I think philosophy always has to beware of the risk of becoming obfuscatory rather than enlightening, and I fear that may be happening here. Compulsion is a fairly straightforward concept, nicely exemplified by the gun-to-your-head scenario. It means being forced to act in ways contrary to how you wish to act by the deliberate actions of other people. We can quibble about whether acting according to your desire to not be shot is just as free a choice as acting according to whatever desires you would have had had you not been threatened with being shot, but I think that just muddies the waters. Most of us consider being put in such a position a form of compulsion, and this is a mitigating factor in judging the morality of subsequent actions. I really don’t see this as problematic.
I think philosophy always has to beware of the risk of becoming obfuscatory rather than enlightening, and I fear that may be happening here. Compulsion is a fairly straightforward concept, nicely exemplified by the gun-to-your-head scenario. It means being forced to act in ways contrary to how you wish to act by the deliberate actions of other people.
It most certainly isn’t straight forward. What does what you wish to do mean? It is your intention, your will, to rob the bank. what is the difference between your will or intention and your wish?
We can quibble about whether acting according to your desire to not be shot is just as free a choice as acting according to whatever desires you would have had had you not been threatened with being shot, but I think that just muddies the waters.
No this isn’t the issue. The point is that if you had different beliefs and desires, you could do otherwise in the circumstances in which you are being threatened with being shot. The example I gave was if you thought the gunman was bluffing and it was your will to call his bluff.
Most of us consider being put in such a position a form of compulsion, and this is a mitigating factor in judging the morality of subsequent actions. I really don’t see this as problematic.
If it isn’t problematic then you can answer why it is a mitigating factor? I think it is because we don’t want to try to prevent this behaviour but don’t know what the thing about compulsion adds, do you?
And why isn’t wanting to rob the bank because you don’t want to work considered to be a form of compulsion and therefore a mitigating factor? The robber intends and wants to rob the bank but he probably doesn’t “wish” to, in whatever you’re definition of wish is. I’m sure he would wish to be in circumstances in which he’d won the lottery last week and didn’t have to rob the bank.
Here is another example:
What if a man loves a woman and she threatens to leave him if he doesn’t rob a bank. Is this a mitigating factor? What is the difference between this and the gunman example?
I would argue it is NOT your intention or will or wish or desire to rob the bank. Your desire, vis-a-vis the bank is not to rob it, but your desire to remain alive and your fear of being shot supercede this. Such a desire is generally considered normal and appropriate, and such a fear when deliberately induced by others with the intent to make you do something you would not otherwise do is considered compulsion. Why is this confusing? I still feel you are missing the forest for the trees because you are so involved in working out the exact details and implications of every angle to the free will question that you have come to overlook, or disregard, the straightforward nature of compulsion as here described. Obviously, the bank robber understands how it works, which is why he uses the threat of violence to compell the victim to act as an accomplice against what would otherwise be their choice.
As to why it is a mitigating factor to be threatened with violence, I think most of us believe that the fear induced is involuntary and that it compels us to act in ways we would not act if the perpetrator had not induced that fear in us. Furthermore, most of us consider complying with the demands of a bank robber to save our own life acceptable. Now, not all threats are so fully mitigating in all circumstances. Soldiers are expected to do what they’re told even when in fear of their lives, and this expectation is reinforced by the fear of punishment, including execution, for disobeying. Most of us would not consider being left by the woman you love a sufficient excuse for robbing a bank, while fear of being shot is. We can argue about whetehr or not the specific consensus, which not all of us will always agree on, is right in individual examples such as these, but the general idea that compulsion mitigates one’s moral responsibility for one’s actions seems as common and reasonable one. All the business about whether or not one could have done something differently if one’s beliefs and desires had been different etc. is academically interesting, but I think what the compatibilist says is that the commonly understood phenomenon of compulsion as a powerful and morally mitigating impediment to our freedom to act as we desire is reasonable, and I agree.
I would argue it is NOT your intention or will or wish or desire to rob the bank. Your desire, vis-a-vis the bank is not to rob it, but your desire to remain alive and your fear of being shot supercede this.
