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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2009
Challenging problems for moral and legal culpability, as Jennifer Radden has impressively brought to our attention, are generated when people suffering from dissociative-identity disorder commit various transgressions. In the type of case of interest in this paper, “Self2” of a two-self multiple is unaware that “Self1” has committed a crime and has played no role in Self1's commission of the crime. This case generates, among others, the following pressing problems. Is Self2 morally to blame for Self1's deed, and is the multiple itself either morally or legally culpable for this deed? In this paper, after critically discussing some of Radden's views on these issues, I defend negative responses to both these questions by appealing to central constituents of a theory of moral responsibility.
1. Radden, Jennifer, Divided Minds and Successive Selves: Ethical Issues in Disorders of Identity and Personality (1996). Subsequent references in parentheses in the text are to this work.Google Scholar
2. In Stephen Braude's terminology, the alters are persons in the dispositional/normative sense of ‘person.’ See First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind 199 (1995).Google Scholar As the discussion unfolds, it will become clear that these selves are what I regard as normative agents.
3. Moore, Michael, Law and Psychiatry: Rethinking the Relationship 406 (1984).Google Scholar
4. Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (1984)Google Scholar, develops a psychological continuity view of the self.
5. On the distinctness of alternate selves of multiples, see Braude, , supra note 2, ch. 3.Google Scholar
6. Braude introduces the notions of being cosensory and being intraconscious; id. at 88.
7. For an illustration of an actual case that fits these parameters, see, e.g., French, A. & Shechmeister, B., The Multiple Personality Syndrome and Criminal Defense 11 Bull. Am. Acad. Psychol. & Law 17–25 (1983).Google ScholarPubMed Radden summarizes essentials of the case. See supra note 1, at 94.
8. See Strawson, Peter, Freedom and Resentment, in Pespectives on Moral Responsibility 45–66Google Scholar (Fischer, J.M. & Ravizza, M. eds., 1993).Google Scholar
9. See Watson, Gary, Responsibility and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian ThemeGoogle Scholar, id. at 119–48.
10. See Strawson, , supraGoogle Scholar note 8, at see. 4; and id. at 129–30.
11. Strawson, , supra note 8, at 50–52.Google Scholar
12. Zimmerman, Michael, An Essay on Moral Responsibility 38 (1988).Google Scholar
13. Radden claims that her conclusions concerning Selfi's responsibility over Self2's actions, drawn through an application of Locke's Principle, may be checked against those drawn through an application of hierarchical theories of responsibility defended, for instance, by Harry Frankfurt (see, e.g., Frankfurt, Harry G., Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, 68 J. Phil. 5–20 (1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or real self theories of the sort developed by Susan Wolf, Freedom Within Reason [1990]). See Radden, , supra note 1, at 91, 105–7.Google Scholar My sole comment on this interesting strategy is that the theories against which Radden proposes to check her results are themselves not free of significant difficulties. Against Wolf, see, e.g., John Martin Fischer & Ravizza, Mark, Responsibility, Freedom, and Reason, 102 Ethics 368–89 (1992)Google Scholar; and Mele, Alfred, Autonomous Agents: From Self-Control to Autonomy, 162–65 (1995).Google Scholar Critical discussion of Frankfurt's hierarchical theory can be found in, for instance, Christman, John, Autonomy and Personal History, 21 Can.J. Philos. 1–24 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fischer, John Martin & Ravizza, Mark, Responsibility and History, 19 Midwest. Stud. Phil. 430–51 (1994)Google Scholar; Shatz, David, Free Will and the Structure of Motivation, 10 Midwest Stud. Phil. 451–82 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thalberg, Irving, Hierarchical Analyses of Unfree Action; 8 Can.J. Phil. 211–26 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ishuyaque Haji, Moral Appraisability (in press).
14. Radden is aware of the objection that to punish a multiple for a crime committed by one of its selves (in our case, Self1), would also be to punish unjustly the innocent self (Self2) who shares a body with Self1, and she responds by appealing to the doctrine of double effect (DDE) (141). The doctrine seems to rule that it is permissible to bring about the bad result of innocent Self's being imprisoned as this is merely a foreseen but unintended side effect of some greater good—punishment of the guilty multiple. I am unpersuaded by this response. My chief reservation is that if we take the incarceration of Self2 to be one of the mere side effects of incarcerating the multiple, such a side effect greatly harms an innocent, and the law might not want to tolerate the harm, given the means by which it is generated. My suggestion is that even if DDE is deeply embedded in our legal system, the law itself might want to rule against some applications of DDE, and such rulings could be defended by appeal to the principle that the “etiological pathway” generating the harm, which is a consequence of some “mere side effect,” is morally significant.
15. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, esp. bk. III.
