User talk:Brews ohare/Moral responsibility

Reasons for this proposal
The WP article Moral responsibility as it presently stands is dominated by a rehash of the various schools in the Free will article. Although the pertinence of free will to the topic is undeniable and can be used to frame the discussion (for example, Eshleman's article in the Stanford Encyclopedia), that framework constricts the subject unnecessarily. The WP article carries this narrowness of vision even further. This proposal aims to loosen these strings and open the discussion to discuss various aspects on their own merits, regardless of how the free-will debate evolves (probably a continuing interest over the next few millennia, as it has been over the past few millennia). Brews ohare (talk) 16:19, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

'Moral sentiments' subsection
Many of the quotes in your "Moral sentiments" section are accurate statements of what is meant by the phrase "moral responsibility" in all uses of it I am familiar with, such as the Stanford Encyclopedia's definition that "to be morally responsible for something, say an action, is to be worthy of a particular kind of reaction". I do not think it is appropriate for that definition to be relegated to a subsection instead of just defining the article that was as the main article currently does, or to opine in the article's own voice about why such a definition is unsatisfying.

On which note, I want to address your "itch" analogy. Say we were in an era before any modern medical science. How do you think people in such a time would define an "itch"? Describe the sensation. It's a kind of... discomfort, a pain maybe. How does it differ from other kinds? Mind you we can't go talking about different types of nerves or parts of the brain involved, that's all a mystery to us back in these dark ages -- and that kind of medical science would still only explain what causes an itch, it still wouldn't describe what an itch is, because the itch is an experiential phenomenon, it's a kind of feeling, and understanding the mechanism that causes such feelings doesn't make you yourself familiar with what that kind of feeling feels like. So we're still asking, what is the feeling of itching? What is it to itch? And at the end of the day beyond some vague classification of itching as a kind of discomfort or pain, it seems like an itch is something that compels you to scratch it.

Heck, out of curiosity I just googled "itch" to see how people do define it, and the first result is our Wikipedia page about it, which begins "Itch (Latin: pruritus) is a sensation that causes the desire or reflex to scratch." Itches still don't make a great analogy for moral responsibility in many other ways, but I wanted to point out that the analogy even fails on the point you're trying to compare them. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:22, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm inclined to agree with your comment "to opine in the article's own voice about why such a definition is unsatisfying". A sourced comment would be more appropriate. The 'itch' analogy would then disappear. I am not satisfied with it myself. I was trying to find something vivid as an analogy, but the analogy doesn't capture the problems with defining morality as something that causes a moral reaction. (You might notice that the Stanford piece doesn't think that a moral reaction is easily defined, suggesting "a particular kind of reaction — praise, blame, or something akin to these". Obviously, praise and blame are attached to many other kinds of things that have nothing to do with 'moral responsibility'.)
 * As Double has pointed out, a lot goes under the rubric of 'moral responsibility' and he thinks the visceral reaction is part of it. I'm inclined to see that reaction as an aspect of social enforcement of 'moral responsibility', and the ascription of this responsibility (described by Hart) as the more bloodless and less visceral formalization of the idea that can be used to describe it more clinically as done in anthropology, for instance.
 * This viewpoint can be found in R Jay Wallace, who divides his book into "two main parts". "One is an account of what it is to hold people morally responsible, in terms of the moral sentiments. The other is an account of the conditions of moral agency, in terms of the rational power to grasp moral reasons and to control one's behavior in the light of them."
 * Could you comment further upon this article, for example, on the other subsections? I appreciate your willingness to discuss it. Brews ohare (talk) 16:31, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I added Wallace to the article, and removed the 'itch' analogy. Brews ohare (talk) 17:35, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I added Wallace to the article, and removed the 'itch' analogy. Brews ohare (talk) 17:35, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I added a See also list that has some food for thought. Brews ohare (talk) 18:32, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Further comments
Below are additional comments by Pfhorrest:

I think your whole approach in that proposal is still completely off the mark, so I don't really see a point in critiquing it point by point. You're just discussing various morality-related topics in general, and conflating a lot of different and unrelated things together. For instance, I don't see what moral sentiment or moral sense theory have to do with what you call "my views", especially as I am not a moral sense theorist or sentimentalist, and the views you quote there are not about emotional reactions at all, but about when certain kinds of condemning or approving responses are warranted or justified, as in, what is a good reason for such a response; nothing about emotion or sentiment there. Your "Dualism" section is especially a mess in this regards, somehow conflating dualism in philosophy of mind, with Kant's noumenal/phenomenal distinction, with the is-ought kind of distinction that divides science and morality, none of which have anything to do with each other, or with moral responsibility.

