Different forms of causation in dynamical systems: Determinism,pattern generation,and information

The standpoint that three fundamentally inequivalent classes of system behavior exist, which deserve separate tools for their characterization, is developed. These classes are: determinism, pattern generation, and information. A simple explanation for the origin of these classes is given. The three classes are shown to correspond to the different possible ways in which the properties of the components of a system unfold in the course of the system's processes. Determinism will be defined as a form of causation in which the properties causing the behavior are factually the same as the ones which for the observer specify the current conditions of the system. As a consequence, deterministic systems can be characterized by state equations that describe how the observable properties change. Pattern generation is characterized here as a form of causation in which the observable properties and the behavior‐generating properties correspond to each other as one to the many. Consequently, we experience in terms of the observable properties a branching behavior which is characterized by a pattern of selections at the branching points, a pattern that stands in close correspondence with the visually perceivable patterns and forms, generated by the system's dynamics. Information will be understood as a name for a process and an instance of causation where properties that cause behavior differ from those which we directly observe. The behavior of the system appears to be a consequence of the content of information hidden in the components. This information is, in turn, epistemologically equivalent to the very causal process in which it is unfolded.     

Control,responsibility, and moral assessment

Recently, a number of philosophers have begun to question the commonly held view that choice or voluntary control is a precondition of moral responsibility. According to these philosophers, what really matters in determining a person’s responsibility for some thing is whether that thing can be seen as indicative or expressive of her judgments, values, or normative commitments. Such accounts might therefore be understood as updated versions of what Susan Wolf has called “real self views,” insofar as they attempt to ground an agent’s responsibility for her actions and attitudes in the fact (when it is a fact) that they express who she is as a moral agent. As such, they seem to be open to some of the same objections Wolf originally raised to such accounts, and in particular to the objection that they cannot license the sorts of robust moral assessments involved in our current practices of moral responsibility. My aim in this paper is to try to respond to this challenge, by clarifying the kind of robust moral assessments I take to be licensed by (at least some) non-volitional accounts of responsibility and by explaining why these assessments do not in general require the agent to have voluntary control over everything for which she is held responsible. I also argue that the limited applicability of the distinction between “bad agents” and “blameworthy agents” on these accounts is in fact a mark in their favor.

Insensitivity and moral responsibility

I am grateful to Marcia Baron, Dorothy Leland, Rod Bertolet, Laurence Thomas, Patricia Curd, Lilly Russow and Marilyn Friedman for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Human moral responsibility is moral responsibility enough: A reply to F. Allan Hanson

Hanson claims that moral responsibility should be distributed among both the humans and artifacts comprising complex wholes that produce morally relevant outcomes in the world. I argue that this claim is not sufficiently supported. In particular, adopting a consequentialist understanding of morality does not by itself support the view that the existence of a causally necessary object in such a complex whole is sufficient for assigning moral responsibility to that object. Moreover, there are good reasons, both evolutionary and contemporary, for not adopting this stance.     

Reasonable expectations,moral responsibility,and empirical data

Philosophical Studies - Many philosophers think that a necessary condition on moral blameworthiness is that the wrongdoer can reasonably be expected to avoid the action for which she is blamed....     

Phenomenal consciousness,collective mentality,and collective moral responsibility

Are corporations and other complex groups ever morally responsible in ways that do not reduce to the moral responsibility of their members? Christian List, Phillip Pettit, Kendy Hess, and David Copp have recently defended the idea that they can be. For them, complex groups (sometimes called collectives) can be irreducibly morally responsible because they satisfy the conditions for morally responsible agency; and this view is made more plausible by the claim (made by Theiner) that collectives can have minds. In this paper I give a new argument that they are wrong. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of mind (what Uriah Kriegel calls “the phenomenal intentionality research program”) and moral theory (David Shoemaker’s tripartite theory of moral responsibility), I argue that for something to have a mind, it must be phenomenally conscious, and that the fact that collectives lack phenomenal consciousness implies that they are incapable of accountability, an important form of moral responsibility.