I Could Not Have Done Otherwise--So What? Author(S): Daniel C

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I Could not have Done Otherwise--So What? Author(s): Daniel C. Dennett Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 81, No. 10, Eighty-First Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct., 1984), pp. 553-565 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026255 . Accessed: 19/08/2012 01:53

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http://www.jstor.org FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM 553

I COULD NOT HAVE DONE OTHERWISE-SO WHAT?* WX T HEREVER progressis stalledon a philosophicalprob- lem, a tactic worth tryingis to find some shared (and hence largelyunexamined) assumption and deny it. The problem of free will is such a problem, and, as Peter van Inwagen notes: ... almostall philosophersagree that a necessarycondition for holding an agentresponsible for an act is believingthat the agent could haverefrained from performing that act.' Perhaps van Inwagen is right;perhaps most philosophers agree on this. If so, this shared assumption, which I will call CDO (for "could have done otherwise"),is a good candidate fordenial, especially since thereturns out to be so littleto be said in support of it, once it is called in question. I will argue that,just like thosepeople who are famous only for being famous, this assumption owes its traditional high regard to nothing more than its traditionalhigh regard.It is almost neverquestioned. And the traditionitself, I will claim, is initiallymotivated by littlemore than inattentiveextrapo- lation fromfamiliar cases. To engage the issue, I assertthat it simply does not matterat all to moral responsibilitywhether the agent in question could have done otherwise in the circumstances.Now how does a friendof CDO set about showing that I am obviously wrong? Not by re- minding meRunnecessarily, of the broad consensus in philosophy in support of the CDO principle, or by repeating it, firmlyand knowingly.The inertia of a traditionis by itselfscant recommen- dation, and if it is claimed that the assumption is not questioned because it is obvious or self-evident,I can at least ask forsome sup- portingillustration of the self-evidenceof the assumption in appli- cation to familiarcases. Can anyone give me an example of someone withholding a judgment of responsibility until he has determined(to his own satisfaction)whether the agent could have done otherwise? It will perhaps appear that I must be extraordinarilyinattentive to the topics of daily conversationif I can ask that question with a straightface. A prominentfeature of many actual inquiries into the *To be presentedin an APA symposiumon Freedomand Determinism,December 30, 1984. Petervan Inwagen will comment;see this JOURNAL, this issue, 565-567. "'The Incompatibilityof Free Will and Determinism,"Philosophical Studies, xxvii, 3 (March 1975): 185-99,p. 188, reprintedin Gary Watson,ed., Free Will (New York: Oxford,1982): 46-58, p. 50. 0022-362X/84/8110/0553$01.30 C1984The Journalof Philosophy,Inc. 554 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY responsibilityof particular agents is the asking of the question "Could he have done otherwise?"The question is raised in trials, both civil and criminal, and much more frequentlyin the retro- spective discussions between individuals concerning blame or ex- cuse forparticular regretted acts of omission or commission. Beforeturning to a closer examination of those cases, it is worth noting that the question plays almost no role in discussions of praise or rewardfor felicitous, unregretted acts-except in the for- mulaic gracious demurrerof the one singled out for gratitudeor praise: "What else could I do?" ("Anyone else would have done the same." "Shucks; 'twarn'tnothin'.") And in these instances we do not take the agent to be disavowing responsibilityat all, but just declaring that being responsible under those conditions was not difficult. Perhaps one reason we do not ask "Could he have done otherwise?" when tryingto assess responsibilityfor good deeds and tri- umphs is that(thanks to our generosityof spirit)we give agents the benefitof the doubt when theyhave done well by us, ratherthan delving too scrupulouslyinto factsof ultimateauthorship. Such a charitable impulse may play a role, but thereare betterreasons, as we shall see. And we certainlydo ask the question when an act is up forcensure. But when we do, we neveruse the familiarquestion to inaugurate the sort of investigation that would actually shed light on the traditionalphilosophical issue the question has been presumed to raise. Instead we proceed to look around forevidence of what I call a pocket of local fatalism:a particularcircumstance in the relevant portion of the past which ensured that the agent would not have done otherwise(during the stretchof local fatalism) no matterwhat he had tried,or wanted, to do. A standardex- ample of local fatalismis being locked in a room.2 If the agent was locked in a room (or in some other way had his will renderedimpotent), then independentlyof the truthor falsity of determinismand no matterwhat sortof causation reignswithin the agent's brain (or Cartesian soul, for that matter),we agree that "he could not have done otherwise."The readilydeterminable em- pirical fact that an agent was a victim of local fatalismterminates the inquiry into causation. (It does not always settlethe issue of responsibility, however, as Harry Frankfurtshows3; under special

