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Historicism, Non-Historicism, or a Mix?
1. The Debate
Central conditions of moral responsibility, such as agency and freedom conditions, are
essentially associated with various responsibility-grounding psychological elements—pertinent
desires and beliefs, for example. Regarding the freedom condition, indirectly free actions derive
their freedom from the freedom of other actions to which they are suitably related whereas
directly free actions, although free, do not inherit their freedom. Responsibility tracks freedom in
that if one is responsible for an action, one is directly so only for a directly free action; otherwise
one is indirectly responsible. Historicism (or externalism) is the thesis that some of moral
responsibility’s key conditions cannot be specified independently of facts about how the person
acquired her responsibility-grounding psychological elements. The salient idea is that facts about
one’s history or past in the external world that bear on the acquisition of these elements are
pertinent to whether one’s actions are directly free and, hence, to whether one can be directly
morally responsible for them. Non-historicism (or internalism) is the denial of historicism.1
Alfred Mele, among others, has proposed that certain cases involving surreptitious
psychological manipulation provide strong impetus for historicism. To appreciate these cases,
some terminology will be helpful. An agent, S, (thinly) values something, X, at a time if and only
if at this time S both has a positive motivational attitude toward X and believes X to be good
(Mele 1995, p. 116). If S so values X, then X is a value for S. S’s action, A, expresses S’s value,
V, if V (perhaps in conjunction with other antecedents of action) nondeviantly and causally gives
rise to A. As an illustrative case, Ann and Beth are both philosophy professors but Ann is far
I use ‘internalism’ and ‘nonhistoricism,’ as well as ‘externalism’ and ‘historicism’ interchangeably, ignoring what
may be legitimate differences between members of each pair (see, e.g. Zimmerman 2003). Among historical
compatibilists are Mele 1995, 2006; Fischer and Ravizza 1998; Haji 1998; and Haji and Cuypers 2008.
Nonhistorical compatibilists include Frankfurt 1975; Wolf 1987; Dworkin 1988; Double 1991; Arpaly 2006;
Berofsky 2006; Vargas 2006; and Watson, 1999.
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more dedicated to the discipline. Wanting more production out of Beth and not scrupulous about
how he gets it, the dean of the University enlists the help of new-wave neurologists who
“implant” in easy-going Beth Ann’s values. These implanted values (such as implanted desires)
are unsheddable for Beth: given her psychological constitution, ridding herself of these values is
not a “psychologically genuine option” under any but extraordinary circumstances (Mele 1995,
p. 172). Though unsheddable, a desire need not be irresistible. The manipulation results in Beth’s
being, in relevant respects, the psychological twin of Ann (Mele 1995, p. 145). Such
manipulation leaves personal identity intact: pre-manipulated Beth is identical to her postmanipulated later self. The first few engineered-in desires of victimized Beth cause her to put in
fourteen hours on her first day of work; in brief, Beth A-s. (One may take her A-ing to be her
making the decision to A if one insists that directly free actions are mental acts of decisionmaking.) Addressing this case Mele, a historicist, writes:
Ann, by hypothesis, is autonomous; but what about Beth?.... By instilling new values in Beth and eliminating old
ones, the brainwashers gave her life a new direction, one that clashes with the considered principles and values she
possessed prior to manipulation. Beth’s autonomy was violated, we naturally say. And it is difficult not to see her
now, in light of all this, as heteronomous to a significant extent. If that perception is correct, then given the
psychological similarities between the two agents, the difference in their current status regarding autonomy would
seem to lie in how they came to have certain psychological features that they have, hence in something external to
their here-and-now psychological constitutions. That is, the crucial difference is historical; autonomy is in some way
history-bound. (1995, pp. 145-46, note omitted)
In contrast, Michael McKenna does not see such cases as providing definitive support for
historicism. In a series of papers, he says that while he remains agnostic about the
historical/nonhistorical debate, the nonhistorical view is more resilient than historical theorists
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contend (forthcoming, p. 1). His rationale for this stance draws partly but vitally on the
supposition that the concept of instantaneous autonomous agency is coherent: an instantaneous
or magical agent could have been created an instant ago, fully equipped with the compilation of
responsibility-grounding psychological elements together with other features responsibility
requires.2 Invoking scenarios that showcase such agents, McKenna develops an intriguing
argument in favor of nonhistoricism. McKenna’s chief exhibit is magical agent Suzie Instant
who comes into existence at an instant as a psychologically healthy woman much like “any other
normally functioning thirty-year old person”(2004, p. 180). The handy work of a God, Suzie has
a complement of false beliefs “according to which she has lived a normal human life for thirty
years” and some “values and principles that are unsheddable” (p. 180). Suzie (falsely) believes
that she has acquired these values through sustained effort over years leading up to what she
thinks is her thirtieth birthday. She takes pride in this belief, all the while thinking that she is
responsible for her efforts that she has freely exerted. In addition, she is a richly self-controlled
person who is able to resist the inclination to act from weakness of will, “satisfies something like
Frankfurt’s hierarchical account of freely willed conduct…[and] is reasons-responsive” (2004, p.
180). Indeed, we are to suppose that Suzie or her behavior of interest satisfies requirements of
the sort that varying compatibilists deem sufficient for responsibility. Finally, Suzie has a robust
and relatively consistent range of beliefs (albeit false beliefs) about her history similar to those
that any psychologically healthy person would have (p. 180). McKenna invites us to ponder the
following:
2
For a highly insightful and instructive paper on the coherence of instantaneous agency and the implications of such
agency for the internalism/externalism debate, see Zimmerman (1999). Some (e.g, Davidson 1987) have expressed
concern about the conceptual possibility of such agency.
