Free Will & Responsibility Dworkin

8/8/2019 Free Will & Responsibility Dworkin

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cuidado de separar. Encontramos, em primeiro lugar, as discusses sobre ascausas e conseqncias de pensamento e ao. todo o comportamento humano totalmente determinado por eventosanteriores sobre os quais as prprias pessoas no tmcontrole? Se no, um comportamento causado por acaso, ao acaso ou

biolgicas sobre eventos fsicosque, igualmente, as pessoas no tm nenhum controle? Ou pode algumafaculdade da mente humana - a "vontade" -exercer uma espcie de agncia de propsito que no seja causado por algumacoisa em si, mas sua ocorrncia prpria?Pode um ser humano ser uma causa sem causa? Vou chamar esses"cientfica" questes, mas muitos filsofosdisputariam em conta este nome imprprio. Eles consideram, pelo menos,uma das perguntas que listei -se a vontade humana pode agir espontaneamente, como uma causa sem causa- como uma questo metafsica

ao invs de uma de fsica ou biologia.Achamos, por outro, as discusses sobre o que denominado "liberdade". Emque circunstncias algumlivre para agir como ele deseja? a sua liberdade comprometida apenasquando ele est sujeito a algumas externasrestrio - apenas quando ele est ligado ou fechado, por exemplo? Ou quandoele est mentalmente doente? Ouquando ele no consegue governar a si mesmo ou controlar seus apetites queele deseja? Ou quando ele no

Pgina 2Livre-Arbtrio e Responsabilidade: Projecto No Cotao 2comportam-se como razo e verdadeira moralidade exige? Ou a sua ilusrialiberdade sempre que suas escolhase comportamento so inevitveis dada eventos anteriores ou foras alm deseu controle? Ele livre, isto ,apenas se e quando a sua prpria vontade age como a causa sem causa de seucomportamento?Finalmente, em terceiro lugar, encontramos discusses deresponsabilidade. Quando apropriado para algum para julgarseu comportamento crtico, e para os outros para julg-lo dessaforma? Quando apropriado para elesentir orgulho ou de remorso, por exemplo, ou para outros elogios ou culp -lo? Sempre que ele ageao invs de se posta em prtica? Sempre que ele toma decises por si mesmoao invs de ser, por


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exemplo, hipnotizado? Ou somente quando sua vontade a causa sem causade suas aes? Apenas esta ltimaedio - da responsabilidade - a nossa preocupao aqui. uma questotica. (Tambm , naturalmente, uma moralquesto, mas vou me concentrar principalmente na sua dimenso tica neste

captulo.) , pois,distinto do primeiro conjunto de questes: as questes cientficas que podemser respondidas, se em tudo, satravs da investigao emprica ou especulao metafsica. Algumas pessoas,embora poucasfilsofos, parecem apenas assumir que se o determinismo realmenteverdade, ento a responsabilidade moral necessariamente ser apenas uma iluso. Mas essa inferncia requer uma ticapremissa maior e, como nsveremos, muito longe de ser bvio se qualquer premissa tica mais plausvelseria tornar o

inferncia de som.O segundo grupo de questes - sobre a liberdade - no so, no entanto,independente dos outros doisgrupos: no h verdadeira questo sobre se as pessoas so livres no sentido emquesto, que ou no a cientfica ou a questo tica no disfarce. Alguns filsofos,aparentemente, usar oidia de liberdade, simplesmente para dizero no-determinismo: dizer que aspessoas so realmente livres,assumir, apenas significa que o determinismo falso. Outros usam a idia de

liberdade, simplesmente para se referir aresponsabilidade moral: eles dizem que as pessoas so ou no so livresquando eles querem dizer apenas queeles so ou no so moralmente responsveis por suas aes. Nenhuma destasformas de expresso umerro conceitual: no um erro lingustico, quer dizer que as pessoas no sorealmente livres desdedeterminismo verdadeiro ou que as pessoas so realmente livres, mesmo seo determinismo verdadeiro, quando sosujeito a nenhuma restrio externa. Se houver algum conflito real entre essasduas declaraes,

o conflito um dos substantivos no tica preciso conceitual. Ento, falandode liberdade nestecontexto intil e muitas vezes os patrocinadores confuso. Proponho nodiscutir liberdade nestecaptulo, embora o meu assunto a polmica livre-arbtrio. Da o ttulo docaptulo.A nossa pergunta a terceira, a questo da responsabilidade. Como vamosenfrentar essa questo?


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Nossas discusses anteriores sobre a natureza do raciocnio tico e moral sodiretamente no ponto. Amundo de valor parte do mundo de interpretao: a tica ea moral somelhor compreendidas comogneros interpretativo. Podemos defender qualquer uma de nossas convices

sobre como viver e como devemostratar os outros apenas pela incorporao de que a condenao em umaestrutura maior de valor a partir do qual ele desenha,e para a qual contribui, suporte argumentativo. No podemos aceitar qualquerconta de tica ou

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Livre-Arbtrio e Responsabilidade: Projecto No Cotao 3responsabilidade moral, no importa o quo convincente que parece por contaprpria, se no podemos aceitar a suaprorrogado ou moral conseqncias ticas. Temos de resistir a qualquerreclamao sobre as condies deresponsabilidade que oferecido como um axioma: no h axiomas em umaestrutura interpretativa.Os filsofos s vezes dizem que eles tm uma "inabalvel" a intuio de queas pessoas no podem serresponsabilizados por suas aes, se o determinismo verdadeiro. Talvez elespossam defender que "a intuio"contra os argumentos contrrios Vou oferecer neste captulo: talvez elespossam encontrar mais geral

ticas ou convices morais que a sustentam, ou talvez eles podem mos trarque a intuio tofirmemente tecidas no tecido da nossa vida que no pode de forma sensata eplausvel ser questionada. Eu acho queno, porm. Vou argumentar, ao contrrio, que a inabalvel convico desuposto encontra quasenenhuma moral ou tica independente de apoio em tudo. condenado e nosuportado pelo restodo que pensamos.debates clssicos do livre-arbtrio e responsabilidade, muitas vezes comeamem uma moral, ao invs de uma ticaproblema. direito de punir ou castigar algum por um dano que infligiu,quando foialucinante, ou sofrendo de algum distrbio mental outras? Ou se ele tivesseum infelizeducao ou agiu sob coao? Seria justo algum preso que cometeu umcrime, enquanto


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agindo sob uma ou outra dessas deficincias? Se no, porqu? Estas questese asrespostas antecipadas preparar o caminho, nos debates modernos, para aameaa do determinismo: seas aes de todos esto determinados por foras alm de seu controle em

nossa maneira de pensar doentes mentaisaes muitas vezes as pessoas so, ento, to injusto culpar ningum, pois para culpar os mentalmentedoente. Proponho-me comear de forma diferente: perguntando como e porque as pessoas normalmente se colocamresponsvel por aquilo que eles tm feito, e porque, em alg umascircunstncias, no e no devefaz-lo. Essa ttica diferente traz a estratgia do captulo em linha com aestratgia geral deo livro, que tenta chamar a moralidade, como um departamento do valor, forado melhor entendimento

da tica - o melhor entendimento, ou seja, de como viver bem. Neste caso, aestratgia permitenos concentrar em algo importante que a estratgia mais usual nos tentaignorar.Quando comeamos na primeira vez que a terceira pessoa, damos maisateno forma como se sente aoser confrontado com uma deciso. Ns pagamos mais ateno,nomeadamente, impossibilidade dedecidir, sem assumir a responsabilidade pela forma como se tem decidido.2. Questes PreliminaresT

ipos de ResponsabilidadeResponsabilidade um conceito complicado, usamos a "responsabilidademoral" e "moralmente responsvel", emdiversos e facilmente confundida sentidos. A responsabilidade moral, emtodos os sentidos, diferente daresponsabilidade causal. Uma pessoa causalmente responsvel por umevento, podemos dizer que, se algum ato dedele parte da cadeia causal que melhor explica a ocorrncia desse evento. Euseria causalmente

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Livre-Arbtrio e Responsabilidade: Projecto No Cotao 4responsvel por um prejuzo para o mendigo cego, se eu tivesse colidido comele distraidamente ou enquantobbado ou maluco ou at mesmo apenas acidentalmente. (Mas no quandoalgum me empurrou para ele