2The misuse of this standard example-e.g., in the extrapolation to the theme that,if determinismis true,the whole world's a prison-is describedin my Elbow Room: The Varietiesof Free Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford/ MIT Press, 1984), fromwhich portionsof the presentargument are drawn. 3"Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,"this JOUJRNAL, LXV, 23 (Dec. 4, 1969): 829-833. FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM 555 circumstancesan agent may still be held responsible.) And if our investigationfails to uncover any evidence of such local fatalism, this also terminatesthe inquiry. We consider the mattersettled: the agent was responsible afterall; "he could have done otherwise." Proving a negative existentialis not generallyregarded as a problem here. We can typicallycount on the agent himselfto draw our attentionto any evidence of local fatalismhe is aware of (for if he can show that "his hands were tied" this will tend to exculpate him), so his failures to come forwardwith any such evidence is takento be a reliable (but not foolproof)sign thatthe case is closed. The firstpoint I wish to make is that if the friendsof CDO look to everydaypractice for evidence for the contention that ordinary people "agree that a necessarycondition for holding an agent responsible foran act is believing thatthe agent could have refrained fromperforming that act," theyin factwill find no such support. When the act in question is up forpraise, people manifestlyignore the question and would seem bizarreif theydidn't. And when as- sessing an act forblame, although people do indeed ask "Could he have done otherwise?", they show no interestin pursuing that question beyond the point where theyhave satisfiedtheir curiosity about the existence or absence of local fatalism-a phenomenon thatis entirelyneutral between determinism or indeterminism.For instance, people never withhold judgment about responsibility until after they have consulted physicists (or metaphysiciansor neuroscientists)for their opinions about the ultimate status-de- terministicor indeterministic-ofthe neural or mental eventsthat governedthe agent's behavior. And so faras I know, no defenseat- torneyhas ever gone into court to mount a defensebased on an ef- fortto establish, by expert testimony,that the accused was determined to make the decision that led to the dreadfulact, and hence could not have done otherwise,and hence ("obviously") is not to be held responsiblefor it. So the CDO principle is not something"everybody knows" even if most philosophersagree on it. The principle requiressupporting argument.My second point is that any such supportingargument must challenge an abundance of utterlyfamiliar evidence suggest- ing that often,when we seem to be interestedin the question of whetherthe agent could have done otherwise,it is because we wish to draw the opposite conclusion about responsibilityfrom that which the philosophical traditionendorses. "Here I stand," Luther said. "I can do no other." Luther claimed that he could do no other,that his conscience made it impossible for him to recant. He might,of course, have been wrong, or have been deliberatelyoverstating the truth,but even if he was-perhaps 556 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY especially if he was-his declarationis testimonyto the factthat we simply do not exempt someone fromblame or praise foran act because we thinkhe could do no other. WhateverLuther was doing, he was not tryingto duck responsibility. There are cases where the claim "I can do no other" is an avowal of frailty:suppose what I ought to do is get on the plane and flyto safety,but I stand rooted on the ground and confess I can do no other-because of my irrationaland debilitatingfear of flying.In such a case I can do no other,I claim, because my rational control facultyis impaired. This is indeed an excusing condition. But in othercases, like Luther's, when I say I cannot do otherwiseI mean that I cannot because I see so clearly what the situation is and because my rational control facultyis not impaired. It is too obvious what to do; reason dictatesit; I would have to be mad to do otherwise, and, since I happen not to be mad, I cannot do otherwise. I hope it is true-and think it verylikely is true-that it would be impossible to induce me to torturean innocent person by offer- ing me a thousand dollars. "Ah"-comes the objection-"but what if some evil space pirates were holding the whole world ransom, and