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[S]uppose…Suzie is presented with the option to do…A or B…. [B] involves a violation of a value that is
unsheddable for her…. [A] involves acting from one of her unsheddable values. Suzie A-s....Supposing that
compatibilism is true, it is not clear to me that Suzie did not act freely or responsibly. I can’t see how a
causal history that zeroed in on this Suzie all in an instance…renders…[her] unfree in a way that she would
not be if instead that causal history unfolded over the course of thirty years. Note that…when Suzie A-ed
from her unsheddable value, she was not compelled to do so. Her doing so was nothing like acting upon an
irresistible desire. It would be natural to say that she A-ed freely—in at least some non-question begging,
restricted sense of freely…. To press the point, suppose that every now and then this same god who created
Suzie Instant visits another possible world and there creates another thirty year old Suzie, Suzie Normal, in
the normal zygote manner. Other times she creates a (seemingly) thirty-year old Suzie, Suzie Instant, at an
instant. Now suppose that Suzie Normal at the age of thirty arrives at the precise point where she comes to
be a historical qualitative duplicate of Suzie Instant. Suzie Normal faces the exact same choice between
options A and B as Suzie Instant faces. Just like Suzie Instant, Suzie Normal opts to do A….The crunch is
now upon us: How is it that Suzie Instant is rendered not free and morally responsible when she A-s at the
relevant time merely by virtue of the fact that the causal history giving rise to her action came compressed
in a momentary package where Suzie Normal’s history chugged along over the course of thirty years? A
difference here seems arbitrary. (2004, pp. 180-81).
To secure the conclusion that victimized Beth may well be morally responsible,
McKenna continues:
Suppose that it is arbitrary to claim that Suzie Instant is not free and responsible but Suzie Normal is. Here
we have a case and some attendant intuitions speaking on behalf of a nonhistorical conclusion as regards
the case of Suzie Instant. But of course, intuitions about varying cases can differ and compete. So it is time
for Suzie Instant, Suzie Normal, Ann, and Beth to meet. Let’s start with Suzie Instant and Ann, and let us
stick with a case in which each A-s as opposed to B-s in such a way that their respective acts of A-ing issue
from their respective unsheddable values. Recall, unlike Beth, Ann acquired her wonderful professorial
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values under her own steam, with the sort of history that Mele finds to be freedom and responsibility
conferring. Suppose that by mere cosmic accident, not even by the intentional design of the god who
brought Suzie Instant into existence, Suzie Instant is a nonhistorical qualitative duplicate of Ann. She is so
right down to her (false) beliefs about her history. If Ann recalls the hours of labor she spent knocking out
her last article, Suzie Instant (falsely) recalls the hours of labor that she thinks she spent. Her psychic life,
her memory of how she came to be is just as Ann’s is. I submit that if Ann and Suzie Instant behaved in the
same ways in the same circumstances, Suzie Instant’s conduct should be regarded as free and responsible if
Ann’s is. If this result seems dubious, just start one step away from this. Make the cosmic accident that this
god created Suzie Normal to be a qualitative duplicate of Ann, living out the very same life and history as
Ann right up to the moment when Ann A’s instead of B-s…. But...we should treat Suzie Instant no
differently than we treat Suzie Normal. Hence, we should treat Suzie Instant no differently than we treat
Ann. (2004, pp. 181-82)
McKenna (with some qualifications that need not delay us) proposes that Beth is not
relevantly different than Suzie Instant. So if Suzie Instant is responsible for A-ing, Beth should
be responsible for A-ing as well. Let’s summarize the symmetry argument in this way:
(1) Suzie Instant is morally responsible for A-ing. (This is because Suzie Normal is morally
responsible for A-ing, and Suzie Instant is not pertinently different in the constellation of features
required for moral responsibility from Suzie Normal.)
(2) If (1), then manipulated Beth is morally responsible for A-ing (as she is not relevantly
different from Suzie Instant regarding the features responsibility requires.)
(3) Therefore, manipulated Beth is morally responsible for A-ing.
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But this is not where McKenna leaves the debate because he also sees virtues in
historicism. In another freshly minted paper, he proposes a modest historicist thesis that he thinks
reveals what is especially intuitively attractive in the judgment that manipulated Beth is not
morally responsible for A-ing, and that implies, contrary to what would be expected from
nonhistoricism, that Suzie Instant is not responsible for A-ing either.
In what follows, I argue, first, that McKenna’s interesting case for nonhistoricism can be
cautiously withstood, and, second, that his brand of modest historicism, while highly insightful,
yields results concerning responsibility that ought to be resisted. I conclude by motivating a
hybrid view that incorporates both historicist and nonhistoricist elements. It implies that
responsibility does not require that one have a past, but should one have a past, it must be a past
of a certain sort.
2. The Case for Nonhistoricism
Assuming that the cases of Beth and Suzie Instant ought to be treated symmetrically—if the
latter is responsible for A-ing, so is the former—McKenna ventures that under this assumption,
he has supplied three considerations nonhistorical compatibilists might offer to explain away the
intuitive force of the Beth case. First, we may stipulate that Ann and Suzie Normal are morally
responsible for acquiring the moral personality from which they deliberate. But this is not so for
either Beth or Suzie Instant. McKenna comments:
Perhaps part of the intuitive unease in holding that Beth is just as responsible for A-ing as Ann is, can be accounted
for by attending to the legitimate concern that there should be some difference in judgments about Ann and Beth.
But this much the nonhistorical compatibilist can accommodate, since the difference needn’t be explained in terms
of one being free and morally responsible for A-ing and the other not, but rather in terms of one being morally
responsible for more than the other. (pp. 6-7).
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Second, McKenna reminds us that there are many moral judgments other than responsibility ones
that are applicable in the Beth and Suzie Instant cases. For example, Beth’s autonomy, in one
sense of ‘autonomy,’ has been violated.3
She’s been done wrong in a way that has robbed her of the moral personality that she fashioned for herself prior to
the manipulation that was forced upon her. Perhaps part of our reluctance to treat Beth as freely A-ing and morally
responsible for doing so is that we wrongly think that in making such a judgment, we are not recognizing the clear
violations of Beth’s rights as a person. But we can recognize that Beth freely and responsibly A-ed and still draw
appropriate moral judgments about the moral wrongs done to Beth and how she deserves to be treated in light of that
history. (p. 7)
Against these views, I (and my co-author, Stefaan Cuypers) proposed that all parties to
the debate can agree that Ann is responsible for more things than Beth or Suzie Instant are
responsible for, and Beth is wronged in ways that neither Ann nor Suzie Instant is. We claimed
that it would be methodologically appropriate to guard against the waters being muddied by
failing to keep in mind that extraneous factors, such as certain moral assessments other than the
ones having to do with responsibility (for the pertinent act of A-ing), may differentially apply.
