“Philosophical doubts about moral responsibility,” writes William FitzPatrick, “have typically been rooted in worries about free agency in the face of causal determinism, culminating in familiar metaphysical arguments against the very possibility of moral responsibility” (589).  So it is noteworthy that a novel argument for moral responsibility skepticism (hereafter ‘MRS’), recently advanced by Michael Zimmerman and Gideon Rosen, does not rest on controvertible metaphysical claims such as the defense of an incompatibilist determinism.  FitzPatrick’s article presents a critical assessment of this new argument.  While he applauds it for drawing our attention to difficult problems surrounding the theory and practice of our attributions of moral responsibility, FitzPatrick concludes that the argument’s skeptical conclusion is too strong.

This new argument for MRS (FitzPatrick focuses his discussion on Rosen’s 2004 presentation, which I have summarized here) is distinctive insofar as it is an epistemological argument, focusing on the warrant for our attributions of moral responsibility, rather than a metaphysical argument concerning the very possibility of moral responsibility itself.  Rosen’s argument is two-staged.  First, he argues that for any agent’s action to qualify as blameworthy, an instance of genuine akrasia must appear at some point in the “causal etiology” of that action.  Second, Rosen argues that we never have good grounds for judging an action to be akratic.

FitzPatrick (correctly, in my assessment) quickly dispatches with the second, “epistemological” stage of Rosen’s argument.  This stage amounts to little more than the assertion that reliable attributions of akrasia are difficult to make.  According to Rosen, we have scant grounds for such attributions, even in the first-personal case.  This claim rests on an appeal to the general “opacity of the mind”, together with the observation that it is often difficult to distinguish cases of genuine akrasia from those of “an imposter – ordinary weakness of will” (593-4).  But as FitzPatrick capably demonstrates, our grounds for akrasia-attributions are not nearly as scant as Rosen seems to suppose.  To begin with, consider cases of first-person attributions.  FitzPatrick points out that the experience of guilt and shame, sometimes felt even at the time of performing an action, can serve as a form of evidence (admittedly defeasible) that our present action is akratic.  Likewise, we need not think that second- and third-personal attributions of akrasia face insurmountable epistemic problems.  For consider the evidence provided by testimony: “people are sometimes honest with themselves about having acted akratically… and are honest with others about it, too” (596).  So the fact that people will sometimes flat-out tell you they have acted akratically is sufficient to undermine Rosen’s claims regarding the alleged inscrutability of akrasia.  Furthermore, FitzPatrick argues, certain forms of circumstantial evidence might warrant these attributions.  Inference to the best explanation, for instance, might demand that we regard a person’s action as akratic, even if that person testifies to the contrary: “Sometimes the alternative of ignorance is just so implausible that the principle of charity requires the attribution of akrasia” (598).  Likewise, a person’s efforts to conceal her morally incorrect behavior – if later uncovered – often provide “good evidence that she knew what she was doing was wrong,” and thus that she was acting akratically (598).  FitzPatrick concludes that there are “plenty of real cases – involving both our own actions and those of others – in which we can know, by any reasonable epistemic standards, that an action involves … akrasia” (599).

FitzPatrick takes little solace in his quick dispatch of the second stage of Rosen’s argument, however, as he reckons that the more forceful challenge lies in its first stage, wherein Rosen defends a tight link between moral culpability and akrasia.  Thus, FitzPatrick devotes the bulk of his article to examining and refuting Rosen’s contentions there, to the effect that assignments of moral responsibility for the performance of wrong actions must always terminate with the identification of an akratic act.

Let me first set out Rosen’s argument at this stage, borrowing liberally from my earlier review of Rosen’s 2004 article, “Skepticism About Moral Responsibility.”  Imagine Sally performs wrong action A.  There are two relevant possibilities here.  The first is that Sally knows that A is a wrong action.  If so, we have a clear case of akrasia, and clear grounds for an attribution of moral responsibility.  The second possibility is that Sally does not know that A is a wrong action.  In this case, we say that Sally acts “from ignorance” – either “circumstantial ignorance” (wherein Sally’s failure to know that A is wrong results from her ignorance of some matter of fact) or “normative ignorance” (wherein her failure to know that A is wrong results from her ignorance of some normative or moral truth).  Does Sally’s ignorance – whether circumstantial or moral – excuse her from responsibility for her wrong action?  Only if she bears no responsibility for her ignorance itself.  If Sally is not to blame for her ignorance, we regard this ignorance as a mitigating factor, and exempt Sally from judgments of responsibility for performing wrong action A.  If Sally is responsible for her ignorance, however, we say that she is “culpably ignorant”, and we do not regard her ignorance of A’s wrongness as an excuse.