promisednot to destroythe world if only you would torturean innocent person? Would thatbe somethingyou would findimpos- sible to do?" Probably not, but so what? That is a vastlydifferent case. If what one is interestedin is whetherunder the specifiedcir- cumstances I could have done otherwise,then the othercase men- tioned is utterlyirrelevant. I claimed it would not be possible to induce me to torturesomeone for a thousand dollars. Those who hold the CDO principle dear are always insisting that we should look at whetherone could have done otherwisein exactlythe same circumstances.I claim somethingstronger; I claim thatI could not do otherwiseeven in any roughlysimilar case. I would never agree to torturean innocent person for a thousand dollars. It would make no difference,I claim, what tone of voice the briberused, or whetherI was tired and hungry,or whetherthe proposed victim was well illuminated or partially concealed in shadow. I am, I hope, immune to all such offers. - Now why would anyone's intuitions suggest that,if I am right, then if and when I ever have occasion to refusesuch an offer,my refusalwould not count as a responsible act? Perhaps this is what some people think:they think that if I were rightwhen I claimed I could not do otherwisein such cases, I would be some sortof zom- bie, "programmed"always to refusethousand-dollar bribes. A genuinely freeagent, theythink, must be more volatile somehow. If I am to be able to listen to reason, if I am to be flexiblein the right way, theythink, I mustn'tbe too dogmatic. Even in the most pre- FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM 557 posterouscases, then,I must be able to see that"there are two sides to everyquestion." I must be able to pause, and weigh up the pros and cons of this suggestedbit of lucrativetorture. But the only way I could be constitutedso that I can always "see both sides"-no matterhow preposterous one side is-is by being constitutedso that in any particularcase "I could have done otherwise." That would be fallacious reasoning. Seeing both sides of the question does not require that one not be overwhelminglyper- suaded, in the end, by one side. The flexibilitywe want a responsible agent to have is the flexibilityto recognize the one-in-a-zillion case in which, thanks to that thousand dollars, not otherwiseob- tainable, the world can be saved (or whatever).But the general ca- pacity to respond flexiblyin such cases does not at all require that one could have done otherwisein the particularcase, or in any particularcase, but only thatunder some variationsin the circumstances-the variations that matter-one would do otherwise. Philo- sophershave oftennoted, uneasily, that the difficultmoral problem cases, the decisions that "might go eitherway", are not the only, or even the most frequent,sorts of decisions forwhich we hold people responsible. They have seldom taken the hint to heart, however, and asked whetherthe CDO principle was simply wrong. If our responsibilityreally did hinge, as thismajor philosophical traditioninsists, on the question of whetherwe evercould do otherwise than we in factdo in exactlythose circumstances,we would be faced with a most peculiar problem of ignorance: it would be unlikely in the extreme,given what now seems to be the case in physics, thatanyone would ever know whetheranyone has everbeen responsible. For today's orthodoxyis that indeterminismreigns at the subatomic level of quantum mechanics; so, in the absence of any general and accepted argumentfor universal -determinism, it is possible for all we know that our decisions and actions trulyare the magnified,macroscopic effectsof quantum-level indetermina- cies occurringin our brains. But it is also possible forall we know that, even though indeterminismreigns in our brains at the subatomic quantum-mechanical level, our macroscopic decisions and acts are all themselvesdetermined; the quantum effectscould just as well be self-canceling,not amplified (as if by organic Geiger counters in the neurons). And it is extremelyunlikely, given the complexityof the brain at even the molecular level (a complexity for which the word 'astronomical' is a vast understatement),that we could ever develop good evidence that any particular act was such a large-scaleeffect of a critical subatomic indeterminacy.So if someone's responsibilityfor an act did hinge on whether,at the moment of decision, that decision was (already) determinedby a 558 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

