Journal of Philosophy, Inc. 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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Philosophy. 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 hold- ing 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, espe- cially 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 some- one 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 other- wise?" 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 fatal- ism) 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 re- sponsibility, 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 prob- lem 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 re- sponsible 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 deter- mined 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 be- cause 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 be- cause my rational control facultyis not impaired. It is too obvious what to do; reason dictatesit; I would have to be mad to do other- wise, and, since I happen not to be mad, I cannot do otherwise.