No this can’t be right. You have two competing desires and one of them wins. The outcome of the competing desires is your will. You intend to do something when you aim at an imaginary future target and act in order to achieve that, which is what happened in my example, I robbed the bank in order to achieve my goal, which was not getting shot. The gunman did what he did in order to achieve his goal, which was to avoid working for a living.
The same in kind but different in degree, and that’s what matters from the point of view of moral mitigation.
You have two competing desires and one of them wins.
Well, this is basically what I said, but I argue that the desires are 1) not to get shot and 2) not to rob the bank. 1>2 so you help rob the bank. At no point do you desire to rob the bank, which is exactly why it is a case of compulsion.
“We ought to admit, up front, that one of our strongest unspoken motivations for upholding something close to the traditional [contra-causal, libertarian] concept of free will is our desire to see the world’s villains “get what they deserve.” And surely they do deserve our condemnation, our criticism, and – when we have a sound system of laws in place – punishment. A world without punishment is not a world any of us would want to live in. (original emphasis)” Daniel Dennett
It doesn’t look like Denett is a moral consequentialist.
My question … the compatibilist description of free will admits to the concept that people could not have done differently unless nature was different, but because no person forced them gives them free will. Is this sense of free will compatible merit based morality?
Well Dennett seems to thinks so.
Stephen
Why then do we want to hold people—ourselves included—responsible? “By holding someone responsible and acting accordingly we may cause him to shed an undesirable trait, and this is useful regardless of whether the trait is of his making.” (Gomberg, 1978, p. 208). Once again, the utility of a certain measure of arbitrariness is made visible. Instead of investigating, endlessly, in an attempt to discover whether or not a particular trait is of someone’s making—instead of trying to assay exactly to what degree a particular self is self-made—we simply hold people responsible for their conduct (within limits we take care not to examine too closely). And we are rewarded for adopting this strategy by the higher proportion of “responsible” behavior we thereby inculcate.
That does sound like consequentialism to me, but the quote you showed seem quite the opposite so i did some more looking.
In darwins dangerous ideas daniel dennett says both “utilitarian and Kantian ethical systems tend to be idealised to the point where they are useless; construction of a practical “Moral First Aid Manual” will require taking into account real computational complexities.”
Interesting discussion; I find Stephen’s point of view to be in line with my own.
I believe that we are what we must be, do what we must do, change as we must change, according to the laws of nature. The healthiest response to this is compassion for all, including yourself. Note: I don’t believe compassion “follows” from naturalism, I simply think it’s the healthiest reaction to our lack of free will.
We are accountable or effective, meaning we will affect people and they will react, hopefully in a way appropriate to the situation. Our goal should be to develop compassionate and effective methods of increasing healthy behavior and decreasing unhealthy behavior.
Here’s my YouTube channel, with a few videos by me and links to some favorites by others.
Actually to be candid with you, I think there are different circumstances in which we feel we are doing what we have to do rather than what we want to do. And I am very interested in theories about what the difference is. However I will argue against your points of view or compatabilist definitions of the difference, if they don’t work.
mckenzievmd - 21 July 2008 12:44 PM
the compulsion is equally the same
The same in kind but different in degree, and that’s what matters from the point of view of moral mitigation.
I see no reason to think there is a difference in degree, so I’d like to know what your reason is?
If the fear of getting shot causes you to rob the bank or the fear of losing the woman you love cause you to rob the bank, there is no difference in degree of compulsion by your definition.
I believe the difference is we don’t want people to risk getting shot in this situation whilst we do want them to risk losing the woman they love.
mckenzievmd - 21 July 2008 12:44 PM
You have two competing desires and one of them wins.
Well, this is basically what I said, but I argue that the desires are 1) not to get shot and 2) not to rob the bank. 1>2 so you help rob the bank. At no point do you desire to rob the bank, which is exactly why it is a case of compulsion.
Ok well if this is true then it’s true that the bank robber is also compelled. This is because he doesn’t desire to rob the bank either. His desire is to avoid going to work.
I see the immediacy and intensity of the threat and the emotional reaction it engenders likley significantly different between being dumped and being killed. I think there are individual and cultural and biological factors that affect this, but I’m confortable with it as a sound generalization. If true, then, this means the degree of compulsion differs because the compulsion lies in the intensity of the threat and the resultant emotional reaction. Most people wouldn’t rob a back if threatened with the loss of their favorite pair of socks, and most would if threatened with being killed, and there’s lots of gradations between these.
