A Picture of the Self Which Supports Moral Responsibility

Abstract

Let us assume (as surely we must) that we can hold at least some people morally responsible for at least some of their actions. What sort of picture of the self is compatible with that assumption? In particular, we need to ask the question of whether we can hold people responsible for actions which follow inevitably from their characters (whether they are innate or have been formed through experience) being what they are. Prima facie, there appears to be a problem in reconciling the two com monly assumed prerequisites of an action for which one can be held morally accountable: (1) that the action be done freely and (2) that the action be, in a significant sense, the self's action. The first requirement might be thought of as entailing that (1') no antecedent conditions, including the self's character being what it is, determine the action. The second requirement, on the other hand, might be interpreted as maintaining that (2') the action follows from the self's character being what it is (or, more precisely, that the action follows from facts about the self's character together with facts about the circumstances). To avoid a contradiction, one must either a) deny that (1) and/or (2) is a prerequisite of moral responsibility, b) deny the in terpretation given above of one of these requirements so they will no longer be incompatible, or c) deny both interpretations (1 ') and (2') of these re quirements. Typically, philosophers select the second alternative. They ac cept both (1) and (2) as prerequisites of moral responsibility but reject one of the above interpretations of those requirements. Many Soft Determinists (or Compatibilists), for instance, deny that (1 ') is the correct interpretation of (1), while accepting (2') as the correct interpretation of (2). Libertarians, on the other hand, deny that (2') is the correct interpretation of (2), but ac cept (1 ') as the correct interpretation of (1). I shall consider options a), b) and c) in turn and argue that c) may well be the most defensible position, in that it preserves more of our intuitions about moral responsibility than do the other positions. The consequence of denying (2 '), in particular, is that we must have a picture of the self which is more complex than customarily envisioned in order to hold people responsi ble for at least some of their actions.