Culpability incompatibilism

Here are three plausible theses:

1. You’re only culpable for a morally wrong choice determined by a relevantly abnormal mental state if you are culpable for that mental state.

2. A mental state that determines a morally wrong choice is relevantly abnormal.

3. You are not culpable for anything that is prior to the first choice you are culpable for.

Given these theses and some technical assumptions, it follows that:

4. If determinism holds, you are not culpable for any morally wrong choice.

For suppose that you are blameworthy for some choice and determinism holds. Let t₁ be the time of the first choice you are culpable for. Choices flow from mental states, and if determinism holds, these mental states determine the choice. So there is a time t₀ at which you have a mental state that determines your culpable choice at t₁. That mental state is abnormal by (2). Hence by (1) you must be culpable for it given that it determines a wrong choice. But this contradicts (3).

The intuition behind (1) is that abnormal mental states remove responsibility, unless either the abnormality is not relevant to the choice, or one has responsibility for the mental state. This is something even a compatibilist should find plausible.

Moreover, the responsibility for the mental state has to have the same valence as the responsibility for the choice: to be culpable for the choice, you must be culpable for the abnormal state; to be praiseworthy for the choice, you must be praiseworthy for the abnormal state. (Imagine this case. To save your friends from a horrific fate, you had to swallow a potion which had a side-effect of making you a kleptomaniac. You are then responsible for your kleptomania, but in a praiseworthy way: you sacrificed your sanity to save your friends. But now the thefts that come from the kleptomania you are not blameworthy for.)

Premise (2) is compatible with there being normal mental states that determine morally good choices, as well as with there being normal mental states that non-deterministically cause morally wrong choices (e.g., a desire for self-preservation can non-deterministically cause an act of cowardice).

What I find interesting about this argument is that it doesn’t have any obvious analogue for praiseworthiness. The conclusion of the argument is a thesis we might call culpability incompatibilism.

The combination of culpability incompatibilism with praiseworthiness compatibilism (the doctrine that praiseworthiness is compatible with determinism) has some attractiveness. Leibniz cites with approval St Augustine’s idea that the best kind of freedom is choosing the best action for the best reasons. Culpability incompatibilist who are praiseworthiness compatibilists can endorse that thesis. Moreover, they can endorse the idea that God is praiseworthy despite being logically incapable of doing wrong. Interestingly, though, praiseworthiness compatibilism makes it difficult to run free will based defenses for the problem of evil.

Does culpable ignorance excuse?

It is widely held that if you do wrong in culpable ignorance (ignorance that you are blameworthy for), you are culpable for the wrong you do. I have long though think this is mistaken—instead we should frontload the guilt onto the acts and omissions that made one culpable for the ignorance.

I will argue for a claim in the vicinity by starting with some cases that are not cases of ignorance.

1. One is no less guilty if one tries to shoot someone and misses than if one hits them.

2. If one drinks and drives and is lucky enough to hit no one, one is no less guilty than if one does hit someone, as long as the degree of freedom and knowledge in the drinking and driving is the same.

3. If one freely takes a drug one knows to remove free will and produce violent behavior in 25% of cases, one is no less guilty if involuntary violence does not ensue than if involuntary violence does ensue.

Now, let’s consider this case of culpable ignorance:

4. Mad scientist Alice offers Bob a million dollars to undergo a neural treatment that over the next 48 hours will make Bob think that Elbonians—a small ethnic group—are disease-bearing mosquitoes. Bob always kills organisms that he thinks are disease-bearing mosquitoes on sight. Bob correctly estimates that there is a 25% chance that he will meet an Elbonian over the next 48 hours. If Bob accepts the deal, he is no less guilty if he is lucky enough to meet no Elbonians than if he does meet and kill one.

This is as clear a case of culpable ignorance as can be: in accepting the deal, Bob knows he will become ignorant of the human nature of Elbonians, and he knows there is a 25% chance this will result in his killing an Elbonian. I think that just as in cases (1)–(3), one is no less guilty if the bad consequences for others don’t result, so too in case (4), Bob is no less guilty if he never meets an Elbonian.

For a final case, consider:

5. Just like (4), except that instead of coming to think Elbonians are (disease-bearing) mosquitoes, Bob will come to believe that unlike all other innocent human persons whom it is impermissible to kill, it is obligatory to kill Elbonians, and Bob’s estimate that this belief will result in his killing an Elbonian is 25%.

Again, Bob is no less guilty for taking the money and getting the treatment if he does not run into any Elbonians than if he does run into and kill an Elbonian.

Therefore, one is no less guilty for one’s culpable ignorance if wicked action does not result. Or, equivalently:

6. One is no more guilty if wicked action does result from culpable ignorance than if it does not.

But (6) is not quite the claim I started with. I started claiming one is not guilty for the wicked action in cases of culpable ignorance. The claim I argued for is that one is no guiltier for the wicked action than if there is no wicked action resulting from the ignorance. But now if one was guilty for the wicked action, it seems one would be guiltier, since one would have both the guilt for the ignorance and for the wicked action.

However, I am now not so sure. The argument in the previous paragraph depended on something like this principle:

7. Being guilty of both action A and action B is guiltier than just being guilty of action A, all other things being equal. (Ditto for omissions, but I want to be briefer.)

Thus being guilty of acquiring ignorance and acting wickedly on the ignorance would be guiltier than just of acquiring ignorance, and hence by (6) the wicked action does not have guilt. But now that I have got to this point in the argument, I am not so sure of (7).

There may be counterexamples to (7). First, a politician’s lying to the people an hour after a deadly natural disaster is not less guilty than lying in the same way to the people an hour before the natural disaster. But in lying to the people after the disaster one lies to fewer people—since some people died in the disaster!—and hence there are fewer actions of lying (instead of lying to Alice, and lying to Bob, and lying to Carl, one “only” lies to Alice and one lies to Bob). But I am not sure that this is right—maybe there is just one action of lying lying to the people rather than a separate one for each audience member.

Second, suppose Bob strives to insult Alice in person, and consider two cases. In one case, when he has decided to insult Alice, he gets into his car, drives to see Alice, and insults her. In the other case, when he gets into the car he realizes he doesn’t have enough gas to reach Alice, and so he buys gas, then drives to see Alice, and then insults her. In the second case, Bob performed an action he didn’t perform in the first case: buy gas in order to insult Alice. But it doesn’t seem that Bob is guiltier in the second case, even though he did perform one more guilty action. I am also not sure about this case. Here I am actually inclined to think that Bob is more guilty, for two reasons. First, he was willing to undertake a greater burden in order to insult Alice—and that increases guilt. Second, he had an extra chance to repent—each time one acquiesces in a means, that’s a chance to just say no to the whole action sequence. And yet he refused this chance. (It seems to me that Bob is guiltier in the second case, just as the assassin possessing two bullets and shooting the second after missing with the first—regardless of whether the second shot hits—is guiltier than the assassin who after shooting and missing once stops.)

