A concept that I haven't seen much contemporary discussion of is effort. A jstor title search finds 18 entries, most notably an 1897 piece by Dewey. But there is very little recent material: There are a few interesting-looking pieces from the 70s (one on effort and desert, and two on effort and freedom of the will), and there is 2009 Business ethics piece on withholding job effort. The subject seems to have been largely neglected in recent times, though it was an active area of interest at the end of the 19th century (in addition to the Dewey piece, there is William James' 1880 Feeling of Effort.
So, if some graduate student needs a project in moral psychology or metaphysics, effort might be worth some attention. A dollop of history—thinking about conatus, say—wouldn't be amiss.
What made me think of the topic was struggling with wind in a canoe, and being struck by the idea that the feeling of effort or struggle, while unpleasant, does not seem to be classifiable as even prima facie evil.
Ability comes in degrees. I can easily lift a pound. With a moderate effort I can lift forty. And over that, effort significantly increases and ability peters out. There is some kind of a connection between ability and effort. Where ability is limited, at the edge of ability there seems to be a need for effort. So it may be that thinking about effort would help advance some of our understanding of ability, and hence of freedom of the will. But that's speculation. (On a connection with freedom, also see this and the responses in the above-mentioned jstor search.)
Here's an argument that has just occurred to me. The more effort of will, mind or muscle it would take for x to A, the less we blame x for failing to A. But the limiting case of increased need for effort is impossibility. So if Aing is impossible to x, for reasons of will, mind or muscle, then we will least, if at all, blame x for failing to A. This is a kind of principle of alternate possibilities. I am not that impressed with this argument. While the limiting case of increased need for effort is an impossibility of some sort, there may be sorts of impossibility that are not limiting cases of increased need for effort.
You write, "The more effort of will, mind or muscle it would take for x to A, the less we blame x for failing to A."
ReplyDeleteI'm worried about the vacuous cases -- cases where the agent simply does nothing in the face of a difficult project. Suppose a madman captures the families of two agents S1 and S2. The madman will kill each subject's family if the subject does not hold a heavy weight over his head for a prescribed time (determined at random). As it turns out, S1 has to hold the weight over his head for two hours; whereas, S2 has to hold the weight over his head for three hours. Now, suppose that both men say, "That seems like a lot of work to me, so I think I'll just let my family die." I don't think it matters at all that S2's task would have required more effort. The reason is that neither actually attempts anything here.
Long story short: I would (at least) amend your principle to something like, The more effort of will, mind or muscle it would take for x to A, the less we blame x for unsuccessfully trying to A.
Or do you take "failing to A" to be equivalent to "unsuccessfully trying to A"?
It’s odd that both effort and success seem to affect what I deserve.
ReplyDelete1) If A is good and difficult, I put a lot of effort into A, and I succeed, then I seem to bear much responsibility for my success. I get pats on the back and perhaps a medal.
2) If A is good and difficult, I put a lot of effort into A, and I fail, then I seem to bear little responsibility for my failure. No one blames me. Perhaps a few friends encourage me for having tried to A.
3) If A is good and difficult, I put little effort into A, and I fail, then I seem to bear much responsibility for my failure. My family is embarrassed of me.
But the same doesn’t seem to be true if I’m trying to do evil. Then, although it depends on my success or failure, my level of responsibility doesn’t seem to depend much on my effort.
A) If A is evil and difficult, I put a lot of effort into A, and I succeed, then I bear much responsibility for my success. I am labeled a menace and sent to prison.
B) If A is evil and difficult, I put a lot of effort into A, and I fail, then I bear some responsibility for my attempt at A. I am ridiculed and given a lighter prison sentence than if I had succeeded.
C) If A is evil and difficult, I put little effort into A, and I fail, then I bear some responsibility for my attempt at A. I am ridiculed and given a lighter prison sentence than if I had succeeded. I become a comic book villain, like Aaron Burr.
Someone might object that effort increases responsibility in the case of evil actions. A murder who schemes for years about how to eliminate his victim is worse than one who decides to kill in the heat of some emotionally chaotic moment. But I think we need to take motive into account in such cases. If the murder kills suddenly because he finds out that his spouse is having an affair, then his responsibility seems somewhat lessened by the intensity of the situation. One who planned for a year or two before making the kill would bear more, but I don’t think this is because of his increased effort. A gunman who opens fire on a kindergarten playground, simply to witness the horror, bears a great deal of responsibility, even though the action requires very little effort. His putting more effort into the crime doesn’t seem to increase his responsibility, so long as his motive is the same.
Chris:
ReplyDeleteVery interesting!
Here are my intuitions:
On the positive side, holding everything else fixed, the more effort, the greater the sacrifice, and hence the more praiseworthy the deed.
On the negative side, holding everything else fixed, the more effort, the worse the deed: "You put so much effort into that!? when you could done something good with that effort."
A particularly interesting case is effort of will. I do have the Kantian intuition that a right action is more praiseworthy the more effort of will it took to do it. And I have the intuition that a wrong action is more blameworthy the more effort of will it took to do it--especially if the effort of will went into a battle with one's conscience.
Jonathan:
If you're right, then one needs to replace effort, with expected effort, in my principle. And that destroys my little argument. Well done.
Perhaps, though, the effect of effort isn't so straight-forward. Suppose, for instance, I visit a clairvoyant and come to believe (mistakenly) that, if I go out and vandalise ten cars, I can avert a horrific string of deaths. In response, I go out and put a dent in a couple of bonnets but then get bored of the endeavour and go to find something to eat instead. When I am later asked to explain my actions, I will likely be asked: "If that was what you believed, why on earth didn't you try harder to vandalise ten cars?". So, doesn't my lack of effort in carrying out an evil action make things worse here? In which case perhaps we need to introduce the idea of intentions as well.
ReplyDeleteIn this example, are you blameworthy for believing the clairvoyant?
ReplyDelete