Freedom and Generalisation

Abstract

Both inside and outside the courtroom we infer as a matter of course facts about specific individuals. In doing so we use generalizations about those individuals based on our knowledge of how similar people tend to behave in similar situations. To take just one example, assuming that a certain individual is more likely to carry Tay-Sachs genes because he is an Ashkenazi Jew seems both legitimate and scientifically founded. However, some types of generalization seem intuitively objectionable. This is most obviously the case with offensive generalizations which rely on race, religion, or gender (e.g. assuming this individual is more likely to be greedy just because he is Jewish), but the phenomenon is not limited to such sensitive categories. For example, using the high rate of violent crime in a certain neighbourhood to support the conviction of an individual resident of that neighbourhood of committing a violent crime seems highly objectionable. Interestingly, the appropriateness of a generalization tends to depend heavily on the context in which it is used. It is less objectionable to use such generalization to decide which individuals to search (for example, by allocating more police resources to that neighbourhood); and arguably it is not objectionable at all to take into account the neighbourhood’s high rate of violent crime when diagnosing the type of injury suffered by a resident arriving to receive medical treatment in the local Accident and Emergency department.This paper proposes a new approach to the use of generalizations in order to identify which are objectionable and explain why this is the case. This new approach, here called ‘the culpability account’, is based on libertarian approaches to the problem of free will (not to be confused with libertarian approaches to political freedom). According to the culpability account, some types of generalization are problematic because using them relies on presuppositions which are incompatible with the presuppositions needed for the attribution of culpability. Using these generalizations presupposes the existence of a certain property which determines an individual’s behaviour, either partly or fully. On the other hand, attributing personal culpability to an individual presupposes that she is free to determine her own behaviour. Drawing on the libertarian approach to free will, this paper argues that these two presuppositions are incompatible. According to the culpability account, using a generalization is objectionable when that generalization both (1) presupposes that an individual’s behaviour is determined by a property they share with similar people and (2) is used in the context of attributing personal culpability to that individual.