While I am not convinced of the cases, they point to the idea that in the context of (7), the guilt of action A might “stretch” to making B guilty without increasing the total amount of guilt. If that makes sense, then that might actually be the right way of account of accounting for actions done in culpable ignorance. If Bob kills an Elbonian, he is guilty. That is not an additional item of guilt, but rather the guilt of the actions and omissions that caused the guilt stretches over and covers the killing. This seems to me to mesh better with ordinary ways of talking—we don’t want to say that Bob’s killing of the Elbonian in either case (4) or (5) is innocent. And saying that there is no additional guilt may be a way of assuaging the intuition I have had over the years when I thought that culpable ignorance excuses.

Maybe.

A final obvious question is about punishment. We do punish differentially for attempted and completed murder, and for drunk driving that does not result in death and drink driving that does. I think there pragmatic reasons for this. If attempted and completed murder were equally punished, there would be an incentive to “finish the job” upon initial failure. And having a lesser penalty for non-lethal drunk driving creates an incentive for the drunk driver to be more careful driving—how much that avails depends on how drunk the driver is, but it might make some difference.

Pressuring people to violate conscience

If you pressure someone to act against their deeply-set moral beliefs, then your pressure is an action which, if successful, results in:

1. the person’s changing their deeply-set moral beliefs, or

2. the person’s acting against their deeply-set moral beliefs.

Our experience of life shows that (2) is rather more likely than (1). People rarely change their deeply-set moral beliefs, but they act against them all too frequently.

But it is wrong to act against one’s moral beliefs. Moreover, acting against one’s moral beliefs is more likely to be culpable than other wrongdoings. For in other wrongdoings, there is always the possibility of being inculpable due to ignorance. But when one acts against one’s moral beliefs, that excuse isn’t available. There is still the possibility that one is insane or that fear of the pressure has taken away one’s free will, but it seems very plausible that most of the time when someone acts against their deeply-set moral beliefs, they are culpable.

Thus, if you pressure someone to act against their deeply-set moral beliefs, there is a very significant chance—bigger than 25%, it is reasonable to estimate—that if you succeed, you will do so by having gotten them to act culpably wrongly. But we should have learned from Socrates that there is nothing worse in life than culpable wrongdoing. Thus the pressure risks a greater than 25% chance of imposing a harm worse than death on the person being pressured.

There are times when it is permissible to impose on someone a 25% risk of death, but that requires very grave reasons indeed, and one should go to great lengths to avoid such an imposition if at all possible. One requires even graver reasons to pressure someone to go against their deeply-set moral beliefs, and one should go to greater lengths to avoid such an imposition.

Remark 1: Here is a kind of a case where it is easier to justify pressure. The harm in violating a mistaken conscience is two-fold: (i) doing wrong, and (ii) culpably so. But now suppose that in fact the person is objectively morally obligated to perform the action they are being pressured to. In fact, let’s suppose the following: the person has a particularly grave objective obligation to ϕ, but they mistakenly believe they have a mild or moderate obligation not to ϕ. Then we may imagine that if they ϕ, they culpably violate a moderate moral obligation, but if they refuse to ϕ, they inculpably violate a grave moral obligation. Which is better? Is it more destructive of one’s moral character to inculpably violate a grave obligation or to culpably violate a moderate one? This is not clear. So in a case like that, pressure is a lot easier to justify.

Conversely, where pressure is hardest to justify is where there is no objective moral duty for the person to perform the action they are being pressured to.

Remark 2: Does it make any difference whether the deeply-set moral beliefs are religious in nature or not? My initial thought is that it does not. In both cases, we have the grave harm of being pressured to wrongdoing, and likely culpable wrongdoing. But on reflection, there can be a difference. Our lives as persons revolve around significant interpersonal relationships. Damaging the deepest relationships between persons requires extremely strong justification. That is why, for instance, we do not (with some exceptions) require spouses to testify against each other in court. But in the fact the deepest relationship in a person’s life is their relationship with God. And to go not only against morality but against what one takes to be the will of God imposes particularly nasty damage on that relationship. Thus when the person cognizes the action they are being pressured to take as not only wrong but contrary to the will of God, the harm that befalls them in doing the action is especially grave. Note that for this harm, it is not necessary that the action be contrary to the will of God—it is enough that the agent believes that it is.

I mean the argument in the previous paragraph to depend on the fact that the person really is in a relationship with God, and in particular that God really exists. I am not talking of the merely subjective harm of thinking that an imaginary relationship is harmed. The extent to which that argument can be extended to people whose religion is non-theistic takes thought. One might hope that these people are still having a relationship with God in and through their religion, and then a version of the point may well apply.

A responsibility asymmetry

Discussion of my previous post has made me realize that, it seems, we’re more apt to be skeptical about the culpability of someone whose evil actions arose from a poor upbringing than of the praiseworthiness of someone whose good actions arose from a good upbringing.

This probably isn’t due to any general erring in favor of positive judgments. We’re not that nice (e.g., think of the research that shows that people are going to say that the CEO who doesn’t care about the environment but institutes profitable policies that happen to pollute is intentionally polluting, while the CEO who doesn’t care about the environment but institutes profitable policies that happen to be good for the environment is not intentionally helping the environment).

Here are two complementary stories that would make the apparent asymmetry reasonable:

• Virtue makes one free while vice enslaves.

• The person raised badly may be non-blameworthily ignorant of what is right. The person raised well knows what is right, though may deserve no credit for the knowledge. But non-blameworthy ignorance takes away responsibility, while knowledge gained without credit is good enough for responsibility for the actions flowing from that knowledge.

The noise from this asymmetry suggests that we may want to be careful when discussing free will and determinism to include both positive and negative actions evenhandedly in our examples.

Yet another simple argument for incompatibilism

1. If you have always done the morally best you could, you are not culpable for anything.

2. If determinism is true, you have always done the only thing you could.

3. When you do the only thing you can, you do the morally best you can.

4. So, if determinism is true, you are not culpable for anything.

Divine command theory and atheism

Suppose that the captain impersonates an admiral and yells: “Turn hard to starboard!” The sailors ought to turn hard to starboard and the captain had the authority to command them this. But nonetheless the captain has failed to issue a valid order. For in order to issue a valid order, the captain needs to make herself heard as the captain. The sailors’ obligation to turn to starboard is not a command-obligation but rather is an obligation of conscience to do what one believes, correctly or not, to be the commands of legitimate authority. A sailor who refused to turn would be acting badly, but would not be disobeying an order: she wouldn’t be disobeying the captain’s order, since the captain did not order anything qua captain, or the admiral’s order, since the admiral didn’t order anything.