Let's think for a clarifying analogy about what an article on legal, rather than moral, responsibility, would discuss. It would not talk about the origin of law in general, or about which legal system is better than another, or whether or not any legal system is better than another. It would not talk about the distinctions between laws in a legal sense and scientific or physical laws. Those are all broad law-related topics which have nothing directly to do with the narrower subject of legal responsibility in particular. It would instead discuss things like the fact that children are (in many legal systems) not held as accountable for their actions as as adults are, in the sense that if a child and an adult commit the same crime, the child is less deserving (according to the law) of as severe a punishment as the adult would be. Likewise it would discuss how people who are lacking in certain kinds of mental faculties (the developmentally disabled or brain damaged, for example) are (again, in some legal systems) held to a similarly lower standard of accountability, and the same crime committed by such a person could warrant a lesser punishment. Similarly, otherwise mentally competent adults can be held to lesser standards of responsibility if they are temporarily overwhelmed and unable to exercise control of themselves, as in an insanity defense. Do you see the common theme here? The topic is about what kind of a person, in what circumstances, is accountable for anything at all, as in deserving of legal punishment for any crimes they might commit; without any discussion of what kinds of acts we're talking about punishing, what the punishment is, on what grounds the legal system claims authority to punish in the first place, or any of a number of much broader topics.

The subject matter of moral responsibility is similar, except we're concerned not with what kind of person in what circumstances is accountable according to law, but instead according to morality -- some system of morality, we don't have to quibble about which, just as we don't have to specify which legal jurisdiction we're talking about before we can discuss legal responsibility in general. The free will stuff is relevant there because it has to do with whether or not people have the right kind of mental capacity to be held accountable like that. All of those legal examples of diminished capacity above -- temporary insanity, brain damage, lack of development -- would be held up by many compatibilists are prime examples of when someone's free will was compromised or otherwise absent, and thus also examples of people with diminished moral responsibility. The incompatibilists meanwhile are concerned that if determinism is true, then everyone always lacks that right kind of mental capacity, free will, and thus nobody is ever morally responsible -- that punishment, reward, blame, praise, etc, are never deserved by anyone for anything. That's all within the common view that free will is a prerequisite to moral responsibility, of course; there are some who say it's not, and even if we have no free will, we can still be morally responsible, and then they give their accounts of what else is important to being morally responsible or not.

That's the kind of stuff the article needs to be talking about. Not about relativism or sentimentalism or whatever you're going for in that "dualism" section. --Pfhorrest (talk) 20:24, 20 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Pfhorrest: Thank you for your remarks. They cover a lot of territory, so I have broken them up to address them in three parts, found below. Please feel free to approach them piecemeal as your time and energy permit. Brews ohare (talk) 15:36, 21 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Although it sometimes is easier to settle details than the 'big picture', maybe it will prove the opposite here. So let's see if we agree on the 'big picture', before getting into the detail below.


 * I assume that we agree that the purpose of any WP article is to present significant published views. For example, I assume also that we would agree that the views of Stent and Hart are reputably published views. We may not agree on their significance, but possibly can agree that the view that 'moral responsibility' ascribes duties and obligations devolving from moral, legal, or ritual imperatives is worth mentioning.


