Subject: Free Will and Moral Judgment

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 19:16:38 -0500

From: Bryan Douglas Caplan <[email-masked]>

I neglected to reply to one of Brock's challenges, so I shall do so
now.  What is the relationship between ("libertarian") free will
and moral judgment?

At the outset, I am puzzled.  I would assume that the compatibilist,
like most determinists, would deny the existence of moral properties
in the first place, since moral properties are obviously not physical.
(That is, you cannot smell goodness, weigh justice, etc.) So it
seems that the compatibilist will have to agree that moral judgment
(praise/blame) is rationally impossible, because it is a judgment
about non-existent properties.

Of course, they might deny that moral judgments are assertive at all,
and are instead commands, expressions of emotion, or whatever.
(Maybe they are _incentives_ for behavior of certain kinds?)
In which case, since moral judgments aren't rational anyway, we 
aren't rationally compelled to abandon them because we don't believe
in ("libertarian") free will.

But suppose that I find a compatibilist who embraces moral realism,
and wants me to explain why free will is a necessary supposition of
moral realism.  At the outset, it seems that _some_ moral judgments
remain rationally possible, such as judgments about the goodness
of different states of affairs.  But as soon as we tread into the
very different moral properties of rightness and virtue, the relevance
of ("libertarian") free will becomes apparent.

Why?  Well, suppose that I am completely paralyzed.  It is physically
impossible for me to move.  Does it then make sense to say that
I ought to save my daughter from being murdered by beating up the
murderer?  Does it make sense to say that I am a vicious person for
failing to do so?  It may make sense to say that it would be _good_
if my daughter were not murdered, but given my paralysis, it makes
no sense to say that it is right or virtuous for me to save her.
I take this as a basic fact about morality; doesn't it make sense?

Now at least according to Brock's version of compatibilism, if
a non-paralyzed person fails to save his daughter, he is "free"
to do so in a sense.  What sense?  A sense looser than one which
takes all of the laws of physics into account.  But if we do take
them into account -- then of course I couldn't have done otherwise.
It was physically impossible to do so.  Impossible, I say.  Now
if this action is impossible (taking _all_ facts into account),
why should I be held more blamable than the paralyzed man, for whom
saving his daughter is equally physically impossible?  Surely
just _talking_ in a loose sense doesn't create moral responsibility
to do the impossible.

Now of course the compatibilist might still make judgments in order
to give incentives, but these are no longer real judgments.  They
are reduced to the level of throwing fish as seals to make them do
their tricks.  Rationally speaking, the compatibilist is just wrong
to judge someone vicious because of their actions.  And once word
of this gets around, perhaps the incentive effect of moral judgment
will fade as well.
     --Bryan