Contribution
It introduced the actual-sequence, mechanism-based reasons-responsiveness account of moral responsibility. It also named the resulting position semicompatibilism. “Really just a sketch of a theory” (p. 63), it is the origin of what became Responsibility and Control (LIT-684).
Key insight
A Frankfurt case shows the agent could not have done otherwise, yet he is responsible. So the condition responsibility needs cannot be about the agent’s alternatives. It must be about the process that actually produced the act, and whether that kind of process could have responded to a reason to act differently.
Assumptions
- The Strawsonian concept: an agent is responsible “insofar as he is rationally accessible to certain kinds of attitudes and activities as a result of performing the action” (p. 63).
- Mechanisms can be individuated, though “I have left extremely vague the crucial notion of “same mechanism"" (n. 18, p. 82).
- Only worlds with the same natural laws count for responsiveness (n. 10).
Key results
- Mechanism, not agent. “An agent is morally responsible for performing an action insofar as the mechanism that actually issues in the action is reasons-responsive” (p. 66).
- Strong responsiveness is sufficient, not necessary: weakness of will and culpable wrongdoing defeat it as a necessary condition (pp. 67–68).
- Weak responsiveness is required: “there must exist some possible world in which there is a sufficient reason to do otherwise, the agent’s actual mechanism operates, and the agent does otherwise” (p. 68).
- Temporally intrinsic mechanisms: a mechanism is relevant only if its operating does not entail the act (p. 74).
- Tracing: responsibility at T needs a reasons-responsive mechanism at T “or some suitable earlier time” (p. 76).
- Semicompatibilism: responsibility “is compatible with causal determinism, even if causal determinism is incompatible with freedom to do otherwise” (p. 78).
- Against mesh theories: Frankfurt’s and Watson’s accounts are “purely structural and ahistorical”, and a manipulator could induce the mesh; “Moral responsibility is a historical phenomenon” (p. 79).
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Responsibility does not require being able to do otherwise | moderate | Frankfurt-type case (p. 66) |
| C2 | Responsiveness belongs to the actual-sequence mechanism | moderate | argued from C1 |
| C3 | Weak reasons-responsiveness is necessary and sufficient for the control condition | weak | argued; note 11 concedes an insane-agent counterexample |
| C4 | Responsibility is compatible with determinism | moderate | follows if C1–C3 hold; “I certainly have not proved” compatibilism (p. 79) |
| C5 | Mesh accounts fail because the mesh can be manipulated | moderate | argued by example (p. 79) |
Concepts
- actual-sequence model — responsibility depends on the properties of the mechanism that operates, not on alternative sequences.
- strong / weak reasons-responsiveness — doing otherwise in the closest worlds with sufficient reason, versus in some such world.
- receptivity, reactivity — recognising reasons and acting on them; the paper names the ways responsiveness can fail (p. 67).
- semicompatibilism — responsibility compatible with determinism even if freedom to do otherwise is not.
Connections
It answers Frankfurt’s 1969 argument and argues against the hierarchical accounts of Frankfurt and Watson. Note 11’s counterexample (an agent weakly responsive only to a bizarre reason) is the problem the later book (LIT-684; précis LIT-728) solves with moderate responsiveness, adding an ownership condition against manipulation.
Bearing on the record
It confirms first-hand what THEORY-121 reported from the encyclopedia: the 1987 account was mechanism-based from the start, rested on weak responsiveness, and had no ownership condition. Its historicism is a claim against the record’s hierarchical account (THEORY-120): structure alone does not settle responsibility. That bears on THEORY-040 (manipulation) as the encyclopedia reported. In this paper the only historical element is tracing to earlier mechanisms; the ownership condition that answers manipulation comes later.
For the owner’s essay: it says nothing about groups. Its unsolved problem, how to individuate “the” mechanism, is exactly the question an organizational application would have to answer first.
Limitations
A sketch, by its own account. Weak responsiveness admits the insane-agent counterexample of note 11. Mechanism individuation is left open (notes 18–19), and responsibility for omissions is not reconciled with determinism (note 25).
Open questions
How to individuate mechanisms, and whether a reasons-responsive condition can avoid both the insane-agent counterexample and manipulation. The later book is the authors’ answer.