 * Aside from this one example, we might agree that there are several dimensions to this topic worthy of presentation. And they can be discussed for themselves, using the sources that present them. What is your reaction to engaging in this broad beginning, Pfhorrest? Brews ohare (talk) 16:59, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Hart and Waller and McKenna

 * For a start, how about Hart? A quote from Hart:
 * "[Responsibility] is a social concept and logically dependent upon accepted rules of conduct. It is fundamentally not descriptive, but ascriptive in character; and it is [not to be defined] by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions whether physical or psychological."
 * This view apparently may be compared with others in Moral sentiments, such as Waller's view:
 * "‘moral responsibility’ is the essential (necessary, if not sufficient) condition for justified blame and punishment."
 * and McKenna's view:
 * "what most everyone is hunting for ... is the sort of moral responsibility that is desert entailing, the kind the makes blaming and punishing as well as praising and rewarding justified."
 * Hart's view is from a legal stance based upon 'accepted rules of conduct' ascribing responsibility, and Waller's & McKenna's might be translatable to fit Hart's if 'justifiable' is enlarged from an individual intuitive reaction to a socially accepted norm. Or, maybe Waller and McKenna are searching for some universal 'justification' beyond mores, and perhaps beyond human values? Or, perhaps they believe in some innate sense of morality genetically programmed into human brains, or placed there by the gods? In any event, any differences between these views, and there may be none, are not to be settled, but to be presented. Brews ohare (talk) 18:38, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Moral sentiment

 * Pfhorrest's comment:
 * I think your whole approach in that proposal is still completely off the mark, so I don't really see a point in critiquing it point by point. You're just discussing various morality-related topics in general, and conflating a lot of different and unrelated things together. For instance, I don't see what moral sentiment or moral sense theory have to do with what you call "my views", especially as I am not a moral sense theorist or sentimentalist, and the views you quote there are not about emotional reactions at all, but about when certain kinds of condemning or approving responses are warranted or justified, as in, what is a good reason for such a response; nothing about emotion or sentiment there. --Pfhorrest (talk) 20:24, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
 * This looks like a bite size segment to begin some discussion.
 * I'm going to assume that these remarks are directed at the subsection Moral sentiments.
 * I used a see also to Moral sense theory ("morality is somehow grounded in moral sentiments or emotions") and Ethical intuitionism {"our intuitive awareness...forms the foundation of our ethical knowledge") because these articles seem to be closest to the emotional reactions to offenses against 'moral responsibility'. If this is a distraction, of course they can be removed.
 * The section is not about "when certain kinds of condemning or approving responses are warranted or justified". It is about the use of such reactions as a flag signalling that some infraction impinging upon moral responsibility has taken place, and the use of these reactions a substitute in the stead of trying to define moral responsibility itself directly. It is my impression that this use is exactly what the definitions quoted by Waller attempt. Could you comment upon that aspect? Brews ohare (talk) 00:30, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

For instance, these quotes: "As I use the phrase..."moral responsibility" is the essential (necessary, if not sufficient) condition for justified blame and punishment."
 * "what most everyone is hunting for ... is the sort of moral responsibility that is desert entailing, the kind the makes blaming and punishing as well as praising and rewarding justified."
 * "To be a morally responsible human agent is to be truly deserving of these sorts of responses, and deserving in a way that no agent is that is not morally responsible."

Emphasis mine. Brews ohare (talk) 00:33, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

This interpretation seems to fit Double's discussion of his observations of participants at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association where he concluded that "something deeper was at stake", "something more ‘visceral’", than academic blunders. Brews ohare (talk) 00:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Role of free will

 * Pfhorrest's comment:
 * The subject matter of moral responsibility is similar, except we're concerned not with what kind of person in what circumstances is accountable according to law, but instead according to morality -- some system of morality, we don't have to quibble about which, just as we don't have to specify which legal jurisdiction we're talking about before we can discuss legal responsibility in general. The free will stuff is relevant there because it has to do with whether or not people have the right kind of mental capacity to be held accountable like that. All of those legal examples of diminished capacity above -- temporary insanity, brain damage, lack of development -- would be held up by many compatibilists are prime examples of when someone's free will was compromised or otherwise absent, and thus also examples of people with diminished moral responsibility. The incompatibilists meanwhile are concerned that if determinism is true, then everyone always lacks that right kind of mental capacity, free will, and thus nobody is ever morally responsible -- that punishment, reward, blame, praise, etc, are never deserved by anyone for anything. That's all within the common view that free will is a prerequisite to moral responsibility, of course; there are some who say it's not, and even if we have no free will, we can still be morally responsible, and then they give their accounts of what else is important to being morally responsible or not. --Pfhorrest (talk) 20:24, 20 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm going to assume that these remarks are directed at the subsection Role of free will. Pfhorrest, your remarks concern "the common view that free will is a prerequisite to moral responsibility" and that "even if we have no free will, we can still be morally responsible". I think these are among the issues pointed out in this section. It begins with a legal quotation from Harris and his remarks that this is based upon "the common view that free will is a prerequisite to moral responsibility", as you mention. It goes on to say "Harris and many others have devised arguments they are convinced make the idea of holding people responsible for their acts makes sense even if it turns out they have no control over their actions, that is, there is no free will or, alternatively, free will is irrelevant.[11][17][29]" with three sources to this viewpoint. That certainly raises the issues of your last sentence, although more could be said, and I invite your suggestions. This subsection then goes on to discuss the idea of 'character' and its weight in judgments about what violations of 'moral responsibility' imply. I think that is pertinent, especially in view of the emphasis upon 'visceral' reactions noted before.
 * I don't think this subsection deviates from your take on this subject, Pfhorrest. If you have some additional remarks on this score, please go on. Brews ohare (talk) 01:49, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Dualist approach

