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On Frankfurt-Type Examples

Ishtiyaque H. Haji
University of Calgary

I had the good fortune to participate in an NEH seminar on responsibility that Peter French conducted in 1995. During the course of the seminar, in addition to valuable discussion with my other colleagues on whether moral responsibility for various events—responsibility, for example, for both actions and omissions—requires freedom to do otherwise, French and I had a number of engaging exchanges on this topic. In large measure, we both agreed on the relevant views regarding responsibility and alternate possibilities that French summarizes in “Fate and Responsibility” (1992). In particular, we concurred that Frankfurt examples provide strong preliminary reasons for both compatibilists and libertarians to reject the principle of alternate possibilities: persons are morally responsible for what they have done only if they could have done otherwise. Drawing on Harry Frankfurt’s work (1969), French advances the following Frankfurt example:

A person M [Mary] decides for reasons of her own to protest the treatment of the prisoners in the H-Blocks. She is then threatened by the IRA with horrible personal suffering if she does not protest. The threat is so horrible that any reasonable person would submit to it. M does protest. (1992, 51)

Reflecting on the example, French writes:

Is M morally responsible for protesting when she had no alternative to doing so? It will be suggested, of course, that M had the alternative of resisting the IRA threat, so the story can be modified to make M incapable of resisting the force that would make her protest. In other words, whatever that force is, M will protest, and she will do so either because she decided to do so or because she was forced to do so, but in no case will she fail to protest. The fact that she could not have avoided protesting is a sufficient condition of her having protested. However, that may play no role in the explanation of why she did protest. …The point is that if our concern is the ascribing of moral responsibility, we should not place much weight on a fact that is irrelevant to explaining a person’s behavior. Only the reasons a person did something in the circumstances should matter. Unavoidability does not explain Mary’s behavior in the circumstances, so it is not relevant to the issues of her responsibility. (52-53)

If we think more deeply about the story, how, precisely, is it to be modified to make Mary incapable of resisting the force that would make her protest so that the modified story would be accepted by interested parties (such as libertarians) to constitute a real threat to the principle of alternate possibilities? We should not, for instance, initiate a change in the original tale that guarantees that Mary cannot but protest if this change begs important questions against the targeted audience. My tentative suggestion to French was that we could make headway if we worked with Frankfurt-type cases involving two features: first, overdetermination—one and the very same event, such as Mary’s protesting, has two independent causal sources; and, second, one of these causal sources is deterministic. For example, although Mary protests on her own (this is one causal route or source to her protesting), it is also causally determined (via an independent causal route) that she protests when she does (and, thus, we may be assured that Mary could not do otherwise). Whereas French welcomed and strongly encouraged the idea of incorporating overdetermination into amended Frankfurt cases, he was rightly suspicious about exploiting determinism as the so-called “ensuring mechanism.” The obvious concern with including this feature—an independent causally deterministic pathway leading, for instance, to Mary’s protesting—in Frankfurt examples is that its inclusion in such examples would not be deemed proper by opponents of Frankfurt: various incompatibilists, for instance, would claim that if it is causally determined that Mary protests when she does, she could not have been responsible for protesting because determinism is incompatible with responsibility in the first place.

I believe, though, that this charge of question-begging may not be as strong as it might first appear. Prior to explaining why, some perspective will help to bring some of the salient features of the debate between “Frankfurt defenders” and “Frankfurt opposers” into relief.

Typical Frankfurt examples feature preemption. Embellishing French’s original story confirms that they do so. In Stage 1, an agent, Mary, chooses (or decides) to do something, X, and intentionally X-s (she intentionally protests). We are to assume that whether you are a libertarian or compatibilist, on your account of free action and moral responsibility, Stage 1 Mary is morally responsible for choosing to X (and for X-ing). In Stage 2, the scenario is developed in a way in which something ensures that Mary (Stage 2 Mary) chooses to X—this thing supposedly precludes Mary from choosing to do other than X—without in any way interfering in Mary’s choosing to X. We are meant to draw the conclusion that since Stage 1 Mary is morally responsible for choosing to X, and since Stage 2 Mary does not differ relevantly from Stage 1 Mary with respect to choosing to X, Stage 2 Mary is also morally responsible for choosing to X even though she could not have refrained from choosing to X. Individual Frankfurt-type examples may differ by way of what is offered in Stage 2 as the ensuring mechanism. In Frankfurt’s original case (1969, 835-36), a “counterfactual intervener”—Black—who can manipulate the agent’s mind is supposed to turn the trick. Stage 2 Mary chooses and does exactly what Black wants her to choose and do, and Black never intercedes. Had Stage 2 Mary, though, showed any involuntary sign of not choosing to X, Black would have intervened and forced Mary to choose to X.