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porque, ento, agir sem meu tem contribudo para o prejuzo.) A longadiscusso do CaptuloNfocada em uma espcie de responsabilidade moral, que eu agora chamo de"virtude" da responsabilidade.Esse o tipo de responsabilidade que temos em mente quando dizemos que

algum responsvel oupessoa irresponsvel, ou que ele se comportou de forma responsvel ouirresponsvel em agir como ele fez. (Ele agiuresponsavelmente em recusar o suborno. Ele teria sido irresponsvel se tivesseaceite.) Tornamosdistines entre diferentes formas ou modos de responsabilidade virtude:distinguimos intelectual,moral e responsabilidade prtica. Um cientista que no verifica seus clculoscareceresponsabilidade intelectual, um escritor que no faz backup de seus arquivosno tem responsabilidade prtica, uma

eleitor que vota em um candidato porque ele descobre que sua sexy no temresponsabilidade moral. Um polticoque envia sua nao para a guerra com inteligncia inadequada claramente irresponsvel em todas as trs formas.Devemos distinguir a responsabilidade virtude, como uma forma deresponsabilidade moral, da atribuioresponsabilidade. Algum tem a responsabilidade de atribuio de algumamatria, se for o seu dever de atenderou cuidar dele. A ltima pessoa a sair de uma sala, poderamos dizer, responsvel por desligar

as luzes eo sargento responsvel por seu peloto. Virtude de causalidade, eaatribuioresponsabilidade por sua vez so diferentes de responsabilidade conseqncia,que a responsabilidade moral paraos resultados de algum ato ou evento. Eu tenho responsabilidade consequnciados danos que causam ao meuconduo negligente, um empregador pode ter responsabilidade por qualquerdano conseqncia de seus funcionrioscausar. Estes so todos, enfim, ser distinguido de responsabilidade dejulgamento. Algum temresponsabilidade por algum ato de julgamento, se for apropriado para elogiar

ou criticar seu agir contra umnorma que determina como as pessoas devem se comportar. Eu tenho aresponsabilidade de julgar o meu atoem p o mendigo lhe dar nada, mas no para o mal quando algum empurrame nele.Esses diferentes sentidos de responsabilidade moral so claramenteinterligados. julgamento de responsabilidade


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necessria para a responsabilidade moral dos outros sentidos. Somente atospara os quais algum judgmentally responsvel pode corretamente figura no julgamento global seest a virtuderesponsvel, por exemplo, ou agiu de forma contrria sua responsabilidade

de atribuio. verdade, as pessoaspor vezes, tm conseqncias para a responsabilidade dos actos dos outros -como eu disse, os empregadores podem terconseqncia a responsabilidade pelos danos causa seus empregados -, masque a conseqnciaresponsabilidade depende de terem a responsabilidade por algum ato dejulgamento das suas prprias: definioempregados ao trabalho, por exemplo.Em qualquer caso, da responsabilidade de julgamento que o desafio agoraestamos preocupados com as chamadasdiretamente na questo. Mais terminologia ser til. A literatura do "livre

arbtrio" problemadivide os filsofos que se preocupar se a responsabilidade de julgamento coerente com

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Livre-Arbtrio e Responsabilidade: Projecto No Cotao 5determinismo ou epifenomenalismo em duas categorias. Compatibilistasacreditam que consistente, e incompatibilistas acreditam que no . Alguns incompatibilistas

so otimistas: elesAcreditamos que a responsabilidade de julgamento verdadeiro, porque elesacreditam, ou como uma questo de qualquercincia ou metafsica, ou ambos, que o comportamento no sempredeterminado pelos acontecimentos passados para alm dode controle do agente. incompatibilistas Outros so pessimistas: elesacreditam que todo comportamento determinadopor acontecimentos passados, e que , portanto, nunca se adequado atribuir aresponsabilidade de julgamentoqualquer um. Isso pode ser certo?As estacas importante notar, desde o incio, que no podemos realmente acreditar. Euno quero dizers que difcil acreditar que a forma como algum pode achar difcil acreditarque umamante tem trado ou que a escravido foi, em geral boa para os escravos. Nsno podemos ser convencido


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feito isso. Mas a concluso ameaada, que voc nunca tem a responsabilidadede julgamento, os pedidos

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Livre-Arbtrio e Responsabilidade: Projecto No Cotao

6mais que isso. Alega que a sua deciso, como uma tosse que no pode parar,est imunejuzo crtico desde o incio, e isso que voc simplesmente no podeacreditar.Isso pode parecer uma frmula extravagante do que incompatibilistaspessimista pedir-lhe paraacreditar. Normalmente, o foco em uma dimenso de crtica: eles argumentamque se o determinismo verdade, ento errado culpar ou punir algum por aquilo que ele faz; desleal,em Galen Strawsonhiprbole, para Deus enviar algum para o inferno. Ainda possvel, por tudoisto exclui, para declarar queum criminoso tenha feito algo moralmente errado e ainda possvelacrescentar que ele tem demonstrado ummoralmente mau carter. Mas essa distino torna-se problemtico quando seconsidera o impacto dadeterminismo da perspectiva de primeira pessoa: quando ns consideramos,ou seja, seu impacto tico. DeNessa perspectiva, vemos padres crticos como nos fornecer razes a favorou contra os actos, e

difcil ver como eu poderia vir a acreditar que, em ambos enganar os meusimpostos moralmente errado etambm que eu no seria censurvel - teria nenhuma razo para sentir remorsoou vergonha - se euenganado. Se enganar moralmente errado, ento eu tenho uma razo de umtipo particularmente forte para noenganar, e se eu tiver uma razo desse tipo especial, deve pelo menos fazersentido para mim, sentir culpaou vergonha se eu agir ao contrrio do que razo. Ento, se eu realmenteacredito que o determinismo fazinsensata de criticar-me dessa forma, no posso pensar que tenho uma razomoral para notrapaa. Eu no posso, ou seja, acho que a trapaa moralmente errado. Nemposso pensar que se enganarrevelaria um mau carter. Como que pode mostrar um mau carter para fazero que no errado fazer?Do ponto de vista de algum decidir como agir, a moralidade uma redeintegrada de normas.


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no uma coleo de mdulos amovveis cada um dos quais pode sereliminado, deixando o resto, mesmomais ou menos intacta.Mas e quanto crtica de outras normas que normalmente empregam na auto-crtica? Se eu abrao

Incompatibilismo pessimistas ainda posso supor que as razes de prudncia dointeresse prprio, paraexemplo, exigir-me a agir de uma forma ou de outra? Eu no acho que se eume tolaFoi atingido por um raio em uma tempestade sbita e inesperada. Se odeterminismo apaga a moral ou ticodiferena entre ser atingido por um raio e traindo os meus impostos, porquecada um uma questoalm do meu controle, ento tambm deve apagar qualquer diferena entre omeu ser surpreendido porrelmpagos e minha tomando meu pequeno barco em uma tempesta de com

raios: ambos so, ento, igualmente questesalm do meu controle. Acho que tenho uma razo de qualquer espcie paraatuar em uma forma ou de outras quando eu tirar esse motivo alegado para afectar a forma como eu deveriaagir. Mas se o determinismo significaque no h nenhuma maneira que eu deveria se comportar quando o destino jdeterminou como eu vai se comportar, ento a suaaniquilando o poder catlica atravs razes. determinismo fora no terrazes de algunstipo especial, que , mas a prpria idia de ter razes. Os furaces no so

censurveis quandoeles matam. Alm disso, no violam as normas morais ou mostrar mau cartermoralmente. Tambm no soimprudente, quando desviou para o ar frio e se dissipar. Se o determinismosignifica que estamos apenas

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Livre-Arbtrio e Responsabilidade: Projecto No Cotao 7pees da natureza, apesar de nossa conscincia, ento todos ns, os furaces eas pessoas, andar na mesmabarco do mar, da natureza. por isso que no podemos realmente acreditar Incompatibilismopessimista. Razes vai multido em cima de nsquando temos de decidir, vamos, finalmente, atuar sobre alguns e rejeitaroutros, o que significa que vamosacho que temos motivos, afinal. Pessimista compatibilismo no no um pasestvel, intelectualmente


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filosficos, a posio do responsvel. No se recomenda a reforma, mas aincoerncia: ele nos pede paraacredito que no podemos acreditar.Eu tenho enfatizado a perspectiva de primeira pessoa em defender essaconcluso forte. Mas

A concluso, ento mantm na terceira pessoa tambm. Se eu no possoacreditar que me faltaresponsabilidade de julgamento, mesmo quando eu aceitar que minhasprprias aes so determinadas, no tenhobase para supor que algum no tem a responsabilidade de julgamento sporque suas aes sodeterminado. Alguns advogados criminalistas um alegaram que devemosabandonar tradicionaisdireito penal, com seu aparato de culpa e punio, e substituir apenas otratamento teraputicoporque, dizem, as pessoas nunca so responsveis pelo que fazem e por isso

injusto culpar epuni-los.1Eles se contradizem: se ningum tem a responsabilidade de julgamento, emseguida,funcionrios que tratam de criminosos acusados como responsveis por suasaes no so responsveis pelos seusprprias aes, e por isso errado para acus-los de agir de formainjusta. Claro que , ento, tambmmal de mim para acusar os criminologistas, como eu tenho, de agir de forma

errada em acusar aFuncionrios de agir de forma errada, porque o criminologistas no somosresponsveis tambm. E erradome a acusar-me de acus-los indevidamente, porque eu no sou responsveltanto. E assim por diante.Este absurdo revela recursiva, mesmo que nada mais fez, que no podemosacreditar que a proposioem que as dobradias, o que que ns todos a falta de responsabilidade parajulgar qualquer coisa.3. Duas verses de ControleTalvez estejamos condenados a incoerncia que acabei de descrever. Talvez

haja apenas no consistente,interpretativamente teoria, satisfazendo da responsabilidade moral. Mas seassim depende doquestes ticas e morais comeamos agora explorar. Primeiro, lembre-se daeconomia ordinrias daresponsabilidade de julgamento: a maneira como voc e outros utilizam aidia de responsabilidade no dia-a-dia.