McKenna, however, is unconvinced. He rejoins:
[This] dismissal...misrepresents the relationship between the intuitions elicited from the cases up for consideration
and the theoretical commitments varying philosophically invested parties bring to the debate. Of course, committed
historical and nonhistorical compatibilists should guard against the influence of extraneous factors of the sort I have
brought into focus. But the examples these competing parties consider are supposed to be ones which, aside from
3
On this point see Arpaly 2003, p. 128.
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one’s theoretical orientation, bring forth judgments that reveal some basic pre-theoretical intuitions—not intuitions
filtered through distinctions about, say, responsibility for character traits leading to action as distinct from
responsibility for the actions themselves. They are supposed to come, then, as “package deal” to the argument. And
so it is only fair game to allow contestants to the debate to cast about for plausible ways of accounting for results
that do not fit with the commitments of their respective theories. (McKenna forthcoming, p. 7)
In reply, let’s remind ourselves of the dialectical context. McKenna admits that Beth’s
case has powerful pull, and that nonhistoricists who insist that post-manipulated Beth—“PBeth”—is morally responsible for A-ing seemingly have to bite a bullet (p. 4). Such
nonhistoricists, McKenna proposes, have to explain away what we may dub the “plausibility
intuition”: P-Beth is not morally responsible for A-ing. They have to cast about for reasonable
ways to account for the opposed intuition or verdict to which they are committed. What are these
reasonable ways? One has to do with considerations of scope. P-Beth is responsible for fewer
things than Ann or Suzie Normal. Whereas P-Beth is responsible for A-ing, she is not responsible
for acquiring various springs of action causally implicated in her A-ing.
Consider the group of nonhistoricists who are aware of pertinent scope distinctions and
who have the plausibility intuition. A representative of this group may respond: “I can grant that
P-Beth is not morally responsible for acquiring her A-relevant springs of action; on this point I’m
in agreement with my historicist rivals. So, it can’t be considerations of scope that explain away
the nagging intuition.” Similarly, imagine a bunch of nonhistoricists who grant that there are
many varieties of moral appraisal that should not be conflated and who share the plausibility
intuition. Reminding such nonhistoricists that, for instance, it was wrong to violate some of PBeth’s rights, should not in any way help them to explain away their unease with this intuition.
In brief, consonant with McKenna’s orientation, I have imagined that, aside from their
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theoretical outlook, the competing parties “bring forth judgments that reveal some basic pretheoretical intuitions—not intuitions filtered through distinctions about, say, responsibility for
character traits leading to action as distinct from responsibility for the actions themselves.” To be
clear, each party, invoking pertinent cases (historicists appealing to apt manipulation cases and
nonhistorists to magical agent cases), lays bare pre-theoretical intuitions concerning historicism
or nonhistoricism. Although aware of relevant scope distinctions, or cognizant of the fact that
there are multiple varieties of normative appraisal, these pre-theoretical intuitions are not
“filtered” through these things. Indeed, it would be somewhat hard to understand why the
relevant nonhistorists retain the plausibility intuition, if their intuitions about the relevant cases,
or intuitions concerning the tenability of nonhistoricism were indeed “filtered through
distinctions about, say, responsibility for character traits leading to action as distinct from
responsibility for the actions themselves.” Such distinctions have little, if anything, to do with
one’s theoretical orientation concerning historicism or nonhistoricism; they are independently
credible and well-recognized distinctions.
McKenna offers another consideration nonhistoristists may draw on to explain away the
plausibility intuition.
Third, consider how you would think of and respond to Beth or Suzie Instant were you to have a morally charged
transaction with one of them (McKenna, 2004: 182-3). Imagine it so that you were aware of their unusual causal
histories. Would you find it genuinely misplaced to make moral demands of them, to think it unfitting to respond
with indignation or resentment were one of them to, say, insult your child or cunningly take illegitimate financial
advantage of you? Perhaps at first blush it would seem misplaced. But think through the case as vividly as you might
be able. Hold clearly in mind the point central to the nonhistorical compatibilist that, at the time coincident with the
(putatively) free act, Beth is a nonhistorical duplicate of Ann. She has just as many resources for moral reasoning
and deliberation as Ann does. She is just as able to do otherwise as Ann is. She adopts the same attitudinal stance
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toward her own convictions about her unsheddable values as Ann does (she’s proud of how she believes herself to
have acquire them, and so on). In such a case, I remarked, when vividly imagined, it can seem credible to claim that
the right way to think of either Beth or Suzie Instant, and the right way to respond to either would be to treat either
as a “real” person, one who is a fully competent moral agent and a legitimate target of our blaming responses.
(Forthcoming, pp. 7-8)
Again, it will be helpful to remind ourselves of the dialectical terrain. As a nonhistoricist,
to bolster your nonhistoricism you appeal to cases involving magical agents such as the Suzie
Instant case, or reflection on such cases moves you toward nonhistoricism. Such reflection will,
presumably, include your pondering the symmetry argument. Still, (as we are supposing) you
retain the plausibility intuition. As a preliminary point, it seems implausible to suppose that
rehearsing the symmetry argument on its own can explain away the plausibility intuition. After
all, having entertained the symmetry argument, you still find yourself with this intuition or so we
are assuming. No new factor over and above your pondering the symmetry argument has been
invoked to help to shed this intuition. Now introduce the participant attitude: imagine how you
would react to P-Beth in a morally charged encounter. Suppose you react in a fashion consistent
with what your nonhistoricism implies about P-Beth’s free agency: you treat her as “a fully
competent moral agent and a legitimate target of our blaming responses” (p. 8). I’m simply
unsure how a germane real-life encounter, or imagining such an encounter, can help explain
away the plausibility intuition if you have it despite at least tentative endorsement of the
symmetry argument. It’s true that you’ve stuck to your theoretical guns, but how does this
whittle away at the plausibility intuition? In your real-life exchange do as McKenna bids: hold
clearly in mind the nonhistorical compatibilist’s central contention that at the time coincident
with the putatively free act, P-Beth is a nonhistorical duplicate of Ann. Be a good nonhistoricist.
