For the defenders of the free will conceit there are only three questions to ask oneself. The first question is about free choice, and whether it actually exists. If, like the libertarians, you can convince yourself of the possibility of free choice, no further justifications are necessary. But if, like the compatibilists, you can acknowledge the impossibility of free choice, you must then decide how seriously you take the problem of moral luck – the pure lottery of biology and upbringing. If you can convince yourself that in a universe without free choice everything does not just come down to moral luck, no further justifications become necessary.
Libertarianism |
Compatibilism |
Illusionism/Attitudinism/Semi-Compatibilism |
Free choice impossible? NO |
Free choice impossible? YES |
Free choice impossible? YES |
Down to moral luck? NO |
Down to moral luck? YES |
|
Wider considerations? YES |
However, if (like the illusionists) you can acknowledge the impossibility of free choice and acknowledge the continuing problem of moral luck, you must then decide whether there are other, wider, considerations in play that will let you wave away the unfairness of moral luck.
“Is [the system] fair enough not to be worth worrying about? Of course. After all, luck averages out in the long run” (Dan Dennett, 1984, p.95).
Illusionism found those wider considerations in majoritarianism and the belief that the interests of the majority completely extinguish the interests of the minority, because for illusionism the need for social cohesion untroubled by questions of conscience trumps any other imperative (moral or otherwise). Reactive-attitudinism found those wider considerations in the supposed truth of our rat-and-monkey strike back instinct, albeit only after rejecting any evaluation of the nobler, and uniquely human, capacities of impartial justice or a sense of fair play. Semi-compatibilism found its wider considerations in the idea that unfairness is the new fairness: in the belief that there is no requirement for universal fairness.
At its most fundamental, free will justification is the inability to admit that others have been, or will be, less lucky in life than you. Belief in free will – be that belief in free will as free choice, or belief in a free will that eschews free choice – means never having to say “thank you”: it means never having to acknowledge your own great good fortune, or recognise the far greater misfortune of others. Free will justification is also, though, an inability to recognise or speak the truth. When John Searle, Roger Penrose, Roy Baumeister, and Kathleen Vohs tell us that people can, or at least may be able to, stand outside their biology and upbringing and freely choose to do otherwise in the deep libertarian sense this is not (and could never be) true. When Stephen J. Morse and Michael S. Moore tell us that determinism does not entail an absence of choice, and that could-have-done-otherwise conditionality is applicable at the level of the individual, this is not true. When Dan Dennett tells us that luck averages out in human life and that in America all – rich or poor, black or white – get approximately the same breaks, this is not true. When Dennett and Saul Smilansky tell us that morality allows us to wholly discount the rights of the minority, this is not true. When Gary Watson says that there is room for the thought that you and I can take credit for our wonderful health and fine characters – with the deeply distasteful corollary that it is to others’ discredit when they are born diseased or into a toxic environment – this is not true. When Watson and Michael McKenna tell us that there are two biologically distinct forms of human, and that we owe no sense of fellow-feeling to the less-than-perfect form, this is not true. When Dennett writes that it is the person who has “managed to turn himself into a monster”, or when Watson writes that “the thought is not ‘It had to be!’”, or when Jonathan Jacobs writes that it is “not exclusively a matter of bad constitutive luck” and that the individual “could have acted differently”, these statements are not true. And when Dan Dennett, Harry Frankfurt, Peter Strawson, Saul Smilansky, John Fischer, and Stephen Hawking tell us that the absence of free choice does not raise, or at least can find an ethically acceptable answer to, the deep problem of moral luck, this is not true.
We can get drawn into endless arguments about the “correct” meaning of origination, of coercion and control, of freedom of choice, and of could-have-done-otherwise. But nothing in the free will and moral responsibility literature can answer to the fairness of blame and suffering when some of us – through no credit of our own – are born and raised lucky, and some of us – through no fault of their own – are simply born and raised unlucky. And nothing can justify what Oxford’s Neil Levy has called the “double dose” of unfairness that free will justification brings with it. The first dose of unfairness is the poor developmental luck some have to suffer through no choice of their own. But the second dose of unfairness is when we add the further injustice of claiming that the person was somehow responsible for their first dose of unfairness, or at the very least that blame and suffering are their just deserts. It should surely be sad enough that some have to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, while many of us – generally the wealthier, the better-educated, the more attractive, the lighter-skinned – coast though life with barely a hiccup. But to then feel the pressing need to tell untruths about those who suffer misfortune: what does this say about us? To bear false witness about those who didn’t get the breaks we did, to make up stories about how they freely chose their own misfortune? When free will philosophers like Smilansky and Dennett tell us that justice for the 99%, or the 80%, wholly extinguishes injustice for the 1%, or the 20%, using arguments “we take care not to examine too closely”, what does this say about us? When free will theorists like Gary Watson state that we don’t need to extend consideration to those not like us, and we stay silent, what does this say about us? And when philosophers like Fischer and Ravizza tell us that there is no requirement for universal fairness, and we don’t call them on this, what does this say about us?
Bruce Waller has observed that “there is a deep cultural connection” between strong belief in self-creation and free choice and extremes of poverty and wealth, and an absence of genuine opportunity for large segments of the culture. The greater the commitment to these conceits, the more the “absence of genuine opportunity… the greater the disparity between rich and poor, the weaker the commitment to equal opportunity, and the meaner the support system for the least fortunate”. What is surprising is not that Waller can claim this. It is that so few are willing to admit the profound logical connection he recognises. When the influential conservative social commentator Charles Murray tells us that there is indeed a level playing field in America, and that rich and poor, black and white, get just as many chances in life, his evidence and his argument is equality of opportunity. “The options are always open. Opportunity is endless,” writes Murray. Yet what The Bell Curve’s author is claiming is no different from what compatibilists like Dan Dennett, Gary Watson, Jonathan Jacobs, and George Sher are writing. “Everyone comes out more or less in the same league”, say the philosophers. “Many of the differences that survive are, in any event, of negligible importance” and “count for nothing”, they suggest. “The thought is not ‘It had to be!’”, they assert. The differences between people “are rarely so pronounced as to have” the effect of making any course impossible, they profess. Genes and culture are not limiting because the person can rise above his biology and upbringing: he has “created and unleashed” himself, they intone. The options are always open, and opportunity is endless, says the author of The Bell Curve. The options are always open, and opportunity is endless, say the philosophers. But in a universe without free will – however you define that term – the uncomfortable truth is that for many there was no level playing field, no equality of opportunity. For some the options were never open; the opportunity was non-existent.
Everyone does not come out “more or less in the same league”. The differences that survive are not “negligible”. They do not “count for nothing”. It is the differences that survive which absolutely and in every way determine our economic successes and our economic failures, our social successes and our social failures, and our moral successes and our moral failures. The thought is entirely “It had to be!” None of us is a disembodied self who gets to rise above the dragging and wholly limiting effects of biology and environment. Yet the myth – the scapegoating prejudice – of the self-made man joins arch conservative social commentator to liberal philosopher in privileging the lucky and taking away the opportunities, the equality, the dignity, the freedom – even the lives – of the unlucky.
“Is it fair, he keeps asking, to hold both of them responsible? Life isn’t fair” (Dennett, 2012).
Life is not fair. And if we leave it up to the priests, the rabbis, and the philosophers, it never will be.