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comportamento deliberado tem uma vida interior: h uma maneira que sentedeliberadamente para agir. Pretendemos fazeralguma coisa e ns fazemos isso. H um momento de deciso final, omomento em que um dado lanado, omomento em que a deciso de agir se confunde com a ao decidida. Essa

sensao interna deao deliberada marca a distino, essencial para a nossa experincia tica emoral, entre1Cite Clarence Darrow.

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Livre-Arbtrio e Responsabilidade: Projecto No Cotao 8agir e ser atendido: entre empurrar e ser empurrado. Ns pensamos que somosjudgmentally responsvel por aquilo que fazemos, mas no para o queacontece conosco: por dirigir muito rpido, masno por ser atingido por um raio. O nosso complexo de idias mais sobre aresponsabilidade depende demelhorias nessas idias bruto. Podemos distinguir as ocasies normais em queas pessoas decidemagir no s daqueles em que so postas em prtica, mas tambm daqueles queagem sob acontrole de outra pessoa, como em hipnose ou tecnologia formas superiores decontrole da mente, ou quando sovtimas de certas formas de deficincia mental ou doena. Ns dizemos, no

primeiro caso, que odeciso no reflete a sua prpria sentena ou a inteno, mas sim de sua mentee controladorneste ltimo caso, que, apesar de ter agido em seu prprio julgamento ou ainteno que, no entanto,no devem ser responsabilizados porque eles no tinham alguma capacidadeessencial para a responsabilidade. Nstem em mente, como parte dessa capacidade, alguma habilidade mnima paraformar crenas verdadeiras sobre o mundo,sobre os estados mentais de outras pessoas, e sobre as provveisconsequncias do que fazem.Algum que incapaz de compreender o fato de que as armas podem ferir aspessoas no responsvel quando elealgum atira. Ns tambm temos em mente, como parte do que a capacidade,a capacidade de tomar decisesque se encaixam o que poderamos chamar de personalidade agentenormativo: seus desejos, preferncias,


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convices, apegos, lealdade e auto-imagem. decises Genuno, pensamos,so propositais,e algum que no pode igualar a sua deciso final a qualquer um dos seusdesejos, planos, convices ouanexos incapaz de ao responsvel.

Este sistema de idias sobre responsabilidade - o "sistema deresponsabilidade", poderamos cham-lo - muitoamplamente compartilhada quando se afirma como abstratamente como eutenho. verdade, muito do que o sistema torna-secontroversa quando especificado em maior detalhe. Discordamos, porexemplo, sobre se algumque incapaz de resistir aos impulsos decorrentes do intervalo cego, mesmoquando estes contradizem os impulsostodos os seus efeitos mais reflexiva, ou algum que forado a agir contrasuas convices porameaa de dano grave se ele no tiver, ou algum cujo senso de certo e errado

foideformada assistindo a violncia na televiso, judgmentally responsvel porseus atos. Mas uma plausvelteoria filosfica da responsabilidade deve explicar, ao menos abstrata recursodo sistema. deve identificar de forma mais geral ou moral dos princpios ticos quefundamentam os principais contornos dosistema e, em seguida, explicar de que forma esses princpios esto satisfeitosou porque eles no so. Ns podemosportanto, abordar a questo deste captulo - compatvel com a

responsabilidade de julgamentodeterminismo - tentando construir e justificativas morais ticos do sistema deresponsabilidadepara ver se estas a responsabilidade colocada em risco.Pode parecer bvio o princpio tico e moral justifica o sistema deresponsabilidade. Eu deveriame segurar ou outras pessoas responsveis por aquilo que eu ou eles fazemquando esto no controle de suasprprio comportamento, mas no quando eles no so . Esse princpio decontrole explica, por exemplo, por que eu souresponsvel por ignorar um mendigo, mas no quando estou empurrados para

ele, ou para o que eu fao quando eu ajo

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Livre-Arbtrio e Responsabilidade: Projecto No Cotao 9de doena mental grave. Mas, como demonstra a literatura filosfica, ocontrole


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princpio pode ser interpretado de uma grande variedade de formas e qual ainterpretao que acreditamos melhorcapta o seu recurso vai determinar se estamos ou compatibilista sob reincompatibilistasresponsabilidade.

Podemos interpretar a exigncia de controle da seguinte maneira, porexemplo. Uma pessoa no est emcontrole de seu comportamento, se a sua deciso ea ao so completamentecausados por eventos anteriores alm de suacontrole ou se sua deciso no faz parte da cadeia causal que termina em suaao. Poderamos chamaresta verso do princpio do controlo do "princpio de controle hidrulico",porque faztransferir a responsabilidade sobre a causalidade dos fluxos de energiaelctrica ou outra fora natural para, em torno ea partirnossos crebros. Uma vez que o determinismo afirma que as pessoas nunca

esto no controle dessa forma, o sistema hidrulicoprincpio de controle produz Incompatibilismo. Mas outras interpretaes doprincpio do controlode salvaguardar o compatibilismo. Poderamos adotar essa verso diferente,por exemplo: as pessoas esto emcontrole de seu prprio comportamento quando eles tm e podem exercer asduas capacidades que eu descrevi -as capacidades normais de formar crenas com base em provas e argumentos echegar a decisesque so chamados pela sua personalidade normativa. Vou chamar essa verso

do princpio do controloo "controle princpio criativo", porque pressupe que as pessoas criam suasvidas atravs de suasdecises independentemente de a melhor explicao causal dessasdecises. Ele faz o controlee, portanto, transferir a responsabilidade sobre o que est disponvel para umagente de introspeco e para os outrosatravs da interpretao de seu comportamento geral. claro que muitosoutros, diferente e maiscomplexo, as interpretaes do princpio do controle abstrato estodisponveis. Mas o meu muito longe de

amostragem abrangente da literatura sugere que historicamente maisproeminentes eincompatibilistas contempornea aceitar, como um princpio tico e moralprofundo, alguma verso doprincpio de controle hidrulico, e que o mais proeminente compatibilistas,incluindo Hobbes, Collinse Hume, assim como compatibilistas moderna, o princpio de controle criativoou algo muito


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como ele em mente.Essa reivindicao histrica no faz parte do meu argumento e no voupersegui-lo. Sugere,no entanto, que seria til para os nossos propsitos para comparar e contrastaras duas verses

princpio do controle abstrato mais. O que est a ser dito, por uma questo detica ou moralanlise, a favor e contra cada uma dessas duas concepes de que o princpioabstrato? Queproporciona uma justificao mais satisfatria para o sistema deresponsabilidade que eu descrevi? claro que ointeresse destes dois princpios no se esgota a sua influncia sobre a disputaclssica. Porque, se nsno rejeitam a idia de responsabilidade, seja porque estamos compatibilistasou porque somosotimista no compatibilistas, ento precisamos confrontar as controvrsias no

mbito da responsabilidadesistema que acabei de mencionar, e (como veremos mais adiante), que osnossos dois princpios que tomamos para justificaro sistema de responsabilidade determinante para muitas destas controvrsias.

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Livre-Arbtrio e Responsabilidade: Projecto No Cotao 10Devemos concentrar-nos agora, porm, sobre o importante e filosficagrandes diferenas

entre os dois princpios que afectam a possibilidade e carter de julgamentoresponsabilidade. Os princpios expressam diferentes concepesradicalmente do ponto do resumoexigncia de controle que todos ns aceitamos e, portanto, o ponto daresponsabilidade do sistema geral, maisque rege nossas vidas. Podemos afirmar a diferena, inicialmente, atravs deuma metfora espacial familiar.Muitos quebra-cabeas filosficos comea no fato de que ns, seresconscientes podem situar-nos emqualquer um dos dois mundos: o mundo fenomenal cada um de ns cria eevolui atravs e em suavida mental eo mundo natural que nos inclui, juntamente com a nossa vidamental, como parte dea natureza. O princpio de controle hidrulico assume a responsabilidade deser essencialmente um fato da segundamundo: um facto fixada pelo papel do resto do mundo natural para explicaro nosso comportamento.


