Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Phil’s Trojan Horse Argument against PAP (Peter Lupu)

(I) In a post dated June 6, 2009 Philoponus presented the Trojan Horse Argument (THA) against thre Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) according to which a person is morally responsible for what he as done only if he could have done otherwise.  He says:

(A) “So, if we say a agent shall be responsible for doing x only if conditions a and b and c obtain, and it turns out that c cannot obtain, or we can never ascertain or be sure that c obtains, we have rendered it impossible ever to hold someone responsible for doing x. Yes? The PAP is a Trojan Horse if we attach it to moral responsibility.”

Phil then maintains that

(B)  “The criminal law wisely and steadfastly refuses to allow a Trojan Horse like the PAP into the criminal codes, … Think about what would happen if a PAP clause—“he could have done/chosen otherwise”– became a material element of a criminal charge. Then the prosecution would have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the perpetrator could have acted/chosen otherwise.”

In this post I shall examine Phil’s THA with respect to both claims (A) and (B).


(II) Phil’s THA with respect to (A). Phil’s argument has the following form:  

(1) Some suitable version of PAP requires as one of the necessary conditions for moral/legal responsibility a condition such as ‘could not have done/acted otherwise’. Call this the *alternative-possibility requirement* or APR for short;

(2) It is not possible to determine whether APR ever obtains;

Therefore,

(3) It is not possible to determine whether anyone is ever morally/legally responsible.

The argument is valid. Is it sound? Everything depends on premise (2).

(III) Phil has two versions of premise (2). The first version states that APR *cannot* obtain: this claim is metaphysical. The second version states that even if APR obtains in a given situation, it is not possible to discern (know) whether it obtains: I take this claim to be an epistemological claim.  

(i) Phil offers no evidence or argument in support of the metaphysical claim. I suppose he would bring in brain-determinism once again. It is worth pointing out, however, that advancing the metaphysical claim is somewhat surprising for someone who supports the cogency of Frankfurt style examples against PAP. Why? Because Frankfurt-style examples presuppose as a metaphysical fact that  persons can change their minds and do otherwise: i.e., that APR is possible. For imagine that Phil is right about the metaphysical claim. Then there is no need for a special Frankfurt-style example: the world is already a Frankfurt-like world with respect to every decision or action we undertake. No one could do otherwise. APR is not possible. So there is no need for an evil manipulator, Genie, or any other device to insure that our subject stays the course. Our subject cannot but stay the course. So if the metaphysical stand Phil adopts regarding APR is true, he should reject Frankfurt-style examples as spurious.

(ii) Phil offers no evidence for the epistemological claim. Moreover, it is unclear whether Phil will include in the scope of the claim the first person as well. Suppose he intends to do so. Why should we accept this broad scope of the epistemological claim? Suppose someone asks me: Did you intend to respond to Phil today? I answer: You know what, I pondered this very question before I started to write this post; I wondered whether I should use my time to respond to Phil or I should instead do my homework. I decided in favor of the former for reasons that do not matter here. Phil undoubtedly will point out that this account is an illusion because prior brain activity already dictates the conscious decision taken. Of course, here Phil begs the question against APR and therefore PAP. But there is another problem. If choices are metaphysically impossible (i.e., if APR is metaphysically ruled out), then the epistemological claim is beside the point: if there cannot be choices to be made, then the question whether we can know that someone engaged in a choice making activity and could have done otherwise has no subject matter. No such knowledge is possible.

(iii) So we must assume that the epistemological claim is of the form: even if choices were metaphysically possible, we could not ascertain whether in a given case a person chose to do one thing but could have done otherwise. Suppose choices are metaphysically possible. What evidence or argument is there in support of the conclusion that APR cannot be known? First, in many cases we certainly can rely upon first person reports. I concede that I chose to respond to Phil instead of doing my homework. Why should we suspect such a first person report? Second, we might have indirect evidence. We estimate based upon reasonable evidence that the person was in control of their faculties, there appear not to be internal or external physical causes that compelled the subject to do what he did,  there were alternative courses of action available at the time, and so forth. So we can certainly obtain indirect evidence for APR in particular cases. Is such evidence conclusive? No! Does it offer certainty? No! But it certainly can be as good evidence as Phil has for those neurological theories he seems to be so fond off. So unless Phil offers some reasons to substantiate premise (2) above, his Trojan Horse Argument against APR has no merit.  