The same thing would be true, though perhaps less clearly, if the admiral impersonated the captain and told the crew to turn to starboard. The admiral had the authority to issue the order (or so I assume), but to do that she would have to have made herself heard as the admiral.

Similarly, if the captain is a telepath and induces in the helmsman a strong moral belief that he should turn the ship to starboard, no order has been issued to the helmsman. If the helmsman refuses to turn, he is disobeying conscience but he is not disobeying the captain.

Now, consider the command version of the divine command theory: God’s commands (rather than will) define moral obligation. Now we have a prima facie problem with atheists. The atheist believes in an obligation to refrain from stealing, but is not aware of it as a divine command. Therefore, it seems that no command has been validly issued to the atheist: the case seems relevantly like that of the telepath captain. Thus it follows that on the command version of the divine command theory, the atheist has no obligations.

This was a bit too quick, however. For a promulgation condition on commands that requires actual cognitive uptake is too strong. If the captain is yelling orders as captain but the helmsman has deliberately plugged her ears so as not to hear the orders, the helmsman’s failure to hear does not impugn the validity of the orders.

But suppose instead that the helmsman is hard of hearing due to a recent explosion, and the captain whispers the order while knowing the helmsman won’t hear it. In this case, the order is invalid. It seems, roughly, that if the captain could easily make the command heard as her command but does not do so, and the failure to hear it as her command is not something the other party is antecedently at fault for, then the command is invalid.

Now, it seems that there are atheists who are not at fault for their atheism, and whose failure to hear divine commands as divine commands is not something they are at fault for. But God could easily (everything is easy to an omnipotent being) make them hear them as such. So, on the command version of divine command theory, these atheists have never been validly commanded, and hence have no obligations—which is clearly false.

Maybe I will get some pushback on the claim that there are atheists who are not at fault for atheism. Let’s consider, then, the case of Alice, a life-long atheist who is at fault for her atheism and who was never aware of any divine command as a divine command. Then, at some point t₁ of time, Alice did the first thing that made her be at fault for her atheism and/or her failure to be aware of divine commands as divine commands. Perhaps an argument for theism was being offered to her by Bob, but she refused to listen to Bob out of racism.

Now to be at fault, you have to culpably do something wrong. And, according to divine command theory, the wrong is always a violation of a (valid) divine command. So, at t₁, Alice’s action was the violation of a valid divine command. But at t₁, Alice wasn’t aware of the command as one from God, since we’ve assumed that Alice was never aware of any divine command as a divine command. And Alice’s failure to be aware of the command as one from God was not due to any antecedent fault of hers, since we have assumed that t₁ is the time of Alice’s first action that made her be at fault with respect to this failure.

Thus, it seems that the divine command theorist who takes the command part of the theory seriously has to say that those who are now atheists are atheists because they disobeyed a command from God which they were aware of as a command from God. This is deeply implausible. It is way more implausible than the already not very plausible response to the hiddenness argument that says that all atheists are morally guilty for their atheism.

But perhaps we want to distinguish epistemic from moral fault, and say that a command can still be valid if it fails to be heard due to an epistemic fault that the commander could have easily overcome, even when that epistemic fault does not correspond to a moral one. I do not think this is plausible. Being unable to parse complex sentences might be an epistemic fault. But if I issue a complex command to someone I know to be incapable of parsing such complex sentences, when I could easily have used a simpler sentence with the same content, I do not validly command.

Culpability for irrational action when you are culpable for the irrationality

It is widely thought that:

1. If you act wrongly in an irrational state, but you are responsible for being in the irrational state, then the irrationality does not take away your culpability for the wrongful action.

But consider these two cases.

Case 1: Suppose that you now program an unstoppable robot to punch me in the face ten years from now. The law sentences you to a jail sentence justly suited to what you have done. Then, ten years later, the robot punches me in the face.

Comments: You clearly should not get another jail sentence for that. You’ve already been punished for all that you did, namely programming the robot.

Case 2: The same as Case 1, except now the unstoppable robot is programmed to brainwash you into punching me in the face. Ten years later, the robot brainwashes you, and you punch me in the face.

Comments: I think it is almost as clear as in Case 1 that you should not get another jail sentence. It shouldn’t make any difference to your culpability whether the robot punches me directly, as in Case 1, or brainwashes you (or someone else) to punch me.

This judgment seems to contradict (1). For in Case 2, you act out of an irrational state but are responsible for that irrational state.

I think we need to clarify things. We talk of culpability for actions and culpability for the effects of actions. Thus, if Alice freely punches Bob in the face, we can say that she culpable both for punching Bob and for the effect, say, Bob’s broken nose. But when we say that Alice is culpable for Bob’s broken nose, I think this should be taken as shorthand for: Alice is culpable for freely punching Bob in the face in a way that resulted in a broken nose. In other words, culpability for the effects of actions is culpability for an action qua resulting in the effects.

In Case 1, you have effect-culpability for the robot punching me, and action-culpability for programming the robot. Talking of the effect-culpability for my being punched is shorthand for saying that you are action-culpable for programming the robot so that it would punch me.

In Case 2, we should say a very similar thing. You have effect-culpability for your

Principle (1) is right as regarding effect-culpability but wrong as regarding action-culpability.

Scepticism about culpability

I rarely take myself to know that someone is culpable for some particular wrongdoing. There are three main groups of exception:

1. my own wrongdoings, so many of which I know by introspection to be culpable

2. cases where others give me insight into their culpability through their testimony, their expressions of repentance, etc.

3. cases where divine revelation affirms or implies culpability (e.g., Adam and David).

In type 2 cases, I am also not all that confident, because unless I know a lot about the person, I will worry that they are being unfair to themselves.

I am amazed that a number of people have great confidence that various infamous malefactors are culpable for their grave injustices. Maybe they are, but it seems easier to believe in culpability in the case of more minor offenses than greater ones. For the greater the offense, the further the departure from rationality, and hence the more reason there is to worry about something like temporary or permanent insanity or just crazy beliefs.

I don’t doubt that most people culpably do many bad things, and even that most people on some occasion culpably do something really bad. But I am sceptical of my ability to know which of the really bad things people do they are culpable for.

The difficulty with all this is how it intersects with the penal system. Is there maybe a shallower kind of culpability that is easier to determine and that is sufficient for punishment? I don’t know.

