The Retreat of Reason Part 9 pdf

higher-order stance is actually adopted towards it. There is a case for saying that the adoption of such a stance of accepting or rejecting a desire as effective is a form in which a latent internality or externality manifests itself. The account here proposed of compulsive desires is in some respects like that of Gary Watson’s, which views such desires as being “more or less radically independent of the evaluational systems of these agents” (1975: 220). But while I (roughly) regard what is best as (implicitly) relative to some set of intrinsic desires, as that which fulfils them, Watson may well take an objectivist view of values. He sees evaluations as a source of desires (1975: 211), as something from which desires spring or arise (1975: 208). They are, however, not the only source of desires, on his view. As was noted in Chapter 12, Watson presents a dualistic picture of the self, according to which reason—within the province of which the making of evaluative judgements lies—constitutes one source of desire and appetite the other. One problem with this dualism is to explain why desires spring- ing from reason should be authoritative relative to desires having their origin in the appetitive part of the self: why should one try to overcome the latter desires (cf. Piper, 1985: 178–81)? But supposing that we construe what is at present of value for A as what would fulfil her present, intrinsic desires, how can we then explain the occurrence of compulsive desires, that is, overruling desires that are contrary to what she sees as best? We have already accounted for a similar discrepancy in cases of weakness of will by maintaining that one can temporarily overlook some of one’s dispositional reasons that are relevant enough to be episodically represented. This will, however, not do when it comes to compulsive desires, for here one is fully conscious that the compulsive desire runs counter to one’s best reasons: as has been remarked, this desire is experienced as an external force drag- ging one in an undesirable direction. None of this is true of the akrates who is momentar- ily oblivious of the fact of acting contrary to his best dispositional reasons. If it had occurred to him at the crucial moment that he was about to act against his best reasons, he would have resisted this, because he would then episodically represent these reasons. The compulsive subject cannot do this, I suggest, because the compulsive desire is so strong that its objective monopolizes attention. He is currently aware that he has better reasons that point in the opposite direction, but, owing to the strength of his compulsive desire, he fails to spell out or fully and vividly represent to himself what the contents of these reasons are. Therefore, they are prevented from taking their proper effect. It is true of the weak-willed agent that he possesses dispositional reasons such that, if prior to the situation in which the weakness took place, he had vividly represented these reasons to himself, he would have been able to recall them at the crucial moment, and if he had done so, he would have refrained from falling victim to akrasia. In this sense, the akrates could have avoided being weak. Punishing or blaming the akrates could have the effect of strengthening his motivation to take such precautions in the future. Therefore, there is a forward-looking justification for holding the akrates responsible. In contrast, the agent who is in the grip of a compulsive desire could not have resisted this desire: however vividly he represented his reasons before the onset of the compulsive desire, he would fail to retrieve them after its onslaught. In view of the strength of the 400 Rationality and Responsibility Compatibilist Freedom of Will 401 desire, the content of the compulsive desire exercises such a hold on attention that thoughts of nothing else can gain a foothold. Hence, it would be useless, from a forward- looking point of view, to punish or blame this agent. An illustration might be of assistance. Hark back to an example of akrasia given in Chapter 13: A takes a painkiller when a severe pain sets in, although, as she realized beforehand, she has better reasons not to. Here it was assumed that if A had prepared herself for the possibility of backsliding by trying to impress on her mind that she must not later fail to think of certain salient reasons, she would not have succumbed to the temptation to inject the painkiller. This is the import of the claim that A could have abstained from this act. Suppose, however, that the pain had been excruciating, so intense that however great an effort A would have made to think of something else, she would have failed. Then it would not help; whatever precautions she had taken to facilitate the future representation of her best reasons, she would still have failed to represent them with sufficient vividness for them to take proper effect. That is, A’s desire to get rid of the pain is irresistible, and she cannot avoid acting on it. To sum up: in order for A’s causing p to be a responsible act it is necessary that it not be done out