Totalitarianism specializes in the dissolution of fortitude, whether by the extremes of physical torture (Bettelheim 1943) or by the psychological degradation of “thought reform” or “brainwashing” (Lifton 1956; Schein 1956). These practices are repellent, but their effects are not unexpected. Aristotle (1984: 1115b7—9) acknowledged that some things exceed human endurance, and Russell (1945: 267), with another 2,000-odd years of history to consider, remarked that the will withstands the tyrant only so long as the tyrant is unscientific. Situationism teaches something more surprising and, in a sense, more disturbing. The unsettling observation doesn't concern behavior in extremis, but behavior in situations that are rather less than extreme; the problem is not that substantial situational factors have substantial effects on what people do, but that seemingly insubstantial situational factors have substantial effects on what people do. The disproportionate impact of these “insubstantial” situational factors presses charges of empirical inadequacy against characterological moral psychology: If dispositional structures were typically so robust as familiar conceptions of character and personality lead one to believe, insubstantial factors would not so frequently have such impressive effects. In the present chapter, I'll document the evidence for this contention.

Character and personality traits are invoked to explain what people do and how they live: Peter didn't mingle at the party because he's shy, and Sandra succeeds in her work because she's diligent. Traits also figure in prediction: Peggy will join in because she's impulsive, and Brian will forget our meeting because he's absentminded. So too for those rarefied traits called virtues: James stood his ground because he's brave, and Katherine will not overindulge because she's temperate. Such talk would not much surprise Aristotle (1984: 11O6a14—23); for him, a virtue is a state of character that makes its possessors behave in ethically appropriate ways. I'll now begin arguing that predictive and explanatory appeals to traits, however familiar, are very often empirically inadequate: They are confounded by the extraordinary situational sensitivity observed in human behavior. Discussion of the descriptive psychology occupies me for several chapters; afterward, I'll be positioned to address related normative concerns.

Traits and Consistency

Dispositions

As I understand it, to attribute a character or personality trait is to say, among other things, that someone is disposed to behave a certain way in certain eliciting conditions. In philosophy, this seems a standard interpretation: Character traits, and virtues in particular, are widely held to involve dispositions to behavior.

Slote begins an interesting paper with the remark that the question of whether human beings have free will has long been considered one of the most important in philosophy for, among other things, the assumption that free will is necessary to moral responsibility and vital to ethics. He goes on to argue, however, that there are forms of ethics that are possible in the absence of metaphysical freedom (1990: 369). In this chapter, I will start by considering a version of virtue ethics developed by Slote that he believes is compatible with determinism. I will follow by questioning some aspects of the compatibility claim. Then I will consider a sketch of another version of a virtue ethical theory offered by Watson. This theory does seem compatible with determinism, but I argue that the concepts of rightness, wrongness, and obligatoriness supported by this theory are far removed from our ordinary deontic understanding of them. So even if this version of virtue ethics survives pressure from determinism, it won't sustain the view that deontic anchors (as I have been conceptualizing them) are possible in deterministic worlds. Further, if there are significant costs to not having such anchors, as indeed there are, such a virtue ethics will not be able to recoup these losses. Finally, I will end by arguing for the “independence” of deontic moral appraisals: Such appraisals are distinct from various other modes of moral appraisal such as, for example, appraisals of praise- or blameworthiness, and axiological ones concerned with the instrumental, intrinsic, or overall goodness of states of affairs.

Being deprived of deontic anchors does exact serious costs. I have discussed some of these in the past few chapters. One is that, without deontic anchors, there would be no grounds for reactive attitudes such as resentment and forgiveness. A second is that, in the absence of deontic anchors, deontic appraisals of rightness, wrongness, and obligatoriness would lack propriety. A third cost is affiliated with concerns of overridingness. If the moral “ought” is overriding, and its verdict is definitive in settling what one plain ought to do in situations in which different sorts of obligation conflict, we will be dispossessed of this ultimate standard of appeal if there are no deontic anchors. One might be, as I am, skeptical about morality's being overriding. Determinism, though, threatens overridingness itself in another way. As I explained, the Overridingness Thesis presupposes the existence of an overarching standard, “Reason,” that passes judgment on the relative normative stringency of special standards of obligation such as moral or prudential obligation. The “plain ought” dictates of Reason, it seems, just like those of the deontic moral “ought,” require alternative possibilities. But if this is so and determinism effaces alternative possibilities, determinism would undermine plain “ought” prescriptions as well.

In this chapter, I first single out an additional cost of being deprived of deontic anchors: In a world devoid of such anchors, we are not, in a way to be explained, “sources” of deontic morality.

