Abstract
Is the idea of the voluntary important? Those who think so tend to regard it as an idea that can be metaphysically deepened through a theory about voluntary action, while those who think it a superficial idea that cannot coherently be deepened tend to neglect it as unimportant. Parting company with both camps, I argue that the idea of the voluntary is at once important and superficial—it is an essentially superficial notion that performs important functions, but can only perform them if we refrain from deepening it. After elaborating the contrast between superficial and deepened ideas of the voluntary, I identify the important functions that the superficial idea performs in relation to demands for fairness and freedom. I then suggest that theories trying to deepen the idea exemplify a problematic moralization of psychology—they warp psychological ideas to ensure that moral demands can be met. I offer a three-tier model of the problematic dynamics this creates, and show why the pressure to deepen the idea should be resisted. On this basis, I take stock of what an idea of the voluntary worth having should look like, and what residual tensions with moral ideas this leaves us with.
Highlights
What makes an action voluntary? And does it matter? Is the concept of the voluntary even an important idea to have in our conceptual repertoire? Theorists who have thought the concept of the voluntary important have tended to do so because they considered it an enigmatic but profound idea that could be deepened through a theory of action, while those who thought it a superficial idea that could not coherently be deepened have tended to neglect it as unimportant
The systematic point is that by deepening the idea of the voluntary in such a way that voluntary agency lies beyond contingent empirical determination, an account of the psychology of agency acquires the right shape to hold out the promise of allocating responsibility and blame on an fair basis
The kind of concept of the voluntary we need, is one that balances the moral demands for freedom and fairness against the practical demands to hold people to account and to be realistic about the pervasiveness of contingency: it should render us sensitive to differences in the degree to which actions are under the control of the agent’s will while retaining the wide applicability of our regulatory practices of responsibility attribution by accommodating the fact that even the most voluntary actions are still conditioned by contingent factors lying beyond the agent’s control
Summary
Theorists who have thought the concept of the voluntary important have tended to do so because they considered it an enigmatic but profound idea that could be deepened through a theory of action, while those who thought it a superficial idea that could not coherently be deepened have tended to neglect it as unimportant. The notion of the voluntary is an essentially superficial notion that performs important functions, but it can only perform those functions if we refrain from deepening it. Something like this view might be thought to be adumbrated in G. I proceed as follows: I begin by elaborating the contrast between superficial and deepened ideas of the voluntary I draw out what an idea of the voluntary worth having should look like (Sect. 6), and what residual tensions with some of our moral ideas this leaves us with (Sect. 7)
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