of a compulsive desire to cause p. It is, strictly speaking, not necessary that the desire that A acts out of on this particular occasion be resistible (not irresistible), but it is necessary that, as a rule, the desire out of which responsible agents act be resistible or sensitive to the agents’ reasons. Otherwise there could not be a forward-looking justifica- tion of the R–P practice. The argument here is analogous to the one presented in the last chapter as regards condition (2) of responsibility. But let us for the time being eschew these complications and concentrate on the conditions at a particular time of action. Since we are concerned only with a sufficient condition of responsibility, we can rest content with (3*) given above. Coercion and Acting of One’s Free Will There are further considerations bearing on ascriptions of responsibility. I have in mind considerations to the effect that the agent was forced or coerced to act or acted under duress. Coercion can be ‘physical’. Suppose that a stronger man pushes me off the pavement, with the result that I knock over a bicyclist. Then I am certainly not responsible for having knocked over the bicyclist (at least not if I have done nothing to provoke the man to force me off the pavement). It is not hard to understand why this is so. For even if I can be said to have acted in some sense when I knock over the bicyclist, I obviously do not act inten- tionally or knowingly. In other words, condition (1) suffices to explain why there is no responsibility here. So we need not waste any time on physical coercion. We should rather focus on cases in which the agent’s will is subjected to coercion. A case in point would be the one discussed in Chapter 4, where a cashier hands over money to a robber, because he is convinced that the robber will otherwise carry out his threat and kill him. It seems incontestable that there is a sense of ‘acting of one’s own free will’ in which it is not applicable to the cashier in this situation. It is not applicable to him because he acts under duress or is forced or coerced to act as he does by the robber’s threat. Moreover, it seems plain that the cashier’s behaviour can be described in this fashion even if he does not act out of a desire that is compulsive or irresistible, but it is true of him that he complies with the robber’s threat simply because he judges that course of action to be best for him under the circumstances. In ‘Coercion and Moral Responsibility’, Frankfurt grants that such an agent could properly be described as acting “under duress” (1988: 37). In this sense, one is forced to do something if that is the only reasonable thing to do, if other alternatives would be, as one realizes, far worse at least for oneself. Under these conditions, however, one could strictly speaking have willed and performed an alternative action: the effective desire was not irresistible. Had one’s view of one’s reasons or good been different, one would have acted accordingly. Now Frankfurt prefers to employ the term ‘coercion’ so narrowly that an agent is coerced only if his effective desire is irresistible and, more precisely, compulsive. He stipulates that “coercion, as here understood, may be said to deprive its victim of free will” (1988: 42 n.)—where “free will” carries the meaning expounded above, namely, a will that is controlled by one’s second-order volitions. Frankfurt’s reason for understand- ing ‘coercion’ so narrowly is that this understanding is indispensable if coercion is to annul responsibility (1988: e.g. 39). This is true: if ‘coercion’ is so liberally used that the cashier can be described as being coerced when he submits to the robber’s threat, not because he is seized with an irresistible or compulsive desire to save his life, but because he sees this course as the one he has best reasons to choose, then a plea of coercion does not exempt him from responsibility. However, even if the threat here does not relieve the cashier of responsibility, it qualifies, as we shall soon see, what he could justifiably be held responsible for. Thus, the wider sense of coercion has some bearing on responsibility, and this justifies my taking a closer look at what lies behind this talk of coercion. Furthermore, since I have already investigated irresistible and compulsive desire, I can now concentrate on cases of coercion that fall outside the scope of Frankfurt’s narrow notion. One difference between a compulsive desire, like the kleptomaniac’s, and the desire that the cashier is forced or coerced to have is that the cashier is forced to have this desire only given some other desire that he possesses. The cashier is forced to want to hand over the money only because he has a desire to hang on to life and, as he is aware, the latter desire can be fulfilled only if the former state of affairs obtains. So far as the case has been described, the clerk is, however, not forced to desire to go on living, for this desire is not presented as being derived from some other desire of his. Hence, if one describes the cashier as doing what in the present situation will keep him alive, one attributes to him an action that he executes of his own free will. There is no other threat—for example, to the effect that the clerk’s children will be tortured to death if he does not submit to the first threat—which forces him to do what in the present situation will keep him alive. Nevertheless, he is forced to hand over the money to the robber; this is not anything he does of his own free will, although it is that which in the present situation will keep him alive. 