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But here’s the rub: also do as the historicist bids: hold clearly in mind the point that at the time
coincident with the putatively free act, P-Beth is a victim of manipulation, and that her A-ing
expresses engineered-in springs of action. If your rehearsal of the symmetry argument by itself
does not explain away the plausibility intuition, then it is difficult to see how a real-life
encounter (or imagining such an encounter) with P-Beth, provided you bear in mind the very
factor that undergirds your plausibility intuition—that P-Beth is a victim of manipulation—a
factor we have assumed you keep squarely in mind, should help to explain away this intuition.
People often act as though they have genuine alternatives; it doesn’t follow that they have such
alternatives. Analogously, people may interact with Beth as though she is morally responsible for
germane behavior; it doesn’t follow that she is responsible.
To his three points, McKenna adds a fourth: We should not conflate blameworthiness
with the “propriety or fittingness of blame, where the blame at issue is meant to be overt blame
directed at the blameworthy party” (p. 8). He says that when overt blame is fitting, because
deserved, it provides “one who has standing to blame with a pro tanto reason to do so” (p. 8).
Other considerations, for instance, when overtly blaming someone for a minor offense would
cause her massive harm, can override such a reason. He then claims that with this in mind,
revisit the point above about the kind of response Beth deserves as one whose previous moral personality had been
hijacked. The legitimate response to her for that wrong done to her could give one good reason to go light on
blaming her. Or it could give one good reason not to blame her at all. But it would not follow from this that she
would not be blameworthy for her act of A-ing (Forthcoming, p. 8)
The concern with McKenna’s parry should by now be anticipated: A nonhistoricist who
keeps straight the familiar distinction between blameworthiness and overt blame, and who has
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the plausibility intuition, cannot reasonably be regarded as explaining away the intuition in some
such way as this: “Perhaps it isn’t morally right to overtly blame P-Beth for A-ing. If one harbors
the plausibility intuition, maybe one has it because one thinks that because it isn’t right to overtly
blame P-Beth for A-ing, she isn’t blameworthy for A-ing.” When the ‘one’ in the previous
sentence refers to any nonhistoricist who is familiar with the symmetry argument, aware of the
distinction between blameworthiness and overt blame, and who has the plausibility intuition,
such reasoning is surely suspect.
McKenna concludes that these four points nonhistorical compatibilists can supposedly
exploit to explain away the plausibility intuition show that they are “not impotent in the face of
the challenges at issue” (p. 8). He proposes, however, that finding a principled way to underpin
asymmetrical treatments of the Beth and Suzie Instant cases would allow us to adjudicate this inhouse dispute between historicist and nonhistoricist compatibilists. Here he turns to critical
scrutiny of my (and my co-author’s) relevant views. What are these views?
3. An Interlude: A Hybrid Compromise
Cuypers and I have defended a position that navigates between historicism and nonhistoricism.
Its crux is that moral responsibility does not require that one have a past but it does require that
one not have certain kinds of past. To motivate this view, we distinguished between two stages
of moral agency in agents like us who mature psychologically over time, roughly the initial
childhood stage, and the post-childhood free agent or evolved stage. An agency requirement of
responsibility is that the agent be capable of intentional deliberative action. Such action, in turn,
requires some psychological basis for evaluative reasoning; it requires that an agent have an
“evaluative scheme.” The constituents of such a scheme include (i) normative standards the
agent believes (though not necessarily consciously) ought to be invoked in assessing reasons for
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action, or beliefs about how the agent should go about making choices; (ii) desires, beliefs, or
plans that express the agent’s long-term ends or goals he deems worthwhile or valuable; (iii)
deliberative principles the agent utilizes to arrive at practical judgments about what to do or how
to act; and (iv) motivation both to act on the normative standards specified in (i) and to pursue
one’s goals of the sort described in (ii) at least partly on the basis of the deliberative principles
outlined in (iii).
A child’s (or an agent’s) initial evaluative scheme is the scheme the child (or the agent)
initially acquires. Elements of such a scheme may be a result of imitation or conditioning.
Furthermore, such schemes can be inauthentic—they can be of the sort that, because not one’s
“own,” they subvert responsibility for one’s later behavior in which one engages when one
matures into a morally responsible agent. Or they can be authentic—they can, by virtue of being
“one’s own,” sustain responsibility for one’s later behavior. One of our central contentions is that
initial schemes, if authentic, are merely “relationally authentic”: they are authentic only insofar
as they do not subvert responsibility for later behavior. If certain desires that are elements of a
child’s incipient values that later actions of hers express, are irresistible and remain so, and are
constituents of her initial scheme, then the responsible agent into whom this child develops will
not be responsible for actions that partly causally issue from such values. There is nothing like
“plain” authenticity with initial schemes (of agents like us); there is only relational authenticity:
“authenticity-with-an-eye-toward moral responsibility.” We proposed, furthermore, that
depending upon the sorts of creature in question, initial schemes may vary in complexity. The
initial schemes of very young human beings do not display the intricacy that supports moral
responsibility. We can, however, think of creatures where this is not so. In the Blade Runner
world reproduction requires that bodies, including brains, be fabricated. Once these things are
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prepared, close to complete initial schemes—schemes relevantly like those of mentally healthy
adult human beings—must be instilled if the “offspring” are to survive (Haji and Cuypers 2008,
p. 34). The limiting case would be one involving a magical agent—her initial scheme mirrors, in
pertinent respects, that of Ann’s.
An evolved scheme is a scheme that results from suitable changes to an initial scheme,
however complex this initial scheme. Roughly, we contended that an authentic evolved scheme
must be causally related to initial schemes through alterations that can only occur through an
agent’s exercise of her own deliberative control. Setting aside many details, we then proposed
that the second premise of the symmetry argument—if Suzie Instant is morally responsible for Aing, then P-Beth is too—is on shaky ground. Suzie Instant’s initial scheme is “fully-formed” and
authentic—as authentic as Ann’s evolved scheme. So we see no reason to deny that she is
morally responsible for A-ing. Consequently, responsibility does not require that one have a past.
But P-Beth’s evolved scheme is not authentic; she does not acquire important elements of it
under her own steam. Since these elements are among the springs of action that causally give rise
to her A-ing, there is good reason to deny that she is responsible for A-ing. Responsibility, then,
does require that if one have a past, this past not be of a certain sort.