Of all the different sorts of obligation such as prudential, legal, or moral, moral obligation has been thought by many from Plato down to several contemporary thinkers to be the most stringent or “overriding.” The moral “ought's” claim to supremacy – its claim to overridingness – it may be thought, kindles another concern with being deprived of deontic anchors. In rough strokes, the issue is this: In a world with no deontic anchors, no nonmoral variety of obligation would be overriding, as it is moral obligation that is overriding, and this sort of world is devoid of such obligation. But then there would be no ultimate standard to which one could appeal to settle what one “plain ought” to do in “conflict situations” where, for example, legal obligation conflicts with prudential obligation, or prudential obligation conflicts with duties of love. For the moral “ought” is the “overarching” ought, the standard that dictates what one plain ought to do in conflict situations, but a world without deontic anchors is a world without moral obligation. Hence, loss of deontic anchors would be accompanied by loss of an overarching standard – the final court of appeal for settling normative conflicts of the relevant sort. Consequently, practical reason would, in a manner of speaking, be “fragmented.”

Aspects of this concern ring true to me; others are rife with confusion. To sift truth from confusion, let's start with some fundamentals.

THE PROBLEM AND THE OUTLINES OF A SOLUTION

Just as one might reasonably deny that an agent can be responsible for performing an action if its occurrence is a matter of luck, so one might reasonably deny that an agent can perform an action that is morally right, or wrong, or obligatory if its occurrence is a matter of luck. How, for example, can one be under an obligation to open the magical safe if there is an equal probability of its opening or not opening even upon dialing the right combination? It might be replied that, assuming the person can (physically) dial any combination, is relevantly situated, has the cooperation of nature, and is lucky, the person can open the safe. After all, there is a world accessible to the person in which she succeeds in opening the safe even on the first try. Perhaps, it might be added, it would frequently be difficult to discharge our moral obligations if the accomplishment of our actions were luck infused, but that is a different concern than the one of whether there could be moral obligations in the first place.

However, this sort of response is dubious. If moral rightness, wrongness, and obligatoriness require control, and if the safe's opening is not even under one's proximal control, then it is really not “up to” one at all whether the safe opens.

One cannot perform an act that is morally right, wrong, or obligatory if one does not have appropriate control over that act; deontic acts presuppose control. This is, perhaps, most evident in the case of moral obligation. It is difficult to accept the verdict that Leno, though pinned to his seat, ought to have saved the child, or that the paraplegic ought to have walked across the lawn when ‘ought’ denotes moral obligation or requirement. Again, it is hard to see how Mitch did something that is morally wrong by failing to help the victim of the car crash when he could not have helped the victim. Or it is, minimally, puzzling to see how Zakir did moral wrong by stealing the loaf when he could not but have stolen it. One might, given apt circumstances, reasonably think that Zakir did something bad by stealing the loaf, but this judgment is consistent with Zakir's not having done wrong. Or, again, it is paradoxical to suppose that the mother's not spanking the child was morally right when she literally lacked the ability to spank her child. These enigmas are not merely pragmatic or do not simply have to do with substantive moral claims about what is fair but are conceptual; the verdict about the paraplegic, for instance, seems conceptually inconsistent. Such examples, and numerous others like them, motivate the view that one cannot do what is right, or wrong, or obligatory unless one has appropriate “deontic-grounding control” over what one does.

The upshot of the last chapter is that rightness, wrongness, and obligatoriness all require alternative possibilities. I have argued for this result by invoking a number of principles, including K and OW. These principles may, however, be regarded by some with suspicion. In this chapter, I first address various objections to K and then turn to concerns regarding OW.

OBJECTIONS TO K AND REPLIES

I find principle K, particularly the moderate version, attractive, and in this I am not alone. K enjoys widespread support, the basis of which, I believe, is at least twofold. First, there is the deep-seated intuition had by many that if overall moral obligation expresses moral necessity or requirement, then one must be able to do the thing – one must have control over doing the thing – that one ought morally to do. Indeed, partly for this reason, K seems to have the status of a sort of axiom – a deontic one – that in the minds of many, any adequate substantive moral theory about what makes right acts right, wrong acts wrong, and obligatory acts obligatory, or any acceptable analysis of the concept of obligation, should “validate.” Second, as we have seen, some of the best theories about the nature of moral obligation, theories that, among other things, provide an analysis of the notion of obligation, have K as a theorem; K is, roughly, implied by these theories.

TRANSITION AND SYNOPSIS

There are no deontic anchors in deterministic worlds. Some indeterministic worlds in which agents lack even proximal control over their decisions or actions will also be bereft of deontic anchors. Why should this matter? I explore this question in the present and in the subsequent four chapters.

I begin in this chapter, by registering one cost of being without deontic anchors: A number of our reactive attitudes such as indignation, resentment, and forgiveness properly require that persons perform at least some actions that are wrong. A world devoid of deontic anchors, then, is a world devoid of the grounds for such attitudes. We value these attitudes or sentiments insofar as we believe that they have legitimate grounds. Hence, a world with these attitudes or sentiments but without rational grounds for them, would be a world deprived of something deemed morally valuable.

