Another Defense

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXIX (2005)

PAPistry: Another Defense DANIEL SPEAK

O

ne of the liveliest discussions in the recent free will literature involves the viability of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP). Some defenders of the principle have argued that it can be derived from the putatively Kantian maxim that “ought” implies “can” (from now on simply “the maxim”). If this is right, then the moral costs of abandoning PAP are higher than might first have been supposed. Given the intuitive plausibility of the maxim, opponents of PAP have been at pains to sever the tie between alternative possibilities and the requirements of moral obligation. A crucial point has, however, been overlooked in this discussion. All parties to the debate assume a version of the principle of alternative possibilities that very few will accept in other contexts. What has been ignored is the role of a “tracing” condition for PAP. When tracing is factored in, a powerful argument for the original linkage between the maxim and alternative possibilities can be constructed. Almost two decades after he introduced his infamous counterexample argument against PAP, Harry Frankfurt claimed that: The appeal of PAP may owe something to a presumption that it is a corollary of the Kantian thesis that “ought” implies “can.” In fact, however, the relation between Kant’s doctrine and PAP is not as close as it may seem to be. With respect to any action, Kant’s doctrine has to do with the agent’s ability to perform that action. PAP, on the other hand, concerns his ability to do something else. Moreover, the Kantian view leaves open the possibility that a person for whom only one course of action is available fulfills an obligation when he pursues that course of action and is morally praiseworthy for doing so. On the other hand, PAP implies that such a person cannot earn any moral credit for what he does. This makes it clear that renouncing PAP 262

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does not require denying that “ought” implies “can” and that PAP is not entailed by the Kantian view.1 There is a sense in which nearly all participants in the free will debate can agree with Frankfurt’s formal conclusion. Rejecting PAP need not involve rejecting the maxim. As noted above, most defenders of alternative possibilities have rejected a strict version of PAP. This is because most defenders of alternative possibilities accept a tracing condition such that an agent can be morally responsible at t2 even if she cannot do otherwise at that moment because she could have done otherwise at some earlier time, say, t1. Such a person’s responsibility can be “traced back” to some time at which she had the ability to do otherwise, even though she lacked the ability at the time of action. Call this somewhat more nuanced account the alternative possibilities condition PAPH: PAPH—a person can properly be held morally responsible for doing X at T only if she could have done otherwise than X at T or there was something she could have done at an earlier point in time that would have made it possible for her to do other than X at T. Thus, even if Frankfurt is right about the relation between the maxim and PAP, it does not follow that the same is true about the relation between the maxim and PAPH. Brief reflection on the recent debate will bring the importance of this point into relief. THE RECENT DEBATE David Widerker has directly attacked Frankfurt’s claim as quoted above that the maxim and PAP are logically separable. Widerker argues that Frankfurt is misled by an asymmetry between the conditions for appropriate moral praise and blame. It is true that moral praise requires only that the agent be obligated to perform the act for which praise is to be given. But moral blame seems to require that the agent be obligated not to perform the act in question. So the maxim, Widerker admits, does not imply PAP with respect to praiseworthiness: (PAP1) An agent S is morally praiseworthy for performing a given act A only if it is within S’s power not to perform A. But it does imply PAP with respect to blameworthiness: (PAP2) An agent S is morally blameworthy for performing a given act A only if S has a moral obligation not to perform A. Widerker concludes from this that putative counterexamples to PAP2 (like traditional Frankfurt-style cases) will also invalidate the maxim. “The relation between 1. Frankfurt (1982, 287).

