Contribution
Two things. First, a compact, first-hand list of the elements of Fischer’s framework for moral responsibility, with his statement of which of them he regards as essential and which as revisable details (§I). Second, an account of why acting freely matters: its value is the value of artistic self-expression, because free action makes a life a story with narrative value. That revises his 1999 view that it is self-expression of an unspecified kind (note 6). The product of that activity, a life, is evaluated mainly in moral and prudential terms, and Fischer argues that this mismatch is what is special about free action (§§II–III).
Key insight
Fischer’s responsibility framework has a fixed core and adjustable parts. The core is that responsibility needs guidance control and not regulative control, that it is historical, and that it is compatible with determinism. The adjustable parts are the specific accounts of ownership (the “subjective” condition) and of reactivity (“all-of-a piece”). His answer to “why care about guidance control?” is that acting from one’s own reasons-responsive mechanism is writing one’s life.
Assumptions
- A Strawsonian working hypothesis about the concept of moral responsibility, aptness for the reactive attitudes, while taking “no official stand” on its analysis (p. 3).
- Aristotle’s two conditions: an epistemic condition and a freedom-relevant condition. The paper concerns only the second (p. 3).
- Velleman’s view that what turns a chronicle into a story is a distinctive kind of understanding it provides, accepted in “bare bones” (p. 5).
- That evaluation is purpose-relative, so the mode of evaluating a product is not fixed by the kind of activity that produced it (pp. 6, 8–9).
Key results
The paper argues by stating, not by proof, and its §I is a summary of arguments made elsewhere.
- §I, the framework. Its elements: the concept/conditions distinction; regulative versus guidance control; guidance control as the freedom-relevant condition; guidance control as “mechanism ownership and moderate reasons-responsiveness”, so that an agent “exhibits guidance control of an action insofar as the action issues from the agent’s own, ‘moderately reasons-responsive’ mechanism”; its compatibility with causal determinism; and its value as self-expression (pp. 3–4). The supporting arguments are in the works of note 1, chiefly Fischer and Ravizza 1998 (LIT-684), and are not given here.
- §I, Frankfurt cases. Frankfurt-style examples, cases of “pre-emptive overdetermination”, imply that the Principle of Alternative Possibilities is false. Their moral is that acting freely and being responsible depend on the actual sequence. Fischer adds that there are other routes to the same conclusion (citing Wallace 1994 and Dennett 2003 in note 2), so the conclusion does not depend on accepting the examples (p. 4).
- §I, what is negotiable. He can give up “strong subjectivity” in ownership and the thesis that “reactivity-is-all-of-a piece” and keep the three core claims. He cites his 2005 and 2006 replies for this (note 3) (p. 4).
- §II, the value. Free action is “a sentence in the story of my life” (p. 5). It gives the life a narrative dimension of value, along which momentary well-being is not simply summed. Since a narrative is “by definition a work of art”, acting freely is artistic self-expression (p. 5). The product, the life, is typically and primarily evaluated prudentially and morally, so free action is a sui generis artistic context: the activity is aesthetic and its product’s main evaluation is not (p. 7). The two components of the value, self-expression and moral and prudential assessment, are matched to the two components of guidance control, ownership and reasons-responsiveness, though “the relationships here are perhaps less tight than one might like” (p. 7).
- §III. (a) Family or regional histories are narratives without being works of art, but they do not themselves have narrative value, so the objection (credited to Schwitzgebel) does not reach lives (pp. 7–8). (b) “The Aesthetic Fallacy” is inferring that lives should be judged primarily aesthetically from the aesthetic nature of free activity (pp. 8–9). (c) Since others interpret our behaviour too, acting freely does not write a fixed story but constrains the plausible stories, which parallels the “humbler” guidance control against the “Total Control” of “metaphysical megalomania” (pp. 9–10). (d) Lives are vehicles of narrative content, as sentences are of propositions, and some lives are like poems in their economy of expression (pp. 10–11).