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nesse sentido um fato natural. O princpio de controle criativo assume aresponsabilidade de ser fixado noas decises, pensamentos e capacidades que constituem o mundo fenomenal.Eu no deve sugerir, atravs dessa metfora, que temos de escolher entre osdois princpios pelos

explorando a possibilidade de dualismo metafsico ou epistemolgico, ououtras questes de no-filosofia normativa. Certamente alguns grandes enigmas filosficos levantamto profundase epistemolgicos questes metafsicas. Mas no este: ele se transforma emjulgamento tico e moralou no epistmico mistrios metafsicos. A questo no se um dos nossosdois princpiosfaz sentido filosfico - ambos fazem -, mas sim qual deles eticamenteerrado. Nspode descobrir que somente atravs da comparao de cada um deles com os

outros princpios que compem ogrande rede de valor tico e moral que apreenderam e manter a nossaconvico.No entanto, os dois princpios que refletem as atitudes contrastantes emdireo a outra filosfica centralquesto: o fundamento da dignidade humana. Nossa auto-estima comoanimais distintos parece que muitas pessoasa depender de nossa capacidade de ver a nossa vida consciente, como, dealguma forma isenta ou especiais dentroa ordem causal da natureza. Caso contrrio, eles pensam, ns somos apenas

mais do homogeneizado fsicacoisas que nos rodeia. Muitas pessoas acham que a confirmao de nossocarter excepcional na religio.Talvez Deus nos deu o livre arbtrio como um ato milagroso de graa. Ou, seEle negou, no mnimo, a nossa pr-destino no foi decretado por uma mecnica sem alma, mas por umainteligncia suprema que tinha feitons, sozinhos, Sua imagem. O desmo do Iluminismo bloqueados queescapar para a maioriafilsofos, no entanto, assim como o enorme sucesso da fsica ampliada doIluminismo

ameaa.Two sources of dignity might be thought to remain. We might find that ourdecisions are after allin some way independent of the transactions of the physical and biologicalworld. That hope isembedded in the hydraulic control principle but, located there, it is threatenedby scientific


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descoberta. Optimistic non-compatibilists struggle to defeat the threat: theyappeal to Kantianmetaphysics or various forms of dualism. Their pessimistic colleaguesabandon that road to

Pgina 11Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 11dignidade. On the other hand, however, we might think that the fact of ourconsciousness and thephenomenal world of challenge it offers the challenge of lives to lead andthousands ofunscripted decisions to make itself gives us all the dignity we need or shouldcrave. Essa aview expressed in the creative control principle. Nature may know what wewill decide but we dono. So we must struggle to choose and we can create value the adverbialvalue of living well through our choices. So far as we know, nothing else in the universe faces thatchallenge or hasthe opportunity to create such value. We might read the long existentialisttradition inphilosophy as built on that second view of our dignity: that undeniable sensein which ourexistence precedes our essence.Each of the two principles is popular, as I said, in the philosophical literature.

Each has obviousinitial strengths as an ethical or moral principle, but also has apparentweaknesses. The hydrauliccontrol principle seems, at first blush, to capture the essence of responsibility:If we really can'thelp doing something, if we have no choice but to do it, then how can we beresponsible for it?On a second look, however, many philosophers have found the principlearbitrary. How can thepresence or absence of some physical or biological or mysterious mentalprocess of which wecannot be aware, and which does not reflect or alter the intentions, motives,convictions andemotions with which we act, make any difference to moral responsibility? Thecreative controlprinciple has the initial advantage of avoiding the incoherence I described: itassures those who


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are drawn to determinism as science that individual responsibility is not acasualty of theircondenao. But it seems, on a second look, to depend on illusion.Pirandello's six charactersmight think they are responsible for what they do because they think they are

independent oftheir author and can challenge and confront him. But we know, as they cannot,that theconfrontation is itself scripted. They live under an illusion and those whoembrace the creativecontrol principle may be succumbing to the same illusion. They do not realizethat they are onlypuppets on a string.4. Hydraulic Control?Causal PresuppositionsThe hydraulic control principle supposes that our familiar assumptions about

judgmentalresponsibility embody causal assumptions that may be false. I am an adult,suppose, of normalinteligncia. I do not suffer from any mental disease and I have the ordinarycapacity to suit mydecisions to my preferences and convictions. I see a beggar on the st reet and Iwonder whether togive him something. I quickly rehearse reasons for and against. He lookshungry, I won't miss adollar or two. He'll spend it on drugs. I gave at the office. I decide against

giving; I walk past. I

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 12assume that I am judgmentally responsible for my action: it makes senseeither to blame me forstinginess or praise me for good judgment.If the hydraulic control principle is correct, however, my assumption ofresponsibility is subjectto scientific refutation. If my decision was actually determined by forces orevents that werewholly beyond my control if the combination of my genes and myenvironment made itinevitable that I would not give then my sense of responsibility, howeverunshakeable, is onlyan illusion. If my decision made no difference to my behavior if thesephysical events would


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any activity begun without or in advance of any decision by a fresh decision: Imay initiate an actof shoplifting unaware but cancel it once I become aware that I am about tosteal. Isso2

Cite Libet article.

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 13possibility, Libet believes, is enough to protect moral responsibility: I amresponsible if I do notintervene to cancel some decisions I should have cancelled.Epiphenomenalists suppose, however,that allconscious decisions, including decisions to cancel a process begununconsciously, are side-effects rather than causes. They think, for instance, that the series of physicalevents thatculminated in my typing the last word in this sentence began before I actuallydecided which wordto type assiduously. It began while I was still, or so I thought, hesitating overmy choice of words.If every conscious decision is only a side-effect, then whatever part of meforms that decision,whether we call it my will or by some other name, can hardly be in chargeof what happens.

is only the fraud of Oz, pulling levers and pluming steam to no effectwhatsoever.Determinism and epiphenomenalism may both be true: I am not competent tojudge either ofthem as scientific theories. Neither has been demonstrated, I believe, to betrue. Everything ispossvel. Every Tuesday's New York Times brings fresh surprises about braingeography, physicsand chemistry, about potent alleles on neglected chromosomes, and about theinterrelationsamong all these and our mental life. Every dinner party brings freshspeculation about the sexualreasoning of baboons, the moral lives of chimpanzees, the reptilian brainbeneath your cerebrumand the neo-Darwinian explanation of the trolley problem I discussed inChapterN. Nossagrandchildren had better be ready for anything.Interpretive Isolation


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The hydraulic control principle is popular. Is it defensible? In this section I tryto describe thereasons (many of them well canvassed in the literature) why so manyphilosophers have rejectedo princpio. I said earlier, summing up these reasons, that they find the

principle arbitrary. Aprinciple is arbitrary, or so I shall argue, because it is interpretively isolatedfrom the largerscheme of moral and ethical conviction on which it must draw for substantivesupport. Eu disse quewe could not integrate the hydraulic control principle with our other beliefs ifwe thoughtdeterminism or epiphenomenalism true, because the principle would thencontradict convictionsabout our judgmental responsibility that we cannot disbelieve. I shall now toestablish something

that should be even more worrying to defenders of the hydraulic principle:that it finds no basis inthe rest of our convictions even if we assume that determinism andepiphenomenalism are notverdadeiro.The force of that different objection is easily illustrated. For example, aprinciple somewhatdifferent from the hydraulic control principle was once popular amongincompatibilists: this heldthat people are not responsible for any particular action unless it was possible

for them to haveacted otherwise in the very circumstances in which they acted. If determinismis true, then ofcourse this is never possible. The philosopher Harry Frankfurt pointed out,however, that wewould not accept that principle if we did not already believe determinism true.Suppose A is

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 14wholly under the control of a brain manipulator, B, who is determined neverto let A apologizefor any action. If A is about to apologize, a situation B can detect infallibly,then B will interveneto prevent this. So it is true of A that when he fails to apologize, he could nothave acted in any


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contrary way. But A, as a matter of his own character, absolutely hatesapologizing for anythingand would never do so. Unless we thought determinism true, we would haveno reason to doubtthat A is judgmentally responsible for his surly behavior in spite of the fact

that he could neverhave behaved in a non-surly way. So we cannot accept the principle thathinges responsibility onalternate possibility as a general ethical or moral principle. I hope to show,partly througharguments already familiar in the work of others, that we must take the sameview of thehydraulic control principle. We have no reason to accept it as a general moralor ethicalprincpio.Epiphenomenalism and Attempt

I begin with that principle's second requirement: that our decisions be causallypotent. Suponhaepiphenomenalism in the dramatic form I described earlier is true. Everythingyou do, includingany act interrupting an act earlier begun, is initiated in your nervous andmuscular system beforeyou take the decision to do it. Your decisions, from the simplest to the mostcomplex and far-reaching, are only part of an after-the-fact documentary film playing on thescreen of your mind:

what you do causes your sense of having decided to do it, rather than the otherway around. Ahypothesis is of course amazing. But what can it have to do with judgmentalresponsibility?Responsibility is an ethical or moral matter: it attaches to final decisionswhether or not these arecausally effective. We might say: someone who decides to injure someoneelse, but whose decisionis only epiphenomenal, is guilty merely of an attempt. He is trying with all hisheart to doalgo ruim. But he fails because his decision is not the cause of what happens.

