Responsibility always was a difficult issue, and it is not getting any easier. When we knew relatively little about mental processes, it was easier to think of the forces that might interfere with our agency in such abstract terms as ‘laws of nature’ and in relatively external ways (environment, upbringing). As we learn more about psychology, these interfering forces – or ‘effects’ as they are usually called – seem more personal and perturbing. We are subject to Order Effects, Bystander Effects, the Better-Than-Average Effect, and so on. At any one time, it seems, we have no way of knowing the extent to which our actions are influenced by any of these operating conditions of our psychological machinery. This is apt to lead to considerable skepticism about freedom and responsibility. Doris makes a compelling case for the problem in his Talking to Our Selves, but is also kind enough to offer what he takes to be a solution. The account is a slight modification of the Frankfurtian idea that central to agency (or personhood) is our ability to form second-order volitions. Doris calls such volitions ‘values.’ Values are desires that we have put in the driver's seat, Doris says. We are only responsible for actions that express our values. So far, so good.
Doris embraces a rather strong form of skepticism about what we can know about the causes of our actions. Because of the way our minds work, our actions are sometimes, if not always, influenced by things other than our values. Can we be responsible for such actions? Yes, Doris says, as long as our actions can be seen as expressing those values. This opens up the real possibility that actions that express our values are not actually caused by our values. Indeed, Doris seems to welcome this conclusion, even if it does not sit comfortably with his insistence that we are only responsible for actions that are self-directed: “self-ignorance often functions to effect self-direction, and its absence can be an impediment to agency” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 144). How is this possible? We are presented with a range of cases where an agent's actions that are caused by unconscious mental influences end up furthering his or her well-being or projects. For instance, the Illusion of Control is the illusion that you have more control over events than you actually do. But suppose that this illusion prompts you to work harder at saving a faltering relationship that you value. Now this influence enhances your agency, Doris claims, because it is more likely to help you achieve your goal (of saving the relationship). Even if it is the Illusion of Control that drives your effort – unbeknownst to you – your actions still express your valuing of the relationship.
But there are a number of problems with this solution. First, it is unclear how your working on the relationship expresses your valuing the relationship if, in fact, it is the Illusion of Control that's driving your actions. Typically, what is expressed is part of the cause of the expression. Take, for instance, emotions. When we express an emotion, the emotion or its eliciting conditions is the cause (depending on your view of emotions). The causal chain may be more or less direct. In Doris's case, however, there may be no causal chain from your values to the expression of them. But can something that has nothing to do with your valuing the relationship express it? Perhaps the idea is this. Works of art can express things that did not cause them, such as desperation, joy, or anxiety. Fine. But can such forms of expression be linked to responsibility? Recall that self-direction is central to responsibility, and this is analyzed in terms of values. But in the cases Doris mentions, the person does not direct anything by way of her values; it is her psychological quirks (the Illusions of Control, say) that cause her to act as she does. This means that her working on her relationship coincides or is consistent with her valuing the relationship. But this is hardly sufficient for her being held responsible for working on the relationship if this requires self-direction.
Hang on, you might say. Was it not part of Frankfurt's point that a willing addict could be held responsible for taking the drug because his second-order volition was one of embracing his addiction, even if it was the addiction that caused him to take the drug? Doris's position seems to be no different. The following counterfactual appears to be at work: had the Illusion of Control not influenced her actions, the agent would nonetheless have acted in the same ways to salvage the relationship. This may seem acceptable. Now we are holding an agent responsible not so much for the actual action she performs, but for an action that she would have performed had she been free to do so. This may be as good as it gets for agency. We should note, however, that determining what someone would have done is tricky. Philosophers are adept at constructing examples that make compelling cases (e.g., Frankfurt Reference Frankfurt1969), but reality tends to be messier. I don't think we can really suppose that had our subject not been under the control of the Illusion of Control, she would nonetheless have performed the very action she performed because she valued her relationship. I don't see how we could possibly know that. Neither could she.
