Free Will, Determinism and Moral Responsibility

Critical reflection on: Mary M. Litch, “Free Will, Determinism and Moral Responsibility” and Joel Kupperman, “Free Will”

The two readings being brought together address the relationship among free will, determinism and moral responsibility, and the relative implications for the truthfulness (and falsity) of these claims. They both provide a broad overview of some of the key philosophical arguments in favour and critical of the incompatibilist (hard determinism, libertarianism) and compatibilist (so-called “soft-determinism”) cases. Litch offers a more general treatment of the subject matter; identifying that each of the three views represent intractable problems, are subject to “severe criticism” (p. 151) and have “serious unanswered questions” (160). Kupperman argues that the case for determinism is inconclusive, considering and rejecting compatibilism as an alternative. He mounts an argument against determinist views in the predictive social sciences in particular, and concludes in favour of free will.

Litch and Kupperman each deal with a range of issues in the philosophy of free will, determinism and moral responsibility. Their definitions of determinism generally cohere (Kupperman, 167; Litch 142), and although Litch makes the additional distinction between universal determinism and human determinism, the outcome for humans is the same (144). This is important is the context of Kupperman’s main line of argument against determinism and the predicative power of the social sciences. In particular, Litch devotes a significant section to the discussion of the relationship between hard determinism and moral responsibility (154 – 157), and while the discussion of moral responsibility is more in the margins of Kupperman’s main effort, it is covered in the context of the arguments mobilised in his consideration of determinism (168-171). As such the concentration here will be on how their understandings of determinism influence their treatment of moral responsibility, and the conditions for and responses to morally blame worthy activities.

Both Litch in particular (154) and Kupperman by implication (167) note that society holds people responsible for their actions, usually as a consequence of an exercise of their free will. Litch shows how hard determinism’s denial of free will, if true, makes no allowance for moral responsibility (154). Indeed, the “incompatiblism” of hard determinism has been so strongly defined as to be directly identified as incompatible with “the sort of freedom needed to ground moral responsibility” (154). Litch’s attempt to formularise in detail the argument connecting hard determinism and moral responsibility (154) bears summarising here. To be morally responsible for an action, it must be freely performed. Such “freedom” means it must have been possible for a person to do something other than what they did. But if determinism is true, it is never possible for this to occur and thus it is never possible for a person to be morally responsible.

Kupperman agrees that to claim a person is not exercising free will is to “absolve that person of responsibility” (167), and approaches determinism from the angle of predictability. He offers the case of drug addiction as an example, where the choices taken by user are understood not to be free. Because their drug-taking behaviour is entirely knowable in advance, their choice is illusory. This establishes the case for determinism such that “conduct that seems free is not free if it is entirely predictable” (167). A generalisation of this principle of predictability to all behaviours in the population at large similarly denies that anyone’s choices are free. By extension, it also denies their moral responsibility. Despite this, Kupperman argues there may be no reason to deny responsibility in practice. A difficulty with this is its self-conscious demotion of moral responsibility to a merely descriptive or metaphorical role rather than the key plank on which accountability rests.

Litch (155) applies the implications of determinism for moral responsibility in discussing the conditions and consequences imposed by society in response to breaches of law. Determinism denies free will in the sense of disallowing that a person could do something other than what they actually did. As Litch contends, this also seems to describe the extenuating circumstances often taken into account in practice in both our moral and legal evaluations of whether a person performed an action freely. However, this analogy does not hold, as it reaches for the intuitive libertarian notions that underpin moral responsibility. With varying degrees of freedom, we have varying degrees of moral responsibility. For the true determinist, moral responsibility is not the golden standard to which all are held on account of an assumed free will, outside of individual unusual cases. It is irrelevant.