When, then, is Sally morally responsible for her ignorance that A is wrong?  When she is morally responsible for her failure to discharge one of her “procedural epistemic obligations” – the procedures “any reasonably prudent person in [her] circumstances would have done in order to see to it that [she] was adequately informed” (Rosen 2004, p. 301).  And when is Sally responsible for her failure to discharge one of these procedural epistemic obligations?  Here is the crux of Rosen’s argument: Sally is thus responsible only when her failure to discharge these epistemic obligations is itself a clear instance of akrasia.  Were Sally (non-culpably) unaware that she stood under any such procedural epistemic obligation, her failure to discharge this epistemic duty – and thereby her resulting ignorance regarding A’s wrongness – would be non-culpable.

We now see why Rosen believes that for any putative case of moral responsibility for a wrong action, an instance of genuine akrasia must appear at some point in the “causal etiology” of that action.  We can also see why, even if we reject the second stage of Rosen’s argument for full-blown MRS, the sub-conclusion of this first stage poses an important challenge: for as FitzPatrick puts it, the “striking result” is that Rosen’s akrasia-invoking condition often “will not be met in many cases where we normally attribute responsibility, particularly in cases involving basic normative ignorance” (599).

Thus FitzPatrick defends an alternative condition for culpable ignorance, “CI”, which is weak enough to include (rather than to exclude, as Rosen’s does) many of the central cases in which we typically wish to attribute responsibility for normative ignorance.  FitzPatrick formulates CI thusly: “Ignorance, whether circumstantial or normative, is culpable if the agent could reasonably have been expected to take measures that would have corrected or avoided it, given his or her capabilities and the opportunities provided by the social context, but failed to do so either due to akrasia or due to the culpable, nonakratic exercise of such vices as overconfidence, arrogance, dismissiveness, laziness, dogmatism, incuriosity, self-indulgence, contempt, and so on” (609).  Among the central cases which CI (but not Rosen’s condition) countenances as examples of morally-culpable ignorance (cases to which FitzPatrick devotes considerable discussion, so as to motivate his view) are both fictional and non-fictional ones.    Among the former, there is the case of the character Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life.  Among the latter, there is President George W. Bush.  (FitzPatrick confesses that his motivation for formulating and defending CI may have been his recognition that Rosen’s criterion could serve – wrongly, in FitzPatrick’s estimation – to exculpate President Bush from responsibility for many of his actions while in office.)

Gideon Rosen’s contention that moral responsibility for wrong actions only arises as a direct or indirect result of clear-eyed akrasia is clearly articulated, forcefully argued, and – one feels – incorrect.  William FitzPatrick’s rival criterion for responsibility-generating culpable normative ignorance, CI, is unwieldy and imprecise in formulation; it is vague and relies heavily on anecdote in its defense; and yet it is – one feels – largely correct.  Thus the dialectic here is as it ever was between philosophical skeptics and their critics.  Neither Rosen, with his elegant and compelling argument for a radical and counter-intuitive conclusion, nor FitzPatrick, with his less-dazzling defense of a more-plausible position, clearly wins the day in this exchange.   Fortunately, though, inasmuch as it comes away from this contest with a vastly-improved understanding of the issues and options at hand, their audience does emerge as the clear winner.

Wellman defends the view that states have an almost unqualified right to admit or keep out immigrants, including refugees.  Wellman argues that this is a direct implication of the freedom of association (henceforth: FoA) of the citizens of a state.  His article aims:

1. to show that FoA can be used to justify the policies of immigration-restriction by states,
2. to rebut two views that might defeat the argument from FoA: egalitarian and libertarian arguments for open borders, and
3. to defend one qualification to FoA: that states cannot decide to exclude would-be immigrants on racist (ethnic, religious, etc.) grounds.