He wants to killhis rival, he decides to do so, the gun he is holding fires, the rival dies. But itwasn't he who killedhim; it was (we might say) only his programmed reptilian brain. So what? Atleast in this kind ofcase, an attempted murder is morally as bad as a successful murder.Lawyers like to invent cases like this one: A puts arsenic in B's coffee,intending to kill him, but


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just as B is about to drink, C shoots him dead. A is not guilty of murder, ofcourse, but only ofattempted murder. Nevertheless A is morally as much at fault as if he were amurderer; that is theassumption that makes the law yers' question why should A be punished less

severely than C? -difficult to answer. Lawyers discover or invent policy or proceduralreasons to explain whyattempted murder should be punished less severely than murder. We want toencourage people tochange their minds at the last moment; we can't be sure that A wouldn't havewarned B justbefore he sipped the coffee. But these reasons of policy have no applicationhere. So whyshouldn't we say that the person who tries to kill his rival and fails because hisdecision is not the

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 15cause of the rival's death but only an epiphenomenal consequence of muscularbehavior isnevertheless morally culpable? He is judgmentally responsible for havingtried.I agree that this comparison between the action of a single person and of twodistinct people is

strange. It is strange to treat a person and his reptilian brain as separate actors,the way we treatA and C in the lawyers' imagined case. But that artificial bifurcation of aperson is exactly whatthe hydraulic control principle itself relies on. We normally treat people aswhole people: thesame person who has a mind also has a brain, nerves and muscles, and aperson's acting involvesall of these. The hydraulic control principle separates mind from body,personifies part of mindas an agent called the will, and then asks whether that agent actually causesthe body it inhabits toact in a certain way, or whether it is only a fraud pulling lever s disconnectedfrom anything. If weaccept this picture, however, we must, for the purposes of moral and ethicalcriticism, hold theperson-within-the-person responsible for what he has tried to do. Kant saidthat nothing is really


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good except a good will. If we were persuaded of epiphenomenalism, wewould add that nothing isreally responsible except a purposive will.Chance and GuiltSo there is little to be said for the second requirement of the hydraulic control

principle. Agoraturn now to the first requirement. It seems an immediate objection, I said, thatit makes peoplestreatment of one another, as well as their self-criticism, deeply arbitrarybecause it makes themost basic attributions of guilt, fault or praise turn on what seems, at leastfrom any plausiblemoral or ethical perspective, a matter of pure chance. We can see this quicklythrough a fantasy.Imagine that determinism is not generally true: people often make decisionsthat are not

determined by any past external event or force, but are the consequence onlyof a wholly originalact of will with its own, albeit mysterious, causal potency. But this is only asporadic occurrence:your free will is a sometime thing. Sometimes your decisions are indeed onlythe result of pastevents and forces wholly beyond your control. But you cannot tell thedifference: you neverknow which decision is original and which was determined. You makedecisions over your life that

allseem, from your internal phenomenal perspective, free choices. Incredibleinstruments,however, can detect the difference after you act: they allow scientists todiscover which of yourdecisions were original and which not. Neither the scientists nor you,however, can identifyanything else that differs in the two cases: Nothing in your internal experienceor outwardbehavior is any different when your action is totally determined by externalforces from what it iswhen your will acted spontaneously and unaffected by anything else. So only

the fantasyinstrument can detect the difference.It seems crazy that how others treat you and how you judge yourself whether they put you injail for some illegal act, for example, or whether you burn with remorse for it should depend on


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Pgina 16

Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 16which type of event the instrument finally detects. The instrument's reading isa fluke totally

disconnected from any of what normally matters: motive, personality,intention, deliberation.The responsibility system I described makes moral and ethical sense becauseit makesresponsibility turn on qualities or factors that make some further difference topeople's lives.The properties that lead us to excuse young children and mentally ill peopleare also qualities thataffect their behavior and their lives, and our relations with them, in hundredsof other ways.People who lack the capacity to reason or properly to organize their desireslead very differentlives from those who have those capacities. People who are hypnotized orwhose brains aremanipulated by mad scientists have become subordinated to alien wills. Forall such people, theirlack of responsibility is a status not an occasional piece of cosmic whimsy.If I am right that it would be crazy to make responsibility turn on what theinstruments display inmy fantasy, then the hydraulic principle must be wrong. It makes nodifference to that objection

when we change the fantasy. I might have supposed, not that everyone'sbehavior is sometimesdetermined and sometimes not, but that some people's behavior is alwaysdetermined and otherpeople's behavior never is. It would make no ethical or moral sense to treat thetwo classesdifferently once instruments had identified their category. Since the hydrauliccontrol principlewould seem arbitrary in these various different circumstances, we cannotaccept it as a soundethical or moral principle. If the bare, brute fact of determinism cannotsupport judgments ordenials of responsibility when that fact is randomly distributed, it cannotsupport those judgmentsor denials when the fact is pervasive.Determinism and RationalityThe first requirement of the hydraulic principle seems arbitrary in a furtherway, moreover, when


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we notice that none of what we might call the ingredients of rational decisionhave theindependence from external events and forces that the principle requires forthe decision itself. Sewe are rational, our decisions are firmly grounded in our beliefs and values,

but no one supposesthat he can choose his beliefs or his values by an act of uncaused will.3On the contrary, one ofthe other forms of responsibility I described intellectual responsibility depends on our nothaving that power. The laws of physics, among other things, fix how theworld is and if we arerational those laws therefore fix how we think it is. It would be silly to thinkthat we would have3

Galen Strawson, unlike most incompatibilists, argues that since we do notchoose the beliefs and convictionsout of which we act, moral responsibility is an illusion whether or notdeterminism is true. To be trulymorally responsible for what you do you must be truly responsible for the wayyou are at least in crucialmental respects. See Galen Strawson, The Impossibility of MentalResponsibility, Philosophical Studies 75:5-24, 13. He assumes, that is, that judgmental responsibility for some decisionrequires causal responsibility

for the beliefs, desires and convictions out of which the decision is made.

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 17more judgmental responsibility for our acts if that were not so: if we hadspontaneous thoughtsabout geography, physics and cosmology, or if we could whimsically decidefor ourselves whichbeliefs on these matters would take root in our minds. If we didn't think thatsome combinationof the state of the world and the state of our nervous apparatus produced ourbeliefs, we wouldhave to count those beliefs as random visitations, and that randomness wouldprovide an excuse, areason for denying responsibility, not a reason for insisting on it.Nor do people choose their values: their tastes, preferences, convictions,allegiances and the rest


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of their normative personality. I argued in ChapterNthat our moralconvictions are not causedby moral truth: that the causal impact hypothesis is false. If it were true,however, then ourconvictions would of course then be caused by something outside us moral

fact not anoriginating will inside. If it is false, as I believe, then any competent causalexplanation of ourconvictions must lie in the personal history I described in that chapter, whichmeans that acomplete explanation would include not only facts about my genes, family,culture, andenvironment but also the causes of these: it would include the laws of physicsand chemistry andthe history of the universe. This is even more evidently true of our tastes,desires and

preferences. We cannot create these from nothing by some wondrous act ofwill. Yes, to somedegree people are able to influence their preferences and convictions. Westruggle to like caviaror sky diving, or to become better people by enrolling in churches orextension philosophycursos. But we do this only because we have other convictions or preferencesor tastes we did notescolher. People try to train themselves to like caviar or skiing because for avariety of reasons

they desire to be the kind of people who do like them, and they did not chooseto have the latterdesejo. They join churches or self-help groups to acquire or strengthenconvictions they alreadywant to have. In ChapterNI described what I called a rationality project: thisrequires people totry to work their various convictions, including their sense of authenticconviction, into acoherent and integrated whole. But these efforts at integrity respond to stilldeeper aspirationsthat we do not originate by any act of will either, and they are also sadly and

inevitablyfrustrated, at least to some degree, by what we find we just cannot believe.If in any case the psychological materials out of which my decisions emergeare inevitablydetermined by events beyond my control, why should it matter whether or notthesepsychological materials in turn make my decision inevitable? If I am rational,any seer who knew


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my beliefs, convictions, desires and tastes in the most marvelous and absolutedetail, and had anincredible computer at his disposal, could predict my decisions withmarvelous and absoluteexatido. I fire an employee. Given my beliefs about my employee's crimes,

performance andvalue to the organization, my desires for an honest and efficient organization,my convictionsabout my assignment responsibility to my clients and my other employees, mypositive taste for

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 18confrontation, and all the other features of my normative and emotionalpersonality, it wasinevitable that I would fire him. The hydraulic principle seems to insist that ifthis is really true if my decision was really inevitable it follows that I was not responsible formy act. Seriawrong for you to praise or criticize me for it or for me later to take satisfactionor feel regret inele. I would be responsible for firing my employee only if I could haveignored my own beliefs,desires and convictions and acted contrary to what these required. This seemsparadoxical. Em

these circumstances it would have been irrational for me not to fire thisemployee, and you wouldnot think I was judgmentally responsible had I not fired him. On the contrary,you would look forsome external pressure or mental instability that prevented me from acting asrationality wouldexigir. There seems the makings of a dilemma here. If someone is in fullcontrol of his action,then he is the kind of person whose behavior is entirely predictable givenabsolutely fullknowledge of the beliefs and values he did not choose. If his behavior is notpredictable, giventhat knowledge, then he is not in control. Only something alien, like a disease,can then accountfor his behavior. So the hydraulic control principle seems to make someoneresponsible onlywhen he is not responsible.


