Physicalism, character and condemnation

The following argument is valid:

1. (Premise) Necessarily, it is unjust to condemn a person for something that she is in no way responsible for.
2. (Premise) Necessarily, it is not unjust to condemn a person for having a gravely wicked character when she in fact has a gravely wicked character.
3. (Premise) If physicalism is true, it is possible for a person to have a gravely wicked character that she is in no way responsible for.
4. It is impossible for a person to have a gravely wicked character that she is in no way responsible for. (By 1 and 2)
5. So, physicalism is not true. (By 3 and 4)

Of the three premises, (3) is clearly true. If physicalism is true, a gravely wicked character is simply a function of the arrangement of matter, and particles in the brain of a good person could just randomly quantum tunnel into positions that constitute a gravely wicked character. That leaves premises (1) and (2). I am pretty confident of (1). And (2) has a certain plausibility to it.

Still, I am not really all that confident of (2). Part of my lack of confidence has to do with Christian intuitions about not condemning others. But those intuitions may not be relevant, since (2) concerns justice, while the Christian duties of forgiveness and non-condemnation are grounded in charity, and a desire to oneself be forgiven by God, rather than in justice to the wicked. Still, I am not sure of (2).

The quantum tunneling argument I gave for (3) in fact established a stronger claim than (3): it established the claim that if physicalism is true, it is causally possible for a human person to be gravely wicked without any responsibility for that. This means that we can weaken (1) and (2) by replacing "person" with "human person" and "Necessarily" with "Causally necessarily". I don't know if this does much to make (2) more plausible.

Whatever the merits of the argument, I think it is an independently really interesting question whether (4) is true.

Fictional characters, heaven and the multiverse

One of the minor sadnesses of life is when you finish a work of fiction and then you miss a character from there, wishing for more interaction with that character (some examples in my own case: Gandalf, Twoflower, Lucy Pevensie, Sherlock Holmes, Pan Wolodyjowski, Elizabeth Bennet, JC Denton, Inspector Gently, and the Moomins). It's not so much that you want to meet that character in real life (my first thought was that I wanted to meet the character, but then I realized that I just wouldn't click with all of them). But you want something like eternal fictional life for the character (to be distinguished from fictional eternal life, which at least the characters created by authors who believe in eternal life are presumed to have even if this is not mentioned, just as they are presumed to have spleens even if this is not mentioned).

In heaven all tears are wiped away, and presumably this includes the minor ones. So how is the minor sadness of missing a fictional character met? One possibility is that all that is engaging about any person, real or fictional, is his or her way of participating in God. Thus the beatific vision of God will supply the reality that the character is a shadow of.

But although the beatific vision we hope to receive after death even before the resurrection of the body will give us a bliss fulfilling our deepest desires, there is something fitting to our nature to also receive back our bodies. Likewise, then, there is something fitting to our nature to also receive back contact with fictional characters.

Let's speculate. Does this mean that further episodes in their lives will continue to be fictionally created—either by their author or by oneself—ad infinitum? Maybe: these episodes might be set in an infinite afterlife, or they might would-have-been episodes in parallel universes. But there may be a way in which such extension could betray the finitude and integrity of the author's creation, even when in-story the character has eternal life (as Lucy Pevensie clearly does). Though this is definitely one option. Another option is that even the finite earthly life of any real person has infinite thickness, infinite depth of participation in God. If so, then one might enjoy interaction with the character by coming to a deeper and deeper appreciation of the character. Another option is that we might stick to the canonical works created on earth, but have the ability to re-enjoy these works even more deeply than the first time (say, by reaching back in memory to them).

An even more daring option is that we might be living in a very large multiverse and we might meet the real people of whom the characters were shadows. But I am not sure that this is what we really want--I think in at least some of the cases (JC Denton?) we want more of the fictional interaction, rather than a meeting with a real-life person like the character.

There are interesting parallels between this set of issues and the issue of losing a pet.

I suppose the one thing we can with confidence about questions like is that way in which our tears--minor in this case, major in other cases--will be wiped away will be surprising...

Morality without virtue

Habits induces correlations between choices in similar epistemic circumstances. A person who has behaved courageously in the face of physical danger on ten past occasions is more likely to be a physically courageous person, and therefore is more likely to behave courageously now when again facing physical danger, even when we control for the considerations on the basis of which we are deciding, unlike a fair coin which is not more likely to land hands just because on the ten past occasions it has done so. Our choices, moreover, modify our habits thereby even further increasing these correlations.