16. For a recent instructive discussion on global manipulation cases, see Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will, 65–71 (1996); Mele, , supra note 13, ch. 9Google Scholar; and Double, Richard, Puppeteers, Hypnotists, and Neurosurgeons, 56 Phil. Stud. 163–73 (1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17. See Frankfurt, Harry's seminal piece, Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility 66 J Phil. 829–39 (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18. I realize this is controversial, but I shall assume that in Frankfurt-type cases, the agent like Slay cannot refrain from doing otherwise, and that he is responsible for what he did. For a recent thorough discussion of Frankfurt-type cases and their relevance to the control dimension of moral responsibility, see Fischer, J.M., The Metaphysics of Free Will (1994).Google ScholarSee, in addition, van Inwagen, Peter, An Essay on Free Will (1983)Google Scholar and Widerker, David, Libertarianism and Frankfurt's Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, 104 Phil. Rev. 247–61 (1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. A somewhat more detailed account of volitional control is this: S has volitional control over her action A if and only if there is a world satisfying certain conditions at which S intends or decides to do something other than A (given the motivational precursor of A) and succeeds in (nondeviantly) doing so. These conditions include: the world has the same laws as our (the actual) world; S has the same evaluative scheme and the same character and psychological constitution; S has the same “conative history” until (or very close to) the time of action (S would, then, in this world have the proximal desire that gives rise to A in the actual world); and the world not including conditions which would be “exceptional” for the agent—for example, extreme fear, panic, etc. (For justifications of these conditions, see Haji, Ishtiyaque, supra note 13, ch. 4.Google Scholar) Part of the idea I am trying to capture here is that someone has volitional control just in case his intentions, decisions, or actions are sensitive to at least some beliefs about what the world is like.
My construction of the concept of volitional control has been influenced by the discussion of reason's responsive mechanisms in Fischer, J.M., Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility, in Responsibility, Character, and The Emotions 81–106Google Scholar (Schoeman, F. ed., 1987).Google Scholar
20. The distinction between objective and subjective wrongness I have in mind is this: Just as there is a distinction between what one believes to be the case and what the case is, some agent can believe that something is wrong—she subjectively believes that that thing is wrong, without that thing actually being—objectively—wrong.
21. See supra note 13 for relevant references.
22. A nice development of this criticism can be found in Fischer, & Ravizza, , Responsibility and History, supra note 13.Google ScholarSee also Slote, Michael, Understanding Free Will, 77 J. Phil. 136–51 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stump, Eleonore, Sanctification, Hardening of the Heart, and Frankfurt's Concept of Free Will, 85 J. Phil. 395–420 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23. See Wolf, Susan, Freedom Within Reason (1990).Google Scholar
24. Kleinig, John, Ethical Issues in Pstchosurgery 75 (1985)Google Scholar explains.that psychosurgery is frequently characterized as a surgical procedure whose goal is to correct disordered mental states by altering brain tissue, frequently for the purpose of changing the patient's personality.
25. For further details regarding authenticity of initial schemes and modified initial schemes, see Haji, , supra note 13, ch. 8.Google Scholar
26. Braude, , supra note 2, at 68.Google Scholar
27. Radden does indicate that in rare cases in which appeal has been made to the insanity defense to defend multiples, those exonerated are exonerated because of the presence of factors that regularly serve to exculpate the insane and not because of multiplicity per se (see supra note 1, at 132). The point I want to emphasize is that the law itself shows recognition that multiples are special; cases involving multiples aren't to be assimilated to those involving crimes committed by single-selved persons.
28. It is noteworthy that the multiple fails to satisfy criteria favored by Radden, (supra note 1, ch. 3) of being a self akin to Self1 or Self2.
29. Braude suggests that there are good reasons to believe that the multiple itself is a rational agent He says that even if an understanding of one alter may not be of help in predicting what other alters might do, a “thorough understanding of the multiple (as an individual) might help us to understand and explain everything that all the alters do” (supra note 2, at 202). Although suggestive, Braude's view is controversial as this analogy confirms: Though a thorough understanding of a corporation (as a “collective individual”) might help us to understand and explain every germane thing that the corporate members do, it is not in the least evident that the collective itself is (thereby) a rational agent.
30. My position here remains unaffected on the supposition that of the selves of a multiple, one self can be singled out as the true or authentic self. Braude, , supra note 2, at 56–60Google Scholar, is skeptical about the view that with “advanced” multiples, there is anything like a primary alter. He does postulate the existence of some kind of unifying self underlying the splits of multiple personality (ch. 7), but he believes that this is compatible with alters being discrete moral and prudential agents (sec. 8.3). Owen Flanagan is dubious about the existence of anything like a real or authentic alter and takes issue with Braude's claim that an underlying unifying self is required to explain various phenomena. See Flanagan, , Multiple Identity, Character Transformation, and Self-Reclamation, in Philosophical Psychopathology 135–62Google Scholar (Graham, George & Stephens, G. Lynn eds., 1994).Google Scholar
31. For helpful comments and suggestions, I thank two anonymous referees for Legal Theory. I am grateful to the office of the vice president for research at the University of Minnesota for its support