(IV) In (B), Phil argues that the criminal law does not allow a Trojan horse such as PAP and APR into the system. He is wrong about (a) the criminal law; (b) law in general; (c) society at large; (d) history of humanity up to the present.

(a)   A precondition for being tried in a criminal case is the determination that the accused was and is capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. If the defense can prove that the accused could not distinguish between right/wrong at the time of the alleged criminal action or in general, then there is no criminal trial. What is the purpose of this precondition? Clearly, its intended purpose is to determine that the accused was able to distinguish between doing something that is morally wrong from an alternative of not doing what is morally wrong. Therefore, the criminal law in this country certainly recognizes APR. Moreover, if an accused killed someone while sleepwalking and a pre-trial investigation will offer reasonable evidence to this effect, then the person will not be even charged with murder. Why? Because the killing was not done intentionally. But, what does it mean that the killing was not done intentionally? It means that the person has not intentionally chosen to end the life of another.

Phil is wrong about the criminal law.

(b1) The following is a quotation from the Belmont Report that states the principal laws and regulations that govern Research with Human Participants in medicine, biology, and behavioral sciences:

“To respect autonomy is to give weight to the autonomous person’s considered opinion and choices while refraining from obstructing his or her actions…”

The rest of the laws and regulation rely upon the above principle of a person’s autonomy and their “considered opinions”. Researchers must obtain in writing an informed consent form and make sure that all participants know that they have the choice to withdraw from the research. Every clause in these laws presupposes that human participants have autonomy and are capable of making choice. Persons with diminished autonomy (children, disabled, prisoners, etc.,) must be treated in very specific ways.  

Phil is wrong about the laws and regulation that govern all research with human subjects.

(b2) A contract is an agreement among two parties that was entered without coercion, willingly, and both parties were in a state of mind which enabled them to understand the terms of the contract. These provisions all presuppose some version of APR and therefore PAP.

Phil is wrong about contract law.

(b3) I don’t think that the following argument would be accepted: “Yes your honor, I was driving 125 mph in a 45 mph zone. The officer is correct. And yes I was in my right mind, the car was functioning properly, and I knew that the speed limit is 45 mph. However, given that I was actually driving 125 mph on that road at that time, clearly on that road at that time I could not have driven any slower (Reference: Phil post on Maverick Philosopher site).”

Phil is wrong about laws governing traffic. Almost every law and regulation presupposes some version of APR and therefore PAP.

(V) And so does almost every aspect of human relations, interactions, friendship, etc. We could not imagine a society in which APR or PAP are false or cannot be known.

(VI) Human beings made progress in acquiring knowledge about the world. But more importantly, we made moral progress as well. We gradually came to recognize that human beings must be treated as autonomous agents, agents that make choices, and could have chosen otherwise. We gradually recognized that because human beings are autonomous agents we cannot simply treat them as means only. If I happen to find a brain in a vat floating around, then I am morally permitted to cut it up and experiment with it. But I am not entitled to do the same with your brain while you are alive and well without your permission. Why is that?

(VII) Frankfurt-style examples are on a continuum with Zeno’s paradox. We do not take Zeno’s paradox as a discovery that motion does not exist along the lines of the discovery that the earth is round. Rather we conclude that there is something deeply wrong with the premises which lead to this conclusion. We should treat Frankfurt-style examples along the same lines as we treat Zeno’s paradox. These examples do not refute APR or PAP. They simply show that there is something wrong with the assumptions behind these examples.