In this context, approaching Kupperman’s drug addiction case study from a compatibilist perspective (169 – 170) provides a compromise between determinism and moral responsibility. For the compatibilist, determinism is a prerequisite for moral responsibility. Actions must be determined by something – those that aren’t are random, and this is not the same as being free (173). According to this view, a person is free if “what they do is the result of their own unconstrained choice…whether or not their choice is in fact entirely predictable” (168). For the addict, to know that the psychological and physiological factors entirely predict addict’s behaviour is to know they are constrained from exercising free will – what they did was inevitable (169). This will not exonerate the addict of liability (given the crime of drug addiction), only explain the behaviour, because the addict’s choices are not unconstrained. Responsibility is only imputed in circumstances where a person might have, or should have wanted to, act differently. Nevertheless, the fact that the person’s choice was unforced does not change the fact that determinism denies their responsibility.

Although “moral and legal responsibility does not necessarily coincide” (Litch, 155), Litch further explores some of the practical consequences for the judicial system if persons are not held morally accountable for their actions. Is punishment defensible under hard determinism? Not if it is based on retributive notions of justice. Applying Litch’s summary (154), retribution demands that the guilty suffers based on the assumption of the exercise of a substantive free will capable of choosing between alternatives. But if we are not free agents, we cannot deliberate among real choices so as to be responsible for our actions. However, Litch argues other reasons are used by society to justify punishing lawbreakers, such as deterrence, protection and reform (155).

Deterrence remains consistent with a determinist worldview. Knowledge of the negative consequences of lawbreaking occurring (for example, prison) discourages both the lawbreaker and others who may be considering committing similar crimes. Kupperman recognises this when he argues in practice, even if all choices are determined, we “might feel free” (168), to engage in actions that assume people are responsible for their behaviour – blame, persuasion, and appeals to reason. Happily this will not be in vain, as even in a determinist universe these activities will still have “genuine causal impact” (168) – and a genuine deterrent effect. The irony of this move should not be lost: subjective feelings of freedom are being used as a justification to provide the causal foundation of behaviours in a known determinist system.

Punishment with the intent of reform serves to “discourage” the lawbreaker from “engaging in that behaviour again upon release” (Litch 155). The offender is altered for the better by the punishment experience (for example, imprisonment), and does not need to assume the engagement of a free will for its success. As Kupperman argues with reference to deterrence, determinism allows for “genuine causal impact” to effect change. Litch agrees that a process of real and threatened rewards and punishments can alter behaviour (155). That people are “determined” in this scenario does not equate to “set in their ways”, only that antecedent conditions can determine human actions. However, if the extreme naturist version as the source of our determinism is true, humans are incorrigible without some sort of “genetic manipulation or biological intervention” (158). This poses a problem for rehabilitation as a goal for incarceration.

Punishment is still warranted on the basis of the final factor: protection of society from future harm by this individual. Punishment in the form of incarceration restricts the liberty of the person and minimises the opportunity for the offence to reoccur – or perhaps even to occur in the first place. Accepting the availability of sufficient advanced predictive technology, it is possible to imagine science fiction-like scenarios involving the arrest and detention of people in advance of their crimes. In this view, the protection of society would be entirely justified, because such persons would inevitably commit their misdeeds. It is arguable that justice been served in a determinist universe in which a person can do no other that what their antecedents make them.

Hard determinism is an effective explanation for punishment that favours more consequentialist approaches. Giving up libertarian notions of free will that assume moral responsibility only dispenses with retributive notions of justice, as Litch (155) argues. Nevertheless, even if moral responsibility could be excised as merely a legal fiction, its absence does not survive the switch from an external perspective of moral responsibility to an internal one. As Kupperman suggests, “we experience ourselves as making choices, and there is no reason to disregard this experience”(177). He appeals Sartre’s description of our own awareness of the spontaneity of our activities for support - a “phenomenological” or insider experience (177). This freedom lends support to regarding ourselves and others as morally responsible for actions. On the other hand, Litch’s description of determinism seems to say the same thing about our subjective experience, albeit is a tongue-in-cheek manner. As Litch remarks (157), “There is only one course of action truly open to us. Luckily, though, is the course of action we choose.”