THEORY-120: A motive is the agent's own, and she acts of her own free will, when she identifies with it, and that is all the freedom moral responsibility requires: identification is the conformity of the effective desire to a decisive higher-order volition (1971), and later wholehearted acceptance with no conflict at any higher order

The evidence, and what is unread

Two primary texts are read first-hand: the 1971 paper, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person” (LIT-692, NOTE-545), and the 2004 Tanner Lectures (LIT-293, NOTE-264). The texts between them are unread: “Identification and Externality” (1976), “Identification and Wholeheartedness” (LIT-575), “The Faintest Passion” (LIT-695) and “Autonomy, Necessity, and Love” (1994). What this account says of them is reported by McKenna and Coates (LIT-291), Buss and Westlund (LIT-296) and Dryden (LIT-297), and is marked as such. The owner authorised filing it on this evidence.

Source

• Frankfurt (1971), LIT-692, read in NOTE-545: the apparatus, identification, freedom of the will, decisive commitment, and responsibility without a free will or alternatives.
• Frankfurt (2004), LIT-293, read in NOTE-264: identification as willing acceptance, free will as volitional unanimity and wholeheartedness, and the externalised desire.
• McKenna and Coates, SEP Compatibilism, LIT-291, §4.2 and supplement §A, read in NOTE-270: the 1987 and 1994 amendments as reported, and the 2002 reply on manipulation.
• Buss and Westlund, SEP Personal Autonomy, LIT-296, §2 and n. 1, read in NOTE-267: the account as “strict coherentism”, and satisfaction as reported.
• Dryden, IEP Autonomy, LIT-297, §2.a, read in NOTE-266: the 1987 reply to the regress as reported, with page numbers.

What the sources show

The 1971 account, first-hand. LIT-692 defines the will as “an effective desire—one that moves (or will or would move) a person all the way to action” (p. 8), and a second-order volition as wanting a desire “to be his will” (p. 10). A person identifies with one desire “through the formation of a second-order volition”, and “makes one of them more truly his own” (p. 13). Freedom of the will is being free “to have the will he wants”: “It is in securing the conformity of his will to his second-order volitions … that a person exercises freedom of the will” (p. 15). The series of higher orders is ended “without cutting it off arbitrarily” by a decisive identification, made “without reservation or conflict”, which “‘resounds’ throughout the potentially endless array of higher orders” (p. 16). One acts “of his own free will” when the will that moved him “was his will because it was the will he wanted”, and then the alternatives are “quite irrelevant” to responsibility (p. 19). The willing addict, whose will is not free, takes the drug “of his own free will” and “may be morally responsible” (pp. 19–20).

The 2004 account, first-hand. LIT-293 keeps the definition: “we will freely when what we want is what we want to want”, and a will is free when “The desire that governs him as he is acting is in agreement with a higher-order volition concerning what he wants to be his governing desire” (p. 177). It adds a wholeheartedness condition: “no conflict in us between this motive and any desire at any higher order” (p. 178). Identification is now “willing acceptance”, “Whether with a welcoming approval, or in weary resignation”, and “very largely … simply the default condition” (p. 173). Externalised desires are ours “in a gross literal sense” but are denied “any entitlement to supply us with motives or with reasons” (pp. 174–175).

Between them, by report. Dryden (LIT-297, §2.a.ii) reports the 1987 essay (LIT-575): a decisive commitment is one made “without reservation”, when the agent feels no reason to go on deliberating, and stopping there is “hardly arbitrary” (IWWCA 168–169). McKenna and Coates (LIT-291, supplement §A) report it as “an unopposed higher-order volition” plus a judgment that further deliberation would not change one’s resolve, and a 1994 amendment requiring that identification be “active” and wholehearted. Buss and Westlund (LIT-296, n. 1) report “satisfaction”, “an absence of ‘restlessness or resistance’”. The three reports disagree in date and content (NOTE-270, Connections).

Structural, not historical. LIT-692 says the conception is “neutral with regard to the problem of determinism” (p. 20), and accepts that an addict made so “by the deliberate and calculated work of another” may be “fully responsible” (n. 10). The 1988 preface (LIT-693) calls the method “primarily structural rather than historical”. LIT-293 says responsibility for character “is not essentially a matter of producing that character but of taking responsibility for it” (p. 172). McKenna and Coates (LIT-291) quote the 2002 reply accepting a manipulated character. Buss and Westlund (LIT-296) call the family “doubly internalist”: neither the origin nor the content of the endorsing attitude matters, and n. 6 of LIT-692 says there is “no essential restriction on the kind of basis, if any” on which a second-order volition is formed.