Elaborating, suppose Mary believes that in her circumstances it is morally obligatory for her to protest. So she decides to protest (and proceeds to protest) partly on the basis that she ought to do so. It seems that she is deserving of praise for deciding to protest and for protesting. Unbeknownst to Mary, though, she could not have refrained from deciding to protest due to the presence of an IRA operative, Black, who has the power to read and control Mary’s mind. Black wields this power partly in virtue of possessing the following knowledge. Had Mary been about to refrain from deciding to protest, she would have displayed some involuntary sign—a neurological pattern, N*, in her brain—whereas if she had been about to decide to protest, she would have displayed a different neurological pattern, N. Had Black detected N*, he would have interceded in Mary’s deliberations via direct stimulation of Mary’s brain and would, in this way, have caused Mary to decide to protest. But Black detects N, the reliable sign for Black that he need not show his hand at all. Owing to Mary’s deciding to protest on her own, in the absence of Black’s intervention, it seems highly reasonable that Mary acts freely and is morally praiseworthy for deciding to protest (and, subsequently, for protesting) despite not having alternative possibilities with regard to this decision and action. It has, thus, been thought, as French notes, that Frankfurt cases provide strong prima facie reason to believe that alternative possibilities are not required for praiseworthiness or responsibility in general.

Perhaps the most potent objection against such examples—the “Dilemma Objection”—was initially suggested by Robert Kane (1985, 51; 1996, 142-44, 191-92) and then developed independently by Carl Ginet (1996) and David Widerker (1995, 247-61). The objection is in the form of a dilemma. If sign N is reliable, in the sense of being infallible, it can only be so because states of the agent (Mary) prior to the occurrence of the supposedly free choice (or action) are causally sufficient for this choice (and the sign indicates this). But if that is the case, then a deterministic relation obtains between the prior sign and Mary’s subsequent choice, and this begs the question against incompatibilists who believe that determinism is incompatible with freedom or responsibility. On this first horn of the dilemma, the incompatibilist will insist that Mary is not responsible for her choice, for her choice was causally determined. If, on the other hand, sign N is not infallible and is only reliable in some weaker sense, then an agent (such as Mary) who acts freely in a Frankfurt example retains the ability to do otherwise when she acts on her own. On this second horn, the connection between the prior sign and subsequent choice is not deterministic. The presence (or absence) of the prior sign is, thus, consistent with the agent choosing or acting in a manner other than the manner in which she does. So, on this second horn, Mary could well be responsible for her choice; but as she could have chosen otherwise, the incompatibilist will claim that the principle of alternate possibilities remains unscathed.

In reply to the Dilemma Objection, Frankfurt defenders have responded in many different ways (see, for example, Fischer 1999; 2006; Hunt 2005; McKenna 2003; Mele and Robb, 1998; 2003; Pereboom 2000; 2001; 2003; Widerker 2006). Here, I propose a line of resistance to the first horn: I develop a Frankfurt example featuring overdetermination in which one of two causal routes to the decision (or action) in question is causally deterministic.

Consider an amended version of a Frankfurt-type scenario involving overdetermination that I have advanced elsewhere (Haji 2000). A British agent, Pemba, decides, at t0, on the basis of his own indeterministic deliberation, to squeeze the trigger at t1, and he does squeeze the trigger at t1, thereby bringing it about that Mary is killed by t2. His decision to squeeze the trigger is indeterministically caused in that there is a possible world, with the same laws of nature as the actual world, in which Pemba’s own deliberative process occurs, but in which this process does not cause his decision, at t0, to kill Mary by t2. In this case, “Murder-1,” a libertarian would presumably agree that, provided all other conditions of moral responsibility are met, Pemba would be morally responsible for his decision and for the state of affairs Mary’s being killed by t2.

