided or somehow intentionally brought it about that
one had at least some crucial part of the mental constitution which led one to A. It seems clear that,
except for very few cases, we never even aim at acquiring, modifying, maintaining or eradicating
beliefs, desires, or tendencies. Relatively few people consciously consider what character traits,
principles of action, values, beliefs and desires they want to have; even fewer people actively try to
influence such factors of their mental constitution; and even fewer people (if any) succeed in doing
so. Most importantly, it seems very implausible to me to say that the intuitive appeal of claims such
as Aristotle’s30 comes from so very particular ethical ideals such as conscious self-shaping of
character. If control over sources of actions is necessary for responsibility, this control cannot be
construed as a specific ethical exercise that only a minority have chosen to engage in.
I accept that our intentional actions influence the development of our character and motives,
and indeed I believe this is necessary for responsibility, as I sketched in the previous section. But
the intentional actions which influence the development of our character and motives need not be
aimed at influencing this development. Their contribution to this development is necessary for
responsibility in virtue of the fact that it is by acting intentionally (by reflecting on a value that the
teacher is talking about in class, by critically evaluating a certain proposition that someone claims
29
That is, Mele’s response is very likely not satisfactory to someone who favors a view such as Kane’s. I will
not pursue this issue here, since it is beyond the scope of this paper.
30
See footnote 23 above.
16
to be false, by evaluating whether it is good to satisfy a given desire, etc.) that we are sufficiently
active in acquiring and maintaining our character traits, principles of action, values, beliefs and
desires.
4. 3 Another Response to the Basic Argument
I think that Alfred Mele’s response to the Basic Argument is convincing enough to dispel the worry
that moral responsibility is impossible (as is Susan Hurley’s, which I did not reproduce here).
However, I will offer another response, which I personally find more satisfactory.
I contend that what makes it sound so plausible to say that an agent is responsible for an
action only if she is responsible for the sources of the action is the following: Sometimes, some
unlucky agents are extraordinarily passive with respect to their own character traits, principles of
action, values, beliefs and desires (in the way illustrated by the examples on page 4 above, and
explained on page 7). And, as a result of this, we may want to exempt them from blame (and
perhaps also from praise) for the actions they perform on these sources - even if they act
intentionally, on resistible desires, free from coercion, force or threat, embracing the reasons on
which they act, and with full awareness of what they are doing. A plausible explanation for why
such agents are not responsible for what they do is that they were not active enough in the process
by which they acquired these character traits, beliefs, and desires.
The paradigmatically active way of bringing something about is by choosing it. And, if the
required control or activeness regarding the sources of our actions had to be attained by choosing to
have these sources, then - as Strawson shows - an infinite regress would make responsibility
impossible. However, one cannot, and, most importantly, one need not choose to acquire, maintain,
change or get rid of a certain character trait, belief, or desire, in order to be active or in control of
one’s having that character trait, belief, or desire in a way that distinguishes one from the
manipulated agent. Since nobody can acquire, maintain or eliminate a mental trait of this kind just
17
by deciding to do so, it is misguided in the first place to construe control over sources in terms of
choices regarding sources. Making justice to the intuition behind Strawson’s notion of moral
responsibility does not require positing, for every free and responsible action, a prior choice of the
sources of the action.
4. 4 Luck and Control-Centered Historical Conditions on Free Will
Finally, consider the following argument that could be made in favor of the idea that being
responsible for an action requires having chosen the action’s sources: If responsibility for X is
understood as requiring both one’s choosing to X (free from irresistible desires, force, threats, and
so on) and one’s having chosen at least certain crucial sources of this choice, it is easy to see why
severe manipulation, brainwashing, rigorous indoctrination, hypnosis, and the like undermine
responsibility; they compromise the agent’s capacity to contribute to shaping her character and
motives through actions aimed at just doing so. In opposition, if one contends that manipulation,
brainwashing and the like undermine responsibility for an action by undermining the agent’s control
over the sources of the action, but combines this with the view that choosing the sources of an
action is not necessary to be responsible for that action, then which non-arbitrary criterion can one
use to draw the line between acceptable histories of actions and histories which undermine
responsibility?