402 Rationality and Responsibility Compatibilist Freedom of Will 403 Against this background, it should be readily comprehensible that coercion does not remove responsibility, but merely qualifies that for which one is held responsible. The action for which the clerk is held responsible should not be described as simply ‘handing over the money to the robber’, but as doing this in circumstances in which this action was necessary to save his life or, in other words, as ‘saving his life at the expense of giving away the bank’s money’. For it is only in the special circumstances in which giving money to the robber is a means of staying alive that the clerk wants to do this action. Of course, blame and punishment might be withheld from the clerk, because it is agreed that his appraisal of the situation was reasonable, that his life is indeed of greater weight than the money. But this does not alter the fact that he has performed an action for which he can intelligibly be held responsible: somebody who dissents from this appraisal could intelligibly urge that the cashier be blamed and punished. So freedom of will in a sense that excludes coercion or duress is not necessary for responsibility.⁹ Thus no clause requiring this freedom of will need be added to the three conditions for responsibility so far established. A requirement to this effect can, however, easily be built into the conditions. Acting intentionally is acting at will or voluntarily, in one sense. Clearly, acting of one’s own free will or acting voluntarily, in another sense, entails acting at will. Hence we can incorporate the requirement men- tioned by replacing (1) by (1*) A voluntarily causes p, where ‘voluntarily’ carries the second, stronger sense. This substitution ensures that A’s responsibility for causing p does not rest on any special circumstances obtaining at the time of action. One further matter should be cleared up. I have claimed that the statement that the clerk is forced or coerced to—want to—hand over the money to the robber presupposes his having some other desire from which this desire is derived. But obviously, not every derived desire is one that one is forced or coerced to have, so it must be asked: what dis- tinguishes derived desires that one is coerced or forced to have? If we let the term ‘the will’ designate the capacity to form desires, including derivative ones, the problem can be formulated as follows: when is the will coerced? The answer was sketched in Chapter 4. Prior to the issuing of the threat, the bank clerk has both a firm desire not to give the bank’s money to anyone who is not entitled to it and a firm desire to stay alive. This is possible because until he was threatened these desires were co-satisfiable. The threat obstructs this co-satisfiability and brings them into con- flict. Since the desire to go on living is the strongest, the cashier forms a derivative desire to give away the bank’s money in this situation. Because of his aversion to this conduct, in view of what it normally brings along, he reluctantly forms this derivative desire. That is why he is described as being coerced or forced to—want to—hand over the money. As we saw, offers can be coercive just like threats. If I am strongly averse to eating worms, but do ⁹ This is argued, e.g. by Don Locke (1975) and Slote (1980: 147–9). so to earn a million dollars, I can be described as being forced to—want to—do this action in order to earn the million dollars. In contrast to what is the case as regards the cashier, however, it goes against the grain to deny that I eat the worm freely or of my own free will. The question why that is so was earlier left unanswered. I think that the reply is that, whereas a threat makes the alternatives of action facing the agent worse, an offer improves them. Therefore, all things considered, the agent welcomes the offer: I welcome the offer to make a million dollars, because—in spite of the unpleasantness of having to eat the worm—it opens up new possibilities of living a more fulfilling life. In contrast, a threat restricts these possibilities. Prior to the introduction of the threat, the cashier could fulfil both his desire to stay alive and his desire to guard the bank’s money; after its introduction, he can fulfil at most one of these desires. Hence the cashier regrets the fact that the threat has been issued. My con- jecture is, then, that one is said to be deprived of freedom of will when one is forced to form a desire as the result of circumstances (beyond one’s control) that one regrets obtaining. Being subject to a compulsive desire and being coerced or forced to have a desire in a sense that entails the negation of freedom