Modifying Murder-1, assume that there is a device in Pemba’s brain, the “mimic randomizer,” that operates in the following fashion. When Pemba’s decisions are indeterministically caused by desire/belief pairs of which he is conscious, the mimic randomizer is triggered. Once triggered, it initiates neural processes in Pemba’s unconscious that mimics the actional sequence of events that Pemba initiates at the conscious level. So, for example, if Pemba’s undetermined decision, D, to squeeze the trigger at the conscious level is caused by a certain desire/belief pair, P, the mimic randomizer, when triggered, initiates a sequence of events in Pemba’s unconscious in which another desire/belief pair, P*, of which Pemba is acutely unconscious and which is type- or near type-identical to P, also leads, though deterministically, to the very same decision D. So there are two independent routes, one indeterministic (Pemba’s reasoning at the conscious level) and the other deterministic (the sequence of events initiated by the mimic randomizer in Pemba’s unconscious), each of which causally produces the very same event—Pemba’s deciding at t0 to squeeze the trigger. The world, then, in which events in this story transpire need not be deterministic; we need assume only that, in this sort of prior sign case, one causal pathway to Pemba’s deadly decision involves deterministic causation. This is consistent with assuming that there is indeterminism elsewhere in Pemba’s world. (As a rough analogy, imagine that, operating independently, two British agents, at t1, each initiates, at t1, a sequence of events, each sequence causally producing Mary’s death at some later time, t2: each assassin fires a bullet into Mary. If one of the agents is “subtracted from the scene,” poor Mary would still be killed by t2 as a result of the activities of the other agent. Imagine, further, that the relevant sequence of events that Agent-1 initiates is not deterministic, whereas the pertinent sequence of events that Agent-2 initiates is deterministic.)

Should one not favor the mimic randomizer set-up, imagine that there is a mechanism, totally independent of Pemba’s own conscious practical reasoning, which will deterministically cause Pemba to arrive at the very decision that he does to squeeze the trigger at the precise time t1 when he indeterministically decides on his own to squeeze the trigger. One might wonder what happens if the two pathways diverge; specifically, what happens if Pemba’s own reasoning favors the decision not to squeeze the trigger when the deterministic pathway favors the contrary decision? In this case, stipulate that the deterministic pathway overrides the indeterministic one and causally produces Pemba’s deadly decision.

It seems that Pemba (Pemba qua conscious reasoner) is morally responsible for his choice. Still, he could not have decided otherwise because of the parallel deterministic sequence of events that is an independent cause of this choice. Needless to say, a “dilemma defender” may be expected to rejoin that Pemba’s case succumbs to the first horn: since Pemba’s deadly decision, D, is co-caused by a deterministic sequence of events, Pemba is not responsible for this decision. But this rejoinder is a bit too quick. For, presumably, the libertarian (or an interested party not already predisposed to either accepting or rejecting the principle of alternate possibilities) would concede that if the deterministic sequence of events were “removed from the scenario,” Pemba (given certain responsibility-friendly assumptions) would or may well be morally responsible for his deadly decision in this “one-sequence scenario.” (It will be convenient to refer to this one-sequence scenario as “Pemba-1” and to the “two-sequence” original scenario in which Pemba’s deadly decision is co-caused as “Pemba-2.”) “Addition” of the parallel deterministic sequence of events to Pemba-1 does not in any way influence how Pemba brings about his decision in Pemba-1: if Pemba is an ultimate originator of his decision in Pemba-1, he is so in Pemba-2 as well (see below for elucidation); if, in Pemba-1, Pemba makes his decision in light of the belief that in so doing he is doing moral wrong, his decision in Pemba-2 is based on this belief as well; if Pemba satisfies various agency requirements of responsibility in Pemba-1, he satisfies these very requirements in Pemba-2 as well; if he exercises self-control in making his decision in Pemba-1, he also does so in Pemba-2, and so forth. So one might then well wonder how the removal of alternative possibilities, accomplished by the addition of the deterministic sequence of events to Pemba-1, “transfers” a case of responsibility to one of nonresponsibility.

An advocate of the principle of alternate possibilities—the “Papist”—might claim that Pemba lacks a certain species of control in Pemba-2, the sort of control one can have in making a decision or in performing a nonmental action only if one has (pertinent) alternative possibilities. This is an interesting claim but, given the dialectical context, the Papist should tread carefully in her use of this claim to vindicate the proposal that alternative possibilities are required for responsibility-relevant control.

