Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (14 page)

Look, this action was the result of the way my scanner/producer system had been `set'. Perhaps events in my childhood, quite outside my control, `set it' so that making the
environment dog-free has for nie the highest priority. My
tree producer told me it was an option, after my scanner
had told nic that there was a dog present and a window
nearby. My evaluator immediately selected that option, and my producer smoothly initiated the action of chucking
the dog out of the window. Why blame me?

Surely I am not likely to be very impressed. I might reply something like this:

I am not all that interested in how you came to be `set' like
you are. What bothers me is that this is your set. I don't care
how it came to be your set, or what deterministic forces
brought you to have these systems set that way. All I am
concerned about is that now, at the end of the day, you are it
nasty piece of work, and I am going to thump you. Maybe it
was indeed bad luck your getting to be like you are. And
now it is doubly had luck, because you are going to get
thumped for it.

At least I have the consolation that, following your own argument,
you cannot blame me for thumping you! It's just the way I am set:
I react badly to people who do this to my peaceable old dog.

Thumping you may have a point-in fact, several points. It
might readjust your evaluator. Next time round, this module may
rank throwing the dog out of the window below putting up with its
presence. In a more complex picture, we could imagine this happening by means of a number of other mechanisms: perhaps it attaches a risk-of-being-thumped flag to the dog-throwing option.
Or perhaps my anger shocks you into a more general re-evaluation
of strategies of behaviour. And even if thumping you does not succeed in changing you, it sends a signal to other would-be dog-
chuckers. It also relieves my feelings.

This is different from blaming someone for drowning, while not
blaming him or her for being trapped in the water. The causal route there lies through basic animal physiology that cannot be altered
by education or the attitudes of others. Praise and blame cannot
`reset' it. The causal route does not lie through modules that are
elastic, or flexible, capable of being reset by anger or blame. But
dog-throwers can be deterred and changed and warned away.

Schoolteachers sometimes say things like this: 'I don't mind a
stupid pupil, but I do dislike a lazy one.' In the grip of the hard
determinist argument, you might think that this is just prejudice:
some people are born stupid and pitied for it; why should those
horn lazy not be similarly pitied for that? It is just tough luck, either
way. But the schoolteacher's attitude will have a point if laziness responds to incentives in a way that stupidity does not. If respect for
the teacher's opinion can make you work harder, whereas it cannot
make you smarter, then there is one justification for the asym-
metry.'I'he teacher is in the business of resetting your evaluating
module. It is an empirical fact, a fact to be learned from human experience, how far modules do get reset by interactions with others,
including the unpleasant ones in which the others display their
anger or contempt for us.

We have here the beginning-but only the beginning-of the
programme of compatibilism, or the attempt to show that, properly understood, there is no inconsistency between acknowledging
determinism and our practices of holding people responsible for
their actions. Compatibilism is sometimes called `soft' determinism, in opposition to `hard' determinism. This is not a very good
label for two reasons. First, it is not really a different kind of determinism. It accepts determinism in just the same sense as anybody
else. There is no ghostly power stepping in to interfere with the nat ural causal order of events. Second, in moral or political terms, the
`soft' determinist may actually be pretty hard, in the sense of harsh.
If you come to her with the heartrending excuse that your biology
or your environment made you the way you are, she turns deaf, and
vents her anger on you just the same. Not for her the facile equation
between crime and illness: people can pull their socks up, and if it
seems appropriate, she will use punishment or any other appropriate reaction to make you do so too.

Of course, a compatibilist can accept some kinds of excuse. If
you were constrained in some situation so that no matter how
well-functioning your `modules', no good upshot was possible,
then you are not to blame for events. This is the case of the drowning swimmer: no matter how good their character, there is nothing
they can do about it. Equally, if an action is quite `out of character',
for instance, because you have had to take some medications
whose result is to disorientate you or depress you, then perhaps
you can be forgiven, when you are yourself again.

We might think at this point: well, the reaction to the villainous
dog-thrower was natural enough. Perhaps it is even justifiable in
terms of its consequences. Perhaps blame and associated reactions
have a function, and we just need things with that function. But all
the same, isn't there a hint of injustice? Because we have done nothing to show that the dog-chucker could have done otherwise. For on
any occasion, the modules will be set one way or another, so the
outcome is determined. Compatibilists, so far, seem to blame
someone for events, when the person could not have done otherwise. To this they may reply by distinguishing different senses of
`could have done otherwise'. If the causal route to the agent's action lay through the decision modules, then she 'could have done otherwise' in some sense, and maybe regarded as being free. To get at the
right sense of `could have done otherwise, we might offer what I
shall call the first compatibilist definition:

A subject acted freely if she could have done otherwise in
the right sense. The subject could have done otherwise in
this sense provided she would have done otherwise if she
had chosen differently.