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the Kantian thesis and PAP,” according to this argument, “is more intimate than Frankfurt suggests.”2 I am largely sympathetic to the form of argument Widerker employs. This form of argument has, however, been aggressively scrutinized. In particular, Gideon Yaffe has argued recently that it turns on a fairly obvious mistake.3 Yaffe reconstructs the main argument in this way: (1) An agent is morally blameworthy for what she has done only if she had a moral obligation not to do as she did. (2) An agent was morally obligated not to do as she did only if it was within her power to act differently from the way she did act (from the maxim). (3) Therefore, PAP [from (1) and (2)].4 He goes on to argue that the conclusion depends upon a hidden premise that turns out to be false. The required argument should actually be: (1¢) An agent is morally blameworthy for what she has done only if she had a moral obligation not to do as she did [equivalent to (1)]. (2¢) An agent was morally obligated not to act as she did only if she was morally obligated to act differently from the way she did act. (3¢) An agent was morally obligated to act differently from the way she did act only if it was within her power to act differently from the way she did act (from the maxim). (4¢) Therefore, PAP [from (1¢), (2¢), and (3¢)].5 Yaffe claims that (2¢) is the hidden premise. Furthermore, he believes that it is false. Why? Because being required not to do A is not equivalent to being required to do something other than A. Suppose for example that I am obligated not to lie to my wife at midnight. As it turns out, I’m fast asleep at midnight. So, I don’t lie to my wife. Intuitively, I had an obligation and I have satisfied it. But not if (2¢) is true. Under this premise, I had an obligation not to lie only if I had an obligation to do something other than lie. The only thing I’m doing at midnight—if anything—is sleeping. I am not, however, obligated to sleep. We can see this by noting that I would not have violated any obligation if I had (say) stayed awake and simply read a book. So in the initial case of my sleeping at midnight, (2¢) will force us to conclude either that I did not satisfy my obligation not to lie or that I was not obligated not to lie. Both of these options are seriously counterintuitive. Thus, (2¢) must be false. Since this premise is false, the argument to the conclusion that there is a deep connection between the maxim and PAP can be rejected. 2. See Widerker (1991, 223). David Copp (1997) makes essentially the same argument, but in a slightly more polemic spirit. 3. Yaffe (1999). 4. Ibid, 219. 5. Ibid, 219–220.

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A NEW DERIVATION This is a powerful response to Widerker.6 The response is powerful, however, at least in part because the maxim argument begins with an overly strict version of the alternative possibilities condition. Having already abandoned such a version, I am convinced that one can derive the relevant alternative possibilities condition from an appropriately specified version of the maxim. (Maxim 1) A person is obligated to do X only if she can do X. is too imprecise. It is not, for instance, temporally specified. But the mere addition of temporal specification, as in (Maxim 2) A person has an obligation to do X at T only if she can do X at T. will not be enough to make the maxim satisfactory. We can imagine cases wherein an agent incurs a prima facie obligation to do something at a certain time in the future, but in which it becomes impossible for her to do so after the incursion. Perhaps she agrees to pick up a friend at the airport, but then proceeds to have an eye surgery that makes it impossible for her to drive. My own inclination is to say that this person still has a derivative obligation to pick up her friend, an obligation derived from her primary obligation not to undergo a procedure that would make keeping her promise impossible. The problem here is that a strict interpretation of “can” will mean that the woman in the above example has no obligation to pick up her friend at the time in question. This is because she cannot pick her up at that time (due to her inability to see). This suggests that a broader image of ability is at work in our moral intuitions about this case (and those like it). The version of “can” that would make sense of this case would be something like: there is a set of conditions sufficient for her doing X at T to which she can causally contribute through voluntary action or omission at or prior to T. Making this more explicit yields: (Maxim 3) A person has an obligation to do X at T only if: (1) She can do X at T, or (2) She could have done something prior to T that would have made it the case that she could have done X at T, or (3) She would have been able to do X at T if she hadn’t done something prior to T that made it the case that she couldn’t do X at T. 6. Ira Schnall (2001) has defended Widerker’s argument against Yaffe. Though I haven’t the space to take up Schnall’s argument here, I believe it fails. Yaffe has, to my mind, demonstrated this failure in his paper in this volume (“More on “Ought” implies “Can” and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities”).