Developing this point, first distinguish, briefly, among different notions of control. Active control concerns the direct causal production of agent-involving events, such as the agent’s having certain values, desires, and beliefs, his making a certain evaluative judgment, his forming a certain intention or arriving at a certain decision, his executing an intention, and his performing a nonmental action. Thus, as Randolph Clarke and Alfred Mele explicate, such control can be taken, first, to constitute wholly or partly different types of direct actional control. Any action is an exercise of some sort of direct control by the agent. An action’s proximal causation consists in its being nondeviantly caused by appropriate desires, beliefs, intentions, and the like. When an agent exercises direct actional control in performing an action, this action’s proximal causation is partly what constitutes the agent’s having direct actional control in that instance. An agent would exert this sort of control, for example, in (nondeviantly and properly) forming an intention, something that qualifies as a mental action. Active control can also be a constituent of indirect actional control as when an agent exercises such indirect control over the occurrence of an event that is not an action, this control deriving from the agent’s direct actional control over earlier actions. Active control may, second, also have a nonactional form. For example, an event that would be the making of an evaluative judgment by some agent would not be an action. An agent’s control over such an event, the occurrence of which is not itself the result of having performed earlier actions over which the agent had direct actional control, would be a function of the way in which the agent’s deliberative causal process produced that event. This sort of event would be under its agent’s active control to the extent that the (nondeviant) causal processes that produced it were free of certain sorts of influences. These would be influences that either would, as Mele proposes, undermine the freedom of the subsequent action the event produced, such as compulsion, manipulation, and insanity, or, as Clarke suggests, involve certain sorts of inefficiency and irrationality that may not be so severe as to undermine the freedom of the agent’s subsequent action, such as the coming to mind, while deliberating, of irrelevant considerations or akratic influences (Clarke 2000, 26-27; Mele 1995, 225).

Ultimate control is concerned with forging an intimate link between an agent’s putatively free action and the agent herself so that it is, minimally, plausible to maintain that the agent is the “final” source of her action. Assume that any free action is caused. Two conceptions of ultimate control that are relevant to our discussion may be distinguished, negative and positive. Both conceptions share the following. (i) The cause, or at least a causal antecedent, of the free action must be a component of the type of cause that plays a salient role in the production of action or free action (such as the having of a suitable belief or desire). (ii) This cause (or part of it) must, in some obvious sense, be internal to its agent. (iii) The cause must be at least partly constitutive of the agent in a way in which, in virtue of being so constitutive, it would be correct to say that the action (or the free action) “truly” issues from the agent or is the “agent’s own.” One type of compatibilist, for instance, who claims that free actions causally arise from first-order desires with which we identify—first-order desires appropriately associated with higher-order psychological elements of ours—may accept these three conditions as sufficient for ultimate control (Frankfurt 1971). But no libertarian would do so unless the causal relatum of the action that meets these three conditions satisfies some further condition. A libertarian who endorses the negative conception of ultimate control conceives of this cause as an event (or state) and adds to the trio of conditions that this cause not be causally determined if it deterministically gives rise to the action or free action, or it indeterministically produces the action or free action. For example, Mele claims that an agent has (negative) ultimate control over a decision only if at no time prior to the making of the decision is there any minimally causally sufficient condition, that includes no event or state internal to the agent, for the agent’s making that decision. Hence, agents could have ultimate control over their actions only if determinism is false (Mele 1995, 211).

The positive conception of ultimate control adds to (i), (ii), and (iii) the additional condition that the action (or free action) be agent-caused. Agent-causal accounts of free action typically maintain that the freedom moral responsibility requires depends on agents possessing causal powers to make choices or perform actions without being causally determined to do so. On these views, the variety of causation implicated in an agent’s making a free choice is not reducible to causation among ordinary events, including events involving states of the agent or the agent. Rather, the sort of causation is an instance of a substance or particular—the agent—directly causing a choice or a causal precursor of the choice, but not by way of any states or events. Proponents of agent-causal accounts of free action claim that when an agent agent-causes a free action, she herself is an uncaused cause of that action. In this way, she is the ultimate source and, consequently, an ultimate originator of her action (see, for e.g., Clarke 2003). Now let’s revert to the Papist’s concern that Pemba in Pemba-2 lacks freedom-relevant control or, if one wants, responsibility-grounding control, in deciding to squeeze the trigger owing to his not being able to decide otherwise. The control in question could not be active control. At bottom, active control is a species of causal control. The mere lack of alternatives (secured by inclusion of the deterministic pathway in Pemba-2) cannot augment or diminish whatever (active) causal control that Pemba exercised in deciding and acting as he did in Pemba-2 (see, for e.g., Haji 2003; 2006).

