Overview

Morse’s article tries to answer two challenges from neuroscience. The first challenge is that neuroscience seems to show that the brain causes behavior. The second challenge is that neuroscience seems to show that mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions do not cause behavior. These challenges are both spelled out in the handout.

Morse is especially worried about the second challenge because it threatens to undermine the legal standard for responsibility. The legal standard is rationality: people are liable to punishment only if they are rational. Rationality involves acting on one’s beliefs and desires: rational people act in ways that they believe will enable them to get what they want. If beliefs and desires do not cause actions, then rationality is irrelevant to how we behave and the legal standard of rationality is misconceived.

The law’s compatibilism

The law recognizes excuses for behavior that violates the criminal law. People who do not meet the standards of rationality cannot be punished for their actions.

Sneha has rightly said that the crucial question is: what does it mean to be rational? The main component, according to Morse, concerns knowledge: rational people understand what the law requires and the nature of their own behavior (Morse 2010, 842).

As Francis pointed out, this is not all that goes into being rational. That’s right. But it is a necessary condition of rationality. If you don’t understand what you’re doing, you’re not acting rationally. You still might act irrationally even if you do understand what you’re doing. For instance, you might know perfectly well that the chicken you’re about to eat is fried and irrationally go ahead despite knowing that you react poorly to fried food. But the law is only concerned with whether you clear that low bar. If you pass it, you’re rational enough to be punished for violating the law, even if your behavior was irrational for other reasons. We will return to exactly what the standard of rationality is next week.

The law also recognizes external compulsion or coercion as an excuse. Those who break the law with a gun to their heads are excused even though they do not suffer from defects in their rationality. (Quite the contrary.)

This raises a question about what is sometimes called “internal” compulsion. Cases of internal compulsion involve people who cannot control their behavior. They do what they know to be wrong for reasons that, they maintain, are out of their control. Is internal compulsion an excuse and, if so, why? Morse treats these cases as defects of rationality (Morse 2010, 843). Morse’s presentation of his opinion is quite terse, so I am not entirely confident that I have him right. That said, the idea seems to be that cases of internal compulsion involve an inability to control one’s behavior in the light of what one knows to be right. So you can know what the law is and what your behavior involves but still suffer from a lack of rationality if you can’t bring your knowledge to bear on your actions. The idea is that these cases are similar to cases of external compulsion because it is unusually difficult for the person to make the correct choice. Consequently, the law excuses the behavior in both kinds of case.

The law excuses people who are subject to external and internal compulsion. The important thing for Morse is that the legal excuse cannot be generalized from these specific causes of behavior to all causes of behavior. So, he maintains, you can be excused if you were forced by a gun to your head but not if your behavior was the product of causal forces that originated with the big bang.

We will talk more about internal compulsion on Tuesday when we discuss the unfortunate Kevin.

The threat to folk psychology

What really worries Morse is the possibility that neuroscience will displace what he calls “folk psychology.” When we employ folk psychology, we explain people’s behavior as the product of their beliefs, desires, and intentions. Morse believes the law assumes folk psychology is accurate and that beliefs, desires, and intentions really do explain why people do the things they do.

That is how we can understand human actions as rational or irrational: do they reflect the person’s beliefs and desires or not? Your behavior is rational if it makes sense in the light of what you want to achieve and your beliefs about how to achieve it. If you want to go to lunch and you believe that the cafeteria is to the west of here, your behavior of walking west towards the cafeteria is rational. If you walk south despite believing there is no place to eat to the south, your behavior is irrational.

So if neuroscience displaces folk psychology in the way that the physical sciences have displaced folk physics, one of the assumptions the law relies on would have been shown to be false. That is what Morse worries about.