Avoiding double counting of culpabilities

Here’s an interesting double-counting problem for wrongdoing. Alice stands to inherit a lot of money from a rich uncle in Australia. Bob thinks he stands to inherit a lot of money from a rich uncle in New Zealand. Both of them know that it’s wrong to kill rich uncles for their inheritance, but each of them nonetheless hires a hitman with the instruction to kill the rich uncle. Both hitmen run off with the money and do nothing. But Bob in fact has no uncles—he was misinformed.

Here are some plausible observations:

1. Alice culpably committed two wrongs: she violated her conscience and she wronged her uncle by hiring a hitman to kill him.

2. Bob culpably committed only one of these wrongs: he violated his conscience.

3. Bob is just as morally culpable as Alice.

Here is one way to reconcile these observations. We should distinguish between something like moral failings of the will, on the one hand, and wrongdoings, on the other. It is the moral failings of the will that result in culpability. This culpability then will qualify one or more wrongdoings. But the amount of culpability is not accounted by looking at the culpable wrongdoings, but at the moral failings of the will. A being that executes unalloyed perfect justice will look only at these failings of the will. Alice and Bob each morally failed in the same way and to the same degree (as far as the stories go), and so they are equally culpable. But, nonetheless, Alice has two culpable wrongdoings—culpable through the same moral failing of the will, which should not be double counted for purposes of just punishment.

Adding infinite guilt

Bob has the belief that there are infinitely many people in a parallel universe, and that they wear numbered jerseys: 1, 2, 3, …. He also believes that he has a system in a laboratory that can cause indigestion to any subset of these people that he can describe to a computer. Bob has good evidence for these beliefs and is (mirabile!) sane.

Consider four scenarios:

1. Bob attempts to cause indigestion to all the odd-numbered people.

2. Bob attempts to cause indigestion to all the people whose number is divisible by four.

3. Bob attempts to cause indigestion to all the people whose number is either odd or divisible by four.

4. Bob yesterday attempted to cause indigestion to all the odd-numbered people and on a later occasion to all the people whose number is divisible by four.

In each scenario, Bob has done something very bad, indeed apparently infinitely bad: he has attempted infinite mass sickening.

In scenarios 1-3, other things being equal, Bob’s guilt is equal, because the number of people he attempted to cause indigestion to is the same—a countable infinity.

But now we have two arguments about how bad Bob’s action in scenario 4 is. On the one hand, in scenario 4 he has attempted to sicken the exact same people as in scenario 3. So, he is equally guilty in scenario 4 as in scenario 3.

On the other hand, in scenario 4, Bob is guilty of two wrong actions, the action of scenario 1 and that of scenario 2. Moreover, as we saw before, each of these actions on its own makes him just as guilty as the action in scenario 3 does. Doing two wrongs, even two infinite wrongs, is worse than just doing one, if they are all of the same magnitude. So in scenario 4, Bob is guiltier than in scenario 3. One becomes the worse off for acquiring more guilt. But if 4 made Bob no guiltier than 3 would have, it would make Bob no guiltier than 1 would have, and so after committing the first wrong in 4, since he would already have the guilt of 1, Bob would have no guilt-avoidance reason to refrain from the second wrong in 4, which is absurd.

How to resolve this? I think as follows: when accounting guilt, we should look at guilty acts of will rather than consequences or attempted consequences. In scenario 4, although the total attempted harm is the same as in each of scenarios 1-3, there are two guilty acts of will, and that makes Bob guiltier in scenario 4.

We could tell the story in 4 so that there is only one act of will. We could suppose that Bob can self-hypnotize so that today he orders his computer to sicken the odd-numbered people and tomorrow those whose number is divisible by four. In that case, there would be only one act of will, which will be less bad. It’s a bit weird to think that Bob might be better off morally for such self-hypnosis, but I think one can bite the bullet on that.

Attempts at wrongdoing

It is a common intuition, especially among Christians, that attempts at immoral actions—say, attempted murder or attempted adultery—are just as bad as the completion of the actions.

But in practice the situation is rather more complicated. Suppose Samantha is about to murder Fred. She is sitting on the rooftop with her rifle, has measured the windspeed, has made the corrections to her sights, is putting Fred in her cross-hairs and is getting ready to squeeze the trigger at an opportune moment. Then suddenly a police officer comes up and grabs Samantha’s rifle before she can do anything.

Samantha has performed actions whose end was Fred’s death. She is an attempted murderer. But I think there is an immoral act that she has been saved from. For imagine three versions of how the story could end:

1. The police officer comes up and grabs her rifle at time t₁ before she squeezes the trigger.

2. At time t₁, Samantha decides not to squeeze the trigger and not commit the murder.

3. At time t₁, Samantha decides to squeeze the trigger.

In all three cases, by the time of t₁, Samantha is already an attempted murderer. But in version 2, Samantha has done at least one less bad thing than in version 3. As of t₁, Samantha still has a decision to make: to go through with the action or not. In case 3, she decides that wrongly. In case 2, she decides that rightly.

In case 1, the police officer prevents her from making that decision. It seems clear that Samantha’s moral state in case 1 is less bad in than in case 3. For in case 3, Samantha makes a morally wrong decision that has no parallel in case 1. So the police officer has not only saved Fred’s life, but he has decreased the number of wrongs done by Samantha.

Of course, timing and details matter here. Suppose that the police officer grabs Samantha’s rifle at a moment when the bullet is already traveling through the barrel, making the shot go wide. Then Samantha is an attempted murderer, but the amount of wickedness on her conscience is the same as in case 3.

So there is a moral distinction to be made between Samantha in cases 1 and 3, but the distinction isn’t the distinction between attempt and success. Rather, the issue is that a typical wrong action involves multiple acts of will, many of which may well come with the possibility of stopping. Each time one does not will to stop, while being capable of willing to stop, one does another wrong. If one is prevented from completion of the act after the last of these acts of will, then one is not better off in terms of one’s moral guilt state. (Though one is better off in terms of how much restitution one owes and similar considerations.) But if one is stopped earlier, then one is better off.

This means that counting counts of sin is tricky. Suppose Fred had decided on committing adultery with Samantha’s sister Patricia. He texted Patricia offering to meet with her in a hotel room. He is already an attempted adulterer. But then he makes a number of decisions each of which could be a stopping point. He decides to get in his car. To drive to the hotel. To enter the room. Etc. At each of these points, Fred could have stopped, I assume. But at each point he chose adultery instead. So by the time he is in the room, he has committed adultery in his will many times.

But when we count wrongs, we don’t count like that. We count the number of murders, the number of adulteries or the number of thefts—not the number of times that one could have stopped along the way. We act as if the person who murdered five is worse than the person who murdered one, even if the person who murdered the one had to drive ten times as far.

Maybe the reason we count as we do is just a pragmatic matter. We don’t know just how many times one’s will is capable of stopping one, and how much a person just acts on auto-pilot, having set a course of action.