of will are then similar in that in both cases there is in the offing a wish or desire that one be without these desires. As Slote points out (1980: 143–7), it follows from this account that it is a relative matter, depending on the variable psychological make-up of subjects, whether or not some external circumstance eliminates freedom of will. For instance, suppose that, by repeatedly dwelling on the causal necessity ruling all events in the world, the cashier has developed an attitude of calm acceptance of everything that happens. As a consequence, when he is threatened, he does not regret the fact that he is put in a situation where he must (want to) hand over the bank’s money to a robber; it does not appear to him that his alternatives of action have been substantially restricted. Then he cannot be said to have been divested of his freedom of will. It should be noted, though, that this avenue to freedom opens up only to those willing to pay the price of being attached to few things. Forward-looking Justification and Mere Conditioning It is sometimes suggested that a forward-looking justification of the R–P practice reduces it to a mere conditioning device that has nothing to do with responsibility. For instance, Susan Wolf argues that to justify rewarding and punishing in this way is to justify these practices in the same way that we justify the praise and blame of lower animals—in the same way, that is, that we justify the reward and punishment of pets, of pigeons in the laboratory, of monkeys in the circus. It is to justify these practices only as a means of manipulation and training. (1981: 389) In expounding condition (3) as (3*), I have already gone some distance towards meeting this objection, for this move reveals this condition to entail that A has to have conceptual resources to deliberate and form reason-based desires, and this is a power that some of Wolf’s “lower animals” certainly lack. It is possible, however, to be equipped with these 404 Rationality and Responsibility Compatibilist Freedom of Will 405 resources without being able to ascribe desires to other beings than oneself—or, for that matter, to oneself at other times than the present—and hence without being able to form a conception of the weal and woe of these beings. But I believe having a conception of the weal and woe of a being to be necessary for being responsible for what one does to it.¹⁰ Remember that in Chapter 30, when I expressed the view that one’s being respons- ible for something, for example a deed, was tantamount to it being right or justifiable to let one respond or answer to criticism for this deed, I claimed that this presupposes one’s understanding of assessments of the deed for which one is criticized. In other words, responsible subjects must have a general understanding of why praise and blame, rewards and punishments are distributed; they must understand judgements such as ‘You are blamed (punished) because you have acted wrongly to somebody’. Thus we should add a constraint like the following: (4) A is conceptually equipped to view the R–P practice as being applied to herself because she has caused something good or bad for some being (usually other than herself ).¹¹ This is not a requirement for every application of the R–P practice being justifiable from a forward-looking perspective. It can be justifiably applied to conscious beings that lack the capacity of attributing desires to other creatures, and that, as a consequence, have no con- ception of what is good or bad for these beings. But for responsibility to be attributable we should demand that the R–P practice perform its useful service in a certain way: through the subjects’ understanding that the sanctions befall them for the reason that they have brought about something good or bad for somebody. Doubtless, the R–P practice can effectively be used on beings that lack this understanding, to reinforce certain forms of behaviour and to counteract others. For this use, it is only necessary that the being to whom it is applied experiences the sanctions as pleasant or painful and that it correctly links them to actions performed by it. I claim, however, that under these conditions—that is, if (4) is not satisfied—the justifiability of the R–P practice is not sufficient for respons- ibility. It is then just a method for manipulating the behaviour of non-responsible agents. It may be asked whether we should not strengthen (4) to require that A is conceptually equipped to view the R–P practice as being justifiably applied to herself. This is in effect to require that to be responsible one must oneself have the concept of responsibility.