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We can dissolve this dilemma only through some strategy like this one: wesay that judgmentalresponsibility, according to the hydraulic principle, requires not that peopleever do actirrationally, in defiance of all their values, tastes and preferences, but that

events beyond theircontrol do not determine that they will notact irrationally. But the lattercondition seems itselfirracionais. The hydraulic principle is offered, remember, as an interpretationof the more abstractprinciple that people are liable to praise or blame only when they are incontrol of their owncomportamento. Someone who acts irrationally is not in control, and ittherefore seems perverse toinsist that someone is not in control unless he has the power to lose control.We might as well

say that a society isn't free if it holds agreements to sell oneself into slaverynull and void.Psychological and metaphysical impossibilitySuppose determinism is generally false. People's decisions generally are theresult of an exerciseof will that is not made inevitable by past events beyond their control. But thefamiliarphenomenon of psychological impossibili ty nevertheless holds for somepeople. Martin Lutherspeaks psychological truth when he declares that he can do no other than

declare his new faithbefore the world; Mother Teresa is incapable of a selfish thought or action;Stalin is incapable ofa generous or noble thought. Commentators sometimes say that people haveput themselves inthat situation by prior deliberate decisions: Mother Teresa may have squashedany selfish thoughtshe had until she no longer had any. But that is not necessarily (or, I thi nk,even usually) so.Someone who was born into and grew up in a rigid military environment maynever have been

capable of shirking disagreeable or dangerous duty; someone born into afundamentalist religious

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 19


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family or into a resentful and mistreated minority may never have beencapable of acts that seemnatural to others. We say that these people's character make it psychologicallyimpossible forthem to act, in certain instances, other than as they do.

If we are tempted by the hydraulic principle we must decide whether this kindof psychologicalimpossibility negates judgmental responsibility, so that though we may blameordinary politicalleaders for their infrequent acts of cruelty or tyranny, it would be wrong toblame anyone sodouble-dyed in evil as Stalin, and though it would be right to praise generallyselfish people fortheir occasional acts of generosity it would be wrong ever to praise anyone soinstinctively goodas Mother Teresa. Those distinctions seem implausible.

4But if we therefore decide thatpsychological impossibility doesn't count, so that we can praise or condemnStalin and MotherTeresa as we do everyone else, then the hydraulic principle seems arbitrary ina different way. Nsmust be distinguishing between psychological and some other kind ofinevitability call itmetaphysical. We must think that someone's will can be the uncaused cause ofhis actions in spite

of the fact that his character, formed by events wholly beyond his control,makes it in factimpossible for him to act other than as he does act. But that offers anotherdilemma. Seinevitability is what defeats the ethically important kind of control, then thesource of theinevitability shouldn't matter. If inevitability does not in itself defeat theimportant kind ofcontrol, then why does metaphysical inevitability jeopardize responsibility?The Responsibility SystemThe popular responsibility system I described makes exceptions to judgmental

responsibility. Nsare not responsible when someone physically forces our body or manipulatesour mind throughhypnosis or chemical or electrical intervention. That is understandable; theseare not our acts.But we are also not responsible when we are small children or seriouslymentally ill. It might seem


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an important strength of the hydraulic control principle that it identifies andjustifies all theseexcees. Indeed the familiar pessimistic argument that I described at theoutset begins withthat claim. Pessimistic non-compatibilists argue that if we accept that mentally

ill criminalsshould be excused because they are not responsible, we must for that reasonaccept that no one isever responsible because everyone is actually in the same position. Peop lewho are mentally illare not in control of their behavior, but neither are people whose actions arecaused entirely byevents beyond their control.4Susan Wolf argues, in effect, that Mother Teresa is free and responsiblebecause she does what is right for the

right reasons but Stalin is not free or responsible because he does not. I findher distinction unpersuasive but, inany case, she is not arguing from anything like the hydraulic control principle.

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 20The structure of that familiar argument is important. It is addressed to peoplewho think thatthey and other people are normally responsible for what they do, but who also

assume thatchildren and the mentally ill, among other people, are not responsible. It aimsto show them thatthey already accept the hydraulic control principle. You assume, it tellsthem, that there arecrucial differences between your normal situation and that of children and thementally ill. Ahydraulic control principle captures what you must take the crucial differenceto be. Voc acha quethat in the exceptional cases people's decisions are caused by events beyondtheir control, whilein the normal cases people's acts of will, as uncaused causes, initiate thecausal chain that ends inaco. We now show you, by demonstrating the truth of determinism, thatpeople's decisions arenever original in that way but are always the product of events wholly beyondtheir control. The


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strategy assumes that the distinction ordinary people see between normal andexceptional cases isbest explained as a difference in causal roles: decisions in exceptional casesbut not in normalcases are determined by events beyond the agent's control. But the strategy

fails because thatcannot be what ordinary people think. They do assume that they areresponsible for theirdecisions, and that young children and the mentally ill are not. But thehydraulic control principlecannot be, for them, what justifies that distinction.Consider, first, young children. Senior citizens make decisions that give effectto their beliefs,desires and preferences. We have no reason to think that young children, whocertainly do makedecisions, make them in any other way. We therefore have no basis for

ascribing a differentinternal agency or hydraulics of decision to them. I imagined, a page or soago, that the hydraulicprinciple might be thought to require a capacity for irrationality as a conditionof responsibility.Few parents would deny that capacity to their young children. Whatever viewwe take about thefreedom of an adult will must therefore hold for a young child as well. But ofcourse there is adifference: it is the difference that the other interpretation of the original

control principle, thecreative control principle, picks out. Young children have a defectivecapacity, judged by normaladult standards, to form correct beliefs about what the world is like, and henceabout theconsequence, prudence and morality of their having what they wa nt and doingwhat they want tofazer. They are often ignorant of the nature and quality of their acts. It isthese incapacities, notany assumption about the causal pedigree of their decisions, that strikespeople as requiring that

children be relieved of some or all judgmental responsibility.Now consider someone suffering from a serious mental disease: he thinkshimself Napoleon orGod and he also thinks that his status as such entitles or even requires him tokill and steal. Elelacks the normal capacity to form beliefs that are guided by facts and logic.He is crazy and the


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familiar responsibility system holds him exempt from judgmentalresponsibility for that reason.But there is no reason to suppose that his decisions have either less or moreinitiating power than

Pgina 21Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 21they would have had if he were not crazy. Like normal people, he acts in away that is fullypredictable given a full knowledge of his beliefs and normative personality.We ordinary peoplehave no reason to think that a crazy person's decisions have any less causalindependence ororiginality than their own. True, we might find it natural to say that his diseasehas made him kill,which might suggest something special about the causal pedigree of hisdecisions. But that is onlya figure of speech. Taken literally it is absurd; the disease, un-personified, isnot capable of thatkind of action. We speak more accurately when we say that the disease hasdistorted its victimsjulgamento. But then, once again, we are invoking the creative not thehydraulic control principleto justify the exception.Now consider a different form of mental disease: someone who though he has

normal powers toform true beliefs, and though he is committed to unexceptional moral, ethicaland prudentialconvictions, is nevertheless unable to square his actual decisions with thoseconvictions. Instnciasrange from psychopaths the killer who begs society to catch and stop himbefore he kills again to the physiological or psychological addict the smoker or shooter oralcoholic or compulsivehand-washer who is desperate to stop but cannot. I distinguish theseunfortunate people frompeople who have been hypnotized into behavior they w ould reject or whoseminds aremanipulated by a villain with a thought-control ray gun. I do not know what itfeels like to behypnotized, and no one knows what it feels like to have his thoughts zappedinto being. Vou


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assume, however, that people in these latter cases do not make what I calledfinal decisions: real,felt decisions that merge into the actions the decisions contemplate. Theirbehavior is like acough or other production of their autonomic nervous system. They do not act

and so theirbehavior raises no question of judgmental responsibility. (If I am wrong, thentheir cases raise thesame problem as those of the ill people I do discuss.) I do suppose, however,that psychopathsand addicts make final decisions: to kill or to light or shoot up. S o we cansensibly ask whether itwould make sense for ordinary people, who think that they themselves havejudgmentalresponsibility for their acts, to excuse psychopaths or addicts from suchresponsibility because of

some perceived difference in the etiology of their own and the latter'sdecisions.We ordinary people, who believe that we are responsible for what we do butthat psychopaths andaddicts are not, concede that we ourselves are sometimes unable to overcometemptations ofvarious sorts: we sometimes decide to do what our reflective values condemnas imprudent orerrado. We might or might not deliberate much; we might or might notstruggle. But temptation

wins: we say: Just this once, or, The hell with it, and we order anothersteak pommes frites.We do not think that on these occasions we have been hypnotized or zapped;we do not thinkour wills have been robbed of their ordinary originating power. We think, onthe contrary, thatour wills are to blame: we say we have been weak-willed and we resolve notto sin again. Contamos

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 22the occasion as showing not a conquest of our minds by some alien force but afailure of ourmind's ordinary capacity to organize and direct our reflective convictions.We can find no reason, in this account of our own lapses, to think that anaddict's situation is an