Or maybe the responsibility for the choose-not-to-stop decisions is much lower than for the initial decision?

I don’t know.

"Should know"

I’ve been thinking about the phrase “x should know that s”. (There is probably a literature on this, but blogging just wouldn’t be as much fun if one had to look up the literature!) We use this phrase—or its disjunctive variant “x knows or should know that s”—very readily, without its calling for much evidence about x.

• “As an engineer Alice should know that more redundancy was needed in this design.”

• “Bob knows or should know that his behavior is unprofessional for a librarian.”

• “Carl should have known that genocide is wrong.”

Here’s a sense of “x should know that s”: x has some relevant role R and it is normal for those in R to know that s under the relevant circumstances. In that sense, to say that x should know that s we don’t need to know anything specific about x’s history or mental state, other than that x has role R. Rather, we need to know about R: it is normal engineering practice to build in sufficient redundancy; librarians have an unwritten code of professional behavior; human beings normally have a moral law written in their hearts.

This role-based sense of “should know” is enough to justify treating x as a poor exemplar of the role R when x does not in fact know that s. When R is a contingent role, like engineer or librarian, it could be a sufficient for drumming x out of R.

But we sometimes seem use a “should know” claim to underwrite moral blame. And the normative story I just gave about “should know” isn’t strong enough for that. Alice might have had a really poor education as an engineer, and couldn’t have known better. If the education was sufficiently poor, we might kick her out of the profession, but we shouldn’t blame her morally.

Carl, of course, is a case apart. Carl’s ignorance makes him a defective human being, not just a defective engineer or librarian. Still a defective human being is not the same as a morally blameworthy human being. And in Carl’s case we can’t drum him out of the relevant role without being able to levy moral blame on him, as drumming him out of humanity is, presumably, capital punishment. However, we can lock him up for the protection of society.

On the other hand, we could take “x should know that s” as saying something about x’s state, like that it is x’s own fault if x doesn’t know. But in that case, I think people often use the phrase without sufficient justification. Yes, it’s normal to know that genocide is wrong. But we live in a fallen world where people can fall very far short of what is normal through no fault of their own, by virtue of physical and mental disease, the intellectual influence of others, and so on.

I worry that in common use the phrase “x should know that s” has two rationally incompatible features:

• Our evidence only fits with the role-based normative reading.

• The conclusions only fit with the personal fault reading.

Two ways of acting wrongly through ignorance

Case 1: Petr shoots and kills Anna while hiking, thinking that Anna is a dangerous bear (she was wearing a fur coat).

Case 2: Ivan the NKVD agent shoots and kills Natasha for speaking out against the state, thinking it is right to kill dissidents.

Both Petr and Ivan acted in ignorance. If their ignorance was inculpable, then they might well be inculpable for their respective killings. However, even if neither is culpable, it seems that Ivan is now a murderer while Petr is an accidental killer.

Wherein lies the difference? Both killed someone who shouldn't have been killed. Both did something that would have been a case of culpable murder if they killed while knowing all the relevant facts.

One difference is this. Petr acts under this description: "Killing something that appears to be a dangerous bear" or maybe even: "Killing a dangerous bear." Ivan acts under this description: "Killing someone who spoke out against the state." The description that Petr acts on is a description that it is permissible to act on (regardless of the version we choose). The description that Ivan acts on is a description that it is always impermissible to act on. Both Petr and Ivan have deficient knowledge. But Petr's intention is acceptable while Ivan's is corrupt.

I am somewhat inclined to go even further. Of the two, Petr did nothing morally wrong. Ivan, however, acted wrongly, albeit perhaps inculpably. This works best if we take Petr's intention to be "Kill a dangerous bear." In that case, we can say that Petr's action was a permissible attempt to kill a dangerous bear. But Petr's action was unsuccessful. On the other hand, it seems that Ivan's intention to kill a dissident made his action impermissible but successful.

Maybe. But what if Ivan's intention was this: "Permissibly kill Natasha for being a dissident"? In that case, Ivan failed, too, since his killing wasn't permissible. But now it seems we have a close parallel between Petr and Ivan. Petr failed to fulfill his intention to kill a dangerous bear. Ivan failed to fulfill his intention to permissibly kill Natasha. Can't we, in fact, say that just Petr accidentally killed a human, Ivan accidentally killed someone that it was impermissible to kill? So can we really say that Ivan was a murderer but Petr wasn't?

I don't know. There is, nonetheless, this difference. The intention "Kill a dangerous bear" is one that it is possible to succeed at. The intention "Permissibly kill Natasha for being a dissident" is one that it is not possible to succeed at. (Admittedly, there may be cases where it's permissible to kill a dissident. But even in those cases, it's not permissible to kill the dissident for being a dissident. Rather, the cases of permissibility are ones where there is some reason for the killing over and beyond the dissident's dissidence.) But while this is a significant difference, it doesn't seem to be a morally significant difference. After all, just as "Permissibly kill Natasha for being a dissident" is impossible to succeed at, so too "Find a counterexample to Fermat's Last Theorem" is impossible to succeed at. However, there is nothing morally wrong with someone who tries to find a counterexample to Fermat's Last Theorem in ignorance of the impossibility.

Inculpably acting through culpable ignorance

It is widely held that:

1. Doing the wrong thing while inculpably ignorant that it's wrong is itself inculpable.
2. Doing the wrong thing while culpably ignorant that it's is culpable, assuming the other conditions for culpability are met (freedom, etc.).

I think (1) is true but (2) is false. I think that not only does inculpable ignorance excuse, but so does culpable ignorance. (Assuming, of course, that it's real ignorance: one can lie to oneself that one is ignorant when in fact one knows.)

Start with this case. Sally was inculpably ignorant of the wrongness of targeting civilians in just wars. Like many Americans, she was raised to think that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally permissible, since the bombings saved many lives by ending the war early. One morning, while an undergraduate, she culpably spent an extra five minutes on Facebook before going to her ethics class. As a result, she culpably showed up five minutes late (being late to class isn't always morally wrong, but being late without sufficiently good reason disturbs others' learning and is morally wrong, and I assume this is a case like that). Consequently, she missed the discussion of double effect and the distinction between strategic and terror bombing. Had she heard the discussion, she would have known that it's wrong to target civilians. Since she is culpable for lateness to her ethics class, her ignorance of the wrongness of the kind of terror bombing that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were subjected to is wrong. Years later, incurring no further culpability, she is still ignorant. But then one day there is a just war, and she is a drone pilot asked to target civilians in a situation relevantly similar to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She does so, believing that it's her duty to do so.