 * Pfhorrest's comments:
 * I think your whole approach in that proposal is still completely off the mark, so I don't really see a point in critiquing it point by point...Your "Dualism" section is especially a mess in this regards, somehow conflating dualism in philosophy of mind, with Kant's noumenal/phenomenal distinction, with the is-ought kind of distinction that divides science and morality, none of which have anything to do with each other, or with moral responsibility.
 * That's the kind of stuff the article needs to be talking about. [The stuff about free will, compatibilism, determinism, and so on] Not about relativism or sentimentalism or whatever you're going for in that "dualism" section.
 * These remarks are directed at the subsections Moral relativism and Dualist approach.
 * The easy starting point is Moral relativism, where the extreme brevity of your remarks suggests to me that you find this topic irrelevant to moral responsibility. As you know, there are two aspects to this topic: the first is the anthropological/sociological aspect that amounts to describing how 'moral responsibility' is handled in various cultures. This work is descriptive and scientific in nature, and not directly philosophical. However, there is a second, philosophical aspect. The topic of Moral relativism is considered among philosophical topics, and seems germane to any discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of 'moral responsibility'. For instance, aside from any specific details, in general and philosophically speaking, can 'moral responsibility' be based upon universal principles, or must it be based upon the mores of individual groups? Perhaps you view this aspect of 'moral responsibility' as ranging into morality itself, and that it is therefore a digression? Even if that is so, don't issues about the basis for 'moral responsibility' have to be brought up, though perhaps not in the detail one might expect in an article on morality? Isn't it germane that different groups see 'moral responsibility' differently, and some groups don't even use the concept? Isn't 'moral responsibility' relevant to governing group behavior, and vice versa?
 * Another of your comments is that I have confused the noumenal/phenomenal distinction with other matters, none of which are germane. If I understand your view, it is that this section is wrong, but more importantly doesn't matter for 'moral responsibility'. It is hard for me to see that Kant's work is irrelevant to 'moral responsibility', so perhaps, if that is your view, you could explain that to me.


 * Pfhorrest, approaching the question of accuracy of what is said, the noumenal/phenomenal distinction is important because it allows Kant to avoid a deterministic view, and to introduce the Willkür that allows the human to make decisions with causal impact, and the Wille that engages in moral reasoning but is advisory, not causal, in nature. These two 'wills' "make plausible that we are affected by our inclinations, but not determined by them." Pinker thinks of moral responsibility as does Kant, namely that there is a regime governed by moral thinking that is outside the 'laws of nature', that this regime is distinguished from other regimes, and that it assigns moral responsibility. However, the agent is not bound by this reasoning, any more than the architect is bound by Newton's laws, although in both cases defiance has its consequences. Perhaps you could explain your view of irrelevance further? Brews ohare (talk) 02:15, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I've referred to the noumenal/phenomenal division as 'dualist' because it does identify two aspects of 'reality' one governed by the 'laws of nature' and one not. This division is a contrast with the position that 'moral responsibility' is an aspect of 'nature' and an enforcement of its laws. For example, this view. Brews ohare (talk) 02:22, 21 February 2014 (UTC)