¹² But this requirement threatens to make the account circular by assuming that an understand- ing necessary to make applications of the R–P practice justifiable have to be to the effect that they are justifiable. Putting together the four conditions, we obtain the following conception of responsibility. (4) demands that the responsible agent A is endowed with cognitive and conceptual powers ¹⁰ There is no need for punishment if one causes harm to oneself now, for then the effect itself fulfils the function of punishment. ¹¹ For similar ideas, see Stern (1974). Wolf’s book on the subject (1990) makes it clear that she favours a clause requiring knowledge of moral goodness. Her “Reason View” maintains that “part of freedom and responsibility lies in the agent’s ability to form or revise her deepest values in light of the truth” (1990: 140–1). But it seems to me that responsibility requires no more than (true or false) beliefs about what is good and bad. ¹² Cf. Galen Strawson (1986) and Fischer and Ravizza (1998: 220–3). that allow her to register certain facts of the world, namely, how her actions affect the good and bad of other creatures, and that the R–P practice is applied to her owing to these facts. Obviously, if A cannot associate the application of this practice with some of her behaviour, the R–P practice cannot supply her with reasons for action. (3*) ensures that the strength of A’s reasons is mirrored by her intelligent desires. If this were not the case, providing her with reasons by bringing the R–P practice to bear on her would not be a reliable way of influencing her intelligent desires. (1) states that A’s intelligent desires are manifested in action, and (2) that if she instead had desired to avoid the action, this would have been possible. If intelligent desires were not as a rule non-redundant components of sufficient conditions for action, the R–P practice could not efficiently serve the purpose of reinforcing and counteracting forms of behaviour. In sum, there must be malfunction- ing at none of the stages (A)–(C) distinguished at the beginning of Chapter 32. Direct and Ultimate Responsibility It may be objected that the conditions (1)–(4) cannot be sufficient for responsibility because it is possible that A has been made to satisfy them by the manipulations of another agent. Suppose that, initially, A was not at all inclined to intentionally cause p, but by manipulating her brain the neurosurgeon B has transformed her into such a person that when she deliberates about whether or not to cause p, she forms an intention to cause p which she also implements in action. (Note that this is not a case of implanting into A’s brain a compulsive intention or desire, whose strength is independent of her reasons. This would not satisfy the conditions (1)–(4).) It may seem that if the causal background of A’s satisfying the conditions (1)–(4) is of this kind, she is not responsible for causing p (e.g. something very harmful). On the basis of such considerations, some writers—for example Mele (1995: ch. 9) and Fischer and Ravizza (1998: 194–201)—have argued that responsibility is a “historical” notion: only if the history behind the fulfilment of conditions like (1)–(4) is of a certain kind, do we have responsibility. The libertarian Robert Kane has concluded that the manipulation I have sketched rules out an ultimate responsibility which involves “the power to be the ultimate source or origin of one’s ends or purposes rather than have that source be in something other than you” (1996: 70; cf. Pereboom, 2001: 110 ff.). We shall turn to the notion of ultimate responsibility, and the attendant backward- looking perspective, in the next chapter, but for the time being my point is that the motivational manipulation in question does not undercut justification of the R–P practice from the forward-looking perspective. From this perspective, it is perfectly possible to hold B responsible for causing A responsibly to cause p. This may be put by saying that, alongside the notion of ultimate responsibility, the forward-looking perspective provides space for a notion of direct responsibility, for which (1)–(4) are sufficient. True, if B’s manipulations of A’s motivational states are very frequent, for example daily, it would be pointless to subject A to the R–P practice. (Under these circumstances, we should concentrate on applications of this practice to B.) But then it is the frequency of 406 Rationality and Responsibility Compatibilist Freedom of Will 407 the manipulations that has this consequence, not the mere fact that A’s mind has been manipulated by someone else. If A is left alone after an instance of manipulation, it makes perfect sense to apply the R–P practice to her to consolidate or improve her ways. This brings out that the R–P practice is designed to be applicable to people who exhibit something like the psychological stability we encounter in the actual world. (It follows that to make our set of conditions strictly sufficient, we need to add some such ‘stability’ condition. But I refrain from explicitly doing so because it is obvious that it can be done consistently with determinism. Similarly, I have not tried to state the other conditions, (1)–(4), as carefully as possible, but only precisely enough to make it plain that they are compatible with determinism.