Wellman’s positive argument is fairly straightforward.  He notes that FoA is widely believed to be very important and that FoA confers on members of an association the right to decline membership to outsiders.  Wellman sums up the central analogy of the article:

“[J]ust as an individual has a right to determine whom (if anyone) he or she would like to marry, a group of fellow-citizens has a right to determine whom (if anyone) it would like to invite into its political community. And just as an individual’s freedom of association entitles one to remain single, a state’s freedom of association entitles it to exclude all foreigners from its political community.” (110-1)

Wellman defends this analogy by refuting some potential concerns.  He argues that A) not only individuals, but groups can have the right to exclude as a matter of FoA; B) the coercive nature of states leaves room for the application of FoA; and C) that FoA applies to large associations, like states.

Now the argument as stated is incomplete – why think that access to a state’s territory is the same as joining an association?  However, during his defense of these claims it becomes clear that Wellman endorses the principle that everyone who lives for an extended period of time in a certain state should be included in its decision-making.  Thus, since newcomers will have a say in how the political community should be governed, its current members have a serious stake in who may join.

Wellman then turns to refuting various arguments for open borders.  Egalitarian arguments hold that since closed borders maintain global material inequalities, and such inequalities (i.e. whether you are born this or that side of the border) are due mostly to bad luck, closed borders are unjustified.  Wellman attacks both the premise of this argument and the argument itself.

First, Wellman endorses a relational conception of equality.  On this view, what really matters is not so much equality per se, but what equality can avoid: oppressive relationships.  This means that equality is primarily a virtue of political societies, and does not apply across borders.  In fact, the appeal of arguments for global redistribution is due to the extreme poverty of some.  We do have duties towards these people, but these are duties of Samaritanism, not equality.  This refutes the premise of the egalitarian argument.

Second, Wellman argues that whatever duties we have to improve the material condition of foreigners who are worse off, do not require open borders.  Instead of redistributing people, we might redistribute money.  What about those people trapped in oppressive political regimes?  Here too our duties can be fulfilled differently, for example through humanitarian intervention.

The libertarian argument for open borders considered by Wellman consists of two claims.  First, states cannot legislate whom individuals may or may not invite onto their property.  And second, border controls interfere with the freedom of movement of outsiders, thereby violating their rights.

Wellman considers both arguments too strong.  First, states have some authority over people’s property – or anarchism is true, a reductio for Wellman.  Moreover, closing borders is a rather mild interference with people’s freedom, whereas newcomers pose a serious burden.  Therefore closed borders can be justified.

Second, Wellman follows David Miller’s argument that our rights to free movement are not unlimited.  This means that, just as other people’s property rights may limit our freedom, the FoA of states can be justified.

The final section considers whether the exclusionary rights of FoA can be exercised with full discretion.  Could FoA justify even racist anti-immigration policies?  Wellman answers negatively.  Although FoA in principle allows for any motivation to decline membership, citizens of liberal states have “a special responsibility not to treat their compatriots as less than equal partners” (130).  But racist immigration policies insult co-citizens who are relevantly similar to those who are rejected.  Paradoxically, then, no state can enforce racist immigration policies because this would wrong its citizens.

It is unavoidable that an article on a subject as complex as immigration has some loose ends.  For example, some of Wellman’s responses to arguments for open borders are not entirely convincing.  It is hard to tell which of his two recommended approaches to helping the global poor and vulnerable has a worse track-record: redistribution of wealth or humanitarian intervention.  Can his replies be sustained in the face of such spectacular failures?  And perhaps a discussion of Hillel Steiner’s argument that FoA requires open borders (Steiner, 2001) would have been in order.

I have a more serious concern as well.  Wellman argues that states may exclude people because of the FoA of their populations.  But this seems to suggest that groups of citizens within states also have this right.  Wellman explicitly argues against the idea that only groups of a certain character have such rights, so why should only the state have the right to exclude?   Does the argument support a right for provinces, counties, even cities to close their borders, including to fellow citizens?  Perhaps Wellman would appeal again to the idea that co-citizens must treat each other as equals, and claim that this implies domestic free movement.  But it is not clear that such equal treatment must apply across the provinces of a state but not, say, across the states of the European Union.  In other words, the assumption that the exclusionary rights of FoA apply at, and only at, the level of the state seems unwarranted.