Now imagine persons that do not have habits in this sense. They make their choices based on the considerations present in each case, on a case by case basis. The fact that they have braved physical danger ten times does not make it more likely that they will brave it now, as long as one controls for the considerations present in the cases. Moreover, I will suppose that the motivational strength of the considerations they are deciding on the basis of does not change over time. They always find duty to have a certain pull and they always find convenience to have a certain pull, and the degree of pull does not change.

Such persons would not have character in the way we understand character. They would have neither virtues nor vices. They would have much less control over the shape of their lives. For we can shape our futures by inducing in ourselves a certain character. They could, however, influence the shape of their lives through rational means, by gaining new beliefs or by creating reasons to act.

It would be difficult for such beings to live in community. But we could imagine that one of their very clever engineers builds a mechanical sovereign who enforces basic rules for harmonious living through harsh punishment. For although there are no correlations between choices made in similar circumstances, one could change the circumstances to increase the weight of considerations in favor of actions that conduce to harmonious living. Or a prophet could convince the people that great rewards for virtue and harsh punishments for vice follow in an afterlife, and that, too, would conduce to harmony. But that still wouldn't be virtue.

The lives of such beings would be less storied. They would not exhibit the good of making a certain kind of person out of oneself. There are, indeed, many goods that they would lack.

But without any virtues or vices, these beings could still could have morally significant freedom. They could freely choose, on a case-by-case basis, whether to follow duty or some other consideration. Many of the familiar moral norms that bind us could apply to them. It would be no more permissible for them to kill the innocent or build palaces on the backs of the suffering poor than it is for us. They would have one fewer reason in favor of doing the right thing, though. If I build a palace on the backs of the suffering poor, I become a more vicious person. That wouldn't happen to them. But they would still have the simple reason that it's wrong to do this, together with extrinsic considerations coming from hope of reward or fear of punishment. And that I will become a more vicious person is only an extrinsic consideration against committing an action, anyway.

Virtue ethicists will probably disagree with me that such beings couldn't have morality. So much worse for virtue ethics. Virtues are an important component of human moral life, but I think they are not a component of moral life in general as such, just as physical interaction is an important component of human moral life, but isn't a component of moral life in general (angels have a moral life but as far as we know they have no physical interaction).

Producing a character

Suppose I act in a way that contributes to Bob's having a vicious character that deterministically produces wrong actions under a wide variety of circumstances. Am I responsible for these wrong actions of Bob's? Maybe and maybe not. I might have completely inculpably acted in such a way as produced this character in Bob. Perhaps my action caused Bob to undergo some minor temptation that he simply did not withstand. Perhaps I was brainwashed into brainwashing Bob. On the other hand, if with full responsibility I produced Bob's vicious character, and produced it so that it would deterministically produce such wrong actions, then I am fully responsible for those wrong actions of Bob's. The following seems right:

1. x is responsible for the actions determined by y's character precisely to the extent that x is responsible for y's having a character that determines such actions.

Now, I will apply principle (1) in the special case where x=y. You might wonder if (1) is applicable in that case. But consider cases where I act so to induce a vicious character in some individual under some description and it turns out that that individual is me. For instance, I pay a brainwasher to kidnap a random person and brainwash that person into being a bank robber, and I turn out to be the random person. In those cases, (1) seems exactly right, too. It is plausible that (1) holds in general. (I think I am thinking about N-responsibility here.)

In the special case where x=y, we get the claim that one is responsible for the actions determined by one's character precisely to the extent that one is responsible for having such a character. And now add this:

2. x is responsible for a state of affairs S only if S depends (causally or constitutively or by a chain of causal and/or constitutive relations) on or is identical with one or more of x's choices or actions that x is responsible for.

One could probably formulate this in terms of degrees of responsibility, but there may be some difficulties. The idea is that one is responsible for S to the extent that x is responsible, under that description, for choices or actions on which S depends or with which S is identical. Maybe that's exactly right or maybe it needs to be tweaked. But I'll only need (2).

Now, in the case of someone all of whose actions are determined by her character, given (1) (in the special case x=y) and (2), if the individual is responsible for any action, we generate an infinite regress, as in Galen Strawson's argument against responsibility.

I think the compatibilist has to either deny (2), and insist that we can be responsible for a character that does not depend on any responsible choices or actions, or else has to distinguish in (1) between the case where x is non-identical with y and normal cases where x is identical with y (cases like the one where I hire the random brainwasher being abnormal).

As a libertarian, I also think the above arguments conflate derivative and non-derivative responsibility, but I do not think the compatibilist can really make much use of that distinction.

Is it good to be the sort of person who is never willing to lie?