¹³) If this is correct, direct responsibility is not a historical notion. But hitherto I have confined myself to justification of responsibility from the forward-looking perspect- ive. I have deferred the question of justification from the backward-looking perspective which needs to be addressed to make applications of the R–P practice deserved and just. As will transpire in the next chapter, the notion of ultimate responsibility with which this perspective operates is a historical notion. Now, that A is ultimately responsible is indeed excluded by the manipulation we have considered. In fact, the mere truth of determinism suffices to exclude it. For, as Kane remarks, irrespective of “whether the sources of your ends or purposes lie in nature or in other agents, they do not lie in you” (1996: 71). It would be hard to insist on a wedge here, for it does not appear crucial that the manipulation is executed by an agent acting intention- ally. Surely, A would not be more (than directly) responsible if the cause of her mental transformation were some natural force, like radiation (as conceded by Mele, 1995: 168–9). Nor would A be more responsible if B had created her with her present attitudes instead of letting her undergo a mental transformation (cf. Mele, 1995: 168). But, if neither of these aspects is essential for manipulation to rob us of responsibility, what could plausibly be held to make manipulation but not determinism responsibility-robbing? The next chapter implies that this challenge cannot be met, for there I shall give a general argument to the effect that determinism is incompatible with our being ultimately responsible. Moreover, in opposition to Kane, I shall try to show that ultimate respons- ibility is undermined by indeterminism, too. Neither determinism nor indeterminism can give us this deeper responsibility which, alongside direct responsibility, is a part of the commonsensical concept of responsibility. Thus, the exploration of responsibility is forced backwards yet another step. I started by examining the sense in which responsibility has been held to require that one can act otherwise. I found that this presupposes a sense in which our deliberation can issue in another decisive desire or intention than the actual one. According to my explication, the latter notion is epistemic, boiling down to that the upshot is in principle unpredictable, owing to the fact that it is based on our reasons which, necessarily, are partly outside our ¹³ Double puts it well: “Although the task of arriving at the best compatibilist account may be indefinitely perplexing, the compatibilist’s strategy promises to ever more closely approximate the best account” (1991: 61). I think, though, that Double’s “autonomy variable account” (ch. 2) demands too much in respect of mental powers such as rationality and self-knowledge. It seems to me to state necessary conditions for being free to a high degree rather than being responsible. purview. It will be seen in Chapter 36 that this explication is of importance for my interpretation of responsibility in the desert-entailing sense. For the time being, however, I want only to emphasize that this explication does not force us to postulate any degree of indeterminism (though it does not exclude it). Consequently, we arrive at a sense of responsibility—direct responsibility—that is compatible with determinism. But it has emerged that there is a stronger sense of responsibility—ultimate responsibility—which forces us to move further backwards and plumb the causal background of the conditions of direct responsibility. Since these conditions are compatibilist, there must be such a background to plumb. 408 Rationality and Responsibility ¹ This sort of ‘compromise’ has been defended in different forms by Honderich (1988: chap. 8), Double (1991: ch. 6), and Smilansky (2000: ch. 6). ² (1970: 58). See also Kleinig (1971: 73). 34 RESPONSIBILITY AND DESERT I HOPE now to have outlined a plausible forward-looking justification for ascriptions of responsibility that is compatible with the possibility that determinism rules in the sphere of mind and action. That there should be such a justification appears likely in view of the fact that so many thinkers have embraced compatibilism, that is, the thesis that determinism is compatible with full responsibility, for it seems unlikely that all of them have gone completely wrong. By analogy of reasoning, however, the fact that libertarianism and incompatibilism have also found a great number of adherents indicates the existence of an alternative way of justifying the R–P practice that transcends the bounds of determin- ism. If this conjecture is correct, neither compatibilism nor incompatibilism represents the whole truth about the relationship between responsibility and determinism. Both of them rather reflect complementary aspects of this relationship, although both err in denying aspects discerned by their opponents.¹ In Chapter 30 I characterized the backward-looking justification of the R–P practice now to be considered by saying that, according to it, applications of the practice are deserved and, thereby, just. What I shall now attempt is to make good the claim that this kind of justification can be reconciled neither with determinism nor with indeterminism. To accomplish this, the concept of desert must be analysed in some detail. The Structure of the Concept of Desert In a ground-breaking study of desert, Joel Feinberg remarks: “If a person is deserving of some treatment, he must, necessarily, be so in virtue of some possessed characteristic or prior activity”.