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Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility The University of Manchester Research Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility Link to publication record in Manchester Research Explorer Citation for published version (APA): O'Neill, M. (2009). Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility. Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on Manchester Research Explorer is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Proof version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Research Explorer are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Takedown policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please refer to the University of Manchester’s Takedown Procedures [http://man.ac.uk/04Y6Bo] or contact [email protected] providing relevant details, so we can investigate your claim. Download date:23. Sep. 2021 Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility A dissertation presented by Martin Patrick O’Neill to The Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Philosophy Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts January 2009 © 2009 – Martin Patrick O’Neill All rights reserved. iii Advisor: Professor Thomas M. Scanlon, Jr Martin Patrick O’Neill Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility Abstract Philosophical problems of freedom and responsibility are among the most recalcitrant philosophical problems that we have, and are connected to a range of important issues in our understanding of agency, autonomy, blame, and the grounds of moral assessment. Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility argues for a ‘Hybrid View’ on these issues: that is, a view that combines the insights of more traditional compatibilist and incompatibilist theories into a unified solution to this set of closely connected philosophical problems. Part One, ‘Agency, Autonomy and Desire: Or, Rescuing the Rational Wanton’, is based around an examination of the views of Harry Frankfurt. In this part of the dissertation, I argue that the sort of “volitional hierarchy” described in Frankfurt’s work can generate neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for personhood or for freedom of the will. I also critically examine Frankfurt’s conception of desire, and his account of the conditions for moral responsibility. This Part concludes that the shortcomings of Frankfurt’s view should lead us to seek an alternative ‘pluralist’ account of the conditions for autonomy. iv Part Two, ‘Freedom without Resentment: Responsibility and the Reactive Attitudes’, undertakes a careful investigation of the influential views of P. F. Strawson. Here, I critically investigate Strawson’s account of the relationship between the moral attitudes and reactive interpersonal attitudes such as resentment, and give reasons why we should reject the sort of ‘naturalistic compatibilism’ that Strawson’s approach embodies. I conclude that Strawson has failed to show that our practices of using desert-entailing reactive and moral attitudes are outside the scope of rational criticism. Part Three, ‘Freedom, Fairness, Responsibility and Blame: A Hybrid View’ presents and defends my own positive view regarding freedom and responsibility. I argue that the standards of fairness that govern ‘responsibility-as-blameworthiness’ differ significantly from those standards of fairness that govern ‘responsibility-as- assessability’. I conclude that we should therefore endorse a view that is broadly incompatibilist about the former kind of responsibility, but compatibilist with regard to the latter variety, and I further support this Hybrid view by appeal to some general considerations of philosophical methodology. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements viii Dedication xiii Epigraph xiv Part One: 1 Agency, Autonomy and Desire – Or, Rescuing the Rational Wanton 1. Introduction 2 2. Second-Order Desires and the Concept of a Person 5 3. Volitional Hierarchy, Judgement-Sensitivity, Agency and Personhood 10 4. Rescuing the Rational Wanton: Personhood, Rationality and Desire 20 5. Personhood, Agency and Freedom of the Will 31 6. Decisiveness, Commitment and Higher-Order Desires 40 7. Hierarchy, Volition and Responsibility 49 8. Coda: Towards a Pluralist Account of Autonomy 65 Part Two: 70 Freedom without Resentment: Responsibility and the Reactive Attitudes 1. Strawson’s View: Practical Compatibilism as a Form of Naturalism 71 2. Relationships and Reactive Attitudes 78 a. What are the reactive attitudes? – Broad and narrow conceptions 78 b. Excuses and Exemptions – ‘Quality of Will’ and ‘Capacity’ 84 c. Making Sense of the ‘Objective Attitude’ 89 d. In