Justification,Attachments and Regret

Abstract: In The View From Here, Jay Wallace emphasises that an agent's capacity to regret a past decision is conditioned by the attachments that she may have developed as a result. Those attachments shape the point of view from which she retrospectively deliberates. Wallace stresses, however, that not every normative aspect of her decision is affected by this change in perspective, because her decision will remain as unjustified as it was in the past. I will argue, however, that this approach to justification is inconsistent with the normative import that Wallace ascribes to the actual dynamics of our attachments in his defence of the rationale of regret. If I am right, Wallace's approach is caught in the following dilemma: Either he renounces a nonperspectival approach to justification or he revises his view about the normative import of the actual dynamics of our attachments.     

On Regretting Things I Didn't Do and Couldn't Have Done

One of the lines of investigation opened up by Wallace in The View from Here concerns the notion of regret: what it is, what it is rationally constrained by, and what are the proper objects of regret. A distinctive feature of Wallace's view is that regret is an intention‐like state, which, whilst backward‐looking, is bound up with our future directed practices of value. In this commentary, I set out Wallace's claims on regret, its rational constraints, and its objects, and raise some worries about Wallace's position on each of these three issues.     

Policy Externalism

I develop and argue for a kind of externalism about certain kinds of non‐doxastic attitudes that I call policy externalism. Policy externalism about a given type of attitude is the view that all the reasonable policies for having attitudes of that type will not involve the agent's beliefs that some relevant conditions obtain. My defense primarily involves attitudes like hatred, regret, and admiration, and has two parts: a direct deductive argument and an indirect linguistic argument, an inference to the best explanation of some strange ways we use certain conditionals. The main thought throughout is that attitudes we reason with, like belief, are very different from attitudes we don't reason with, in a way that constrains the former but not the latter. Finally, I investigate some consequences of policy externalism, including that it secures the possibility of genuine conditional apologies.     

The ‘Constitutive Thought’ of Regret

In this paper I defend and develop Bernard Williams’ claim that the ‘constitutive thought’ of regret is ‘something like “how much better if it had been otherwise”’. An introductory section on cognitivist theories of emotion is followed by a detailed investigation of the concept of ‘agent-regret’ and of the ways in which the ‘constitutive thought’ might be articulated in different situations in which agents acknowledge casual responsibility for bringing about undesirable outcomes. Among problematic cases discussed are those in which agents have caused harm through no fault of their own, or have been constrained to choose the lesser of two evils or to act against their moral values. R. Jay Wallace’s ‘bourgeois predicament’ and related cases, in which we recognize that our present advantages have flowed from regrettable antecedents, further show that regret is often not a simple emotion, and it is argued that conflicted regrets are sometimes unavoidable. Finally, the paper looks at Descartes’ account of regret as a form of sadness engendered by the recollection of irrecoverable happy experiences, to which the ‘constitutive thought’ does not readily apply. It is suggested that what Descartes is discussing is a different genre of emotion for which ‘nostalgia’ might be a better name.     

Randomness,Contingency, and Faith: Is there a Science of Subjectivity?

Materialists argue that there is no place for God in the universe. Chance and contingency are all that structure our world. However, the materialists’ dismissal of subjectivity manifests a flawed metaphysics that invalidates their arguments against God. In this essay I explore the following: (1) How does personal metaphysics affect one's ability to do science? (2) Are the materialist arguments about contingency used to dismiss the importance of our place in the universe valid? (3) What are the implications of subjectivity on belief and science? To answer the first question, I examine the later years of Sir Alfred Russel Wallace, one of the cofounders of evolution through natural selection with Darwin. His belief in nineteenth–century spiritualism profoundly affected his standing in the scientific community. I describe the effect of spiritualism on Wallace's science. To answer the second question, I use my own work in mathematical modeling of evolutionary processes to show that randomness, and contingency at one level, can actually be nearly deterministic at another. I demonstrate how arguments about chance and contingency do not imply anything relevant about whether there is a designer behind the universe. To answer the third question I begin by exploring a paradox of consciousness and show how the existence of subjective truths may provide a paradigm for sustaining a rational belief in God. These questions form the framework of a structured belief in a creator while yet embracing what science has to offer about the development of life on our planet.     

On being and holding responsible

In his Responsibility and the moral sentiments, Wallace develops the idea that we should think of what it is to be morally responsible for an act in terms of norms for holding someone responsible for that act. Smith has recently claimed that Wallace's approach and those like it are ‘fundamentally misguided’. She says that such approaches make the mistake of incorporating conditions for ‘actively blaming’ others into the basic conditions for being responsible, when in fact the conditions for active blame ‘go beyond’ the basic conditions. In this essay, I argue that Smith's otherwise illuminating discussion of these ‘Normativist’ approaches does not undermine them. Specifically, I maintain that being actively blamable by certain persons with the relevant standing is actually constitutive of being responsible for at least some acts. By distinguishing between persons with different sorts of standing, a Normativist approach can avoid Smith's challenge. My larger aim is thus to clarify and defend the Normativist approach.     