What about negative ultimate control? When Pemba decides on his own to squeeze the trigger, his decision is indeterministically caused in so deciding. Given overdetermination, it is, of course, also deterministically caused. Suppose we were to “subtract” from Pemba-2 the independent deterministic causal route to his decision. Then, presumably, we would agree that Pemba exercises negative ultimate control in making his decision. And let us simply suppose that such control suffices for freedom-relevant (responsibility-grounding) control. Now “add,” again, to Pemba-2 the independent deterministic causal route. Addition of this causal route does not in any way interfere with Pemba’s bringing about his decision on his own (although it, too, brings about the decision). So it would be puzzling why, in the two-pathway overdetermination version of the story, Pemba is not responsible for his deadly decision.

It might be rejoined that what negative ultimate control gives you is freedom from control by the past. If your choices are causally determined, then there are factors over which you have no control of any kind and which are causally sufficient for your choices. To be responsible, though, for your choices, your choices must be “up to you” in that you must be responsible, at least partly, for anything that is a sufficient cause of, or motive for your choices (Kane 1996, 73-74; Fischer et al. 2007, 22). Furthermore, having negative ultimate control in making your choices is a necessary condition for your choices to be “up to you” in this libertarian fashion. This rejoinder, though, is suspect. For consider the very first free action of yours. Suppose that this action is a mental action—some decision that you make. As it is a mental action, this decision is caused by antecedents such as your having a desire or belief (or your being in an appropriate motivational state). Either these antecedents are free in the sense that you have the control, whatever it precisely is, that moral responsibility requires regarding these antecedents, or they are not free. The first option is not possible on the rejoinder that we are entertaining and on the hypothesis that your pertinent decision is your first free decision. This is because if these antecedents—your having of desires or beliefs—are free, they are indirectly free; they owe their freedom to the control that you have over (perhaps other) “basic actions,” again, whatever these are, regarding which you are directly free or have direct control. But these basic actions (assuming there are some) that supposedly give rise to the causal antecedents of your decision cannot be free if this decision is the first free action of yours. On the second option, your decision is free despite its causal antecedents not being free. But if this decision can be free even if your making it has proximal antecedents regarding none of which you have control, then you have given up on the proposal that lies at the heart of the rejoinder, that to be responsible for a choice, you must be partly responsible for anything that is a sufficient cause of, or motive for your choice. In addition, if you hold that your decision can be free even though you are not free with respect to its causal antecedents, then you might as well embrace compatibilism.

Lastly, as far as positive ultimate control is concerned, an agent is an ultimate originator of her free actions because she is an uncaused agent-cause of them. Clarke has developed an interesting “integrated agent-causal account” of free action according to which a free action is both agent-caused and indeterministically caused by prior apt agent-involving events (Clarke 1996; 2003). If an event can, in principle, be both agent-caused and indeterministically event-caused, as Clarke proposes, then it seems that it should also be the case that that event can, in principle, be both agent-caused and deterministically event-caused, as Clarke concedes. Revert, again, to this sort of thought experiment: First, modify Pemba-2 so that it is a one-path case in which Pemba agent-causes his deadly decision, and assume, this time around, that his agent-causing his decision suffices for this decision’s being free. Then we would agree that Pemba exercises positive ultimate control in deciding as he does. Now, reintroduce in Pemba-2 the independent deterministic causal route to Pemba’s deadly decision. This addition has no influence whatsoever on Pemba’s deciding on his own. Specifically, Pemba’s lacking pertinent alternatives on re-addition of the independent deterministic pathway does not in any way undermine Pemba’s being an uncaused agent-cause of his decision. So, once again, it would seem implausible to suppose that Pemba is not responsible for his decision to kill Mary in the two-pathway overdetermination incarnation of the story.

We should, hence, conclude that the Papist’s claim that in the two-path case (Pemba-2), Pemba lacks freedom-level control because he lacks pertinent alternatives ought to be taken with a grain of salt.

Finally, the Papist might dig in her heels and insist that one cannot be responsible without having the control that comes with having alternative possibilities. But this simply amounts to refusing to entertain seriously Frankfurt-type thought experiments, one primary objective of which is to question whether having alternatives is a requirement of enjoying responsibility-relevant control. This sort of refusal to engage debate with the Frankfurt defender is especially suspect if one is not already committed to the view that responsibility requires alternative possibilities, but is reflectively undecided over whether leeway is indeed essential to responsibility (Haji and McKenna 2004; 2006).

In conclusion, I agree with French that responsibility is compatible with lack of freedom to do otherwise because “we have good grounds for holding people responsible for some of the things they do even if they are unavoidable” (1992, 54).

References

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