McKenna believes, however, that we have not offered convincing reasons to believe that
the cases of Beth and Suzie Instant should be treated asymmetrically. Here is his interesting
objection:
Insofar as Haji and Cuypers grant that Suzie Instant is genuinely morally responsible for her act of A-ing rather than
just quasi-responsible (and they do), then in one especially important respect, Suzie Instant is very different from a
child with respect to her initial evaluative scheme. Furthermore, being a current-timeslice duplicate of Suzie
Normal, we can safely assume that the full complement of Suzie Instant’s moral personality is just as complex and
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contains just as much flexibility and sensitivity to the contingencies of life as any psychologically healthy mature
person one might meet. Indeed, we can suppose that the phenomenology of Suzie Instant’s moral deliberations in,
say, fretting over whether to A rather than B, can include reflection on her (false) memories of how she came to
mature into the person who now sees what is best to do, how when she was younger and impetuous, she did not
weigh things properly, and so on. In this way, Suzie Instant is not very much at all like a child, and is very much like
Ann or Suzie Normal. So,...we can ask the following question: Does the case of Suzie Instant cast into doubt the
contention that evolved authentic schemes must be causally related to initial schemes through alterations that can
only occur through an agent’s exercise of her own deliberative control? Of course, it can be granted that, as a
contingent matter, the evolved authentic schemes of actual persons have indeed been the product of a causal history
of the sort Haji and Cuypers favor. But the case of Suzie Instant can be taken as a thought experiment meant to
challenge the contention that plain authentic evaluative schemes simply must have such a history. And if not, then
this gives the nonhistorical compatibilist some resources to resist the contention that Beth is not free and morally
responsible when she A-s. (Forthcoming, pp. 10-11, note omitted).
In reply, the Blade Runner world highlights the fact that initial schemes can be near
complete or near fully-formed. Again, there is no conceptual barrier to supposing that such
schemes can be as complex as the fully-formed schemes of mentally healthy mature human
beings such as Ann (granting that the concept of instantaneous autonomous agency is coherent).
So, in a way I agree with McKenna: the case of Suzie Instant is a counterexample to the view
that any complete or fully-formed scheme that is “truly one’s own” must result from changes one
makes to one’s prior scheme. But the real question is whether any evolved scheme must be
suitably causally related to a prior one to sustain responsibility for behavior that causally arises
from elements of that scheme. The historicist’s answer is that it must. To support this view,
entertain another thought experiment: Some time after Suzie Instant pops into existence, she falls
into the hands of the new-wave neurosurgeons who worked on Beth. Like Beth, Suzie Instant is
manipulated so that, in relevant respects, she is just like Suzie Q down the road. Historicists
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would insist that when post-surgery Suzie Instant—“P-Suzie Instant”—performs an action that
expresses engineered-in springs, she is not responsible for this action. P-Suzie Instant, just like
P-Beth, is no longer in control of shaping her destiny.
In an astute footnote, McKenna raises a concern that merits a response because, among
other things, the response clarifies the “hybrid” nature of my species of historicism—the sort of
view I favor has a mix of historicist and nonhistoricist elements. Here is the relevant passage:
There is one deeper concern with Haji and Cuypers’s view that I will not explore here, but I fear creates serious
problems. On their view, an element, E, of an initial scheme counts as inauthentic if it subverts responsibility at a
later time within the framework of an agent’s evolved scheme. If not, then it seems that it is not a candidate for an
inauthentic element. But then the sole basis for whether a candidate element E is in fact inauthentic just depends
upon whether it does in fact cause a later state, S, which is a responsibility-defeating one. If either it does not cause
any state S, or if instead S winds up not being responsibility-defeating, then it is not inauthentic. But if this is the
correct rendering of their view, it appears that it is vacuous. E’s status as authentic or inauthentic just turns on
whether, if and when it causes state S, S winds up being responsibility-defeating. What ends up mattering is just the
nature of the later state, S, and this looks to be friendly to a nonhistorical rather than an historical thesis.
(Forthcoming, p. 11, n. 8)
I have no deep quarrel with McKenna here. Citing from a previous work, I (and my coauthor) proposed the following:
Focus on a case of instantaneous agency in which we have creation ex nihilo of a Suzie Instant type of agent—
Suzie*. Suzie* has no history or past. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that facts about her history in the
external world cannot have a bearing on the acquisition of her (fully-formed) evaluative scheme with which she is
“born” and so cannot, in one way or another, affect responsibility for behavior that issues from elements of this
initial scheme. If it is sufficient (other conditions assumed) for a position to qualify as internalist that facts about the
17
agent’s history in the external world have no bearing on autonomous or responsible agency, then magical agents
vindicate internalism. But it would be a mistake to conclude from this that past facts should not have a bearing on
responsibility with agents (like us) who do have a past. (Haji and Cuypers 2008, p. 53)
We may agree with McKenna that with agents like us who mature (psychologically and
otherwise) over time, the properties of one’s initial scheme important for initial scheme
authenticity are, indirectly, “friendly to a nonhistorical rather than to a historical thesis” (n. 8, p.
11). To underscore yet again a view I endorse, I can’t see how there can be anything but
relational authenticity regarding the initial schemes of such agents (see below). But this
concession does not entail that historical conditions fall away. A kernel of responsibility is that
we be the ultimate originators of our actions; to be morally responsible we need to be in the
driver’s seat. To ensure that one is in this seat, having acquired an initial scheme—having
become the sort of agent to which responsibility ascriptions can be duly attributed—changes to
this scheme cannot be of the sort that completely bypass one’s capacities of deliberative control.4
McKenna is to be commended for bringing the in-house debate between historicist and
nonhistoricist compatibilists into sharp focus, and for impelling me to clarify my hybrid position
on this issue. Whether nonhistoricists have won the day, however, as McKenna in a new chapter
on the historicism/nonhistoricism debate ponders, remains something to be seen. It is to
McKenna’s positive views on historicism that I now turn.