Whatever the merits of these points, this article is a highly interesting and entirely novel contribution to the debate on the ethics of immigration policies.  Its conclusion is very strong, the argument seductively simple.  For anyone interested in the ethics of immigration, this is a must-read.

References

Hillel Steiner, “Hard Borders, Compensation and Classical Liberalism”, in David Miller & Sohail H. Hashmi (eds.), Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)

Articles Covered:*

“Vindicating the Normativity of Rationality” Nicholas Southwood, pages 9-30.
“Reasons: Explanations or Evidence?” Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star, pages 31-56.
“Reply to Southwood, Kearns and Star, and Cullity” John Broome, pages 96-108.

*The Symposium on Broome’s work also contains an article by Garrett Cullity: “Decisions, Reasons, and Rationality.” A review of that article by J.J. Swindell has already appeared in the Philosopher’s Digest, April 7, 2009.

Main authors discussed (by Southwood): John Broome, N. Hussain, D. Velleman, M. Bratman, N. Kolodny, T. Scanlon.
Main authors discussed (by Kearns and Star): John Broome.

In his work on rationality Broome distinguishes between requirements of rationality and reasons. Rationality, he argues, cannot be reduced to responding correctly to reasons; it is also a matter of fulfilling requirements like belief consistency, belief closure, instrumental reasoning, and enkrasia (that is, the requirement to intend to X if you believe you ought to X). For Broome ‘ought’ (and not ‘reason’) is the fundamental normative concept. A ‘reason’ is defined as an explanation, or part of an explanation, of normative facts, i.e., an explanation of why N ought to F. One important question is whether rationality is normative. In his more recent work Broome is sceptical: He thinks rationality is normative in its own right, but he admits that he has no decisive argument to show why this is so.

In his highly interesting paper Southwood aims to provide the missing argument why rationality is normative. He argues against the strategy of tackling the question by offering independent reasons each agent has for compliance with the requirements of rationality (e.g. prudential reasons, or reasons deriving from our valuable status as believers and agents). Just as it is a mistake to answer the “Why be moral?” question by trying to offer a justification outside morality, so it is a mistake to try to answer the question “Why be rational?” by searching “for a justification for rational compliance outside of rationality, a source of normativity that is external to rationality” (18). Whether rationality is normative can, Southwood claims, be answered only by providing a theory of rationality that explains what kind of claims rational requirements are and why they are “by their very nature, normative” (19).

Southwood discusses several accounts of rationality recently offered and then comes up with his own proposal. A first position he rejects is the “distinctive object account” of rationality, which attempts to explain the requirements of rationality by specifying the objects to which they apply. As an example he cites N. Hussain’s claim that rational requirements describe the norms of how we should reason. Southwood rejects Hussain’s interpretation as being too narrow: rational requirements (e.g. demands of coherence and consistency) apply to us independently of whether we are engaged in reasoning (21).

Another account Southwood considers is the “proper functioning account”: rational requirements describe the conditions attitudes have to meet to serve agential functions, either cognitive aims (Velleman) or the practical function to coordinate action (Bratman). According to Southwood, the functioning account fails to show why rational requirements have normative force for particular agents (23).

The “subjective reasons account” (Kolodny, Scanlon) interprets rational requirements as reasons we have to form or revise our beliefs or intentions, given the reasons we think we have because of our other beliefs or intentions. However, Southwood objects that requirements of rationality have real normative force, not only “(seeming) normative force” (Kolodny) relative to the reasons subjects think they have (25).

Southwood considers his own interpretation of rational requirements, the “first-personal authority account,” to be an improved version of the subjective reasons account. Rational requirements must have a reference to “our point of view” since they are claims that we ought to have or form certain attitudes. To avoid the troubling subjectivism of Kolodny’s and Scanlon’s account, Southwood distinguishes between ‘subjective demands’ and ‘standpoint-relative demands,’ the latter being demands that are “relative to the particular first-personal standpoint of the agent who is subject to it” (27). Rational requirements are demands we have to fulfill in order to be agents with first-personal authority. We have first-personal authority if we are standing in a specific relation of accountability to ourselves. “The normativity of rationalty,” Southwood claims, “is a matter of honoring our first-personal authority” (30).

