Recent work has sparked various forms of the worry that the facts of human cognitive makeup lead to skepticism about free will, moral responsibility, and whether reflective deliberation and conscious decisions actually influence behavior (Doris, in press; Levy Reference Levy2012; Nahmias Reference Nahmias, O'Connor and Sandis2010; Roskies Reference Roskies2006; Saul Reference Saul, Jenkins and Hutchison2013). Rather than contest the substance or details of the target article, we assume for discussion that it is on the right track and draw out one implication for common practices of holding ourselves and each other responsible for our behaviors. We argue that the picture of an individual person as fragmented into a cluster of autonomously operating selfish goals competing for psychological resources suggests an interesting kind of problem for responsibility ascriptions.
Huang & Bargh (H&B) marshal an impressive amount of empirical evidence in support of their Selfish Goal model, which they articulate in terms of four principles (autonomy, reconfiguration, similarity, and inconsistency). For our purposes, two features are most important, and both focus on control and behavior. First, although the model depicts an individual person as psychologically fragmented (rather than integrated or unified), it does not suggest that the individual's actions will be utterly random or under no control whatsoever. Nor does it suggest that those actions will be completely detached from internal psychological processes. Rather, a specific episode of behavior will ultimately be under the control of a specific goal, namely, whatever goal has become active and won the competition for access to the lower-level machinery closer to the behavioral periphery. Importantly, goals, in H&B's view, are where the buck stops; they are the highest level, most sophisticated psychological states that enter into the production of overt behavior. There is no higher court to appeal to, no further, more global mental entity that selects among the goals, unifies the individual psychologically, or serves as a more constant source of control over different goal-driven episodes of behavior (hence, the propensity for inconsistency that they stress). Second, although H&B do not deny the existence of a self, they allow it only a severely limited function, relegating it to the politician or public relations role of constructing rationalizations for actions that the self has no hand in selecting, producing, or controlling. With the exception of linguistic behavior, the self is behaviorally epiphenomenal.
This picture appears to be at odds with much everyday thought, including the thinking about and practices surrounding moral responsibility. According to common practices, an individual is responsible only for those behaviors over which she has proper control (as opposed to behaviors that are coerced, accidental, or brutishly reflex-like). When she successfully wields such control, the resulting behavior is an appropriate target for responsibility ascriptions. Although there is not yet any clear consensus on the exact form of control required, a recognizable theme is that individuals contain a stable, continuous psychological core that is the source of this control when it is properly exercised. That is, control is a two-part relation, with one relata being the behavior, and the other what we will call the individual's psychological locus. With the term “locus,” we are trying to remain neutral on whether one thinks of this psychological feature in terms of an individual's self, character, identity, Cartesian mental substance, immortal soul, or whatever. However the notion of a locus is cashed out, typical responsibility ascriptions presuppose that individuals have this kind of central psychological feature. In other words, in ascribing responsibility for an action, there is something we are ascribing responsibility to – some central element of the individual that is the ultimate source of the behavior and to which responsibility attaches.
This then is the worry: the Selfish Goal Theory suggests that individuals contain no such psychological locus, because our behaviors are ultimately determined by a loose collection of autonomously operating goals, each with its own agenda. From the perspective of moral responsibility, neither praise nor blame for behavior will be justified because psychologically there's no there there.
We do not think the locus problem is insurmountable. Even if the Selfish Goal model is correct in denying the existence of a traditional psychological locus, there are reasons to think individuals do have the tools to act as responsible agents. An increasingly prominent movement in philosophy of mind emphasizes the embodied, distributed, social, and externalized character of much cognition. Thinkers like Dennett (Reference Dennett2003) and Clark (Reference Clark, Spurrett, Ross, Kincaid and Stephens2008) stress that even sophisticated human behaviors can be guided by decentralized control systems that lack a stable or continuous core (see also, Shapiro Reference Shapiro2007). Two recent elaborations on these themes deal more directly with moral responsibility and agency.
Doris's (in press) dialogic conception of agency recasts the post hoc and socially mediated rationalizations that are the domain of H&B's “conscious self” as in part constitutive of human agency. For an individual to participate in this kind of moral reasoning allows that individual's behaviors to become self-directed, or guided by those goals relevant to her most important values. Thus, an individual can justifiably be held responsible for a behavior even if that behavior is not under the control of, say, her internal locus of reflective deliberation.
Ismael (Reference Ismael2007; Reference Ismael2011) argues that selves should be thought of in terms of self-governing systems. For her, the conscious self is not merely epiphenomenal, but part of a feedback loop that evolved to help organize and guide sophisticated behaviors. Here, the self is not a centralized controller; rather, it is a distributed but higher-level subsystem of the mind “perfectly compatible with a fully decentralized understanding of lower-level processing” (Ismael Reference Ismael2007, p. 87).
Both projects point to conceptions of agency and behavior control that do not rely on the existence of a traditional, stable, centralized psychological core. If there is such thing as a “real self” on these views, it is a dynamic, distributed sort of thing. Although it does not guarantee complete consistency in our behavior, it may get us what responsibility ascriptions seem to require. By our lights, both look well suited to accommodate both our everyday practices of holding individuals responsible and the Selfish Goal's denial of a psychological locus.