In the next chapter (Chapter 10), I lay out an argument for the thesis that no one can be appraisable – that is, praise- or blameworthy – for any of one's deeds in a world lacking in deontic anchors. The argument hinges on what I have dubbed the “Objective View” of blameworthiness and its praiseworthiness analogue: One is morally blameworthy for performing an action only if that action is morally wrong; and one is praiseworthy for performing an action only if that action is morally permissible or obligatory. Though many find it plausible, I believe that the Objective View is false.

INTRODUCTION

In a deterministic world in which the future is not a garden of forking paths, no acts are right, wrong, or obligatory. I have argued that determinism undermines deontic anchors precisely because it rules out alternative possibilities that such anchors require. If this is so, it seems reasonable to suppose that if some of our actions are not causally determined and we have genuine alternative options, then there will be sufficient leeway to secure deontic morality.

A hallmark of libertarianism is that free actions (if any) that we perform are not causally determined. Libertarian views have been and are generally conceived as views about the sort of freedom or control required for responsibility. However, to explore whether libertarian-like views can accommodate deontic morality, we can exploit the component of such views that allows for agents being able to do otherwise (on various occasions of choice). This is the topic of the second part of this book.

Introducing some terminology will facilitate the discussion. An indeterministic theory specifies the species of control or freedom required for moral responsibility or deontic morality, and it entails that the sort of freedom required for either is incompatible with determinism. Traditional libertarian theories, for instance, all qualify as indeterministic theories. An R-libertarian view is the view that the kind of freedom necessary for moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism and that human beings can sometimes be or are morally responsible for what they do.

Let's remind ourselves of some terminology. To be morally appraisable for an action is to be deserving either of moral praise or blame for its performance. A common view is that determinism undermines appraisability. There are, though, different routes from the postulate that determinism is true to the conclusion that no one is appraisable for anything that one does. Three deserve special mention though I shall dwell at length on only one of them.

The first begins with the premise that if determinism is true, then one lacks “genuine” (or libertarian) freedom to do otherwise. But “genuine” freedom to do otherwise, the second premise says, is necessary for appraisability. Hence, if these two premises are true, then determinism is incompatible with appraisability. As I have suggested in previous chapters, it is the second premise of this argument that many find problematic.

A second argument starts with the premise that if determinism is true, then one cannot be an “ultimate originator” of one's actions (as ultimate origination, requires, in part, freedom from control by the past, and one can have this sort of freedom only if there is some “indeterministic break” at appropriate junctures in actional pathways that culminate in action). But one is appraisable for an action, the argument continues, only if one is an ultimate originator of it. Hence, given these premises, it follows that determinism is incompatible with appraisability. Again, it is the second premise that is controversial.

I have been preparing the way to initiate one of the principal arguments of this book. It can be summarized in this fashion. No one can perform an action that is right, wrong, or obligatory unless one could have done otherwise. As we have seen, this is because there is a requirement of alternative possibilities for deontic anchors. In addition, there are powerful reasons to believe that determinism is incompatible with anyone's ever having freedom to do otherwise. It follows, straightforwardly, that if determinism is true, then no act can instantiate a primary deontic property. This new incompatibility thesis – that determinism is incompatible with deontic morality – is the topic of this chapter.

It is noteworthy that this defense of the new incompatibility thesis, just like one prominent defense of the thesis that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility, turns on the view that determinism expunges alternative possibilities. The cardinal elements of the most widely discussed line of reasoning over the past several years for the incompatibility of determinism and freedom to do otherwise are easy to grasp. As Peter van Inwagen explains in An Essay on Free Will:

I argued in the last chapter that Modest Meleian Libertarianism, despite its provision of dual control, is inhospitable to deontic anchors. In this chapter, I explore whether a more robust variety of libertarianism holds better promise for accommodating deontic morality.

I defend the cogency of the objection that, if this sort of libertarianism is true, our choices and actions are a matter of luck undermining responsibility, in these steps: First, I propose a necessary condition of responsibility. In broad strokes and with qualifications to be noted, this is the condition that an agent is responsible for a choice only if there is an explanation (that need not be deterministic) in terms of prior reasons of why the agent made that choice rather than some other. Second, I provide a rationale for this condition that appeals centrally to aspects of the concepts of blameworthiness and responsibility in general. In particular, the rationale exploits the view that ascriptions of responsibility disclose what an agent morally stands for in relation to deeds for which she is responsible; responsibility requires a sort of “self-expression.”

If the luck objection does seriously threaten responsibility, then it seems that it should threaten deontic morality as well. If no agent can, for instance, be blameworthy for an action that is a result of luck, then equally, it would seem, no agent can, for example, do moral wrong by performing an action that is the outcome of luck.