There are cases where it seems that great harm comes from a refusal to lie. Thus there appears to be a strong consequentialist case against an absolutist position against lying. But I think that if we shift from act-consequentialism to what one might call character-consequentialism, there may be a case for an absolutist position. At least it has not been shown otherwise.

Act-consequentialism says that of all the acts available to one, one should perform the kind of act that will maximize good consequences. Character-consequentialism says that out of all the characters that one might develop, one should have that moral character having which will maximize expected good consequences. (This is a variant on rule-utilitarianism, of course.) There are differences in recommendation between the two consequentialisms. For instance, suppose there is no afterlife. Then there will be cases where act-consequentialism will recommend condemning the innocent to death in order to prevent riots seeking the innocent's death. But character-consequentialism may require one to have a character that never gives in to injustice. For having such a character will make it less likely that people will riot to blackmail one into condemning the innocent to death, plus it will make one more strongly committed to the cause of justice.

What about lying? Bracketing the afterlife, there will be circumstances where the absolutist anti-lying character will produce poorer consequences than the more pragmatic character who generally tells the truth but lies sometimes. But there will also be circumstances where the absolutist will produce better consequences than the pragmatist. These will be circumstances where the good consequences depend on one's sincere testimony being believed. If Professor Kowalska is known to be an absolutist and a student is about to jump off a tall building, and Professor Kowalska yells to the student "Don't jump—I thought your last paper was good", that carries weight. If Kowalska were known to have the more pragmatic character, the student could say: "You're just saying that to make me not jump."

Of course, there is also the case where the student's last paper was no good, and in that case the pragmatist's lie at least has some chance of averting suiciding. But the pragmatist's lie is less likely to work than truth from the absolutist would be.

The question whether the consequences of being an absolutist or being a pragmatist then depend on the relative frequencies, as weighted by what is at stake, of the following two kinds of situations:

1. Cases where (a) one believes p and (b) good consequences follow from one's interlocutor's accepting p.
2. Cases where (a) one disbelieves p and (b) good consequences follow from one's interlocutor's accepting p.

Now, I think that cases of type (1) are more common, because I am inclined to think that (i) there is a positive correlation between what one believes and what is true (this is an anti-sceptical principle of credulity) and (ii) there is a positive correlation between what is true and what is beneficial (not just to the believer) to believe, so there is, probably, a positive correlation between what one believes and what it would be beneficial if one's interlocutor believed.

Granted, there are spectacular paradigm cases of (2), such as when the Gestapo comes to one's door and asks if one is hiding some Jews (and let us suppose no clever solution like I try in this paper works). But these cases are fortunately rare (and even in those cases, there is the practical consideration how likely one's lie is to convince the interlocutor—if we were doing principled ethics, we could ignore this consideration, but we're doing character-consequentialism and can't ignore it). And corresponding to these cases there will be cases where the Gestapo comes to one's door and asks if one is hiding Jews, and one is not hiding Jews but nonetheless the consequences of the Gestapo searching the house would be grave (maybe one is hiding a Gypsy or a Slav, or one has forbidden books). In those cases there may be a serious benefit from having a reputation for absolutism in regard to lying.

In any case, we don't live in Nazi society. And there probably are many cases in our courts where the prevention of grave injustice requires that some sincere witness be believed.

Moreover, there are many small everyday type (1) cases where we can expect the absolutist to produce better results because, say, her praise is more likely to be believed.

It is ultimately a serious empirical question whether the absolutist or pragmatist character in regard to lying can be expected to be the more beneficial one. But the point I want to make is that has not been shown that the absolutist character does worse on average.

Action in and out of character

This post is obviously overgeneralized, but I think it is still heuristically useful.

The compatibilist has trouble with out of character action. The incompatibilist has trouble with in character action.

It is obvious that we sometimes are responsible for out of character action, and that we sometimes are responsible for in character action. Thus, to evaluate a particular compatibilist proposal, it's worth checking whether it allows for responsibility for out of character action, and to evaluate a particular incompatibilist proposal, it's worth checking whether it allows for responsibility for in character action.

The character of God in the Bible

The Old Testament has a picture of its central character, God, that is on its surface inconsistent, with apparently contradictory features. But a deeper reading shows a deep consistency: a consistent but from our point of view complex character displayed in a variety of circumstances, from a variety of points of view, and also reflected in the emotions of narrators and interactions of other characters.

I shall not try to defend this reading of the Old Testament here. It cannot be done in a post, and maybe not even in a book, and certainly not by me. One must drink in the texts. Personally, I have found very helpful our Department Bible study in this regard. We are doing Book III of the Psalms (Pss. 73-89), and this has been one of the things that has led to this post.

