In Defense of Historicism: An Essay on the Metaphysics of Moral Responsibility
To what extent does an agent’s history affect her moral responsibility? Consider a U.S. one dollar bill. Something’s being a genuine U.S. one dollar bill depends on the history of that thing. It is essentially historical. The bill’s authenticity depends upon whether or not it was printed by an autho...
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| Format: | Others |
| Language: | English English |
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Florida State University
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| Online Access: | http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_2016SU_Flummer_fsu_0071E_13291 |
| Summary: | To what extent does an agent’s history affect her moral responsibility? Consider a U.S. one dollar bill. Something’s being a genuine U.S. one dollar bill depends on the history of that thing. It is essentially historical. The bill’s authenticity depends upon whether or not it was printed by an authorized printer of money (and also whether it was printed on an authorized press on authorized paper, etc.). If it was not, then it is a counterfeit. Historicists claim that moral responsibility is essentially historical—like being a genuine U.S. dollar bill. Structuralists deny this. The primary aim of this dissertation is to defend a historicist view of moral responsibility. Consider a pair of drunk drivers who run over pedestrians while equally drunk. Suppose that they have qualitatively identical non-historical psychological profiles at the time of their respective accidents. But suppose that one freely got drunk at happy hour and freely drove home and the other was force-fed alcohol and placed behind the wheel. It seems like the one who freely drove home is morally responsible for running over the pedestrian, but the other is not—despite the fact that neither of them meet common structuralist necessary conditions for moral responsibility. If asymmetrical judgments concerning the responsibility of the two drivers are justified, then structuralist conditions fail to be necessary for moral responsibility. Tracing cases, such as the case of the drunk drivers, are one of the primary motivations for historicism. Manipulation cases are another. They are designed to show that structuralist conditions are insufficient. Suppose Manny has installed a device in Vic’s brain. This device allows Manny to stimulate Vic’s brain in a way that causes him to perform some morally significant action while having the right structure of psychological states. It seems that Vic is not morally responsible for this action despite meeting common structuralist sufficient conditions for moral responsibility. Recently structuralists have argued that tracing cases and manipulation cases do not, if fact, motivate historicism. I first defend tracing from two recent arguments presented by Matt King and Andrew Khoury. I then defend the use of manipulation to motivate historicism from some recent structuralist challenges: the personal identity objection, the unreliable intuition objection, and the x-phi objection. The three main extant historicist views are: Fischer and Ravizza’s positive historicism, Haji and Cuypers’ mixed historicism, and Mele’s negative historicism. Positive historicism holds that in order to be morally responsible, an agent must have a certain type of history. I argue that this position is susceptible to the problem of manipulation and the instant agent objection. Mixed historicism does not require that agents have pasts. So while it avoids the instant agent objection, I argue that it is inadequate because it relies on a problematic notion of relational authenticity. Negative historicism simply requires that agents lack certain kinds of pasts. Mele’s historical condition is part of a set of sufficient conditions that is satisfiable by an agent in a deterministic world. I provide several manipulation cases that cannot be accounted for by Mele’s conditions. I argue that we might want an account of historicism that can cover a broader range of cases. I then present a novel version of historicism called conditional historicism that avoids the aforementioned problems with other accounts. Conditional historicism is similar to mixed historicism in that it does not require that agents have pasts. But if agents have pasts, they must be of a certain sort. My project is to flesh out what sort of past agents must have to be morally responsible. Finally, I conclude by taking stock of the dialectic thus far and discussing a terminological issue. === A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Summer Semester 2016. === May 10, 2016. === Free Will, Historicism, Manipulation, Moral Responsibility, Structuralism === Includes bibliographical references. === Alfred Mele, Professor Directing Dissertation; Aline Kalbian, University Representative; Randolph Clarke, Committee Member; Stephen Kearns, Committee Member. |
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