Praise of the Objective Attitude: 104 On Expectations, Sympathy and Engagement vi e. Taking Stock: The Varieties of Reactive and Objective Attitudes 112 f. The Reactive Attitudes and the Varieties of Incompatibilism 115 g. The Objective Attitude and the Inescapability of ‘the Human Commitment’ 126 h. Rationality, Objectivity, and ‘The General Framework of Human Life’ 136 i. Rationality, the Reactive Attitudes, and “the Gains and Losses to Human Life” 144 (1) The Desirability Objection 145 (2) The Anti-Consequentialist Objection 147 j. Conclusion: Strawson’s First Question Answered 149 3. Moral Judgement, Responsibility and the Reactive Attitudes 151 a. “A More Usual Area of Debate” 151 b. “Kindred Attitudes”? 154 The Reactive Attitudes and their Structural Transformations c. Strawson on Disapprobation, Resentment and the Contours of the Moral 166 d. Strawson’s Conception of the Moral: 173 Responsibility, Disapprobation and Resentment e. The Moral Excuses and Exemptions, Moral Judgements, 184 and the Objective Attitude f. On the Cultivation of the “Purely Objective View” 198 g. Strawson’s Second Question: Moral Attitudes and The Human Commitment 204 h. Naturalism, Practice and “the Consequence of the General Thesis” 208 i. Rationality, Responsibility and the Moral Attitudes 215 j. “A Crude Opposition of Phrase Where We Have a Great Intricacy of Phenomena” 223 k. Optimism, Pessimism, Moral Responsibility and the Objective Attitude 231 l. Optimism, Pessimism and the “General Framework” of Human Attitudes 245 m. Conclusion: Strawson’s Second Question Answered 254 4. Beyond Optimism and Pessimism: Or, Freedom without Resentment 255 Part Three: 257 Freedom, Fairness, Responsibility and Blame: A Hybrid View 1. A Real Reconciliation between Compatibilism and Incompatibilism 258 2. Fairness and Responsibility 266 vii 3. Conceptions of Responsibility and Blame 282 4. Fairness, Responsibility and Blame: The Case for Restricted Incompatibilism 294 5. Putting the Hybridity into the Hybrid View: 318 Circumscribed Incompatibilism and the Conditions for Moral Assessment 6. The ‘Meta Argument’ for the Hybrid View: 333 On the Enduringness and Recalcitrance of Disagreements about Responsibility 7. The Place of Optimism 338 8. On the Apparent Insolubility of the Problem of Responsibility 341 Bibliography 343 List of Figures: Figure 1. Cartesian Desire 15 viii Acknowledgements [Oxton, 19 January 2009] During the time that I have been thinking and writing on these issues, I have benefitted from the help of many people, and a number of institutions. I’m pleased to acknowledge many of them here, and apologize to anyone whom I’ve forgotten. It has been a rare pleasure and privilege to work on my dissertation under the supervision of Tim Scanlon and Derek Parfit. As will be clear to anyone who reads my work, the influence of Tim and Derek on my philosophical outlook has been profound and pervasive. I am grateful to both of them for their guidance, enthusiasm and support. In the case of Derek Parfit, my gratitude for his help dates back all the way to my time as a B.Phil. student in Oxford, where he co-supervised my B.Phil. thesis. I have grown used to Derek’s boundless philosophical enthusiasm, his thoughtfulness, and his wonderful comments on my work. But familiarity with Derek’s qualities as an advisor and supervisor has never blunted my awareness of how exceptionally fortunate I have been to work with him. Tim Scanlon was the primary academic reason that I came to Harvard. I have learned an enormous amount from his seminars, from working with him as a Teaching Fellow in one of his undergraduate courses, and from many conversations with him over the years. I have come to regard Tim as the very embodiment of the virtue of good philosophical judgement, and cannot imagine a better philosophical advisor. I thank him, especially, for his ongoing, and only moderately successful, attempts to curb my tendency towards writing with perhaps a tad too much rhetorical enthusiasm. As well as Tim and Derek, I am grateful to a number of other philosophers at Harvard. Dick Moran, the third member of my dissertation committee, has been a thoughtful and insightful interlocutor. This dissertation benefitted significantly from his influence, especially during its early stages. Niko Kolodny, before his return to Berkeley, served for a year as the fourth member of my committee. I learned a great deal from talking through my work with Niko, and my dissertation certainly gained from his influence. Although Chris Korsgaard was not directly involved in supervising my work, it is hard to over-estimate how much I have learned from her. My understanding of the history of
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