Riley asked whether there is any evidence that neuroscience threatens folk psychology. Yes indeed there is! The evidence that Morse describes comes from experiments done by Benjamin Libet (Libet 1999). These seem to show that the brain starts acting before the person is consciously aware of having decided to act. That suggests that the intention to act is not the cause of our actions: it happens after the brain takes the first steps to cause an action.¹

I ended by suggesting that both Libet and Morse were wrong in assuming that folk psychology requires us to be conscious of our beliefs, desires, and intentions. I myself rarely explicitly think through exactly what I believe, desire, and intend before acting. But I have no doubt that my actions reflect those things. For example, I do not explicitly think “I would like some coffee now” each morning, much less “and I believe that I will get it if I put the kettle on the stove.” Nonetheless I think that those beliefs and desires explain why I put the kettle on the stove every morning.

What I’m suggesting is that the electrical activity that Libet’s experiment identified was the intention to move the hand. It’s just that the subjects were not consciously aware of intending to do that for several microseconds. If that’s right, Libet’s experiments do not threaten to displace the folk psychological concepts of belief, desire, and intention.

Bryce disagreed. He thought that rational thinking has to be conscious thinking. Anything less is no more rational than a reflex action. I think he made a very strong case.

A taxonomy of positions on free will

I know I keep putting this stuff on the board in various configurations. It’s one of those things where repetition doesn’t hurt. And changing it around just a little bit forces you to think rather than relying on rote memorization. So, for one last time, let’s get everything on the table.

Determinism is the view that everything that happens is causally determined. This includes human actions.

Compatibilism is the view that our actions can be free, and we can be held responsible for what we do, even if determinism is true. (Punishment is a way of holding people responsible for their actions.)

Incompatibilism is the view that actions cannot be free, and we cannot be held responsible for what we do, if determinism is true.

Hard determinism combines incompatibilism and determinism.

1. If determinism is true, actions cannot be free, and we cannot be held responsible for what we do. (Incompatibilist premise)
2. Determinism is true. (Determinist premise)
3. Therefore, our actions are not free and we cannot be held responsible for what we do. (Conclusion)

Libertarianism combines incompatibilism with the denial of determinism.

1. If determinism is true, actions cannot be free, and we cannot be held responsible for what we do. (Incompatibilist premise)
2. Determinism is not true because some things that happen are not causally determined. In particular, the decisions of the human will are not always causally determined. (Libertarian premise)
3. Therefore, our actions can be free and we can be held responsible for what we do. (Conclusion)

A taxonomy of theories of punishment

There are two classic positions on punishment.

Consequentialism (aka utilitarianism) is the view that punishment is justified if and only if punishing people promotes the overall good better than any alternative way of dealing with antisocial behavior.

Retributivism is the view that punishment is justified if and only if the person to be punished deserves it. A person deserves to be punished if and only if the person has (a) done something bad and (b) can be held responsible for having done it. (Why two conditions? Because children and insane people do bad things but cannot be held responsible for their actions.)

Remember that the chief problem for the consequentialist view is that it does not require that punishment be used only against those who are guilty, that is, responsible for doing something bad.

How do these positions line up?

Here is what we have.

I am calling Morse a retributivist because he is concerned with defending the law as it stands. The law as it stands is not consequentialist: it puts a lot of effort into identifying the guilty and does not engage in any attempt to calculate the consequences of punishment. But I am adding the qualification “maybe” because he does not discuss the matter. For all I know, he could be a consequentialist who thinks that the law’s surface retributivism is only sensible as a rule of thumb that produces the best overall consequences in the long run.

Main Points

Here is what you should know or have an opinion about from today’s class.

1. How Morse answers the charge that the brain causes behavior.
2. The rationality standard for punishment.
3. Morse’s worry about the second charge, that “folk psychology” is not true.

Folk physics at work

Morse’s worry is that folk psychology is going to go the way of folk physics, that is, the explanations of physical phenomena that are good enough for everyday life but actually false.

I gave one example of folk physics: our belief that the table in the classroom is solid when, in fact, it is mostly empty space.

I referred to another bit of folk physics: heavy objects fall faster than light ones. I know that you know that Galileo showed this was false. But you are still going to be surprised to see it in action.