² That in virtue of which someone deserves something—the basis of desert—“must be facts about that subject” (Feinberg, 1970: 59). A plausible candidate for being the basis of A’s deserts are actions of his that are responsible in something like the [...]... imprudent course, the comparative strength of these sets being such that neither is “decisive” ( 199 6: 127) As a result of these sets of reasons, there occurs an “effort of the will” to resist the temptation to act immorally or imprudently That such an effort occurs is determined by there being reasons for and against, but the effort is in other respects indeterminate ( 199 6: 128) Since the effort is indeterminate,... the falsity of the latter claim This evident fact is (G) Parents produce their children out of material that belongs to them In conjunction with the property-acquisition claim, (G) entails that parents own their children—at least until they voluntary transfer their ownership to their children By the same argument, the parents would be owned by their parents, since they are themselves children of other... raising even further the probability of their efforts being successful, their level of desert cannot correspond to the high probability of their now being successful Suppose, instead, that originally it was equally probable that the efforts of all would succeed If the probability of success later varies between agents, this is the outcome of their past efforts being successful But whether these efforts... “mechanism of control that ‘hooks up’, so to speak, the agent’s reasons and consequent decision (and action)” ( 199 5: 195 ; cf 191 ) But this amendment does not leave agent-causes with any genuine explanatory function For the construct of the agent itself as a cause cannot explain why some of the reasons rather than other ones that the agent had led to action, nor why they led to action at any particular... libertarian theory of free will recently presented by Robert Kane ( 199 6).¹⁵ The central notion of Kane’s theory is that of “self-forming willings”, or acts of will ( 199 6: 124–5) We may here content ourselves with looking at self-forming willings in the shape of decisions or choices occurring in situations of moral or prudential conflict Moral or prudential reasons are here pitted against reasons favouring the. .. in the last chapter that these rights are rights against other people (i.e beings capable of recognizing rights) that these people do not harmfully interfere with how right-holders make use of their psycho-physical assets and property Being claim-rights, these rights are correlated with duties on the part of the others that they do not interfere in this way The fact that these rights (and, hence, the. .. earlier responsible actions of the agents which are determined by other responsibility-giving features of these agents, and so on ad infinitum If so, there would be responsibility-giving properties of these agents for the exemplification of which they would be ultimately responsible in the sense that however deeply one probes their genesis, one does not move outside the range of their responsibilities Such... is of a type which is intrinsically autonomous if and only if it is of a type such that “its intrinsic nature excludes the possibility that either it or any of its components is causally determined by prior conditions” ( 199 1: 277).²² Of course, as Foster himself concedes ( 199 1: 2 79) , the notion of there being a type of event whose intrinsic nature makes it logically impossible that it be caused by other... generated by the properties of an object’s microstructure, but whose role in the causal processes involving that object are not reducible to those of the microproperties ( 199 5b: 1 79) This emergentist view is particularly problematic if one also, like O’Connor, believes in the above-mentioned doctrine that “no answer could be given to the question of what was the cause of a given agent-causal event” ( 199 5b:... that A receive returns the personal value of which to him equals the personal value of the desert-basis for others: when the basis is an action that has culpably made the life of some other being worse and A’s better, the claim is that this advantage be removed and he be made to suffer like his victim, whereas if the basis is an action that has improved the condition of some other, the claim is that A . which they have a right. But let us grant that each of us may be said to become the owner of a certain body by being the first occupant” of it (cf. Kamm, 199 2: 101), in the sense of being the first. Mele ( 199 5: ch. 9) and Fischer and Ravizza ( 199 8: 194 –201)—have argued that responsibility is a “historical” notion: only if the history behind the fulfilment of conditions like (1)–(4) is of a. think that the reply is that, whereas a threat makes the alternatives of action facing the agent worse, an offer improves them. Therefore, all things considered, the agent welcomes the offer: I