Had Sally refused to follow orders, she would have been culpable for violating her conscience--and indeed, very seriously culpable since her bombing saved many lives by ending the war early (I am assuming that this was the case in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). But in fact, Sally acted wrongly: she committed mass murder. She did so in ignorance, but her ignorance was culpable, since she was culpable for being late to the class that would have cured her of her ignorance.

Given (1), had double effect not been discussed in class that morning when she spent too much time on Facebook, she would have been entirely inculpable for mass murder. It seems implausible that whether Sally is culpable for mass murder depends on what in fact went on in a class that she missed. Furthermore, culpability shouldn't depend on arcane counterfactuals. But it could be quite an arcane counterfactual whether Sally would have learned that it's wrong to target civilians in a just war. It might have depended on fine details of just how persuasive the professor was, what effect Sally's presence in the class would have had on the mode of presentation, etc.

Moreover, it seems implausible that Sally is culpable for mass murder because of her culpability for the peccadillo of being five minutes late to class. The intuition behind (1) is that you don't get culpability out of inculpability. You likewise shouldn't get mass-murder-level culpability out of a peccadillo. But this last argument is a little fast. For while "Sally is culpable for mass-murder" misleadingly suggests that Sally has great culpability. If we accept (1), we should accept a parallel principle that the degree to which one is culpable for a wrong act done in ignorance is no greater than one's degree of culpability for the ignorance. As a result, we might say that Sally is culpable for mass-murder, but the degree of guilt is at a level corresponding to being five minutes late to class (without, I assume, any reasonable expectation that those five minutes would result in ignorance about mass murder).

Very well. Let's suppose that five milliturps are the level of guilt corresponding to the lateness to class. Maybe the level of guilt for the mass murder would have been a gigaturp per victim, if Sally had known that such bombing is wrong. So the suggestion we are now exploring for saving (2) is that Sally's level of guilt for an ignorant bombing run is capped at five milliturps, no matter how many victims there are. (There is something odd about having slight guilt for something so big, but I don't think we should worry about the oddity.) Very well. Consider now two scenarios. In the first one, Sally goes on a single bombing run that she knows will claim 10,000 civilian victims. In the second, she goes on two bombing runs, which will claim 5,000 civilian victims each. On the capping suggestion, in the first scenario, Sally acquires five milliturps of guilt for her bombing run. In the second scenario, she acquires five milliturps of guilt for the first bombing run, too. That's already a little strange: we would expect less culpability with fewer victims. But it gets worse. In the second bombing run, the capping view will also assign five milliturps. As a result, in the second scenario, Sally incurs a total of ten milliturps of guilt. And that seems just wrong: it shouldn't matter that much how the victims are divided up. Furthermore, the intuition being the principle that culpability for an ignorant act can't exceed the culpability for the ignorance is, I think, violated when a multiplicity of ignorant acts exceeds in total culpability the culpability for the ignorance.

We might try a modified capping principle: The culpability for all acts coming from culpable ignorance is capped in total. This has the odd result, however, that in the second scenario, Sally is five-milliturps-guilty for the first run, but not at all guilty for the second, having already reached her culpability cap. At this point it seems much more reasonable simply to suppose that all of Sally's guilt is the initial five milliturps for being late to class. She doesn't acquire a second five milliturps for her bombing runs.

It may seem to be an insult to the memory of the victims that Sally manages to murder them without incurring any guilt. But, for what it's worth, it seems to me to be less of an insult to suppose that she is innocent of the murder than to suppose that she is pecadillo-level guilty for it, as on the capping views.

Culpably mistaken conscience

It is plausible that we have duties of conscience arising from inculpable mistakes about what we should do. I shall assume this and argue that culpable mistakes also yield duties of conscience.

Here are two cases.

1. Fred hires a neurologist to brainwash him into a state which will make him think the next day that it is his duty to embezzle money from his employer. The neurologist succeeds. The next day Fred conscientiously believes he has a duty to embezzle money from his employer. But he refrains from doing so out of fear of being caught.
2. Sally hires a neurologist to brainwash her into which will make him think the next day that it is her duty to embezzle money from her employer. The neurologist fails. But that night, completely coincidentally, a rogue neurologist breaks into her home and while she's sleeping successfully brainwashes her into that very state the first neurologist failed to brainwash her into. The next day Sally conscientiously believes she has a duty to embezzle money from her employer. But she refrains from doing so out of fear of being caught. There are no further relevant differences between Sally's case and Fred's.

Fred is responsible for his conscience being mistaken. Sally is not responsible for that. Granted, Sally is culpable for trying to make her conscience be mistaken, but she is no more responsible for the mistaken conscience than the attempted murderer is responsible when her intended victim is coincidentally killed by someone else.

If inculpably mistaken conscience gives rise to duties, Sally has a duty of conscience to embezzle, and she fails in her duty. She thus acted immorally on both days: on the first day she acted immorally by asking to be brainwashed and on the second day she acted immorally by refusing to obey her conscience.

Thus:

3. If culpably mistaken conscience does not give rise to duties, then Fred has not violated a duty of conscience by refraining from embezzling, while Sally has.

If culpably mistaken conscience does not give rise to duties, then Sally is in a morally worse state than Fred, being guilty of two things while Fred is only guilty of one.

But on the other hand, Fred and Sally have made all the same relevant decisions in the same subjective states. The only possibly relevant difference is entirely outside of them--namely, whether the neurologist that they actually hired is in fact the neurologist who brainwashed them. But the whole point of the idea of duties of conscience is to honor the subjective component in duty, and so if Fred and Sally's relevant decisions are all relevantly alike, Fred and Sally will also be alike in whether they've violated a duty of conscience. Hence:

4. If Sally has violated a duty of conscience by refraining from embezzling, so has Fred.

It logically follows from (3) and (4) that:

5. Culpably mistaken conscience gives rise to duties.

Of course all of this argument was predicated on the assumption that inculpably mistaken conscience gives rise to duties, and perhaps a reader may want to now revisit that assumption. But I think the assumption is true, leaving us with the conclusion that mistaken conscience gives rise to duties whether or not the mistake is culpable.

Now let's turn the case about. Suppose that both Fred and Sally follow their respective mistaken consciences and therefore embezzle. What should we say? Should we say that they did nothing wrong? It seems we shouldn't say that they did nothing wrong, for if they did nothing wrong then their consciences weren't mistaken, which they were. So let's accept (though I have a long-shot idea that I've talked about elsewhere that might get out of this) that they both did wrong. Thus, as in Mark Murphy's account of conscience, they were in the unhappy position that whatever they did would be wrong: by embezzling they defraud their employer and by not embezzling they violate their conscience.