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Bill Vallicella

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5 responses to “Phil’s Trojan Horse Argument against PAP (Peter Lupu)”

  1. Philoponus Avatar
    Philoponus

    Peter,
    Thank you for the thoughtful response. You raise many good points. Forgive me if I manage to address only some of them. And thank you, Bill, for affording us this forum to discuss issues of ability & responsibility.
    Let’s talk first about the law and the PAP. I say the law (wisely) does not admit a plea or defense that the accused could not have done otherwise. You think this is wrong. You say in Part IV of your essay that in a criminal action the defense may argue for acquittal on the grounds that the defendant could not distinguish right from wrong at the time of the offense (and so did know that what he was doing was wrong). Correct, but what does this have to do with whether he could have done otherwise? In waht way is this defense supposed to be recognized as a (disguised?) version of the PAP? This defense is meant to excuse people who were (temporarily) insane at the time they did something wrong. I agree that insane people should not be held criminally responsible for their actions, but what is the connection here to the PAP? I don’t get it. Are you implying that any action performed by an insane person is an action that the person could not have avoided performing? Not very plausible.
    Look, there is a defense that implies that the defendant could not have done otherwise. If I was forced or compelled to do X, then I could not have done otherwise than X. In Conrad’s novel, if Lord Jim had been tied up and dragged off the ship by the other mates, then we should not hold him responsible for abandoning his ship. Compulsion is a legitimate excuse or defense, but notice that compelled acts are just one narrow kind of “could not have done otherwise” performances. It is rank fallacy to infer from the fact because in one type of case where I could not have done otherwise my acts are excused that in all cases where I could not have done otherwise my acts should be excused. Utter non sequitur, but I fear that this is how many PAPists (if I may label them) reason.
    “Could not have done otherwise” is ill-defined, open-ended, portmanteau excuse that could be invoked in almost unlimited ways to justify especially the most horrific conduct. The law wisely wants no part of this kind of defense. There is, for example, no claim that Gacy or Bundy were forced to torture and murder, but, given all the psychopathology involved, people are willing to argue that they could not have done otherwise. The law wisely refuses to get entangled with an unknown that could sabotage and wreck every criminal prosecution. Now I think some Papists know this and want this result. They are moral skeptic who want the conclusion that no one can be held morally or criminally responsible for their evil deeds. This is the point of my Trojan Horse simile.
    Besides armchair cases like the Frankfurt counterexamples, there are plenty of real situations in which we hold someone responsible for a deed or omission though we concede he could not have done otherwise. A lifeguard lets a child drown in a pool he is supervising because he (the lifeguard) is unconscious at the time of the drowning. If he is unconscious, he could not have saved the child, but it matters crucially why he was unconscious. If he was unconscious because he got drunk and passed out, we have a very different opinion than if he had a stroke or seizure. In both cases he could not have saved the child, but in the former case we hold him responsible for the child’s drowning. We don’t give a damn that he couldn’t have saved the child because he was drunk. His irresponsible drinking is the reason a child drowned. We don’t give a damn that he was an alcoholic and claims he could not stop drinking. He was derelict and a child died as a result. Van Inwagen says in cases like these we do not hold him responsible for failing to save the child, which he could not do, but for drinking and incapacitating himself. This is certainly wrong as a matter of law. In fact we hold him responsible for both drinking on duty and for negligently letting the child drown. There is ample case law on this issue.
    Reflecting on cases like the drunken lifeguard should weaken the intuitive appeal of a PAP condition on responsibility. We do excuse SOME cases of wrongdoing or dereliction where the plea, for example, compulsion, entails the agent could not have acted otherwise. But we also categorically reject this excuse in other cases, and the law in fact recognizes no general (PAP) plea to the effect that the doer could not do otherwise.