Even if you find the solution palatable for cases such as our relationship example, how should we think of other instances of actions influenced by psychological effects? Suppose that the effect in action does not fit with your values. Take the Bystander Effect. You see a man fall over on the street. Nobody helps him. Neither do you. But this does not express a value of yours. Indeed, you value helping others. Now you seem like the unwilling addict. You are not responsible for your action because you would not have performed it had you not been subject to the Bystander Effect. If this way of modeling Doris's ideas is right, then we ought to analyze all human action as instances of Frankfurt-style addiction. Only if our values happen to coincide with the forces that influence our actions are we responsible for these actions. This is made clear by supposing that you value not helping others. Others should be self-sufficient, and you don't have any responsibility to come to their aid (so you believe). If you now act under the influence of the Bystander Effect you are responsible because this action coincides with your values.
One, no doubt unintended, consequences of this view of things is that people are rarely, if ever, responsible for wrongdoing. Most people do not think of themselves as evil or even averagely bad. They think of themselves as basically decent people. They are unlikely to have put desires in the driving seat that are the sorts of values that we see expressed in wrongdoing. The drunk driver does not value drinking over killing another human being. Is there a way of describing his action in such a way that it makes sense to hold him responsible? Perhaps he values drinking over the safety of others? Presumably, he would not admit to holding such a value. Do his actions nonetheless express such a valuing? In an earlier work, Doris maintains that we may be self-deceived about the values we hold (Doris Reference Doris2002). Our actions may reveal that we hold values that we would not openly endorse or that we have not considered. We might, therefore, say that the drunk driver is responsible, because his drinking and driving expresses a disregard for the safety of others. It is important to note, though, that this determination can only be made on the basis of a pattern. A one-off drunk driving offense is not enough to show that the agent values drinking over the safety of others. This suggests, then, that only repeat offenders can be held responsible for their wrongdoing. The rest of us are quite likely off the hook. That doesn't sit right with me. Even if I do not hold a value of not helping people in need, I can nonetheless be blamed for not helping a person in a Bystander scenario. The point is not that I express my disregard for the person by my inaction, but that I should, and could, have known better (Maibom Reference Maibom, D'Arms and Jacobson2014).
Whether or not we get problems with blaming (i.e., too little of it) on this view of responsibility, it certainly seems that we end up with a pretty radically curtailed number of actions that people can be held responsible for. The problem ultimately speaking is this: either valuing is a substantial process arrived at through a significant amount of cognitive work, in which case many of our actions do not reflect our values, or most of our actions reflect our values, in which case ‘valuing’ means little more than, perhaps, giving in to a desire. At different points in the book, Doris appears to lean in one direction, then in another. Suppose I decide to kill the squirrel that has decimated my strawberry patch. I get an air gun and shoot it. Does this action express a value that I hold (low valuing of squirrels, say)? I doubt it. I am an ardent wildlife supporter. I give a lot of money to such causes. I feed wild birds, and cry inside when I see a flattened squirrel by the road side. I certainly enjoy strawberries and growing my own food, but not above everything else. Indeed, were I to sit back and consider the value of a squirrel's life relative to the, say, 40 strawberries that I'm likely to harvest, I would see the squirrel's life as more important. Moreover, the shooting is hardly part of a pattern of disregard for squirrels. And so the conclusion seems to be that I am not responsible for killing the squirrel. But does this really seem reasonable? If I am responsible, though, this cannot be because of any real value that I hold.
To conclude, whereas I agree with Doris about much of what he says in his book – that psychological effects present a challenge to responsibility and that agency is deeply intertwined with our interactions with others – his solution to the problem does not satisfy me. I cannot see how an action caused by effects that have no internal relation to an agent's values could possibly enhance her agency. At best, it can sidestep it. But even here we face problems, such as that it seems to lead to our rarely being responsible for our actions, particularly for the bad things we do.