But what about their culpability? Since Sally's case is one of inculpable ignorance, we have to say that Sally is not culpable for the embezzlement. Let's further suppose Sally and Fred's reasons for having themselves brainwashed were to get themselves to embezzle. Thus Sally is guilty of entering on a course of action intended to lead to embezzlement--basically, attempted embezzlement. But she's not guilty of embezzlement. What about Fred? He is certainly responsible for the embezzlement: it was intentionally caused by his immoral action of hiring the neurologist. But I am inclined to think that this is an effect-responsibility ("liability" is a good word) rather than action-culpability. Fred is responsible for the embezzlement in the way that one is responsible for the intended effects of one's culpable actions, in this case the action of hiring a brainwasher, but he isn't culpable for it in the central sense of culpability. (Compare: Suppose that instead of hiring a neurologist to brainwash himself, he hired the second brainwasher in Sally's case. Then Fred wouldn't be action-culpable for Sally's embezzlement, since one is only action-culpable for what one does, but only responsible for her embezzlement as an intended effect of his action.) Sally lacks that responsibility for the effect--the embezzlement--because her plan to get herself to embezzle the money failed as the embezzlement was caused by the rogue neurologist.

In terms of moral culpability for their actions, in the modified case where they conscientiously embezzle, Fred and Sally are, I think, exactly on par. Each is morally culpable precisely for hiring the neurologist, and that's all. That may seem like it gets them off the hook too easily, but it does not: they did something very bad in hiring the brainwasher. So, if I'm right, they are on par if they both conscientiously embezzle and they are on par if they both violate their consciences by refusing to embezzle.

Conscience and intending the impossible

One of the toughest problems is what to do about cases of mistaken conscience. Let's say Samantha has a justified false belief that it is right to kill one innocent that ten might live (whether anyone can be really justified in thinking this is a question to bracket), and acts on it. Then it seems: Samantha did wrong and she did right. She did wrong in killing the innocent but she did right in following her conscience. But that shouldn't be the whole story. For suppose that Samantha had done the opposite—refrained from killing the innocent. Then she would have done wrong in disobeying conscience and right in refraining from killing the innocent. So whatever she does, she does wrong and she does right. And yet the two cases are not analogous. For when she kills, then she is inculpable of the murder by reason of her justified false belief. And when she refrains, she is culpable for violating her conscience.

We could leave it at this. But that would leave unexplained why it is that the duties of conscience are what culpability aligns with.

For years I've been trying to explore a story here, and I am never quite happy with it, and I am still not happy with it, but let me give it one more try. Intention, permissibility and impermissibility applies to action types, and not just to action tokens. And while there are no impossible action tokens, there are impossible action types that can be the objects of one's intentions. Many people, some sane and some not, have intended to trisect an angle (with ruler and straightedge). In so doing, their intentions had an object, the action type trisecting an angle. Moreover, their intended action type was permissible, albeit also impossible. We might say that per impossibile had they succeeded, they would have done something permissible and worthwhile.

Now go back to Samantha. Samantha intends a consequentially justified killing of an innocent. This action type, just like the trisecting of an angle, is impossible. It is impossible for consequences to justify the killing of an innocent. But if per impossibile she succeeded, she would have done something permissible and worthwhile. Plausibly, Samantha's intended action type while impossible is permissible, just as trisecting an angle is.

So on this story Samantha intended to do something permissible, but failed. She ended up doing something other than she intended. Samantha's action was an attempt at a consequentially justified killing of an innocent, and at least if she was justified in thinking that the attempt would succeed, she did right to make the attempt. And had she refrained from the attempt, she would have done wrong. Compare the case of someone who is ignorant of the impossibility of trisecting an angle and is told that an innocent will die if he does not trisect an angle. He acts well by trying to trisect and would be we doing wrong by refraining from trying.

On this story, if she kills, Samantha doesn't do both right and wrong. She simply does the right thing. But this right thing is an attempt at the impossible, and hence fails. And its failure, tragically, results in the death of an innocent (though if indeed the ten are saved, there is a silver lining, though not a justification). And if she believes that the killing would be consequentially justified, then in refraining from trying to kill, she simply does wrong.

But don't we want to say that Samantha unjustifiedly killed an innocent, and that's wrong? We need to be cautious here. The experienced surgeon who does her very best but who nonetheless kills the innocent patient does not do wrong. Her performance of the surgery is, indeed, a killing. And it's not a justified killing. But the surgeon's action is not intentional under the description killing the patient, and to say that the surgeon did wrong or right in killing the patient jars in the same way that it jars to ask whether my stumbling over a bump while walking to work was right or wrong. The stumbling was a part of my attempt to get to work, and hence was a part of a right action. But it was an accidental part as far as my intentions go. The same goes for the surgeon. It is harder to say this in Samantha's case, but perhaps not impossible. She did not intend a killing simpliciter, but a justified one. I would be inclined to say that both the surgeon's and Samantha's killings are non-justified, rather than unjustified.

The case of Samantha is particularly striking because it is impossible for a killing of an innocent to be consequentially justified. But one can also have similar cases where what is intended is possible. Suppose I reveal a secret that I promised to keep silent because I justifiedly but falsely believe that I ought to. Then I intend to break confidence as I ought. I fail—my breaking confidence is not justified. But what I intend is in fact a possible action type—there are times when one ought to break confidence. I do the right thing simpliciter: I attempt to do what I ought.

In the cases of Samantha and of confidence breaking, mistaken conscience enters into the story by making it possible for the agent to intend what otherwise the agent could not intend. Thus mistaken conscience functions much as the attempted trisector's false belief that one can trisect an angle.

There are probably some really serious problems with the above as a general proposal of what happens in conflicts of conscience. Here is one that particularly bothers me. I had breakfast today. Suppose, however, that I had promised someone not to have breakfast today (say, in order to experience solidarity with the less fortunate) but I completely innocently forgot the promise (imagine someone slipped me a forgetfulness pill). The analogue to the Samantha story would be that I intended to have a breakfast that I did not promise not to have. But of course I am exceedingly unlikely to have intended this while eating breakfast (wouldn't thinking about promises have brought my promise to mind?). Do you ever have such intentions when eating breakfast? (I suppose if one was in a habit of making promises to skip breakfast, one might. But one shouldn't make a habit of skipping breakfast—it's not healthy.)

Perhaps, though, whenever we do anything, we should be intending to do it rightly, or to glorify God through it, or the like. And if I tried to, say, rightly eat breakfast, while bound by promise not to eat, my action was a failure. So we do have the same pattern as in the Samantha story.

But is it really the case that whenever we act we need to have some such intention? Personally, I find this a plausible proposal. After all, we are to love God with our whole heart, soul, might and mind, and St Paul tells us to pray always and to take captive every thought (noema) for Christ. Thus every action of ours should be at least implicitly directed (perhaps in a way that even an atheist can) at the glory of God. When we fail to have it so directed, we do wrong.