4. A New Chapter: McKenna’s Modest Historicism
In the next installment of the debate, McKenna fashions relatively modest historical principles
that capture “what is essentially gripping about the kinds of examples [such as the Ann/Beth
ones] that seem to commend an historical conclusion” (p. 1). Seeking to give a balanced
4
See, e.g., Mele 1995, pp. 169-72.
18
assessment of this debate, he admits that, although officially agnostic, he is, on the whole, more
inclined toward the sort of historicism that his relevant principles encode (pp. 16-17). In this
section, I outline the principal contours of McKenna’s historicism with an eye toward
highlighting both the close similarities in our approaches and pertinent differences.
McKenna’s distinction between a positive historical thesis and a negative one is a
convenient point of departure. The former specifies a kind of history required for an agent to
perform free actions for which she is morally responsible; the latter requires only that an agent
who performs actions for which she is responsible not have a certain kind of history (p. 9).
McKenna’s candidate for a negative historical thesis says:
NH: An agent A-s freely and is morally responsible for doing so only if, with respect to
the casual springs of her A-ing, she does not have a history that includes the acquisition
of any unsheddable values through means that bypassed her ability to critically acquire,
assess and sustain them.
McKenna entertains the proposal that NH can license asymmetrical judgments regarding
the cases of manipulated Beth and Suzie Instant. This thesis, together with relevant facts about
Beth’s case, implies that manipulated Beth is not responsible for A-ing. In contrast, in
conjunction with germane facts about Suzie Instant, it leaves open that Suzie Instant may be
morally responsible for A-ing (p. 10). However, McKenna questions whether NH best accounts
for the intuitive judgment that Beth is not responsible for A-ing. He contrasts two variations of
pre-manipulated Beth’s life. In one, Beth Active invests considerable time and energy during her
formative years to become the person she was prior to falling victim to the new-wave surgeons;
19
she dynamically chiseled her moral profile. In the other, Beth Passive is a “value-sponge” whose
values, interests, and so forth she inherited almost exclusively by imitating her parents; unlike
Beth Active, her moral personality was passively acquired (p. 11). Reflecting on these two
possible variations of Beth’s history, McKenna writes:
NH yields the result that, when Beth Passive is manipulated into being like Ann, she does not act freely nor is she
morally responsible. This is just what the historical theorist wants. But the problem is that it is hard to see why NH
should apply to Beth Passive in a way that it is not at all hard to see why NH should apply to Beth Active. Beth
Passive blindly stumbled into her moral personality. If we are to regard as freedom-and-responsibility undermining
the intervention into Beth Passive’s psychic life whereby very different unsheddable values are covertly forced upon
her, ones upon which she subsequently acts, it is not because Beth Passive was robbed of a moral personality that
she came to possess under her own steam. This sort of rationale is available for the case of Beth Active, but not for
Beth Passive. Beth Passive did not acquire her character so formed under her own steam; she was passive with
respect to the acquisition of it in the history of her own life.
There is, however, a complication with this criticism. The sort of bypassing condition
codified in NH, on the one hand, and passivity, on the other, are two different things: passivity
does not imply bypassing. In the framework I introduced, let’s suppose that little Beth Passive’s
pertinent initial desires, values, etc. were not responsibility-subverting. Imagine that her initial
evaluative scheme is relationally authentic, something fully compatible with passivity. Indeed,
this is one of the main points I have made in connection with initial evaluative schemes. It is
plausible to suppose that many of our initial values, perhaps “proto-values,” are passively
acquired simply because children have not developed the capacity for critical reflection. Now,
assuming she is in the post-child free agency stage, Beth Passive continues to be passive. She can
during this stage, however, critically reflect on her values, modify some of them even if only
20
modestly, reject others, etc. if she so desires or chooses. But she doesn’t. None of this violates
the bypassing condition. So, proponents of NH might be inclined to stress that whether or not
Beth Passive’s acquisition of germane values is problematic for responsibility depends on the
details of the tale. Did the acquisition bypass perhaps her fairly modest capacities of deliberative
control? If they did not, then although a passive value-sponge in one sense of ‘passive,’ her
acquisition is not responsibility-undermining. From the fact, if it is one, that Beth Passive elected
not to modify, etc. her values, it simply doesn’t follow that she couldn’t, or that they were
acquired in way in which, say, engineered-in values are acquired.
This point aside, McKenna next introduces a positive historical thesis that is “able to
capture what is especially troubling about cases like Beth (Passive and Active), and that perhaps
can be used to show why after all there might be something troubling in the contention that Suzie
Instant is free and morally responsible” (p. 12):
PH: An agent performs a directly free act and is directly morally responsible for it only if
any unsheddable values playing a role in the production of her action arose from a history
whereby she was afforded the opportunity to critically assess, endorse, and sustain them
from abilities that she possessed, and so none were acquired through means that bypassed
those abilities.
McKenna remarks:
Both Beth Active and Beth Passive satisfied PH at the pre-manipulation stage, and neither did at the postmanipulation stage. But then neither did Suzie Instant. PH builds upon NH because it includes the negative proviso
featured centrally in NH—lacking a history whereby the pertinent values were acquired by coercive means. But it
21
goes beyond it by emphasizing the role of having a history—one that makes room for the opportunities whereby one
is able to shape her moral character, should she wish to do so. PH also has the advantage over NH of making it easy
to see why it should apply to a case like Beth Passive just as much as Beth Active. And it also has one further
advantage. It allows the historical theorist some leverage against the nonhistorical theorist with respect to a case like
Suzie Instant. Even granting that the case of Suzie Instant is one that intuitively favors a nonhistorical thesis, PH
helps to call forth the concern that there is something objectionable about regarding Suzie Instant as free and
responsible for her acts just after being brought into existence. Her evaluative framework was fully fixed for her
without her so much as having a chance to have engaged in the shaping of it.
