Freedom, Teleology, and Evil by Goetz Stewart

Author:Goetz, Stewart.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2008-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

5.8 McKenna, Morally Significant Alternatives, and PAP

In this section, I examine an FSC that makes use of the idea that was mentioned in the previous section of a choice being no more than causally open to an agent. The counterexample is McKenna’s and involves an agent, Betty, who, like Joe in FSC5, is facing the issue of paying taxes.86 I label McKenna’s counterexample “FSC6”:

FSC6: Betty is deliberating about whether or not to cheat on her taxes. Whatever she chooses to do, she has to make a choice soon so that she can have her tax return to the post office by 5:00 in the afternoon. She has reasons for not cheating (paying the amount that she owes) and reasons for cheating on her payment. One reason Betty has for paying the amount that she owes is that if she is caught cheating, she will have to spend time in jail. A reason for cheating is that she will have more money to buy what she wants. Beyond these two morally significant choices, however, there are morally insignificant choices that she might make. For example, Betty might choose to head for the gym, or roast a chicken. Given these morally insignificant alternatives, Betty might simply stop deliberating about whether to cheat or not (and, thereby, neither choose to cheat nor choose not to cheat) and instead choose to head for the gym (or choose to roast a chicken). In the end, suppose that Betty chooses to cheat on her taxes. Unbeknownst to her, however, she is a figure in an FSC where the morally significant alternative of choosing to pay the amount that she owes in taxes is blocked (whether fortuitously—as in FSC4, or by design—is not relevant). The morally insignificant alternative choices, however, are not blocked. They are causally open for her.

McKenna asks whether Betty is morally responsible for choosing to cheat on her taxes, even though she was not free to choose not to cheat. According to PAP, Betty is morally responsible only if she was free to choose otherwise. Given the causally open alternatives of choosing to head for the gym and choosing to roast a chicken, it seems that according to PAP she is morally responsible because she is free to choose otherwise. Thus, FSC6, which is designed to show that Betty is morally responsible for a choice event though she is not free to choose otherwise, is not a counterexample to PAP. Though it is not a counterexample to PAP, it teases out an important problem with PAP that is created by the alternative choices available to Betty. Choosing to head to the gym and choosing to roast a chicken are morally insignificant in nature, and it is odd to think that Betty’s being morally responsible is linked to the freedom to make such morally insignificant choices. The “moral” of the story involving Betty is that PAP is too unrestricted or inclusive with regard to what it allows as alternative choices that are relevant for an agent’s moral responsibility.

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