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entirely different matter rather than only a difference in degree. We have nobasis for supposingthat some alien force has usurped the role of the addict's will either. We maysay that since heyields even though at some level he knows that the result will be disastrous,

he is very muchweaker than we are. He is in fact incapable, we might say, of controlling hisimmediate impulses;perhaps, in the moment of acting, he is even incapable of understanding hisperil. But then we arenot assuming that something about the causal history of mental eventsdistinguishes his case fromo nosso. We count the difference between us and him as one of capability andtherefore of degree.That latter explanation does not invoke the hydraulic control principle; itmakes no assumption,

either way, about determinism or epiphenomenalism.ResumoThe hydraulic control principle is popular among philosophers as aninterpretation of the morebasic idea that people are not judgmentally responsible for their acts whenthey are not in controlof what they do. But that interpretation is an ethical and a moral judgment, itmust be assessed assuch, and it finds no support in those departments of value. It is contradictedby familiar

principles and assumptions: that people are responsible when they attemptharm, even when theattempt is unsuccessful, for example. It seems arbitrary because when weimagine that the testmight be met in some ordinary circumstances but not in others, the differenceit makes in thosecircumstances seems wholly inconsequential. It seems pointless since theingredients of decision desires, tastes, convictions and the rest are in any case not chosen or underan agent's control,so that independence from external causes could only mean freedom to be

irrational. Pareceimplausible because it cannot successfully explain why people of either verygood or very badcharacter, who find it impossible to act badly or well, are neverthelessresponsible. Pareceunhelpful because it fails to explain why people who believe they normallyhave judgmental


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responsibility nevertheless suppose that they and others lack thatresponsibility in exceptionalcircunstncias. Many of these arguments are re-workings, from the ethicalperspective, ofobjections familiar in other forms. Taken together they demonstrate the

interpretive isolationand therefore the weakness of the hydraulic control principle understood aseither an ethical or amoral principle. We now turn to the second interpretation of the abstractcontrol principle that Idistinguidos.

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 235. Creative Control?The creative control principle is much less ambitious and much more a matterof common sensethan the hydraulic control principle. Someone is in creative control of hisaction when at thetime of acting he has the two capacities I mentioned in my initial descriptionof theresponsibility system. He must have a minimal capacity to form pertinentbeliefs about the worldin which he acts, beliefs that respond to genuine evidence. He must also havea minimal capacity

to match his decisions to his full normative personality the full set of whathe identifies as insome way good or desirable or appropriate for him to have or do. People infact have these twocapacities to very different degrees. A brilliant scientist is much better atforming true beliefsabout the physical world than I am, and someone less impulsive is better atconforming hisdecisions to what he actually thinks good to have or do. The principlesupposes a threshold levelof these capacities, and much of the controversy among lawyers and laymenabout when it isproper to hold people responsible for their behavior is controversy aboutwhere the thresholdshould be set. I shall take as my initial examples of failed creative controlthose instances inwhich the failure is egregious and undeniable. An idiot cannot form a largeenough stock of stable


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true beliefs about the world to make his life safe let alone profitable; he lacksthe minimum levelof the first capacity. Someone with serious frontal lobe brain injury may bewholly unable toavoid aggressive and violent behavior even though nothing he thinks or wants

or approvesrecommends that behavior. The creative control principle holds that the idiotand the victim ofserious brain damage are not judgmentally responsible for the decisions thatmanifest theseincapacidades.I said, earlier, that the creative control principle locates responsibility withinthe phenomenalmundo. It takes responsibility to depend on what is present to people as theyact and to othersinterpreting their behavior. We can compare our position, if determinism is

true, to a moresophisticated version of Pirandello's characters than I used earlier. They knowthey are scripted:they cannot act but as he has decided they act. But they also know that theymust live incomplete ignorance of the script: it is written but not published. So they do thebest they can:they weigh reasons and praise or blame themselves and each other accordingto their judgment ofwhat the best reasons are and require. In that way they create lives even

though these lives, in adifferent sense, have already been created.Two questions arise. First, if we ourselves are in that position, why does itmatter what, in thatsense, we create? What is the point of judgmental responsibility in thosecircumstances? Em segundo lugar,if that is our position, are we not simply the victims of illusion? Aren't weonly posturing pretending to some causal independence that we know we don't have, pullingwool over our ownolhos? I put the questions in that order because we cannot confront the

suggestion that creative

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 24control is an illusion until we have a better idea of what we should take thepoint of creative


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control to be.Why Responsibility?The creative control principle offers to justify the central features of theresponsibility system Idescribed: it explains why people normally have judgmental responsibility for

the decisions theymake and also why, in the exceptional cases I described, they do not. But weneed to justify theprinciple itself. Why, if it does it not matter whether our decisions are madeinevitable by eventslong ago, is it nevertheless crucial whether we now have the capacities Idescribed? If a decision isinevitable anyway, why should it matter what capacities were exhibited whenthe decision wasfinally made?Once again, as throughout this book, we must distinguish that question of

justification fromdifferent questions of explanation. I believe that the creative control principleor something verylike it is and always has been very widely accepted. If so, what explains thatpopularity andpersistence, even among people who are sophisticated about science? That is aquestion ofpsychological, social and perhaps biological explanation: neo -Darwinianswould no doubt have ananswer to it on hand, or could easily manufacture one. Our question, however,

is one ofjustification not historical explanation.We cannot rule out in advance a consequentialist justification that bringsexplanation andjustification closer together. A utilitarian might suppose, for example, that thewidespreadacceptance of the creative control principle contributes to the general welfareand is justified forthat reason. The consequentialist case for the creative control principle is atleast more plausiblethan any consequentialist case could be for the hydraulic control principle. It

is fatal to thesupposed utility of the latter principle that no one can apply it, either tohimself in retrospect orto others, without knowledge of mind-body interaction that is in principleunavailable. Acreative control principle on the contrary could readily be applied, at least inalmost all cases,


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si mesmo.5Living well means identifying, even if inarticulately, standards of success andthen creating a lifethat is structured by those standards. It means making of a life not just a

chronology but anarrative woven around values of desire, ambition, character, taste, loyaltiesand ideals. No onecreates a narrative of perfect integrity: we all act out of character, as we put it,sometimes. Muitospeople's lives, judged as narratives, are picaresque or even shambles. Hubbard's one damnedthing after another or Millay's one damn thing over and over. But just forthat reason thoselives are not lived well, no matter how full of worldly success they turn out tobe, unless they are

redeemed by a new, late-in-life integrating interpretation or by conversion to anew integrity.We construct our personal narratives through what I called final decisions:those final decisionsthat are merged into and that we cannot pry loose from our actions. I havealready emphasizedthat we cannot not make such decisions. We cannot test determinism orepiphenomenalism bywaiting to see whether our nerves and muscles will act on their own withoutthe mental

component of that final decision. It is those final decisions that are the rawmaterials out of5The distinction between having a good life and living well is important inmany areas of ethics and morality.For example, it allows us easily to account for the familiar and largelyunrelated phenomenon now often calledmoral luck. (See Nagel and Williams.) People often and sensibly feel greatpersonal remorse for terrible eventsin their lives for which they have no fault. The school-bus driver who drivesimpeccably but crashes

nevertheless, killing many of the children in his care, may believe that his lifehas been ruined by the tragedy.He regrets the children's deaths, as anyone would, but also and independentlyregrets that it was he who drovethe bus that killed them. He has indeed, as he knows, had a worse life inconsequence. But he has not lived hislife less well: he should not have the different kind of corroding despair thatsomeone feels who acknowledges


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his fault for a tragedy. Someone who has done great harm while seriouslymentally ill is in the same position.His life has been ruined by his illness, but it would be wrong to say that inconsequence he has lived that lifebadly .

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 26which we construct our life's narrative. It would make no sense for me todeny, as I write aparagraph or end a love affair, that this is my act or that it should count in myown or otherpeople's judgment about my successes or failures. I can make no other senseof my life going wellor badly except to suppose that this is a matter of what I have decided todo. Tomarresponsibility for a decision is just to accept that it counts; if I am aware that Iam leading a life Icannot act without supposing that each final decision does count. Others, and Imyself later, mayjudge that some particular decision does not after all count, that I should notbe held responsiblefor something I have done. But once I am conscious of leading a life, I cannotthink this as I act.Almost all of these final decisions those we think trivial are made

unreflectively, of course.But even these are assessable in retrospect if they turn out to beconsequential. Issoretrospective assessment of all our consequential decisions will ask: have wedecided as well as weshould? How have we stood up, in the only way we can stand up, to ourmortality?However, we can exempt certain decisions from counting in any overallethical assessment if wethink we have reason to do this; we can do it for other people as they act andfor ourselves inretrospecto. We may ask: does every decision we have made count, even inretrospect, in judgingwhat narrative our life exhibits? The decisions we made while children?While ill or underextreme pressure of some sort? A theory of responsibility must be seen as aresponse to these