One more detail is important to fully appreciate PH. McKenna explains that
The phrase “the opportunity to critically assess, endorse, and sustain from abilities that she possessed” in PH must
be interpreted so that the evaluative processes of assessment, endorsement, and sustaining involved do not require
action, and hence do not require free action. All they require is a proper degree of cognitive control or activity, and
so all PH demands is that an agent have had the opportunity to assess her values in this more inclusive way. It is
consistent with such forms of assessment that they are instigated by actions, even free acts, such as clear-eyed
decisions to shape one’s character in certain ways. So one way an agent like Beth Active might satisfy PH when
acting from unsheddable values is by prior free acts of self-formation whereby she took an active role in the shaping
of her moral personality. But this is not required for her subsequent acts to count as directly free. Thus, with the
resources provided by PH, the historical theorist has a rationale to account for Beth Active’s, Ann’s, and Suzie
Normal’s free acts of A-ing as in contrast with Beth’s and Suzie Instant’s (putative) unfree acts of A-ing. (Note
omitted)
However, consider a scenario in which elder Beth Passive at some time at which, we
assume, she is a free agent, A-s, an unsheddable value, W, is in A’s etiology, and she acquired W
at some time during her childhood when her initial scheme—her “pre-moral personality”—was
in embryo. At the time of W’s acquisition, it is false that little Beth Passive—rechristen her Beth
22
Passive-A—was afforded the opportunity to critically assess, endorse, and sustain W because at
this time she lacked the relevant abilities. Bear in mind that an agent, such as Beth Passive-A,
can acquire W either during childhood or during the post-childhood free agency stage. If, as in
our hypothetical scenario, she acquires unsheddable W at the pre-free agency stage, and W is a
causal antecedent of some action, A, perhaps the first supposedly free action that she performs
later at some time when she is a free agent, then A will not satisfy PH. So, Beth Passive-A will
not be morally responsible for A-ing by the lights of PH. Roughly, if what it takes to make a
desire, belief, or so forth “truly one’s own” is rational reflection of the sort PH recommends
concerning these things, then with no resources other than those in PH to account for the
authenticity of such springs, there will be a familiar problem with accounting for the authenticity
of the springs causally implicated by one’s first free actions for which one is morally responsible.
Or look at the matter in this way: McKenna proposes that if PH is correct, Suzie Instant is
not responsible for A-ing because she doesn’t have the relevant history. But then she is, in this
respect, just like little Beth Passive-A: an unsheddable value is in the etiology of each agent’s Atype action, but it is false that this value “arose from a history whereby...[each] was afforded the
opportunity to critically assess, endorse, and sustain them from abilities that she possessed.” The
upshot is that if we accept PH, and understand it to imply that Suzie Instant is not morally
responsible for A-ing, we will have to accept the consequence that Beth Passive-A is not
responsible for A-ing either. How, then, do we get responsibility off the ground with agents such
as human beings? Of course, one might venture that it is contingent whether at least some
unsheddable values are indeed acquired at the pre-free agency stage in us; maybe they are (which
appears to be the more credible view) or maybe they are not. We can, however, imagine
members of a species relevantly much like the members of our species in which sets of
23
unsheddable values essentially are acquired in the young. If these values are of the sort that they
do not threaten responsibility when the young mature into (supposedly) free agents, PH will
again yield a result difficult to swallow: no member of this species will ever be morally
responsible for actions that express such values. Why difficult to swallow? First, because such
members are relevantly like Suzie Instant who is relevantly like Ann, who is, in turn, morally
responsible for A-ing. Second, because there is, on the face of it, no obvious responsibilitysubverting tinkering involved in the proper acquisition of unsheddable values at the pre-free
agency stage, where, again, the notion of proper acquisition is to be understood in a fowardlooking sense: these values are not of the sort, or are not acquired in a way, that will undermine
moral responsibility by, for instance, undermining epistemic or control requirements, for later
actions performed by the free agent into whom the child matures. Indeed, Beth Passive-A seems
to be an agent of this sort—she is a value-sponge “all the way down” to the time at which she
first began to acquire her incipient values. Why should it matter for responsibility if some of
these early values were unsheddable provided that they did not adversely affect responsibility for
later actions that expressed them?
Compare Beth Passive-A with a counterpart (“Beth Passive-B”) who differs from her in
the following way: One of Beth Passive-B’s values, X, that is not unsheddable when first
acquired during her pre-free agency stage in her life, crystallizes into an unsheddable value at a
time when actions that express it may satisfy PH; otherwise, there is no relevant difference in X
and Beth Passive-A’s unsheddable value, W, that she acquires when she is little. In some
scenarios, post-child Beth Passive-B actively contributes to X’s becoming unsheddable, but in
other scenarios, she need not. As she continues on her life’s journey, X hardens into becoming
unsheddable. Focus on scenarios of the latter sort. Now imagine that each of Beth Passive-A and
24
Beth Passive-B perform an A-type action at some time when they are (supposedly) free agents,
and that in Beth Passive-A’s case, her A-ing expresses W, while in Beth Passive-B’s case, her Aing expresses X. PH, in consort with the pertinent facts of these two cases, yields the result that
Beth Passive-A is not responsible for A-ing, whereas Beth Passive-B may well be, and this only
because of the time at which the relevant value becomes unsheddable. However, it is hard to see
how this temporal difference can underwrite differential ascriptions of responsibility regarding
the passive Beths. Beth Passive-B has not brought it about that she has X, and in this respect, she
is just like Beth Passive-A who has not contributed to bringing it about that she has W.
Consider, next, yet another counterpart of Beth Passive-A, Beth Passive-C, who also A-s
at the time, t, when Beth Passive-A A-s, but in Beth Passive-C’s case, her A-ing expresses a
sheddable value, Y, she acquires during her childhood that is, in all other respects to the extent
this is possible, just like the unsheddable value, Y, that Beth Passive-A’s A-ing expresses, and
that, recall, Beth Passive-A acquires during her childhood. PH rules that Beth Passive-A is not
morally responsible for A-ing at t; it leaves open, however, that Beth Passive-C may well be
responsible for A-ing at t. Again, this difference is troubling. If Beth Passive-C’s, sheddable
value Y is not responsibility-subverting (because, for instance, it lacks as a constituent a desire
that is irresistible, and so one that undermines free action), Beth Passive-A’s unsheddable value
W should not be either. We may suppose that if Beth Passive-C never has reason to question or
modify sheddable Y so that Y is with her throughout her life, Beth Passive-A, too, with respect to
her unsheddable W is relevantly just like Beth Passive-C regarding Y. Indeed, it is difficult to see
why the mere fact that values acquired during childhood by agents like our passive Beths happen
to be sheddable or not should ground different ascriptions of responsibility when these agents at
the post-childhood stage perform actions that express them.