prior state of the world, then barringa triumphantreturn of universal determinismin microphysics(which would rule out all responsibility on this view), the odds are very heavy that we will neverhave any reason to believe of any particularact thatit was or was not responsible.The criticaldifference would be utterlyinscru- table fromevery macroscopic vantage point and practicallyinscru- table from the most sophisticated microphysical vantage point imaginable. We have alreadyseen thatordinary people, when interestedin as- signing responsibility,do not in factpursue inquiries into whether theirfellows could have done otherwise.Now we see a reason why theywould be unwise to try:the sheer impossibilityof conducting any meaningful investigationinto the question-except in cases where macroscopic local fatalism is discovered. What then can people think theyare doing when theyask the CDO question in particular cases? Are they really asking the philosophers' metaphysical question about whetherthe agent was determinedto do what he did, but just giving up as soon as the investigationgets difficult-and the prospects get dim of strikinga lucky negative answer (with the discoveryof some local fatalism)?No, forthere is a betterquestion theycan have been asking all along, a question that stops for principled reasons with the conclusion that local fatalism is ruled out (or in). It is betterfor two reasons: it is usually empiricallyanswerable, and its answer matters.For not only is the traditionalmetaphysical question unanswerable;its answer,even if you knew it, would be useless. What good would it do to know, about a particular agent, that on some occasion (or on everyoccasion) he could have done otherwise than he did? Or thathe could not have done otherwisethan he did? Let us take the lattercase first.Suppose you knew (because God told you, presumably)that when Jones pulled the triggerand murdered his wife at time t, he could not have done otherwise. That is, given Jones's microstateat t and the complete microstate of Jones's environment(including the gravitationaleffects of dis- tant stars,etc.) at t, no otherJones-trajectory was possible than the trajectoryhe took. If Jones were ever put back into exactly that stateagain, in exactlythat circumstance, he would pull the trigger again-and if he were put in that state a million times,he would pull the triggera million times. Now if you learned this, would you have learned anythingim- portantabout Jones? Would you have learned anythingabout his character,for instance, or his likely behavior on merelysimilar occasions? No. Although people are physical objects which, like FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM 559 atoms or ball bearingsor bridges,obey the laws of physics,they are not only more complicated than anythingelse we know in the uni- verse; theyare also designed to be so sensitiveto the passing show that they never can be in the same microstatetwice. One doesn't even have to descend to the atomic level to establish this. People learn, and remember,and get bored, and shifttheir attention, and change theirinterests so incessantly,that it is as good as infinitely unlikely that any person is ever in the same (gross) psychological or cognitive stateon two occasions. And this would be trueeven if we engineered the surrounding environment to be "utterlythe same" on differentoccasions-if only because the second time around the agent would no doubt think something that went un- thoughtthe firsttime, like "Oh my,this all seems so utterlyfamiliar; now what did I do last time?" Learning (fromGod, again) thata particularagent was not thus determinedto act would be learning somethingequally idle, from the point of view of characterassessment or planning for the future.A genuinelyundetermined agent is no more flexible,versatile, sensitiveto nuances, or reformablethan a deterministicnear-dupli- cate would be.4 So if anyone at all is interestedin the question of whetherone could have done otherwisein exactly the same circumstances(and internalstate) this will have to be a particularlypure metaphysical curiosity-that is to say, a curiosityso pure as to be utterlylacking in any ulterior motive, since the answer could not conceivably make any noticeable differenceto the way the world went. If it is unlikely thatit matterswhether a person could have done otherwise-when we look microscopicallyclosely at the causation involved-what is the other question that we are (and should be) interestedin when we ask "But could he have done otherwise?"? Consider a similar question that might arise about a robot, des- tined (by hypothesis) to live its entire life as a deterministicma- chine on a deterministicplanet. Even though this robot is, by hypothesis,completely deterministic, it can be controlledby "heuristic"programs that invoke "random" selection-of strategies,policies, weights, or whatever-at various points. All it needs is a pseudo-randomnumber generator, either a preselectedlist or table of pseudo-random numbers to consult deterministicallywhen the occasion demands or an algorithmthat generates a pseudo-random sequence of digits. Either way it can have a sort of bingo-parlor machine for providing it with a patternlessand arbitraryseries of digits on which to pivot some of its activities.