Southwood’s article gives a most valuable exposition of current explanations of rationality. His positive solution raises some questions, e.g., what exactly “honoring our first-personal authority” means and how Southwood’s account is related to an account like Korsgaard’s, where first-personal authority involves commitment to a principle of autonomy in terms of which reasons are defined. In his reply, Broome objects that a reference to standpoint-relativity and first-personal authority does not explain why rationality is normative. The rational requirement not to believe a contradiction is, as Broome points out, not standpoint relative and not dependent on first-personal authority. Broome’s objection raises the question whether the senses of “normativity” at stake here are different: one question is whether rational requirements are normative given their specific content; the other question is why we should comply with them. Since Broome himself emphasizes that one cannot be a person if one violates too many requirements of rationality (99), Southwood’s accounting for the normativity of rationality by explicating the presuppositions of agency does not seem implausible.

Kearns and Star develop a highly challenging critique of Broome’s account of reasons in terms of explanations of ought-facts. Their central claim is that “reasons are evidence, rather than explanations,” they are “evidence of the obtaining of ought facts” (32). Kearns and Star draw the distinction between explanation and evidence in the following way: if fact F explains another fact G, then F makes it the case that G. Evidence, however, merely indicates or makes it probable that G is the case. If F is evidence for G, G may not be true. So their analysis of a reason amounts to the claim: “Necessarily, a fact X is a reason for an agent N to F if and only if (iff) X is evidence that N ought to F” (37).

Kearns and Star consider it an important advantage of their analysis of reasons that it takes into account the being/having distinction. It is crucial to distinguish between reasons there are and reasons an agent has, and talk of evidence makes sense of that distinction: a reason I have is evidence I have; ‘there being a reason’ means ‘there is evidence’ (38).

They raise three objections against Broome’s analysis of reasons: first, Broome cannot explain the practical role of reasons in deliberation; second, Broome does not provide a “full-blooded” analysis of reasons; third, Broome offers no unified account of reasons, because he introduces two different kinds of normative reasons, namely perfect reasons and pro tanto reasons, which cannot be analyzed in similar terms. The property of being an explanation of a normative fact (perfect reason) and weighing in favor of a certain action (pro tanto reason) are for Kearns and Star completely different properties.

The first two objections deserve more detail. In regard to the first objection: that a fact is an explanation of what an agent ought to do is according to Kearns and Star not crucial in guiding an agent in her deliberations. Much more relevant for them is that a fact is evidence for what an agent should do. Moreover, given Broome’s analysis of reasons in terms of explanations, persons would not need reasons in order to figure out what they ought to do (which would eliminate reasons from practical life). Their example: A person might come to the conclusion that she ought to eat cabbage by the fact that a reliable book advises her to do so, yet this fact is not an explanation why she ought to eat cabbage (40, 41).

In regard to the second objection: Broome’s analysis would, Kearns and Star argue, be full-blooded if he would analyze the concept ‘reason’ generally in terms of another concept, namely ‘explanation.’ This analysis, however, holds only for ‘perfect reasons.’ Because Broome introduces ‘pro tanto reasons’ (which play a favoring role in a weighing explanation of what one ought to do) he faces a problem: the idea of facts that “count in favor of a certain action” cannot according to the authors be explained otherwise than by the idea of a reason. To say that a fact counts in favor of a certain action is to say that “the fact is a reason to perform this action” (43). Moreover, Broome’s analysis cannot specify the strength of reasons; something that can be easily achieved by referring to the strength of evidence (44).

The authors then provide further arguments supporting their account. For example, they argue that their analysis of reasons avoids the assumption that ‘ought’ depends on unknowable ought-facts, an assumption which would violate the reasonable condition that ‘ought’ implies the “possibility of our knowing what to do” (53). What sense would it make to criticize agents for ignoring reasons that they could not know? Kearns and Star point out that their interpretation merely presupposes that “if one ought to F, there is some (knowable) evidence that one ought to F,” which seems plausible since a fact is evidence of itself. The main difficulty of their account seems to be that it does not amount to all-things-considered oughts and normative truths since, as Kearns and Star concede, “evidence doesn’t generally play an active role with respect to fixing the truth” (55). However, as the authors point out (referring to Parfit’s example of the trapped miners), evidence makes a contribution to figuring out what we ought to do.