25
Ponder another exotic agent that helps to differentiate two different strands of PH. A
necessary existent necessarily exists at any and every time. Imagine such an agent—“Suzie
Eternal”—who is also essentially omnibenevolent, essentially omniscient, and essential rational.
Imagine, furthermore, that at any time, Suzie Eternal has unsheddable values that are fitting for
such an agent to have; think of them as perfect values. She never has any reason to question or
modify them. Indeed, she could not modify them because doing so would be inconsistent with
her being essentially omnibenevolent. The values she has at any one time are necessarily the
ones she will have at any other time. Unlike Suzie Instant, who springs into being at a particular
time, Suzie Eternal does not have an entry point into her existence. Suppose Suzie Eternal A-s at
a particular time, and her A-ing expresses unsheddable values. Are these values of the sort that
she has had the opportunity to critically assess, endorse, and sustain them from abilities she
possesses? She can certainly reflect on them, endorse, and sustain them in an attenuated sense of
‘sustain,’ the last because, presumably, she would have no reason to alter or modify them. This
marks a difference between Suzie Instant and Suzie Eternal: assuming there is no beginning or
end of time, at any time, t, Suzie Eternal has a history; she existed prior to t. But she does share
with Suzie Instant at the time when Suzie Instant sprang into existence an interesting feature: at
this time, it is true that Suzie Instant did not see to it that she attained any of her initial values.
Similarly, Suzie Eternal never did nor ever will acquire—she did not do anything to attain—any
of her initial values; she always had them, and will always have these very same values. Now for
an interesting result: PH, McKenna says, implies that Suzie Instant is not responsible for doing A
when she makes her first appearance. Apparently, at the kernel of PH lie two intertwined
principal strands. One has to do with acquisition, the other with shaping. Regarding the former,
26
it seems that Suzie Instant has not done anything to bring it about that she has the unsheddable
values that accompanied her entry into life. But then isn’t it also the case that, at any time, Suzie
Eternal has not done anything to bring it about that she has the unsheddable values that she has at
that time? She can assess the values she has and endorse them. However these values are, for her,
immutable, and whatever else she does at some time, it is false that something she does at this
time brings, or helps to bring, it about that she acquires the unsheddable values that she has then.
It would thus seem that if Suzie Instant is not responsible for A-ing (because she did not bring it
about that she had any of her unsheddable values), Suzie Eternal should not be responsible for Aing either for analogous reasons. But this is problematic. If Suzie Eternal is not responsible for Aing, it is not because she has not done anything to equip herself with the values she has: as with
Suzie Instant, these values have not been beaten into her against her will, she is not the victim of
offending manipulation, she has not been tricked into acquiring the values she has, etc. Here, it
may be helpful to recall this feature of Beth Passive-B: sheddable value X she acquires in
childhood and that evolves into an unsheddable one in her post-child free agency stage need not,
by the lights of PH, threaten responsibility for an action that expresses X. Furthermore, PH does
not threaten responsibility in such a case even though Beth Passive-B did not do anything to
bring it about that she has X.
Should one insist that if one has not contributed to bringing it about that one has the
fundamental building blocks of critical evaluation, one is not responsible for pertinent actions,
then, it seems, one is committed to the essentials of Galen’s Strawson’s view that, regardless of
whether determinism or indeterminism obtains, no one can be responsible for any of one’s
behavior because one cannot in relevant ways, make oneself the way one is (Strawson 1986, pp.
28-29).
27
PH encapsulates another core strand: If one is not in a position to mould or shape one’s
unsheddable values that actions one performs express, then one is not responsible for these
actions. One might appeal to this idea to argue for the result that both Suzie Instant and Suzie
Eternal are not responsible for their pertinent instances of A-ing. However, one must have
something to mould in order to mould it. Having acquired one’s initial values, one can, providing
it is possible for one to do so, mould these values, perhaps partly by critically assessing them.
What is attractive about PH is the insight, a number of people applaud and recommend, that such
shaping must be under one’s own steam if one is to be responsible for the germane actions.
Neither Suzie Instant nor Suzie Eternal violates this requirement.
The hybrid view I favor incorporates a nonhistorical constraint (much like NH that
largely impacts acquisition of values) at the pre-free agency stage, and a historical one (much
like the second shaping strand of PH) at the free agency stage. As I have stressed, agents like us
who mature over time do not come with evaluative frameworks intact. The early constituents of
this framework, for all rhyme and reason, can be thought of as being implanted or engineered
into us. The child exercises no freedom-level control, if this is taken to entail performing free
actions, in acquiring these constituents or building blocks of critical assessment. (This is another
point of agreement between McKenna and myself.) In addition, at this stage the child does not
enjoy weaker “cognitive-level” control, where this is understood to consist in one’s having the
opportunity to critically assess, endorse, and sustain the very building blocks of critical
assessment, in acquiring these building blocks. So how do children turn into morally responsible
agents (assuming that some do)? An essential part of the story is that the initial constituents of an
evaluative framework must be put into place—“engineered in”—in a way that does not
compromise responsibility for later actions. Among these constituents may well be unsheddable
28
values. If this fragment of the story is in the right ball park, then it cannot reasonably be required
that the constituents of an initial evaluative scheme satisfy some positive historical constraint
akin to PH. I have suggested, instead, that such constituents should satisfy something like NH:
they should not be acquired in a way that subverts responsibility for later actions to which they
causally (perhaps in consort with other antecedents of action) give rise. If, for example, certain
desires are “beaten into” a child, and if the child’s having them are reinforced in various
indoctrinative ways, these desires may end up being irresistible. Later actions that express them
will not be free.
Once we do get the initial building blocks into place—the bread and butter for critical
evaluative assessment—then we open up space for a positive historical constraint.
So I end were I, roughly, began: one upshot of this hybrid view is that Suzie Instant is
relevantly like a child and, also, relevantly unlike a child: she has an initial evaluate scheme
whose members satisfy a negative historical constraint, although one that unlike a child’s initial
scheme is fully formed. There is no reason to preclude such a magical agent from being morally
responsible for minimally some of what she does.
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