4his is shown in "Designing th6 PerfectDeliberator," in Elbow Room, op. cit. 560 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

Whateverthis robot does, it could not have done otherwise,if we mean that in the strictand metaphysicalsense of those words that philosophers have concentratedon. Suppose then that one fine Martian day it makes a regrettablemistake: it concoctsand executes some scheme that destroys something valuable-another robot, perhaps. I am not supposing, for the moment, that it can regret anything,but just that its designers,back on Earth, regretwhat it has done and find themselveswondering a wonder that might nat- urally be expressed: Could it have done otherwise?Let us suppose that they firstsatisfy themselves that no obvious local fatalism (locked room, dead battery)has afflictedtheir robot. But still they press theirquestion: Could it have done otherwise?They know it is a deterministicsystem, of course; so theyknow betterthan to ask the metaphysicalquestion. Their question concerns the design of the robot; forin the wake of this regrettableevent they may wish to redesign it slightly,to make this sort of event less likely in the future.5What theywant to know, of course, is what informationthe robot was relying on, what reasoning or planning it did, and whetherit did "enough" of the rightsort of reasoningor planning. Of course in one sense of 'enough' theyknow the robot did not do enough of the right sort of reasoning; if it had, it would have done the right thing. But it may be that the robot's design in this case could not reallybe improved.For it may be thatit was making optimal use of optimally designed heuristicprocedures-but this time,unluckily, the heuristicchances it took didn't pay off.Put the robot in a similar situation in the future,and, thanks to no more than the fact that its pseudo-randomnumber generatoris in a dif- ferentstate, it will do somethingdifferent; in factit will usually do the rightthing. It is temptingto add: it could have done the right thing on this occasion-meaning by this that it was well enough designed, at the time,to have done the rightthing (its "character" is not impugned); its failuredepended on nothing but the factthat something undesigned (and unanticipatable) happened to inter- vene in the process in a way that made an unfortunatedifference. A heuristic program is not guaranteed to yield the "right" or sought-afterresult. Some heuristicprograms are betterthan others; when one fails,it may be possible to diagnose the failureas assign- able to some characteristicweakness in its design, but even the best are not foolproof,and when they fail, as they sometimes must, 4 "We are scarcelyever interestedin the performanceof a communication-engi- neering machine fora single input. To functionadequately it must give a satisfac- toryperformance for a whole class of inputs, and this means a statisticallysatisfac- toryperformance for the class of inputs which it is statisticallyexpected to receive." Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics(Cambridge, Mass: Technology Press; New York: Wiley, 1948), p. 55. FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM 561 theremay be no reason at all for the failure;as Cole Porterwould say, it was just one of those things. Such failuresare not the only cases of failuresthat will "count" forthe designersas cases where the system"could have done otherwise." If theydiscover that the robot's failure,on thisoccasion, was due to a "freak" bit of dust that somehow driftedinto a place where it could disrupt the system,they may decide that this was such an unlikelyevent that there is no call to redesignthe systemto guard against its recurrence.6They will note that,in the micropar- ticular case (as always) theirrobot could not have done otherwise; moreover,if (by remotestpossibility) it ever found itselfin exactly the same circumstancesagain, it would fail again. But the de- signerswill realize thatthey have no rational interestin doing anything to improve the design of the robot. It failed on the occasion, but its design is neverthelessabove reproach. There is a difference betweenbeing optimallydesigned and being infallible. Consider yetanother sortof case. The robot has a ray gun thatit fireswith 99.9% accuracy.That is to say, sometimes,over long dis- tances,it fails to hit the targetit was aiming at. Wheneverit misses, the engineers want to know somethingabout the miss: was it due to some systematic errorin the controls,some foible or flaw that will keep coming up, or was it just one of those things-one of those "acts of God" in which, in spite of an irreproachableexecu- tion of an optimally designed aiming routine, the thing just nar- rowly missed?There will always be such cases; the goal is to keep them to a minimum-consistent with cost-effectiveness,of course. Beyond a certain point it isn't worth caring about errors.W. V. Quine notes that engineers have a concept of more than passing philosophical interest:the concept of "don't-cares"-the cases one is rational to ignore.7When theyare satisfiedthat a particularmiss was a don't-care,they may shrug and say: "Well, it could have been a hit." What concerns the engineerswhen theyencounter misperform- ance in theirrobot is whetherthe misperformanceis a tellingone: does it reveal something about a pattern of systematic weak- ness, likely to recur,or an inappropriateand inauspicious linking betweensorts of circumstancesand sortsof reactions?Is thissort of thing apt to happen again, or was it due to the coincidental con- vergenceof fundamentallyindependent factors, highly unlikely to