    Reply
  2. Philoponus Avatar
    Philoponus

    Peter,
    You mention laws governing speeding in section (b3) of your essay. Those of us who have fought (and lost) speeding cases soon discover that speeding is what is called a strict liability offense. The prosecution needs to show no mens rea, no intentional or desire to speed. If you operating a vehicle that was traveling more than the speed limit, you are guilty of speeding. Other more serious offenses are also strict liability offenses.
    If Bill decides to capture one the mountain lions that frequents his environs and make a house pet of him, he can, but keeping dangerous animals as pets is regarded as an “inherently dangerous activity.” If Fluffy (his pet) gets loose and begins to snack on some of Bill’s neighbors, Bill has serious criminal and civil liability, even if he has done every reasonable or even conceivable thing to prevent this. If a fluke earthquake or lightning strike releases Fluffy, Bill is still responsible. It matters not that he did not want this to happen and did everything he could have to prevent it; he is responsible for the carnage Fluffy causes.
    Strict liability cases are another example where the law puts people on notice that any kind of “did not intend” or “could not have prevented” the result will be rejected. I like the idea that the use of firearms should be classified as an inherently dangerous and so a strict liability offense. If you are using a firearm and for any reason you cause injure to another person, you should be held criminally & civilly responsible for the mishap. (I say this as someone who has owned and used firearms in war & peace for 40 years.)
    Strict liability crimes are another example of where the law cares not whether someone could have done otherwise.

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  3. Philoponus Avatar
    Philoponus

    Peter,
    I concede you are right on the epistemological point that we should not say we can NEVER know whether someone could have done otherwise. Did I say or imply this? It is enough for my argument against Papism that we OFTEN cannot be sure that this is not so, and especially in case of horrific wrongdoing. Maybe if we discover that Phil has been embezzling money from his family trust and spending it on the girls at the PussyKat Lounge, we can with complete confidence reject his plea of nymphetomania—see Nabokov’s LOLITA. He could and should have refrained from the embezzlements, however strongly he was attracted to the very young ladies at the PussyKat. But more serious cases that involve psychopathology are not so easily resolved. Could Bundy or Gacy have refrained from torturing & killing, given their impulses and lack of moral restraints? I don’t know, but as a juror, fortunately, I don’t care. Did they do these horrible things? Yes! Did they know what they were doing and did they know it s terribly wrong? Oh, yes. Then they are guilty and deserve capital punishment.
    .
    Do not try to undermine the edifice of crime and punishment by introducing the blanket, open-ended, and often undecidable requirement that the prosecution show the perpetrator could have dove otherwise.

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  4. Philoponus Avatar
    Philoponus

    Peter,
    Frankfurt, as you know, eventually came to conclusion that his counterexamples showed that we must replace the PAP with this principle:
    (P) a person is not morally responsible for what he has done if he did it ONLY BECAUSE he could not have done otherwise.
    He explains: “we understand a person who offers this excuse to mean that he did what he did ONLY BECAUSE…he had to do it. We understand him to mean him to mean, more particularly, that when he did it, what he did…was not what he really wanted to do.”
    As his examples make even clearer, (P) is just a long-winded version of the plea of compulsion, which we already admit. We are not responsible if we are forced or coerced into doing something we abhor. If we are forced or coerced, we could not have done otherwise. But this is no reason to accept the much broader claim that whenever he cannot do otherwise for any sort of reason, we are not responsible. The law wisely accepts compulsiom, insanity, etc as excuses, but rejects the PAP.

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  5. Philoponus Avatar
    Philoponus

    Peter,
    On a personal note, let me add this. Some of the worst decisions I have made in my life are decisions that I now do not know whether I could have chosen differently. Given the circumstances and what I knew (or thought I knew) and my decision criteria, it is very hard for me to imagine coming to a different verdict about what I should do. Let’s say that I am an agnostic on the issue of whether I could have chosen differently. But my agnosticism does not impair my judgment that I am fully responsible for those choices. Do you understand? The PAP says no, Phil, if you doubt whether you could have chosen and acted differently, you should doubt whether you are responsible. The PAP is wrong.
    You know, the worst decisions always seem to be the decisions we are most deliberate and careful about. It is easy to dogmatize and say “you always could chosen differently in these circumstances” but that is mere assertion. I think we must hold ourselves responsible for what we wanted to do and chose to do and did, regardless of any theoretical speculation about what else we could or might have done. The PAP has no role in our moral deliberations.

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