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perguntas. It offers a screening filter and we must judge it as a theory ofresponsibility, at least inthe first instance, by asking how well it performs in that role. We must designour filter with aneye to the overall ethical project and to the human situation as we understand

it. We must notexclude so much that we have made the project of living well either pointlessor impossible. Nscannot, for example, exclude all those decisions we take guided byconvictions or desires we didnot choose. The very possibility of living a life requires that we acceptresponsibility for ourcharacter and convictions even though we did not choose them. In much ofthis book I haveargued that we live well only if our decisions seek some integrity in anormative personality. Mas

we are responsible for our personality even though we did not choose it. It isnot any metaphysicsof freedom that justifies that distinct responsibility but an imperative. Givenour situation, wemust accept that responsibility as part of the more basic responsibility to livewell.So we cannot adopt that dramatically forgiving filter; we cannot screen outeverything we havedone as not counting in assessing how well we have lived. We can, however,adopt a much less

generous filter. We often distinguish, in various contexts, between someone'sdoing a job badlyand his not being able to do that job at all. We do not hold a blind personaccountable for hisreading deficiency. The creative control principle offers a similar distinctionat the most abstractnvel. It requires that we count, in assessing how well we or someone else haslived, only those

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 27decisions that we or he has made when he had threshold levels of thecapacities stipulated in thecreative control principle.Dogs, we believe, can have good or bad lives: they suffer pain and are oftenmistreated. Nem todos os


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dog has a dog's life: some have lives that other dogs might envy. But dogscannot live well ormal. People normally can, because they normally have the two capacities theprinciple cites.Creating a life requires reacting to the environment in which that life is lived;

a person cannotsensibly be treated, or in retrospect treat himself, as creating a life unless hecan form beliefsabout the world that are largely responsive to how the world is. An idiot orsomeone who thinkshe is Napoleon or that pigs can fly lacks that minimal ability. Philosopherssometimes imaginethat they are only disembodied brains in a nutrient vat, pervasively deceivedby a masterintelligence into thinking that they are embodied organisms living on planetEarth. If that is true,

then they are not leading lives. If we assume, as we all must, that we are notbrains in a vat, thenalmost all of us have the epistemic capacity we need for most of our lives. Butfrom time to timesome of us lack or lose that normal ability in one way of another, and then ourresponsibility forwhat we do is called into question.The second capacity the creative control principle requires is regulative.Someone cannot lead alife if he is not capable of forming a normative personality a stable system

of desires,preferences, tastes, convictions, attachments, loyalties, ideals and the rest and making decisionsthat exhibit that personality. Of course, as I said, everyone acts out ofcharacter from time totime seized by a whim or impulse, perhaps. And people's normativepersonalities change overtime, sometimes dramatically. A sybarite may turn into an ascetic or thoughthis is rarer theother way around. But if someone's behavior cannot be interpreted by himselfor others, even

from time to time, as revealing any particular personality, any coherentordering of tastes,desires, ambitions or convictions, any ground for ascribing selfishness orselflessness, industry orlaziness or anything else except randomness to the decisions that make up thecourse of his life,then he is just enduring a life not creating one. His life may be a bad one or,perhaps, a good


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decisions and what I did when I lacked that capacity. I t ake responsibility onlyfor the former.For the same reason, the creative control principle requires me also todisregard, in retrospect,what I have done when suffering from serious cognitive impairment or mental

disease. Estesconditions diminish or destroy the capacities on which judgmentalresponsibility depends. Abeginning infant does not make decisions at all; a very young child does, buthe does not have thecognitive or critical ability needed to match his decisions to any self -consciously recognizedambitions or desires. Mental illness may savage either or both of thejudgmental capacities inanyone; indeed serious loss of either might be a defining condition of mentaldisease. A histria

of the insanity defense debate that I shall briefly describe later in this chaptershows a pendulumswing between a strict doctrine that emphasizes loss of epistemic capacity anda more generousdoctrine that also makes regulative capacity critical.The creative control principle functions, of course, as a moral as well as anethical principle. Emthat different role it plays no direct part in anyone's judgment of how well heor anyone else hasled his life. Instead it serves, among other purposes, as a threshold condition

for blame andsanction. We must therefore ask what justification we have for exporting theprinciple from theethical to the moral arena in that way.6It is a central demand of self-respect, I said in ChapterN,that we must not only take personal responsibility for making something ofour own lives butmust also treat the principle that requires this as an objective principle ofvalue. Isso significa querecognizing and respecting the same responsibility in others. That requirement

cannot be met 6I must take care, here as elsewhere, to guard against being understood to meanthat the moral use of theresponsibility system is subordinate to or dependant on its ethical role. I haveemphasized the ethical role of thecreative control principle because I believe it is easier to see its importancefrom the first person perspective. Mas


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any interpretive argument for the truth of the principle in ethics depends on itsmaking independent sense inmorality as well. The history of the criminal law across civilized nationsseems to me to demonstrate that itdoes; I amplify that statement briefly at the end of this chapter.

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 29we cannot be treating the principle of personal responsibility as havingobjective standing unless we understand personal responsibility to have the same character anddimension foreveryone the same character and dimension in morality, that is, as it has inethics. Suppose Irely on the creative control principle in criticizing myself: in deciding whetherit is appropriateto feel shame or guilt or only deep regret for some decision I wish I had nottaken. I hold myselfresponsible unless I am satisfied that I lacked some capacity essential tocreative control when Itook that decision. What justification could I then have for using a different stricter or morelenient standard for judging the guilt of someone else? For deciding whetherit is appropriate,other conditions being met, to punish him in some way, or appropriate only to

sympathize withele? That would mean my judging and treating him as I think he ought not tojudge and treatsi mesmo. It would be an act of disrespect to him. Since it would deny that theprinciple of personalresponsibility is an objective one, it would also be a failure of self-respect.We have already met a dramatic form of that incoherence. Somecriminologists say that sincescience has shown that no one has free will it would be wrong to punishanyone for anything. Nsshould treat those we now style criminals medically rather than criminally,hoping to reprogramrather than to punish them. This judgment supposes that we haveresponsibility that otherpeople lack, that we can judge ourselves to act unfairly and therefore wronglywhile we can onlyjudge everyone else to act dangerously or inconveniently. Most people have astrong negative


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reaction to the proposal that outlaws should be treated medically rather thanpunished criminally.They think that this would de-humanize outlaws. They sense, I believe, thatthis proposal failsthe sovereign requirement that we treat responsibility in others as we cannot

help but treatresponsibility in ourselves.Delusion?The creative control principle easily passes the test that the hydraulic controlprinciple fails: theformer principle, unlike the latter, finds ample support among our other moraland ethicalconvictions. It serves as the foundation for the root ethical enterprise ofcreating value throughnossas vidas. It also fits the structure of morality that flows from and into thatenterprise.

purports to insulate responsibility from the scientific threats we have beenconsidering. It makesresponsibility turn, not on the hydraulic causes or consequences of a decision,but on the drama ofdecision itself. It treats the struggle of decision as the proper theatre ofresponsibility but makesno assumptions about how the stage on which the drama unfolds came to bearranged. Claro,in judging the merits or demerits of our final decisions, we and others paygreat attention to the

consequences that we foresee, or ought to foresee, of acting as we decide toact. Mas issoattention presupposes no causal efficacy. It presupposes only what logicianscall materialimplication. If I decide to pull the trigger, someone will die through an actionof mine; if I do not

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Free Will and Responsibility: Draft Not for Quotation 30he will not. I can know the truth of those conditionals from my experiencewithout making anyassumption about the hydraulic force of my decision on the muscles that pullmy trigger fingerde volta. The conditionals are consistent, that is, with epiphenomenalism, eventhough they are alsoconsistent, of course, with denying epiphenomenalism.


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The creative principle does make exceptions for what it treats as pathologicalcases: it conditionsresponsibility on the capacities of the agent. But again these are not causalconditions. Aprinciple makes capacities crucial to responsibility not because normal people

have wills that arein charge while a child or an idiot or a madman does not, but because it setsconditions onresponsibility with an eye to the overall ethical judgment whether an agent hascreated value ordisvalue in his life by the way he has lived it. It declares that that overallassignmentresponsibility is in play only when a person is capable of pursuing theassignment. A toddler oridiot or madman makes decisions and presumably makes them with somesense of responsibility

para eles. But he should reject judgmental responsibility for those decisionslater, when he growsor if he recovers, and the rest of us should reject them now. We think andthe toddler, at least,will later come to think that it would be right not to count those decisions indeciding how wellhe has lived. So the creative control principle makes the familiar responsibilitysystemcompatible with determinism and epiphenomenalism. If we accept thatprinciple as the ethical

basis for our responsibility system, we can await the latest exhilaratingdiscoveries about thegeography and electro-dynamics of our brains with boundless curiosity butwith no terror.Is this complacency based only on delusion? I said, when I described how itfeels to make adecision, that we feel as we ponder that we could decide either way. But thatfeeling is sufficientlyvindicated by the interpretation that Hobbes, Hume and many othercompatibilists suggest: wefeel that we can decide as we finally think best. Determinism does not

contradict that sense: itclaims rather that what we finally think best has already been determined,though in a way thatdenies us all access to the content of the determination. No doubt many peoplebelieve thatdeterminism and epiphenomenalism are both wrong: in fact absurd. Theybelieve that it has not


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already been decided what they will think best; that this is a matter of theirspontaneousmanufacture here and now. But whether that further th

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