6Strictly speaking, the recurrenceof an eventof this general type;there is no need to guard against the recurrenceof the particularevent (that is logically impossible) or against the recurrenceof an eventof exactlythe same type(that is nomologically impossible). 7Word and Object (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1960), pp. 182,259. 562 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY recur?So long as theirrobot is not misperformingbut rathermak- ing the "right" decisions, the point in asking whetherit could have done otherwiseis to satisfythemselves that the felicitousbehavior was not a flukeor merecoincidence but ratherthe outcome of good design. They hope that theirrobot, like Luther,will be imperturb- able in its mission. To get evidence about this theyignore the micro-details,which will never be the same again in any case, and just average over them,analyzing the robot into a finitearray of macroscopicallyde- fined states,organized in such a way that thereare links between the various degreesof freedomof the system.The question theycan then ask is this: Are the links the rightlinks for the task? This rationale forignoring micro-determinism(wherever it may "in principle" exist) and squinting just enough to blur such fine distinctions into probabilisticallyrelated states and regions that can be treatedas homogeneous is clear, secure,and unproblematic in science, particularlyin engineeringand biology. That does not mean, of course, that this is also just the rightway to thinkof people, when we are wondering whetherthey have acted responsibly. But thereis a lot to be said forit. Why do we ask "Could he have done otherwise?"?We ask it because something has happened that we wish to interpret.An act has been performed,and we wish to understandhow the act came about, why it came about, and what meaning we should attach to it. That is, we want to know what conclusions to draw from it about the future.Does it tell us anythingabout the agent's character,for instance? Does it suggesta criticismof theagent thatmight, if presentedproperly, lead the agent to improve his ways in some regard? Can we learn from this incident that this is or is not an agent who can be trustedto behave similarlyon similar occasions in the future?If one held his characterconstant, but changed the circumstancesin minor-even major-ways, would he almost always do the same lamentablesort of thing?Was what we observeda fluke,or was it a manifestationof a robust trend-a trendthat per- sists,or is constant,over an interestinglywide varietyof conditions?8 IWhen the agent in question is oneself,this rationale is even more plainly visible. Suppose I find I have done something dreadful. Who cares whether,in exactly the circumstancesand stateof mind I found myself,I could have done somethingelse? I didn't do some-

8We are interestedin trendsand flukes in both directions(praiseworthy and regretted);if we had evidence that Luther was just kidding himself,that his appar- ently staunch stand was a sort of comic-opera coincidence, our sense of his moral strengthwould be severelydiminished. "He's not so stalwart,"we might say. "He could well have done otherwise." FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM 563