In his reply, Broome objects that the “evidential property” is not the decisive criterion for a normative reason (101). Broome accuses Kearns and Star of confusing “epistemology with the determination of facts” (102). Weighing the evidence for (or against) the truth of a proposition is a matter of epistemology. We can weigh evidence for the proposition that one ought to X against the evidence that the proposition is false (it is not the case that one ought to X). But whether one ought to X is dependent on the weight of the reason that you ought to X against the weight of the reason that you ought not to X (which is different from ‘it is not the case that one ought to X’). The weight of a reason is dependent on the facts, not the evidence you have.

Reviewed by Herlinde Pauer-Studer
University of Vienna

Main authors discussed:  John Broome

This article takes up an interesting issue at the intersection of philosophy of action and ethics. The issue takes the form of two related questions: (1) What difference do our decisions make to our reasons for action, and (2) What difference do our decisions make to the rationality of our actions? Before delving into Cullity’s arguments, it is worth pointing out two assumptions that he admittedly makes. He operates with an objective view of reasons, and with a view that “decisions” are things that are made consciously.

On to the arguments we go.

First, focusing on question one, Cullity outlines three ways (cases) in which our decisions make a difference to our reasons for action. The first case is one where my decision causes me to do something that puts me in a new situation  and provides me with new reasons to do something. The second case is one where I make a decision between two equal options, X and Y. The fact that I have made a decision to X, now gives me a reason to pursue X and not Y. The third case is one where I am part of a group that engages in a fair process and reaches a decision. I now have a normative reason (because of the decision and because of fairness) to follow the course of action that the group decided on.

Cullity then moves to, and spends the majority of the article on, question two. He begins by reviewing John Broome’s position on the question. Broome’s position, as characterized by Cullity, is that if you intend E and believe that M is the necessary means to E, but do not intend M, then you are not as you ought to be; you are not rational. Cullity criticizes Broome’s position as not fully capturing the relationship between our decisions and the rationality of our actions because it misses two important cases of instrumental irrationality: (1) the procrastinator who never gets around to intending any means to his end, and (2) the person who intends a very poor or inefficient means to his end. Cullity works to expand Broome’s position to envelop these two criteria.

Formally, Cullity’s position of instrumental rationality comes in two parts:

“Rationality requires of you that (if, during a period through which you have an orderly succession of temporal beliefs,

i) you intend E throughout that period,

ii) you believe throughout that period that E will only suitably be achieved if, by t, you intend some particular means to E, and

iii) at the end of that period you believe that it is t, then at the end of that period you intend what you believe to be suitable means to E),” (p. 72)

and “Rationality requires of you that (if, during a period through which you have an orderly succession of temporal beliefs,

i) you intend E throughout that period,

ii) you believe throughout that period that E will only suitably be achieved by your taking M at or before t, and

iii) at the end of that period you believe that it is t and that you have not taken M, then you believe that you are taking or trying to take M” (p. 74).

Cullity admits that there are additional general requirements of rationality as well. He develops what he calls a “standard-fixing account of rationality,” where if an agent violates things that reinforce “important dispositions” (things that are usually important to our practical and theoretical functioning), then she is irrational. Some examples of these important dispositions include not being weak-willed, gullible, a procrastinator, or impulsive. Cullity closes by noting that there is a cognitivist explanation of the application of [the second part/conjunction of] his standard-fixing account to what are called “from-intentions” (planning from E using the assumption that E will occur), since from-intentions are states whose rationality depends on supplying us with beliefs.

Cullity admits that he does not in this paper attempt to defend the “standard fixing account of rationality” against objections, as he says that doing so will require developing a particular version of the account and adding further detail. He aims for this paper to be an introduction to this theory of rationality.

Reviewed by J. S. Swindell
Baylor College of Medicine