This sounds right, but I don't know that it solves the breakfast problem. For suppose that I eat breakfast with no such intention, and eat contrary to my innocently forgotten promise. Then indeed I do wrong by not having the right God-glorifying intention in eating breakfast. But my innocent ignorance of my promise is still relevant. I am culpable for not intending to glorify God, but I am not culpable for breaking my promise, it seems. So something has yet to be explained.

But that we can handle a number of cases using the above method suggests that we may be able to do even more if we put our minds to it. Maybe there is something special about the promise case, for instance.

Infinite culpability

It's time to defend something like Anselm's idea of infinite culpability.  I once expressed a hope that I'd eventually do so, but couldn't think of good things to say.  Anselm's idea was that there was an infinity in our sins, because they were sins against an  infinite God.  Here, I just want to defend the real possibility that a human being is infinitely culpable.

Case 1. Mason justifiedly believes (correctly or not) that the universe contains infinitely many inhabited planets, each of them with rational beings as deserving of respect as humans are.  Mason works as a janitor at the Large Hadron Collider, and also justifiedly (but incorrectly) believes that if he loosens some bolts, the Collider will malfunction in such a way that it will destroy the universe with all its rational beings.  Mason wants destructive power--he wants to outdo Hitler and Stalin in their destructiveness--and so he loosens these bolts so as to kill infinitely many rational beings.  In so doing, he commits attempted murder of an infinite number of people.

Now, in most nearby possible worlds where Mason does this, he is likely so insane as not to be fully culpable for his action.  But it is within the bounds of real possibility (causal possibility consistent with the basic structure of the world and humanity as we know it) that Mason is not so insane as to fail to be culpable.

Case 2. Lara justifiedly believes (correctly or not--I think correctly) that there is a heaven and a hell, and that hell involves eternal suffering and heaven involves infinite eternal bliss.  She hates Samantha and tempts her into a serious sin, in order that Samantha would suffer forever in hell and lose the infinite joy of heaven.

For evaluation of Lara's culpability, it doesn't much matter whether her belief about hell is correct or whether she succeeds in destroying Samantha's soul.  Lara has acted so as to make Samantha lose an infinite good, and that is an infinite culpability.

Case 3. Alex justifiedly believes (correctly or not--I think correctly) that memories of moral goods had in this life contribute to the joy of heaven on infinite numbers of occasions, adding an infinite amount of joy.  He acts in a way that makes someone lose a moral good in this life.  According to his beliefs, he has acted in such a way as to have made someone lose an infinite number of goods.  Assuming he was sufficiently aware of this when acting, he is apt to have an infinite culpability.

What is helpful about Cases 2 and 3 is that the beliefs in them have some chance of being correct.

Question: Are there flip-sides of these cases that show that we can gain infinite merit?

Answer: This is not as obvious as it may seem.  For while it is twice as morally wicked to commit an act that kills two innocents, it is not twice as morally good to commit an act that saves two innocents.  If by giving a dollar I can save one life, and I do so, I have shown a small amount of virtue.  But if by giving a dollar I can save two lives, and I do so, I have not shown any more virtue, since I did something that was more strongly required and at no greater cost.  On the other hand, had I refrained from giving the dollar, in the two-life case I would have done something about twice as bad.  So one does not generate cases of infinite merit simply by supposing beliefs about infinite goods.

Nonetheless, one can manufacture cases of infinite merit by supposing beliefs about infinite sacrifice:

Case 4. Chuck justifiedly believes that (a) if he helps a slave escape, he will suffer infinite pain in hell; but (b) it is his moral duty to help the slave escape.   In that case, there is a kind of infinity to the merit of Chuck's helping the slave escape.  (There will, of course, be questions about ulterior motives.  If he does it to have a self-righteous feeling, there may not be such merit.  So this suggestion does not do away with the idea that one needs grace for infinite merit.)

(I don't know how close the case of Chuck is to the much-discussed case of Huck.)

Ignorance

It is a common view that if Fred could not have been reasonably expected to know that what he is doing is wrong, if his ignorance of the wrongness of the action is not his fault, then Fred is not culpable for what he did—though he may be responsible in some way other than culpability (e.g., obliged to make restitution). I am inclined to a much stronger view. If Fred does not believe that what he is doing is wrong, then Fred is not culpable for that action. This is true even if Fred knew that the action was wrong and brainwashed himself out of the belief in its wrongness precisely to escape culpability for the action. Of course, in such a case, he does not escape culpability for brainwashing himself with that end in view. But the wrongful deed that was the subject of his brainwashing does not add to his guilt. He is guilty only for the self-deceit, and he is guilty whether or not he goes on to do that further deed.

I do not know that I've met anybody else who endorsed that stronger view. But it is, I think, an unavoidable consequence of a strong denial of moral luck. Suppose one thinks, as one should, that, ceteris paribus, one incurs no more objective guilt by committing a murder than by attempting a murder. Then consider the following means of attempting murder: Fred hypnotizes himself into killing Patrick. In this case, the act of self-hypnosis is the act of attempting murder, since one does not act under hypnosis (I stipulate). If under hypnosis he kills Patrick, he has committed murder. But his murderous act was the act of committing self-hypnosis—it was an act done with the end that Patrick should die. (If this isn't clear, suppose that Fred hypnotizes Sally into killing Patrick. Then Fred's hypnotizing Sally is an act of murder, and Sally does not act in killing Patrick. But the same is true if Fred is both hypnotist and subject of hypnosis.) So if we deny moral luck, we have to say that he is no more guilty when he succeeds in hypnotizing himself into killing Patrick than when he does not succeed.

Now, suppose that instead of hypnotizing himself, Fred brainwashes himself into believing that he ought to kill Patrick, in order that Patrick may die. The act of self-brainwashing here is also an attempt, perhaps successful and perhaps not, to bring about Patrick's death. (This is really clear in the case where Patrick brainwashes Sally.) Therefore, Fred is guilty of a crime equal to murder, even if the attempt at self-brainwashing fails or succeeds but later on he doesn't carry through the deed. Suppose it all succeeds, though. Then Fred's act of killing Patrick is not a guilty act, though it is a wrongful one. Here is why. Fred has already committed an act equal to murder—the self-brainwashing with the intention that Patrick's death should result. If Fred's act of killing Patrick is a guilty act, then he has committed two acts equal to murder—he is doubly guilty. But that is multiplying guilt beyond necessity. Fred indeed is guilty of two things, but surely not of two acts equal to murder: he is guilty of one act equal to murder (namely, the self-brainwashing with lethal intention) and one act where he sins against himself (namely, by destroying his moral sense through self-brainwashing)—and he is guilty of both whether or not he goes on to kill Patrick.