thingelse, and it's too late to undo what I did. But when I go to in- terpretwhat I did, what do I learn about myself?Ought I to practice the sort of maneuver I botched, in hopes of making it more reliable, less vulnerableto perturbation,or would thatbe wastedef- fort?Would it be a good thing,so faras I can tell, forme to tryto adjust my habits of thought in such sorts of cases in the future? Knowing that I will always be somewhat at the mercyof the con- siderations that merelyhappen to occur to me as time rushes on, knowing that I cannot entirelycontrol this process of deliberation, I may take steps to bias the likelihood of certainsorts of considera- tions routinely"coming to mind" in certaincritical situations. For instance, I might tryto cultivate the habit of counting to 10 in my mind beforesaying anythingat all about Ronald Reagan, having learned that the deliberationtime thus gained pays offhandsomely in cuttingdown regrettableoutbursts of intemperatecommentary. Or I might decide that,no matterhow engrossedin conversationI am, I must learn to ask myselfhow many glasses of wine I have had every time I see someone hovering hospitably near my glass with a bottle. This time I made a fool of myself;if the situation had been quite different,I certainlywould have done otherwise;if the situation had been virtuallythe same, I mighthave done otherwise and I mightnot. The main thingis to see to it thatI will jolly well do otherwisein (merely)similar situationsin the future. That, certainly,is the healthyattitude to take toward the regret- table parts of one's recentpast. It is the self-appliedversion of the engineers' attitudetoward the persistingweaknesses in the design of the robot. Of course,if I would ratherfind excuses than improve myself,I may dwell on the fact that I don't have to "take" responsibility for my action, since I can always imagine a more fine- grained standpointfrom which my predicamentlooms largerthan I do. (If you make yourselfreally small, you can externalizevirtu- ally everything.)But we wisely discourage this refuge in finer- grained visions of our embedding in the world, formuch the same reason it is shunned by the engineers: what we might learn from such an investigationis never of any consequence. It simply does not matterwhether one could have done otherwise. It does not matterfor the robot, someone may retort,because a robot could not deservepunishment or blame for its momentsof malfeasance.For us it mattersbecause we are candidates forblame and punishment,not mere redesign.You can't blame someone for somethinghe did, if he could not have done otherwise.This, however,is just a reassertionof the CDO principle,not a new consider- ation, and I am denyingthat principle fromthe outset.Why indeed shouldn't you blame someone for doing something he could not 564 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY have refrainedfrom doing? Afterall, if he did it, what difference does it make thathe was determinedto do it? "The differenceis thatif he was determinedto do it, then he had no chance not to do it." But this is simply a non sequitur, unless one espouses an extremelysuperstitious view of what a chance is. Compare the following two lotteriesfor fairness. In LotteryA, after all the ticketsare sold, theirstubs are placed in a suitable mixer, and, aftersuitable mixing (involving some genuinely-quantum- mechanically-random mixing if you like), the winning ticketis blindly drawn. In LotteryB, this mixing and drawing takes place beforethe ticketsare sold, but otherwisethe lotteriesare conducted the same. Many people think the second lotteryis unfair. It is unfair, they think, because the winning ticketis determinedbefore people even buy their tickets;one of those ticketsis already the winner; the other ticketsare so much worthlesspaper, and selling them to unsuspecting people is a sort of fraud. But in fact, of course, the two lotteriesare equally fair: everyonehas a chance of winning. The timingof the selectionof the winneris an utterlyin- essential feature.The reason the drawing in a lotteryis typically postponed until afterthe sale of the ticketsis to provide the public with first-handeyewitness evidence that there have been no shenan- igans. No sneakyagent with inside knowledgehas manipulated the distributionof the tickets,because the knowledge of the winning ticketdid not (and could not) exist in any agent until afterthe ticketswere sold. It is interestingthat not all lotteriesfollow this practice. Pub- lishers' Clearinghouse and Reader's Digest mail out millions of envelopes each year that say in bold letterson them "YOU MAY ALREADY HAVE WON"-a million dollars or some other prize. Surely theseexpensive campaigns are based on marketresearch that shows that in general people do think lotterieswith pre-selected winners are fair so long as theyare honestlyconducted. But perhaps people go along with theselotteries uncomplainingly because theyget theirtickets for free. Would many people buy a ticketin a lotteryin which the winning stub, sealed in a special envelope, was known to be deposited in a bank vault fromthe outset? I suspect thatmost ordinary people would be untroubledby such an arrange- ment,and would consider themselvesto have a real opportunityto win. I suspect, that is, that most ordinarypeople are less supersti- tious than those philosophers (going back to Democritus and Lu- cretius) who have convinced themselvesthat, without a continual supply of genuinelyrandom cruces to break up the fabricof causation, therecannot be any real opportunitiesor chances. If our world is determined,then we have pseudo-randomnumber FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM 565 generatorsin us, not Geiger counter randomizers.That is to say, if our world is determined,all our lotterytickets were drawn at once, eons ago, put in an envelope for us, and doled out as we needed them throughlife. "But that isn't fair!" some say, "For some people will have been dealt more winnersthan others." Indeed, on any particulardeal, some people have more high cards than others,but one should rememberthat the luck averages out. "But if all the drawings take place beforewe are born,some people are destinedto get more luck than others!" But that will be trueeven if the drawings are held not beforewe are born, but periodically,on demand, throughoutour lives. Once again, it makes no difference-this time to fairnessand, hence, to the question of desert-whether an agent's decision has been determinedfor eons (via a fatefullottery ticket lodged in his brain's decision-box, waiting to be used), or was indeterministic- ally fixed by somethinglike a quantum effectat, or just before,the momentof ultimatedecision. It is open to friendsof the CDO principle to attemptto provide othergrounds forallegiance to the principle, but since at this time I see nothing supportingthat allegiance but the habit of allegiance itself,I am constrained to conclude that the principle should be dismissed as nothing betterthan a long-lived philosophical illu- sion. I may be wrong to conclude this,of course, but under the cir- cumstancesI cannot do otherwise. DANIEL C. DENNETT Tufts University

DENNETT ON 'COULD HAVE DONE OTHERWISE'* DANIEL DENNETT attackswhat he describesas a "shared assumption" of writers on free will: A is responsiblefor having done X only if A could have refrainedfrom doing X.

If this sentence is to express a thesis that has been widely accepted, then 'could have' must be read as the past indicative of 'can', where

*Abstractof a paper to be presentedin an APA symposiumon Freedom and De- terminism,December 30, 1984, commentingon Daniel C. Dennett, "I Could Not Have Done Otherwise-So What?," this JOURNAL, this issue, 553-565.

0022-362X/84/8110/0565$00.50 1984 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.