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Responsibility always was a difficult issue, and it is not getting any easier. When we knew relatively little about mental processes, it was easier to think of the forces that might interfere with our agency in such abstract terms as ‘laws of nature’ and in relatively external ways (environment, upbringing). As we learn more about psychology, these interfering forces – or ‘effects’ as they are usually called – seem more personal and perturbing. We are subject to Order Effects, Bystander Effects, the Better-Than-Average Effect, and so on. At any one time, it seems, we have no way of knowing the extent to which our actions are influenced by any of these operating conditions of our psychological machinery. This is apt to lead to considerable skepticism about freedom and responsibility. Doris makes a compelling case for the problem in his Talking to Our Selves, but is also kind enough to offer what he takes to be a solution. The account is a slight modification of the Frankfurtian idea that central to agency (or personhood) is our ability to form second-order volitions. Doris calls such volitions ‘values.’ Values are desires that we have put in the driver's seat, Doris says. We are only responsible for actions that express our values. So far, so good.
Doris embraces a rather strong form of skepticism about what we can know about the causes of our actions. Because of the way our minds work, our actions are sometimes, if not always, influenced by things other than our values. Can we be responsible for such actions? Yes, Doris says, as long as our actions can be seen as expressing those values. This opens up the real possibility that actions that express our values are not actually caused by our values. Indeed, Doris seems to welcome this conclusion, even if it does not sit comfortably with his insistence that we are only responsible for actions that are self-directed: “self-ignorance often functions to effect self-direction, and its absence can be an impediment to agency” (Doris Reference Doris2015b, p. 144). How is this possible? We are presented with a range of cases where an agent's actions that are caused by unconscious mental influences end up furthering his or her well-being or projects. For instance, the Illusion of Control is the illusion that you have more control over events than you actually do. But suppose that this illusion prompts you to work harder at saving a faltering relationship that you value. Now this influence enhances your agency, Doris claims, because it is more likely to help you achieve your goal (of saving the relationship). Even if it is the Illusion of Control that drives your effort – unbeknownst to you – your actions still express your valuing of the relationship.
But there are a number of problems with this solution. First, it is unclear how your working on the relationship expresses your valuing the relationship if, in fact, it is the Illusion of Control that's driving your actions. Typically, what is expressed is part of the cause of the expression. Take, for instance, emotions. When we express an emotion, the emotion or its eliciting conditions is the cause (depending on your view of emotions). The causal chain may be more or less direct. In Doris's case, however, there may be no causal chain from your values to the expression of them. But can something that has nothing to do with your valuing the relationship express it? Perhaps the idea is this. Works of art can express things that did not cause them, such as desperation, joy, or anxiety. Fine. But can such forms of expression be linked to responsibility? Recall that self-direction is central to responsibility, and this is analyzed in terms of values. But in the cases Doris mentions, the person does not direct anything by way of her values; it is her psychological quirks (the Illusions of Control, say) that cause her to act as she does. This means that her working on her relationship coincides or is consistent with her valuing the relationship. But this is hardly sufficient for her being held responsible for working on the relationship if this requires self-direction.
Hang on, you might say. Was it not part of Frankfurt's point that a willing addict could be held responsible for taking the drug because his second-order volition was one of embracing his addiction, even if it was the addiction that caused him to take the drug? Doris's position seems to be no different. The following counterfactual appears to be at work: had the Illusion of Control not influenced her actions, the agent would nonetheless have acted in the same ways to salvage the relationship. This may seem acceptable. Now we are holding an agent responsible not so much for the actual action she performs, but for an action that she would have performed had she been free to do so. This may be as good as it gets for agency. We should note, however, that determining what someone would have done is tricky. Philosophers are adept at constructing examples that make compelling cases (e.g., Frankfurt Reference Frankfurt1969), but reality tends to be messier. I don't think we can really suppose that had our subject not been under the control of the Illusion of Control, she would nonetheless have performed the very action she performed because she valued her relationship. I don't see how we could possibly know that. Neither could she.