Now, there come to mind four prima facie plausible explanations for the portrayal of a single character across a large body of literature by a large set of authors.

1. Imitation by a number of authors of a canon of primary texts or stories originally by a single author.
2. Harmonization by selection of texts and/or editorial work on particular texts.
3. Cooperative authorship.
4. A modeling of the character on an actual person with whom the diverse set of authors all interacted "in real life."

If (4) is the right explanation, then the fact that the authors wrote over a period of many centuries, in different social circumstances, together with the essential otherness of central character of the texts, makes it most unlikely that any mere human was the model. And the simplest explanation is that the authors were in fact interacting with the person they claim to be describing—Y*WH, the God of Israel. Therefore, if (4) is true, then we have strong evidence that God exists. Observe that it is not uncommon for the same person to have apparent surface differences as seen in different contexts and by different people—we call this "complexity" in the person and it lends reality to the person (which character complexity in the case of God is, I think, compatible with ontological simplicity, but that's a different question).

Note that the deep consilience not only suggests that the various authors interacted with the same person, but that they did not do so in a shallow way. It is possible to have portrayals of the same person by different people who were acquainted with the subject where there isn't such a consilience—I feel this way in the case of Plato and Xenophon's respective portrayals of Socrates, though I could be wrong (I have not drunk in the Xenophon texts sufficiently).

If (1) were the right explanation, we would expect shallow consistency in the portrayal of the character, and quite likely some deep inconsistencies, whereas we observe the opposite. It is hard for one author to take another author's character and portray that character in a consistent way, and the likely result of an attempt to portray that character is that one will have a similarity of outward mannerisms, but to a careful reader (or viewer) it just won't be the same character but an impostor. For instance, the Sherlock Holmes of the "New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" TV series from the '50s is a case in point (this is the most absurd example from the seires). But when two authors portray different surface detail with a deep consistency, then we have something quite unexpected on a copying hypothesis. Granted, this could result from literary genius combined with depth of appreciation of another's work on the part of the copyist, but such a combination is rare. Most literary geniuses create characters on their own, often even when the character bears the name of some historical figure. And the Hebrew Scriptures weren't just written by two or three authors, but by a much greater number. Thus, explanation (1) does not fit the phenomena very well.

As for (2), again harmonization might explain doctrinal agreement and agreement as to surface features, but unless the harmonization takes the form of a rewriting of the whole body of texts by a literary genius, it would not produce a deep consilience in the central character. And no such unified rewriting in fact happened: the Hebrew Scriptures retain a great diversity of genres and styles. Another striking feature is that at least as regarding texts from before around the 4th century BC, it does not appear that there was much in the way of centralized selection. It seems that the main criterion for canonicity in the first century—to the extent that the concept of canonicity existed—was not deep consilience in the character of God, but something more extrinsic like Hebrew-language authorship combined with venerable age.

Option (3) could work with a small number of contemporaneous authors—but certainly not with the great number of authors of the Hebrew Scriptures strung out across centuries.

So that leaves option (4), and so we have good reason to think that at least a number of the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures had encountered the character of God in reality.

What does the New Testament add to the argument? I think the deep consilience with apparent surface difference continues. So the argument is strengthened. And another point emerges. Jesus Christ, although typically not explicitly portrayed as God, is portrayed in a way that gives him a deep consilience of character with the Y*WH of the Old Testament. Just to give one example, he appropriates, in a credible way, God's desire to gather the Israelites to himself like a mother hen.

May we be thus gathered to him.

Of course, I do not claim originality for this argument. It is inspired by similar arguments seen in various places. Nor do I promote this argument as a way of convincing atheists. Because the evidence of the deep consilience needs to be gathered over years of drinking in the Scriptures, and maybe this can only be done while living the life of the community that has produced the Scriptures (i.e., the life of the Church or of the Synagogue), this argument, while of significant epistemic weight, may only be evidentially useful to Christians. Yet, God can help someone not living the life of the community to see the consilience, so it could have some value outside the community, too.

Crime and punishment

Justice demands a punishment proportionate to the gravity of the crimes. In particular, a greater punishment is called for for committing eleven instance of some type of crime than for committing ten of them. But we do not have much reason to think that the person who committed the eleven is a worse person than the one who committed the ten. Hence, pace Hume, punishment is not based solely on the character as evidenced by the crime.

