-By Aarchie Chaturvedi
“The actual consequences which happen to proceed from any action, have a very great effect upon our sentiments concerning its merit or demerit, and almost always either enhance or diminish our sense of both.”
-Adam Smith
A good will is an intrinsic good, i.e., good in itself. It is like a jewel that sparkles on its own and should not be equated with the effects brought forth by it. A bad will cannot be justified on similar lines if, by sheer luck, it turns out well. A reckless driver who does not ram his car into a pedestrian is no better than a driver who does so. There should scarcely be any variation of what we account for reckless driving and manslaughter in this case. The presence or absence of pedestrians is just a matter of chance that cannot undermine the very fact of driving without care.[1]
What we do is also restricted to the opportunities and choices with which we are faced, and these are primarily determined by factors beyond our control. What did one have for breakfast? Was it appetizing? Was it something that can be forgotten? Whatever it was, one did not choose to have that. One might be accustomed to think that one did. Nevertheless, in actuality, one did not. And though one might have had the compos mentis of choosing between- bread or toast and coffee or tea- and one may remember making an active decision, the fact is, one could not have selected any other option except those present in front of him there. Any decision, thus, we think we may have made was simply an illusion.
Immanuel Kant’s theory presumed that all individuals have an equal opportunity to be moral. He tried to keep good and bad luck outside the scope of a person’s intention to fulfil his/her duties. However, with the evolution of ideas like ‘moral luck’, such claims became contentious. Thomas Nagel, an American philosopher, considered Kant’s views to be too simplistic to acknowledge the whirlpool of things that happen in reality. He felt that we would diminish the suitability of our decisions if we could recognize that external influences-good or bad are beyond an individual’s control. And eventually, we would be able to discern that ultimately nothing is under one’s control.[2] The erosion of the moral judgements, hence, should not be treated as something absurd which follows out of accepting Nagel’s views, but it should be dealt as something which flows out of the natural course of activities, though was left unquestioned earlier.
To explain his point, Nagel also categorises external factors into four types of luck, which transforms the happenings of our actions and their consequences.
Moral luck describes a situation whereby a person is assigned a moral blame or praise for an event or for its consequences, over which he/she did not have full control. The issue with moral luck is that gradually nothing will be left that could be perceived as accredited to the responsible self. We would be passive to the events happening in our own lives because we won’t be in time, praised or blamed for them. The things happening around us could be used as a medium to celebrate, explore, or lament, but nothing more than that. The idea of an active self will also be hit hard by this conceptualization.
Nagel presents a different aspect of this point. He says that we are a part of this world which makes us accountable for our actions, but at the same time, we must remember that we are only a part of the world, which in the end leaves us with no one to be. When one sees the result of what they or someone else does as a mere happening, then one will hold the idea loosely of a person deliberately committing that act.[3]
American neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris has suggested the same in his books and speeches. According to him, our thoughts and intentions emerge from a background of which we have no conscious control. He used neuroscientific research to back his ideas. Recordings from the brain’s motor cortex have shown that the activity of just two hundred and fifty-six neurons is enough to anticipate with 80% accuracy a person’s decision about something, approximately seven hundred milliseconds before a person becomes aware of it.
One fact seems indisputable now. Notwithstanding, anything we feel about the consciousness of our actions, at a time when we appear to have complete freedom to behave however we please; our brain has already determined what we will be going do moments before our actual action.
We don’t decide upon the quality of our experiences, and we do not determine the effect such experiences should have on our brains. The bedrock for our mind for selecting a course of action from different available alternatives depends upon the preferences and beliefs that have been drummed into the brain since birth. Nagel, thus, also suggests that the concept of determinism[4] is incompatible with the idea of agency.
Nagel’s argument cannot be totally discarded. His view is partially correct in the sense that all of us do not have equal opportunities to compete in the race of life and, therefore. judging us all in the same spectrum is not the right thing to do.
However, reading his article, gives one the impression that it is not proper to accord someone guilty of having mens rea. Mens rea is essential in framing the charges for many crimes. Nagel’s writing suggests that everything is a result of externalities that involuntary impose themselves upon us. No one can be punished then for the wrongs they committed as no one is responsible for having the intention of doing what they did. This would, hence, encourage the number of misdeeds and offences in this world. Nagel’s views need a bit of enhancement and clarity at this point.