- §IV. The meaning of life lies “at the intersection of the aesthetic, moral, and prudential”, and creative self-expression, after Richard Taylor, is what makes us images of God, “even if pale images” (p. 12).
Claims
| # | Claim | Evidence type | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Guidance control, not regulative control, is the freedom-relevant condition of moral responsibility | stated; argued elsewhere (note 1) | §I, pp. 3–4 |
| C2 | Guidance control is acting from one’s own, moderately reasons-responsive mechanism | stated; argued elsewhere | §I, p. 4 |
| C3 | Responsibility is historical and compatible with causal determinism, and this survives giving up strong subjectivity and all-of-a-piece reactivity | stated; defended in replies cited in note 3 | §I, p. 4 |
| C4 | Frankfurt-style examples show responsibility depends on the actual sequence, and the conclusion has other supports | stated | §I, p. 4 |
| C5 | The value of acting freely is the value of artistic self-expression, which gives a life narrative value | argued informally | §II, pp. 5–7 |
| C6 | The product of free activity is mainly assessed morally and prudentially, so the activity’s nature does not fix the product’s evaluation (the Aesthetic Fallacy) | argued informally | §§II, IIIb, pp. 6–9 |
| C7 | Free action constrains the plausible stories of a life rather than writing a single one | argued informally | §IIIc, pp. 9–10 |
Concepts
- regulative control: control involving access to alternative possibilities, freedom to do otherwise.
- guidance control: actual-sequence control; acting from one’s own, moderately reasons-responsive mechanism.
- mechanism ownership: the first component of guidance control; the paper says only that it “involves a certain sort of ‘subjective’ condition” and that the strong form is revisable.
- narrative value: a dimension of a life’s value along which momentary welfare is not added up and events take meaning from their relations to other events. Lives, not narratives, have it (note 8).
- the Aesthetic Fallacy: inferring the primary mode of evaluation of a product from the aesthetic nature of the activity that produced it.
Connections
- Fischer and Ravizza, Responsibility and Control (LIT-684). §I is a summary of it. The paper confirms first-hand the book’s guidance and regulative distinction, the two components of guidance control, historicity and compatibility with determinism. It does not state the receptivity and reactivity analysis, or taking responsibility, beyond the word “subjective”.
- McKenna and Coates (LIT-291, NOTE-270). Their §4.4 and supplement §B report the same framework at second hand, in more detail. Nothing here contradicts them. Fischer’s remark that the subjective ownership condition is revisable bears on their report (supplement §B.2) that the condition draws the objection that an agent could escape responsibility by failing to take it.
- Robb’s PAP map (LIT-294, NOTE-269). Fischer’s “other dialectical routes” put him on the side of Robb’s map that treats Frankfurt-style cases as one argument among several against PAP.
- Galen Strawson, “Against Narrativity” (LIT-452). Note 10 quotes Strawson’s statement of the psychological Narrativity thesis and calls it “entirely orthogonal” to the paper’s claims, which are about interpretation, not experience.
- Narrative identity (THEORY-060). That account makes a constructed life story the form of a person’s diachronic identity. Fischer’s narrative is a dimension of value that free action confers, and he says our stories are partly told by others, so the two do not meet directly.
Bearing on the record
This is the first first-hand text by Fischer in the record. For the THEORY on Fischer and Ravizza filed in the same batch, it is direct evidence that Fischer holds the claim: responsibility requires guidance control and not regulative control, guidance control is moderate reasons-responsiveness of one’s own mechanism, and it is compatible with determinism. It is not evidence for the analysis of moderate reasons-responsiveness, which it does not give. It supports THEORY-040’s report that Fischer’s condition is historical. It does not bear on whether that history escapes manipulation.
Limitations
- A lecture-length paper whose framework section summarises; every element of §I is argued elsewhere.
- Its thesis about value rests on an analogy with art that Fischer himself calls loose (“less tight than one might like”).
- The volume and date are from the repository’s record (Philosophic Exchange, 2009). The PDF carries no date of its own.