Self-identification

To identify myself in the relevant sense with some quality is to see that quality as embodying a particularly important feature of myself, as making others who have that feature be potential particularly salient role models for me, etc. This isn't any sort of attempt at an analysis of identification, but simply to hint at which sense of "identify with" I am using. In particular, to identify myself with Q involves existentially more than just identifying myself as having Q, and does not imply a weird claim that I believe I am identical with the Platonic entity Q.

I think I should identify myself with being a child of God, a Christian, a father, a husband, a son or daughter, and maybe a philosopher. I should not identify myself with being big-nosed or lazy or a Frenchman. The last sentence may seem a mix: Maybe I shouldn't identify myself with being a Frenchman, because I am not one. Maybe I shouldn't identify myself with being lazy, because although I am lazy, that is something to fight against rather than identify with. Perhaps I shouldn't identify myself with being big-nosed, because although I have a big nose, and that's nothing to fight against, it's still superficial.

Is there some general story we can tell about what qualities of myself I should identify myself with, a story that will help with the question: Should I identify myself with my ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc.? 

Clearly, the virtuous person identifies with having certain values, and there are certain things that no virtuous person would identify with.

Identifying oneself with a quality, even a quite innocent quality, can carry serious dangers. There is a danger of being guided by stereotypes rather than healthy role models. There is a danger of self-reduction--of not sufficiently seeing oneself in one's individuality (and, correlatively, not sufficiently seeing others in their individuality). There may be a self-curtailing of one's autonomy.

Here is a rough hypothesis. You should only identify with having Q when having Q places you under serious role-obligations whose fulfillment either requires this identification or at least is very difficult without such identification.

Since something that constricts one to fulfill one's serious duties does not objectionably curtail one's autonomy, the autonomy worry about qualities does not apply. Moreover, when the role involves serious role-obligations, the need for role models may outweigh the danger of stereotyping. When the physician identifies herself with being a physician, there is the danger she will rely on stereotypes of her profession, but more likely it will help her fulfill her serious obligations by looking to good role-models. Moreover, one's individuality is particularly importantly expressed in one's serious role-obligations.

The hypothesis fits with what I think about the cases. I think that being a child of God, a Christian, a father, a husband, a son or daughter, and maybe a philosopher each implies serious role-obligations, and the need to fulfill these calls for a self-identification. (My choice to put "father" and "husband" rather than "parent" and "spouse", and "son or daughter" rather than "son", is deliberate and obviously controversial. I am inclined to think the parental and spousal roles are gendered in a way in which filial roles are not, though I am not able to provide a full account. But my bigger points do not depend on this controversial claim.) But being big-nosed, lazy or a Frenchman does not provide me with role-obligations. Being a Frenchman doesn't provide me with role-obligations because I'm not a Frenchman. Being big-nosed is too superficial. Being lazy provides me with an obligation to cease to be lazy, but that is just a special case of a general obligation to be industrious.

Wrongness and vice

Consider these two cases:

1. Martha hears Patrick utter an insult against her husband. Incensed by the insult, she fights Patrick with her fists, trying to kill him in a "fair" way (Patrick is not weaker than she is, she is not sneaking up on him, etc.). She succeeds in winning the fight, and has, thus, deliberately killed Patrick.
2. Constantine tortures a small reptile, knowing the reptile to be entirely harmless.

What Martha has done is, intuitively, morally worse than what Constantine did. Martha killed a person, a creature in the image and likeness of God, a being endowed with dignity. She was provoked, but nonetheless acted deliberately to cause the death of a juridically innocent human being. On the other hand, Constantine caused wanton and inexcusable pain, but he did this to a being quite low down on the scale of moral concern. (If you disagree with my comparison between the two actions, then change the reptile into a ladybug.)

However, Constantine's action is the one that is more expressive of a vicious character: a character that is cruel, cowardly and irrational. Martha's action, while admittedly exhibiting disproportionate wrath, also exhibited loyalty and courage, albeit of a misguided sort. We wouldn't want to have Constantine among our friends. On the other hand, having Martha as one's friend would be an asset, as long as we were careful in our behavior around her.

If this is right, then there is a distinction between how wrong an action is and how expressive it is of a vicious character. This distinction has some interesting consequences. An obvious one is that it makes implausible Hume's account of punishment. Hume thought we punished actions insofar as they were evidence of a vicious character. But we would rightly punish Martha more severely than we would Constantine.

But a more important consequence is that it puts into question the virtue ethics project of grounding moral permissibility and impermissibility in virtue and vice. For, surely, if impermissibility is to be grounded in virtue and vice, then an action is more impermissible—more wrong—if it is more expressive of vice. But the above examples show that this is not so.