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Recent work has sparked various forms of the worry that the facts of human cognitive makeup lead to skepticism about free will, moral responsibility, and whether reflective deliberation and conscious decisions actually influence behavior (Doris, in press; Levy Reference Levy2012; Nahmias Reference Nahmias, O'Connor and Sandis2010; Roskies Reference Roskies2006; Saul Reference Saul, Jenkins and Hutchison2013). Rather than contest the substance or details of the target article, we assume for discussion that it is on the right track and draw out one implication for common practices of holding ourselves and each other responsible for our behaviors. We argue that the picture of an individual person as fragmented into a cluster of autonomously operating selfish goals competing for psychological resources suggests an interesting kind of problem for responsibility ascriptions.
Huang & Bargh (H&B) marshal an impressive amount of empirical evidence in support of their Selfish Goal model, which they articulate in terms of four principles (autonomy, reconfiguration, similarity, and inconsistency). For our purposes, two features are most important, and both focus on control and behavior. First, although the model depicts an individual person as psychologically fragmented (rather than integrated or unified), it does not suggest that the individual's actions will be utterly random or under no control whatsoever. Nor does it suggest that those actions will be completely detached from internal psychological processes. Rather, a specific episode of behavior will ultimately be under the control of a specific goal, namely, whatever goal has become active and won the competition for access to the lower-level machinery closer to the behavioral periphery. Importantly, goals, in H&B's view, are where the buck stops; they are the highest level, most sophisticated psychological states that enter into the production of overt behavior. There is no higher court to appeal to, no further, more global mental entity that selects among the goals, unifies the individual psychologically, or serves as a more constant source of control over different goal-driven episodes of behavior (hence, the propensity for inconsistency that they stress). Second, although H&B do not deny the existence of a self, they allow it only a severely limited function, relegating it to the politician or public relations role of constructing rationalizations for actions that the self has no hand in selecting, producing, or controlling. With the exception of linguistic behavior, the self is behaviorally epiphenomenal.
This picture appears to be at odds with much everyday thought, including the thinking about and practices surrounding moral responsibility. According to common practices, an individual is responsible only for those behaviors over which she has proper control (as opposed to behaviors that are coerced, accidental, or brutishly reflex-like). When she successfully wields such control, the resulting behavior is an appropriate target for responsibility ascriptions. Although there is not yet any clear consensus on the exact form of control required, a recognizable theme is that individuals contain a stable, continuous psychological core that is the source of this control when it is properly exercised. That is, control is a two-part relation, with one relata being the behavior, and the other what we will call the individual's psychological locus. With the term “locus,” we are trying to remain neutral on whether one thinks of this psychological feature in terms of an individual's self, character, identity, Cartesian mental substance, immortal soul, or whatever. However the notion of a locus is cashed out, typical responsibility ascriptions presuppose that individuals have this kind of central psychological feature. In other words, in ascribing responsibility for an action, there is something we are ascribing responsibility to – some central element of the individual that is the ultimate source of the behavior and to which responsibility attaches.
This then is the worry: the Selfish Goal Theory suggests that individuals contain no such psychological locus, because our behaviors are ultimately determined by a loose collection of autonomously operating goals, each with its own agenda. From the perspective of moral responsibility, neither praise nor blame for behavior will be justified because psychologically there's no there there.
We do not think the locus problem is insurmountable. Even if the Selfish Goal model is correct in denying the existence of a traditional psychological locus, there are reasons to think individuals do have the tools to act as responsible agents. An increasingly prominent movement in philosophy of mind emphasizes the embodied, distributed, social, and externalized character of much cognition. Thinkers like Dennett (Reference Dennett2003) and Clark (Reference Clark, Spurrett, Ross, Kincaid and Stephens2008) stress that even sophisticated human behaviors can be guided by decentralized control systems that lack a stable or continuous core (see also, Shapiro Reference Shapiro2007). Two recent elaborations on these themes deal more directly with moral responsibility and agency.
Doris's (in press) dialogic conception of agency recasts the post hoc and socially mediated rationalizations that are the domain of H&B's “conscious self” as in part constitutive of human agency. For an individual to participate in this kind of moral reasoning allows that individual's behaviors to become self-directed, or guided by those goals relevant to her most important values. Thus, an individual can justifiably be held responsible for a behavior even if that behavior is not under the control of, say, her internal locus of reflective deliberation.
Ismael (Reference Ismael2007; Reference Ismael2011) argues that selves should be thought of in terms of self-governing systems. For her, the conscious self is not merely epiphenomenal, but part of a feedback loop that evolved to help organize and guide sophisticated behaviors. Here, the self is not a centralized controller; rather, it is a distributed but higher-level subsystem of the mind “perfectly compatible with a fully decentralized understanding of lower-level processing” (Ismael Reference Ismael2007, p. 87).
Both projects point to conceptions of agency and behavior control that do not rely on the existence of a traditional, stable, centralized psychological core. If there is such thing as a “real self” on these views, it is a dynamic, distributed sort of thing. Although it does not guarantee complete consistency in our behavior, it may get us what responsibility ascriptions seem to require. By our lights, both look well suited to accommodate both our everyday practices of holding individuals responsible and the Selfish Goal's denial of a psychological locus.