Blameworthiness and constitutive control
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Blameworthiness and constitutive control Rachel Achs1
Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract According to ‘‘voluntarists,’’ voluntary control is a necessary precondition on being blameworthy. According to ‘‘non-voluntarists,’’ it isn’t. I argue here that we ought to take seriously a type of voluntary control that both camps have tended to overlook. In addition to ‘‘direct’’ control over our behavior, and ‘‘indirect’’ control over some of the consequences of our behavior, we also possess ‘‘constitutive’’ control: the capacity to govern some of our attitudes and character traits by making choices about what to do that constitute those attitudes and traits. Taking this sort of control seriously, I argue, ultimately tips the scale towards voluntarism. First, I address a non-voluntarist case in which an agent is putatively made blameworthy by the reasons for which she acts, even though the particular reasons for which she acts aren’t up to her. I argue that this case looks compelling only if we overlook constitutive control, and thereby miss how the agent’s motivating reasons are under her voluntary control even though non-voluntarists think they are not. I then use the notion of constitutive control to diffuse some of the best putative counterexamples to voluntarism: cases in which subjects are blameworthy either for caring inadequately about others or for wishing them ill. Keywords Responsibility Control Blameworthiness Motivating reasons Choice
& Rachel Achs [email protected] 1
Harvard University Philosophy Department, Emerson Hall, 25 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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R. Achs
1 Voluntarism and non-voluntarism Philosophers who write about blameworthiness, or, more generally, about the type of moral responsibility that renders one a legitimate target of blame, are divided over voluntary control. Specifically, they are divided over the commonsense type of control that one might invoke in saying, ‘‘I can’t control whether it’s going to rain today, but I can control whether I bring an umbrella’’: our capacity to make a difference to what happens via our choices about what to do.1 According to ‘‘voluntarists,’’ people can only be blameworthy for things under their voluntary control. According to ‘‘non-voluntarists,’’ people can be blameworthy for things that are not under their voluntary control, such as the non-voluntary possession of objectionable other-regarding attitudes.2 This dispute is sometimes framed as about whether blameworthiness is ultimately grounded in one’s character or in one’s behavior (where ‘‘behavior’’ is broadly construed to include any events voluntarily controllable via choice—including whether we make mere attempts and preventable omissions).3 When the debate is thus cast, voluntarists claim that people are only ever blameworthy because of what they do (broadly construed), and are only ever blameworthy for something because it is either what they have done or a (reasonably foreseeable) consequence thereof. Non-voluntarists, on the other hand, contend that people are s
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