The title states what the two read texts share, with the 1971 and 2004 forms of identification named separately. The claim that identification suffices for the freedom responsibility requires is the 1971 paper’s (pp. 18–20); LIT-293 restates the compatibilism (p. 178) and does not discuss responsibility in those terms.

What this does not say

• It does not say what makes identification authoritative. Neither read text argues it. LIT-692 asserts it (p. 13), and LIT-293 does not discuss the regress (NOTE-264, Limitations).
• It does not say the later criteria are equivalent. Decisive commitment, satisfaction and wholehearted acceptance are three answers, and the record reads only the first (in its 1971 form) and the last. Whether resigned acceptance counts is disputed between LIT-291 and LIT-293.
• It does not say identification suffices for responsibility. It says identification suffices for acting of one’s own free will, which is the freedom condition. Epistemic conditions are not addressed.
• It does not require a free will, or alternatives, for responsibility. The willing addict has neither. That is THEORY-119’s claim, which this account uses and does not depend on: the 1971 argument is the willing addict, not a Frankfurt case.

Relations

• rivals THEORY-029. That account holds that no higher-order attitude makes a motive the agent’s own by its order alone: any attitude specified without presupposing her participation can be disowned, and any specified to include it begs the question. This account says identification does make a motive one’s own. The 1971 condition, a decisive volition made “without reservation or conflict” (p. 16), and the 2004 one, no conflict “at any higher order” (p. 178), are the stopping points THEORY-029 says must fail. Both cannot be right. Neither yet corrects the other: THEORY-029 is argued by Velleman’s examples (LIT-295) against a 1976 footnote, not against p. 16 of the 1971 paper or LIT-575, so the record has not run the dilemma against the texts. If THEORY-029 is confirmed, it should carry corrects to this account, on its own side, and this one should fall.
• rivals THEORY-054. Self-determination theory places autonomy in integration with one’s other values and needs, graded, “not set by the order of the attitude that endorses it”. This account makes ownership a matter of whether the agent identifies, and makes free will “volitional unanimity”, all or nothing. The two give opposite verdicts on the same agent: identification “in weary resignation” (LIT-293, p. 173) is identification here and controlled regulation there (NOTE-264, Connections); a decisively divided agent who has extruded a rival desire is wholehearted here, by LIT-575 as reported, and poorly integrated there. They are accounts of the same thing, what makes a motive one’s own, and cannot both be right about these cases.
• rivals THEORY-122 (Wolf’s Reason View). Wolf holds that the freedom responsibility requires includes the normative competence to recognise and act on the True and the Good, which identification does not supply. Her JoJo, by Talbert’s report (LIT-691, §3.2), is “happy to be the sort of person that he is” and is moved by the desires he wants to be moved by: he identifies wholeheartedly and so acts of his own free will on this account. Wolf says he is not responsible, for want of competence; this account says nothing is missing from the freedom condition. Wolf’s essay (LIT-690), unread, names the 1971 paper among the “deep self views” it rejects, by the same report (§3.1.1). Both cannot be right about JoJo.
• rivals THEORY-121 (Fischer and Ravizza). Both accounts say responsibility needs no alternatives. They part on history. This account is structural, and LIT-692 n. 10 counts the designed addict “fully responsible”. Fischer and Ravizza require that the mechanism be the agent’s own through taking responsibility, and by Talbert’s report (LIT-691, §3.9, citing 1998 pp. 196–201) object to Real Self views that a mesh produced by “brainwashing or subliminal advertising” would not make the agent responsible. Their book (LIT-684) is unread, but the disagreement is reported with pages, and the designed addict is a case on which they cannot both be right.
• THEORY-040: no relation declared. That account says a structural condition is met by a manipulated agent, so the account must accept the agent as free or add history. This account takes the first branch, in 1971 (n. 10) and, by report, 2002. It is an instance of THEORY-040’s forced choice, not a rival to it and not built on it.
• THEORY-119: no relation declared. The PAP account and this one are Frankfurt’s two arguments for responsibility without alternatives; they support each other and neither builds on the other’s mechanism.