Why is it that a person may just be very unlucky regarding his genes and environment which, let us think, causally determine that he will commit violent crimes when he is an adult, but
he is still responsible for his violent actions because no indoctrination, hypnosis, or coercion
contributed to his becoming violent? Isn’t this arbitrary, if this person did not have any choice about
his becoming violent, just as he would not have had a choice if he had been manipulated to become
violent? The view that being responsible for an action requires having chosen the sources of the
action - this criticism continues - has the consequence that responsibility is impossible, but at least it
18
draws no arbitrary line between agents whose lack of capacity to choose the character and motives
they develop makes them non-responsible, and agents who also lack this capacity, but who count as
responsible. Saying that, in cases of manipulation, it is not the agent herself who commits those
crimes is not very illuminating. Moreover, for all that a control-centered historical condition tells
us, it is arbitrary to say that manipulation introduces in the agent elements which are alien to the
agent - and remain alien even after the agent acts on them intentionally and without coercion or
compulsion, while genes and environment create the person.
I acknowledge this problem. Having been manipulated to desire X need not be worse, less
desirable, or more unlucky than having been born with a natural tendency to desire X in an
environment which has strongly fostered this tendency. Moreover, I acknowledge that there is no
obvious sense in which you control your having a desire to X in the latter case any more than you do
if you are manipulated to desire X. But I do believe, and I tried to motivate, that there is an
important sense in which this is so, one that makes the difference between being responsible for
acting on your desire to X and not being responsible for this.
Still, the arbitrariness remains. We are just given our genes, our capacities and dispositions,
our childhood home and community, our environment and circumstances. Moreover, luck can
significantly affect the results of our decisions and actions. 31 I grant, with most people, that
anything we may be responsible for (an intentional action, an unintentional action, and the
possession of beliefs, desires, principles of action, values, etc.) is something we do or have, in great
measure, as a result of factors beyond our control. On the other hand, our responsibility ascription
practices are too complex to straightforwardly support a criterion which could be used to draw a
principled line (much less a precise line) between responsibility-undermining histories of sources
and acceptable histories of sources. But even if one extracted one criterion which sorted all possible
cases into either Acceptable or Unacceptable, this would not amount to a justification of this
31
For an exploration of the relation between things we are lucky about and things we are responsible for, see
Nagel 1979, Ch. 3.
19
criterion. In sum, it just seems to be a basic rule of the game that the influence, even definitive
influence, of some factors beyond the agent’s control is acceptable, while the influence of other
factors beyond the agent’s control undermines responsibility. In other words, it just seems to be a
primitive fact that there is a line which at least most of us respect in sorting out most cases, which
distinguishes acceptable from non-acceptable histories of sources.
If this arbitrariness is such a basic feature of our responsibility-ascription practices, it will
have to figure in a correct analysis of moral responsibility. In any case, I think that the cost in
arbitrariness of postulating a control-centered historical condition on free will is not as great as the
cost in counter-intuitiveness of not postulating any historical condition, or of postulating a historical
condition so demanding that responsibility turns out to be impossible.
5 Conclusion
In this paper, I defended that our responsibility-ascription practices give us good enough reason to
think that free will is necessarily the product of a certain kind of history. For an unconstrained
intentional action performed by a mentally sane adult to be free, the action’s sources must result
from (among many other factors) prior intentional actions of that agent, in a way that is
incompatible with intuitively responsibility-undermining influences such as manipulation,
brainwashing, indoctrination, and the like. I claimed that being a responsible agent involves having
influenced the development of one’s crucial beliefs, desires, character traits, principles of action,
values, and the like, through a myriad of (uncompelled, uncoerced, etc.) intentional actions. This, I
claimed, is what secures the required control over the process by which we acquire and maintain
our character traits and motives.
I defended this historical condition from Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument for the
impossibility of moral responsibility, by arguing that the control over the sources of an action that
one must have (to be responsible for the action) should not be understood as a chain of conscious
20
choices aimed at shaping these sources. Typically, people do not intentionally shape their character
and motives, and the intuitions that support the idea that control over sources of actions is necessary
for responsibility do not justify the view that intentionally shaping one’s character and motives
through choices aimed at this is necessary to be suitably in control of the sources of one’s actions.
Finally, I conceded that the historical account of free will I favor may be vulnerable to the
charge that it makes an arbitrary distinction between acceptable and unacceptable histories of
sources, but I claimed that this arbitrariness is either unavoidable (because it is an essential feature
of our responsibility ascription practices), or worth paying (because it is necessary to avoid the
counter-intuitive claim that the history of an action is not relevant to the agent’s responsibility for
the action, and to avoid the equally counter-intuitive claim that one is responsible for an action only
if one has chosen the sources of this action, and thus that responsibility is impossible).
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