As for desires, I dsiagree that the robber does not desire to rob the back. One can trace a chain of reasoning and desires backwards, and it’s arguable that his proximate desire (to succeed in robbing the bank) is subsidiary to his ultimate desire (wealth, not working, etc), but I think the diference between the employee who actively desires to not rob the bank but does so to avoid being killed and the robber who is actively seeking to rob the bank is clear, and you are obfuscating rather than illuminating the issue by overanalysis. (And please note, I don’t in any way mean that as a personal criticism. I appreciate the intelligence and effort you’ve gone to in examining questions of free will. I only mean to say that the “specialization” if you will of your intensive study of the issue may be part of why you see it so differently from the conventional understanding, and this isn’t automatically in favor of the truth of your understanding).
I see the immediacy and intensity of the threat and the emotional reaction it engenders likley significantly different between being dumped and being killed. I think there are individual and cultural and biological factors that affect this, but I’m confortable with it as a sound generalization. If true, then, this means the degree of compulsion differs because the compulsion lies in the intensity of the threat and the resultant emotional reaction. Most people wouldn’t rob a back if threatened with the loss of their favorite pair of socks, and most would if threatened with being killed, and there’s lots of gradations between these.
There is gradiation between the intensities as you’ve described. But these are not gradiations between compulsions. If being threatened with the loss of your favorite pair of socks causes you to rob the bank, it is equally as compelling as fear of death.
But we expect people to resist robbing a bank in order to keep their favourite socks. We feel it is fair to ask that of them because the loss is not too great for them.
As for desires, I dsiagree that the robber does not desire to rob the back. One can trace a chain of reasoning and desires backwards, and it’s arguable that his proximate desire (to succeed in robbing the bank) is subsidiary to his ultimate desire (wealth, not working, etc), but I think the diference between the employee who actively desires to not rob the bank but does so to avoid being killed and the robber who is actively seeking to rob the bank is clear, and you are obfuscating rather than illuminating the issue by overanalysis.
The trouble is if his proximate desire is to rob the bank, then the cleaner’s proximate desire is to rob the bank too.
I’m not obfuscating,I’ve deliberately used an example where the bank robber is in the same position as the cleaner.
His aim is to avoid working and robbing the bank is his way to achieve it. He doesn’t wish to rob the bank ,in the same way as the cleaner doesn’t wish to rob the bank.
If only he could like work or find a job he liked,he wouldn’t have to rob the bank. If only he’d won the lottery he wouldn’t have to rob the bank.
If only the cleaner hadn’t been threatened at gun point,he wouldn’t have to rob the bank.
When we talk about what we wish or want being different to what we deliberately do, I think we are talking about what we would wish or want to do, if we were in different circumstances.
In my example both the bank robber and cleaner would wish to do otherwise if they were in different circumstances but unfortunately are not in circumstances where they can act on those wishes.
(And please note, I don’t in any way mean that as a personal criticism. I appreciate the intelligence and effort you’ve gone to in examining questions of free will.
Thank you Brennen, I think we are operating on the basis of mutual respect, even if we sometimes strongly disagree.
I also think that is generally the case here, which is great.
I only mean to say that the “specialization” if you will of your intensive study of the issue may be part of why you see it so differently from the conventional understanding, and this isn’t automatically in favor of the truth of your understanding).
I think it is because conventional understanding is based on libertarian and not compatabilist free will.
I believe that even compatabilists like Dennett have a deep sense that people could do otherwise and not just in the theoretical, if they were in different circumstances sense.
If not he wouldn’t believe in dessert and he wouldn’t be as concerned about free will.
We can punish people for consequential reasons, if they have free will or not but he is concerned that we couldn’t if they don’t have it. Why?
How are we supposed to get into the other circumstances? Beam ourselves into them? Somehow almost all humans believe there is a way to select a different option in the circumstances or to have somehow gotten ourselves into different circumstances in which we could. I’m one of the few who doesn’t.
That is what explains the difference in the way we see things.