It must be acknowledged that a person is unfortunate for inheriting those genes and life experiences which converted him into a psychopath. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be locked up in the jail or we can’t kill him in self-defence. In fact, in certain circumstances, punishment is the finest technique to influence people to behave themselves.
It is important for us not to confuse determinism with fatalism. Choice, reasoning, discipline, etc. have a chief role to play in our lives despite the truth that, to a certain extent, we are the product of prior happenings.
We, at some places, are aware of the differences between voluntary and involuntary actions. A rough idea can be constructed as to what is someone’s personality and what is an accidental handicap, what are the responsibilities of an adult and what are just the actions of a child, what are the activities of a sane mind and what are the consequences of operations of an insane mind, what are the workings of a troubled conscience and what is the mechanism of a free one. People must not account for free will to be something that grants absolute freedom to one to do whatever one wishes irrespective of its consequences on others. Thus, emerged the concept of compatibilism. Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible, and it is possible to have faith in both without being erratic.
In 2002, two psychologists, namely Kathleen Vohs, University of Utah and Jonathan Schooler, University of Pittsburgh, asked one group of people to read a passage that declared free will to be an illusion and made another group read a passage that was impartial on this topic. After this, they had to take a math test, with cheating made easy. The group advised to see free will as illusory proved more likely to take an illicit glance at the answers. When allowed to steal—to make more money than they were due from an envelope of $1 coins—those whose belief in free will had been undermined, stole more.
The belief that free will is merely an illusion has shown to have made people lazy, less resolute, sulky, less creative, and ungrateful. A decreased belief in free will could also be linked to anxiety, grief, and a reduced devotion towards relationships. It seemed that when we embrace determinism, we indulge our dark side.
Sam Harris has further expanded these findings. His case studies state that in the act of September 11 terrorism, those who hijacked the plane are the personification of criminals who chose to do evil. But if we give up the notion of free will, the September 11 attacks would appear to be any other natural phenomenon.[5]
The response to September 11, Harris argued, was clouded by indignation and the desire for revenge and has led to the unnecessary loss of more lives. He, however, did not say that we should not react at all to September 11. It can be considered natural to have hatred for those criminals given how our surroundings have taught us to be, but it is not reasonable to do so after we have a complete understanding of how one became what he/she is today. A coolheaded response would have rather looked very different and likely been much less wasteful. Harris believed hatred to be a toxin that can destabilize individual lives and whole societies. Losing belief in free will destroys the rationale for hating anyone. In fact, according to his view, the consequences of losing faith in free will would be much less negative than what Vohs and Schooler’s experiments have suggested.
It is important, hence, to keep the best parts of free will and ditch the worst. In many areas, it will likely relent more compassion for those who find themselves in a bad spot. At other places where punishment is imperative, it will build up the magnitudes of autonomy, required to live a decent life. In philosopher Saul Smilsanky’s words, we should believe that free will is an illusion, but such an illusion that society must defend.
This brings us to the point that the definition of criminal justice should also somewhere consider the fact that any of us could have traded off to have had a very different role in life. Previous causes that make people act the way they do should make us understand the degree to which luck is involved with morality itself. Offenders can be punished by law, but they don’t deserve to be objects of public hate.
A legal example of an offence where penalty is determined by the consequences of the act is murder. The penalty for attempted murder is less than that for successful murder even with similar intentions and motives of the criminal in the two cases. His degree of culpability depends on whether the victim happened to be wearing a bullet-proof jacket, or whether a bird flew into the path of the bullet—matters beyond his control. This approach can inflict more punishment on some criminals even when the other one’s have had the similar intention/motive/planning to commit a crime. This method of calculating guilt is a bit fallacious and, therefore, all such misguided or unquestioned statutes of law need urgent attention and if required suitable redressal too.
[1] Pojman, Louis P., and Lewis Vaughn. “Moral Luck.” Essay. In The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in
Ethics and Literature, 354–66. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Determinism is the philosophical view that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes.
[5] Harris Sam, Free Will, (Simon & Schuster) 2012.
[The author, Aarchie Chaturvedi, is a second year student of B.A LL. B (Hons.) at National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi (NUSRL)]