And, says the compatibilist, that is all that is needed to justify our
reactions of holding people responsible, and perhaps reacting to
them with blame and anger.

The ghostly response to determinism posited a kind of intervention from outside the realm of nature: a `contra-causal' freedom, in which the ghost is distinct from the causal order of nature,
yet mysteriously able to alter that order. We could call that conception, interventionist control. It is sometimes known in the literature as a libertarian conception of freedom, although this is
confusing, since it has nothing to (1o with political or economic
libertarianism, which is the ideology of free markets and minimal
government. I shall stick with calling it interventionist control.
Compatibilism on the other hand substitutes a view of you as entirely situated insidethe causal order of nature. Your freedom lies in
the way action flows out of your cognitive processes. So how does
the compatibilist respond to the original argument about control?
He might suggest that the argument is no better than this:

The past controls the present and future.

A thermostat cannot control the past.

A thermostat cannot control the way in which the past controls the present and future.

So, a thermostat cannot control the future.

There has to be something wrong with this, because a thermostat
can control the future, in respect of temperature. That is what thermostats do. A thermostat controls the temperature by being part of
the way in which the past controls the present and future. And according to compatibilism, that is how we control things. We are involved in the causal order. We are part of the way in which the past
controls the future. And therein lies our responsibility. We can call
this conception of control, inside control, control from inside nature. When we exercise inside control, the compatihilist holds, we
are responsible for various events. And if we exercise that control
badly, we may justly be held responsible for the upshot, and held to
blame if blame is an appropriate reaction.

But is this compatibilist freedom what we really wanted? We do
not attribute any freedom to the thermostat. And compatibilism
can seem more like a dismissal of the problem of freedom, rather
than a solution of it. This is how it seemed to the great Immanuel
Kant (1724-1804), who dismissed it as giving us only the `freedom
of clockwork' and called it nothing better than a `wretched subterfuge'.

PUPPETS AND MARTIANS

Here is another way of sharing Kant's worries. The modules and
complexities of information processing complicated the causal picture. But do they alter it fundamentally? Imagine counsel for
the fig tree, pointing out that it was winter rather than summer.
This is a complete defence of the tree. Well, if I acted badly,
then does not that show that it was winter too? The modules
had been badly set, presumably by events belonging to causal
chains that stretch back before my birth. It may he that if you are
angry with me that will alter my decision-making system for the future, but it does not show that I could have acted differently in the
past.

As we come to learn about causal regularities lying behind actions and other mental states, we are apt to switch into less moralistic modes. We might blame someone for being depressed all the
time, until we learn a chemical story explaining it. We might be
angry with someone for being unable to stir himself, until we learn
that he has mononucleosis. But according to the determinist, there
are always things like this to learn. Quite apart from increasing
neurophysiological evidence, we may think of cases where we learn
of `brainwashing' or `conditioning: Parents may he inclined to
blame their teenage daughter for spending time, energy, and income on valueless cosmetics, but a better reaction would be to understand the social and commercial pressures that paralyse her
better judgement and bring this state of affairs about.

Things get worse for compatihilism if we indulge in a little science fiction. Imagine the invasion of the mini-Martians. These are
incredibly small, organized, and mischievous beings: small enough
to invade our brains and walk around in them. If they do so, they
can set our modules pretty well at will. We become puppets in their
hands. (If this kind of example sounds too far-fetched, reflect that there actually exists a parasite that lives by colonizing the brains of
ants. Under its influence, the ant climbs blades of grass. This makes
it more likely to be ingested by passing sheep, which the parasite
then infects [the particular individual in the ant's brain itself perishes, but others hitch-hike[. For all one knows, the ant feels free as
air as it climbs its blade of grass.) Of course, the mini-Martians
might set us to do what we would have done anyhow. But they
might throw the chemical switches so that we do quite terrible
things. Then let us suppose that, fortunately, science invents a scan
to detect whether the Martians have invaded us. Won't we be sympathetic to anyone who suffered this misfortune? Wouldn't we
immediately recognize that he was not responsible for his wrongdoings?

But, says the incompatibilist, why does it make a difference if it
was mini-Martians, or causal agencies of a more natural kind?

This kind of reply takes issue with the compatibilist version of
could not have done otherwise'. It is all very well, it points out, to
say that someone would have done otherwise if he or she had chosen differently. But suppose they were set so that they could not
have chosen differently. Suppose at the time of acting, their choosing modules were locked into place by mini-Martians, or chemicals, or whatever. What then? The compatibilist we have so far
shrugs the question off-he is not interested in how the subjects
got to be as they are, only whether the outcome is good or had. The
objector finds it important, and at least some of our reactions,
when we find more about causal routes, show that we agree with
the objector.

OBSESSIONS AND TWINKIES