Responsibility and Planning

We are planning agents and we are, or so we suppose, responsible agents. How are these two distinctive aspects of our agency related? In his "Freedom and Resentment" Peter Strawson understands responsible agency in terms of "reactive attitudes" like resentment and gratitude, attitudes which are normally embedded in "ordinary inter-personal relationships." I draw on Strawson's account to sketch an answer to my question about responsibility and planning. First, the fact that an action is plan-embedded can influence the agent's degree of culpability for that action; for such embeddings can constitute or indicate important facts about the quality of the agent's will. Second, general planning incapacities can to some extent exempt an agent from normal judgments of responsibility. My argument for this second claim appeals to the normal roles of planning in "ordinary inter-personal relationships."     

Hypocrisy as Either Deception or Akrasia

The intuitive, folk concept of hypocrisy is not a unified moral category. While many theorists hold that all cases of hypocrisy involve some form of deception, I argue that this is not the case. Instead, I argue for a disjunctive account of hypocrisy whereby all cases of “hypocrisy” involve either the deceiving of others about the sincerity of an agent's beliefs or the lack of will to carry through with the demands of an agent's sincere beliefs. Thus, all cases of hypocrisy can be described either as cases of deception or as cases of akrasia. If this analysis correct, then I suggest further that the moral status of all instances of hypocrisy must be reduced either to the moral blameworthiness of deception or to the moral blameworthiness of akrasia. There can be no unified account of the moral wrongness of “hypocrisy” that holds across the disjunction.     

On a neglected feature of moral agency

Two conditions have been thought necessary and sufficient for a person to be morally responsible. The first is a control condition: an agent must control the actions for which she is held responsible. The second is an epistemic condition: an agent must know, or have the right kind of cognitive relationship to, the relevant features of what she is doing. Debate about moral responsibility among contemporary philosophers can be neatly divided into two circles, with each circle attending narrowly to one of these two conditions. I argue that these separate debates should not be had so separately. The two conditions on moral responsibility interact in a way that has been neglected. An agent's possession of knowledge, and her capacity to attain knowledge, increase that agent's control in a sense relevant to the control condition on moral responsibility. Conversely, an agent's control of her actions can be used to acquire knowledge in a sense relevant to the epistemic condition on moral responsibility. It is in this way that a sort of feedback loop arises between the epistemic condition and the control condition—each is capable of augmenting the degree to which their possessor satisfies the other. I argue that this interaction has important implications for each debate.     

REASON-EXPLANATION AND THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND

This paper takes a close look at the kinds of considerations we use to reach agreement in our ordinary (non‐philosophical and non‐theoretical) judgments about a person's reasons for acting, and the following theses are defended. First, considering the circumstances in which the action occurs is often enough to remove our puzzlement as to why someone acts as she does. Second, in those situations where we do need to enquire about the agent's state of mind, this does not, in the normal case, lead us to look for hidden, inner events that are candidates for the causes of her action. Finally, even though there are cases in which the agent's introspections, reflections, and deliberations are relevant to our search for reasons, such cases do not lend support to the idea that reasons are hidden or inner causes of action. This suggests a problem for most philosophical accounts of what it is to act for reasons and for most philosophical accounts of the nature of mental states.     

An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence

The aim of this paper is to apply the accuracy based approach to epistemology to the case of higher order evidence: evidence that bears on the rationality of one's beliefs. I proceed in two stages. First, I show that the accuracy based framework that is standardly used to motivate rational requirements supports steadfastness—a position according to which higher order evidence should have no impact on one's doxastic attitudes towards first order propositions. The argument for this will require a generalization of an important result by Greaves and Wallace for the claim that conditionalization maximizes expected accuracy. The generalization I provide will, among other things, allow us to apply the result to cases of self‐locating evidence. In the second stage, I develop an alternative framework. Very roughly, what distinguishes the traditional approach from the alternative one is that, on the traditional picture, we're interested in evaluating the expected accuracy of conforming to an update procedure. On the alternative picture that I develop, instead of considering how good an update procedure is as a plan to conform to, we consider how good it is as a plan to make. I show how, given the use of strictly proper scoring rules, the alternative picture vindicates calibrationism: a view according to which higher order evidence should have a significant impact on our beliefs. I conclude with some thoughts about why higher order evidence poses a serious challenge for standard ways of thinking about rationality.     

Hegel,British Idealism,and the curious case of the concrete universal

Although it is clear in Schelling's Freiheitsschrift that he takes an agent's atemporal choice between good and evil to be central to understanding human freedom, there is no consensus in the literature and no adequate account of how to understand this choice. Further, the literature fails to render intelligible how existential freedom is possible in the light of this atemporal choice. I demonstrate that, despite their differences, the dominant accounts in the literature are all guilty of these failings and argue that this is due to their misunderstanding of Schelling's conception of the relationship between essence and form. After outlining what I take Schelling's account of this relationship to be, I return to the Freiheitsschrift to demonstrate that with this account in mind we can make intelligible Schelling's claims about the agent's atemporal act, and the possibility of existential freedom on his account.     

