Frankfurt: A metaphysical approach to compatibilism.
1. The principle of alternative possibilities:
(A) person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done
otherwise. (443)
d’Holbach and Chisholm agree with this, and give it a categorical reading; Ayer
agrees, but gives it a hypothetical reading. But Frankfurt claims that this principle
is just wrong!
2. Coercion, hypnosis, inner compulsion: These are all construed as circumstances
making it ‘impossible for the person to do otherwise’ (443). And Frankfurt agrees
(in section II) that they render the action unfree, and the person not morally
responsible.
But Frankfurt rejects the view that this is because they leave the person with no
alternative:
The fact that a person was coerced to act as he did may entail both that he could
not have done otherwise and that he bears no moral responsibility for his action.
But his lack of moral responsibility is not entailed by his having been unable to do
otherwise.
3. Frankfurt claims that a person can be in circumstances where it is guaranteed that
the person will do it, without those circumstances moving or leading her to do it.
4. The key question, Frankfurt claims, is not whether someone could do otherwise,
but ‘the roles we think were played, in leading him to act, by (his own) decision
and by (any separate, compelling factor)’. (444)
5. So we come to the case of Jones, who decides to do something, then receives a
threat demanding that he do it, and in fact does go on to do it. Frankfurt argues
that our intuitions about whether Jones is responsible for the action turn, not on
whether or not the threat left him with no alternative, but on what actually caused
Jones to act as he did. Consider Frankfurt’s 3 Jones: Jones1, Jones2, and Jones3.
6. The key case is Jones3. Here we have someone who makes a decision, but whose
range of alternatives is subsequently cut off because he receives a threat that
would compel him to act as he has already decided, whatever he had already
decided. But in fact the threat made no difference to him: He had already made
his decision, and he acted on the grounds he had already considered. Here
Frankfurt argues that (if we were truly confident that this was the situation)
Jones3’s moral responsibility for the action would not be diminished, ‘For the
threat did not in fact influence his performance of the action’. (445)
7. Here Frankfurt claims both
(i)
(ii)
Jones3 was not coerced (since the threat actually had no effect).
Jones3 had no alternative (since, if he hadn’t already decided to do what the
threat demanded of him, the threat would have compelled him to do it
anyway).
8. Even if we say Jones3 was coerced, though, Frankfurt maintains we would still
regard Jones as morally responsible. So wherever we come down on the question
of coercion, we should conclude here that the principle of alternative possibilities
is wrong: moral responsibility does not require that we be able not to do the thing
we are responsible for doing.
9. Frankfurt turns next to an objection: If, in fact, Jones3 was not really ‘moved’ to
do as he did by the threat, then even though (in fact) we know that Jones3 would
have been compelled by the threat if he hadn’t already decided to do as it
demanded, we might simply deny that this implies that Jones3 could not have
done otherwise. We might say, instead, that Jones3 could (in some sense) have
defied the threat, had he so chosen. We might even (Frankfurt doesn’t remark on
this) say that, since the threat did not affect his decision making process in the
circumstances, we know that, in the relevant sense, he could indeed have defied
the threat (unlike poor Jones2).
10. But Frankfurt’s next move is a clever slip past this objection. He introduces
Black, who ensures that Jones4 will do as he wishes by observing very carefully
as Jones4 is deciding what to do, and intervening only if he sees that Jones4 is
about to do something else. (This requires only that there be some sign Black can
detect that shows Jones4 is about to decide in the ‘wrong’ way, and that Black be
able to intervene & alter this decision.)
11. Frankfurt now declares: ‘(S)uppose that Black never has to show his hand
because Jones4, for reasons of his own, decides to perform and does perform the
very action Black wants him to perform. In that case, it seems clear, Jones4 will
bear …the same moral responsibility …as he would have borne if Black had not
(been there at all).’
12. What is up to Jones4 is not whether he does what Black wishes him to—it is only
whether he does this of his own accord, or under Black’s influence. But if it’s the
former, surely Jones4 is fully responsible for what he has done, despite his not
having any alternative.
13. For Frankfurt, the key to moral responsibility is not whether we have alternatives,
but what actually explains our actions. In the Jones3 and Jones4 examples, the
action would have been the same even if the circumstances were changed to
restore the availability of alternatives. If these alternative-eliminating
circumstances actually played no role in producing the action, then Frankfurt says
that responsibility is unaffected by their presence.
14. So, you might think, we get a new principle. A person is not responsible for some
action if they did it because they had no alternative. But if they would have done
the same thing anyway, the fact (if it is a fact) that they had no alternative is
irrelevant. But this seems to imply that incompatibilism is true: In a
deterministic world, there are always causes that operate to determine the agent’s
action. So Frankfurt rejects this principle, in favour of a narrower view of the role
of alternatives in responsibility:
‘A person is not morally responsible for what he has done if he did it only because
he could not have done otherwise.’ (448)
This position aims to capture the notion that there is a difference between doing
something because it is what you wanted (all things considered, in the
circumstances) to do, and doing it only because (in the circumstances) you were
compelled to act against your preferences.
One remark: I have no clear idea of what it means to do something only because one is
compelled. This is a distinction that does not play any clear role in a deterministic
picture of the world, though Frankfurt clearly supposes it’s compatible with a
deterministic picture of the world. What could we mean by this? Is it something to do
with a complex psychological distinction between “normally motivated” behaviour and
behaviour that arises from some other sort of process (really compelled, in one of the
ways Frankfurt considers at the outset)? Can a metaphysical take on this distinction
really be arrived at (consider a very clever version of Black who keeps the ‘causal track’
of the decision within the parameters of normal motivation by subtle manipulations along
that track!).