Even if you find the solution palatable for cases such as our relationship example, how should we think of other instances of actions influenced by psychological effects? Suppose that the effect in action does not fit with your values. Take the Bystander Effect. You see a man fall over on the street. Nobody helps him. Neither do you. But this does not express a value of yours. Indeed, you value helping others. Now you seem like the unwilling addict. You are not responsible for your action because you would not have performed it had you not been subject to the Bystander Effect. If this way of modeling Doris's ideas is right, then we ought to analyze all human action as instances of Frankfurt-style addiction. Only if our values happen to coincide with the forces that influence our actions are we responsible for these actions. This is made clear by supposing that you value not helping others. Others should be self-sufficient, and you don't have any responsibility to come to their aid (so you believe). If you now act under the influence of the Bystander Effect you are responsible because this action coincides with your values.
One, no doubt unintended, consequences of this view of things is that people are rarely, if ever, responsible for wrongdoing. Most people do not think of themselves as evil or even averagely bad. They think of themselves as basically decent people. They are unlikely to have put desires in the driving seat that are the sorts of values that we see expressed in wrongdoing. The drunk driver does not value drinking over killing another human being. Is there a way of describing his action in such a way that it makes sense to hold him responsible? Perhaps he values drinking over the safety of others? Presumably, he would not admit to holding such a value. Do his actions nonetheless express such a valuing? In an earlier work, Doris maintains that we may be self-deceived about the values we hold (Doris Reference Doris2002). Our actions may reveal that we hold values that we would not openly endorse or that we have not considered. We might, therefore, say that the drunk driver is responsible, because his drinking and driving expresses a disregard for the safety of others. It is important to note, though, that this determination can only be made on the basis of a pattern. A one-off drunk driving offense is not enough to show that the agent values drinking over the safety of others. This suggests, then, that only repeat offenders can be held responsible for their wrongdoing. The rest of us are quite likely off the hook. That doesn't sit right with me. Even if I do not hold a value of not helping people in need, I can nonetheless be blamed for not helping a person in a Bystander scenario. The point is not that I express my disregard for the person by my inaction, but that I should, and could, have known better (Maibom Reference Maibom, D'Arms and Jacobson2014).
Whether or not we get problems with blaming (i.e., too little of it) on this view of responsibility, it certainly seems that we end up with a pretty radically curtailed number of actions that people can be held responsible for. The problem ultimately speaking is this: either valuing is a substantial process arrived at through a significant amount of cognitive work, in which case many of our actions do not reflect our values, or most of our actions reflect our values, in which case ‘valuing’ means little more than, perhaps, giving in to a desire. At different points in the book, Doris appears to lean in one direction, then in another. Suppose I decide to kill the squirrel that has decimated my strawberry patch. I get an air gun and shoot it. Does this action express a value that I hold (low valuing of squirrels, say)? I doubt it. I am an ardent wildlife supporter. I give a lot of money to such causes. I feed wild birds, and cry inside when I see a flattened squirrel by the road side. I certainly enjoy strawberries and growing my own food, but not above everything else. Indeed, were I to sit back and consider the value of a squirrel's life relative to the, say, 40 strawberries that I'm likely to harvest, I would see the squirrel's life as more important. Moreover, the shooting is hardly part of a pattern of disregard for squirrels. And so the conclusion seems to be that I am not responsible for killing the squirrel. But does this really seem reasonable? If I am responsible, though, this cannot be because of any real value that I hold.
To conclude, whereas I agree with Doris about much of what he says in his book – that psychological effects present a challenge to responsibility and that agency is deeply intertwined with our interactions with others – his solution to the problem does not satisfy me. I cannot see how an action caused by effects that have no internal relation to an agent's values could possibly enhance her agency. At best, it can sidestep it. But even here we face problems, such as that it seems to lead to our rarely being responsible for our actions, particularly for the bad things we do.