Indeterminism and Frankfurt‐type examples

Abstract

I assess Robert Kane's view that global Frankfurt‐type cases don't show that freedom to do otherwise is never required for moral responsibility. I first adumbrate Kane's indeterminist account of free will.This will help us grasp Kane's notion of ultimate responsibility, and his claim that in a global Frankfurt‐type case, the counterfactual intervener could not control all of the relevant agent's actions in the Frankfurt manner, and some of those actions would be such that the agent could have done otherwise. Appealing to considerations of responsibility and luck, I then show that the global cases survive Kane's objections     

Effects of Manipulation on Attributions of Causation,Free Will,and Moral Responsibility

If someone brings about an outcome without intending to, is she causally and morally responsible for it? What if she acts intentionally, but as the result of manipulation by another agent? Previous research has shown that an agent's mental states can affect attributions of causal and moral responsibility to that agent , but little is known about what effect one agent's mental states can have on attributions to another agent. In Experiment 1, we replicate findings that manipulation lowers attributions of responsibility to manipulated agents. Experiments 2–7 isolate which features of manipulation drive this effect, a crucial issue for both philosophical debates about free will and attributions of responsibility in situations involving social influence more generally. Our results suggest that “bypassing” a manipulated agent's mental states generates the greatest reduction in responsibility, and we explain our results in terms of the effects that one agent's mental states can have on the counterfactual relations between another agent and an outcome.     

P. F. Strawson was neither an externalist nor an internalist about moral responsibility

Internalism about moral responsibility is the view that moral responsibility is determined primarily by an agent's mental states; externalism is the view that moral responsibility is determined primarily by an agent's overt behaviour and by circumstances external to the agent. In a series of papers, Michelle Ciurria has argued that most if not all current accounts of moral responsibility, including Strawsonian ones, are internalist. Ciurria defends externalism against these accounts, and she argues that, in contrast to his contemporary followers, P.F. Strawson himself was an externalist. I believe that Ciurria's reading of Strawson is problematic. The aim of this paper is to elucidate Strawson's position with regard to the internalism‐externalism issue against the background of Ciurria's reading of him. I conclude that Strawson was neither an internalist nor an externalist about moral responsibility. I draw extensively upon the whole body of Strawson's work, much of which is sadly neglected in discussions of ‘Freedom and Resentment’, although it illuminates many of the issues discussed there.     

Emotional Disorder

In this paper I aim to provide a characterisation of emotional disorder. I begin by criticising the thought that an agent can be judged to be experiencing an emotional disorder if his emotion causes him some type of harm. This then leads me to develop the claim that emotional disorder relates to sufficiently inappropriate emotion, where (sufficiently) inappropriate emotion relates to emotion that fails to be (sufficiently) responsive to the agent's beliefs and/or desires. Finally, I conclude the paper by suggesting that if an essentially non‐cognitivist conception of emotion is accepted then – on the characterisation of emotional disorder that I defend – there may exist strong grounds for thinking that cognitive therapy will be an inappropriate form of treatment in cases of emotional disorder.¹     

The Relational Use of Self and Space in Creation: Commentary on Paper by Frank Summers

In this discussion I address some of the ways in which psychoanalytic theory and technique have advanced, taking as my starting point Dr. Summers' chosen schools of thought. I then go on to elaborate what I see as a difference in our understanding of Philip Bromberg's and Donnel Stern's ideas about therapeutic action, suggesting that they actually contribute in bolstering Summers' argument.     

A Unified Account of the Moral Standing to Blame

Recently, philosophers have turned their attention to the question, not when a given agent is blameworthy for what she does, but when a further agent has the moral standing to blame her for what she does. Philosophers have proposed at least four conditions on having “moral standing”: 1. One's blame would not be “hypocritical”. 2. One is not oneself “involved in” the target agent's wrongdoing. 3. One is warranted in believing that the target is indeed blameworthy for the wrongdoing. 4. The target's wrongdoing is some of “one's business”. These conditions are often proposed as both conditions on one and the same thing, and as marking fundamentally different ways of “losing standing”. Here I call these claims into question. First, I claim that conditions (3) and (4) are simply conditions on different things than are conditions (1) and (2). Second, I argue that condition (2) reduces to condition (1): when “involvement” removes someone's standing to blame, it does so only by indicating something further about that agent, viz., that he or she lacks commitment to the values that condemn the wrongdoer's action. The result: after we clarify the nature of the non‐hypocrisy condition, we will have a unified account of moral standing to blame. Issues also discussed: whether standing can ever be regained, the relationship between standing and our “moral fragility”, the difference between mere inconsistency and hypocrisy, and whether a condition of standing might be derived from deeper facts about the “equality of persons”.