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A case in which I fail to keep an appointment because I fail to set my alarm is covered by (2). And (3) covers the case in which I get drunk and do damage as a result. For ease of expression, let’s say that a person who satisfies the extended disjunction above is “deeply capable” of doing X at T. The equivalent version of the principle, then, is: (Maxim 4) A person has an obligation to do X at T only if she is deeply capable of doing X at T. With this version in place, PAPH can be derived from the Kantian maxim: (1) If A has an obligation to do X at T, then A is deeply capable of doing X at T (Maxim 4). (2) If A is blameworthy for not doing X at T, then she has an obligation to do X at T (definition of blame). (3) Therefore, if A is blameworthy for not doing X at T, then she is deeply capable of doing X at T (1, 2). (4) If A is blameworthy for not doing X at T, then A did not do X at T (definition of blame). (5) If A did not do X at T, then she is deeply capable of not doing X at T. (6) Therefore, if A is blameworthy for not doing X at T, then she is deeply capable of not doing X at T (4, 5). (7) Therefore, if A is blameworthy for not doing X at T, then she is deeply capable of not doing X at T and she is deeply capable of doing X at T [conjunction of (3) and (6)]. To say that an agent is deeply capable (in our specialized sense) of either doing X or not doing X is just to say that the agent satisfies PAPH. We can conclude, then, that: (8) If A is blameworthy for not doing X at T, then she satisfies PAPH. This means that, given the maxim, if anyone is to be blamed for shirking her moral obligations, then she must have had alternative possibilities. Either PAPH is true or no one can be blamed for failing to do her duty. Have I avoided Yaffe’s objection? I believe so. I take his concern to be that some obligations (specifically, some obligations not to do various things) can be discharged passively. This means that the maxim needs to be understood in such a way as to allow for this. This is what the lying-at-midnight case demonstrates. Thus, insofar as the concept of ability or power that is built into the principle of alternative possibilities is robustly active, the two moral intuitions will appear to come apart. My claim is that this appearance is due largely to the fact that “tracing” has been ignored. PAPH permits a certain kind of derivative passivity in cases of morally responsible behavior not permitted by rigid PAP. That is, there can be passivity at the time of action because of robust activity at some time in the past. PAPH and the maxim share the relevant power expectations.

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Yaffe might, however, reformulate his concern in response to my derivation. Another way of making his point is to note that there might be an impropriety in moving from “X kept his promise” to “X was able to keep his promise.” If we maintain a strict notion of ability, then the lying-at-midnight case might invalidate this inference. However, the new derivation does not rely on this inference. Indeed, it relies on an analogous inference, but one, I believe, not so easily invalidated. This is because the crucial power concept to which I appeal (deep capability) is broader and more nuanced than the one employed by Widerker and others. The analogous inference that Yaffe would be forced to challenge, then, is from “X kept his promise” to “X was deeply capable (in our sense) of keeping his promise.” This is to say that Yaffe’s objection to my derivation would have to be that premise (4) above is false. But how could (4) be false? The lying-at-midnight case clearly does not falsify it. This is because when X does not lie at midnight it remains true either that: (1) X was able not to lie, or (2) X could have done something in the past that would have made it possible for him not to lie (like going to sleep), or (3) X could have avoided doing things that would have rendered him unable not to lie. This is to say that X’s not lying seems to imply his deep capability not to lie in a way that it does not imply his ability not to lie. Now, strictly speaking, (4) can be falsified, but only in non-agential circumstances. For example, my toaster never did a back flip. But neither was it capable of not doing a back flip.7 Our context, however, is of course an agential one. Indeed, this is necessarily so given the moral implications. Thus, given the toaster case, I will admit that (4) can be false in cases where the subject is either not an agent or has at no point in the sequence employed her agential powers. But this is irrelevant in the present context. This is because obligation and blame require agency. The moral content of the maxim straightaway constrains the range of cases to which it applies. The fact then, that (4) is false in certain cases not involving agency does not show that there is any problematic moral inference involved in my derivation of PAPH from the maxim. CONCLUSION Once a version of PAP that involves the intuitive concept of tracing is in play, it is considerably more difficult to pull the maxim away from it. Of course, many philosophers are prepared to abandon the maxim on independent grounds.8 But to the degree that one is committed to the idea that “ought” implies “can,” one must also be committed to the necessity of alternative possibilities for blameworthiness. By the same token, counterexamples to the one will be counterexamples to the other.9

7. Yaffe has pressed this particular objection in correspondence. 8. Others raise concerns about the viability of tracing conditions like the one my argument presupposes (see the paper by Manuel Vargas included in this volume). 9. For numerous conversations and helpful comments, I extend sincere thanks to both Gideon Yaffe and Manuel Vargas (who remain, for incompatible reasons, largely unconvinced).

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Copp, David. 1997. “Defending the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: Blameworthiness and Moral Responsibility.” Noûs 31:441–56. Frankfurt, Harry. 1969. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.” Journal of Philosophy 66:829–39. ———. 1982. “What We Are Morally Responsible For.” Reprinted in Fischer and Ravizza, 1993, 286–95. Fischer, John Martin and Ravizza, Mark. 1993. Perspective on Moral Responsibility. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kane, Robert. 1996. The Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schnall, Ira. 2001. “The Principle of Alternate Possibilities and ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can.’ ” Analysis 61:335–40. Widerker, David. 1991. “Frankfurt on ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’ and Alternative Possibilities.” Analysis 49:222–24. Yaffe, Gideon. 1999. “ ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’ and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities.” Analysis 59:219–21.