Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility

SAN ITY AN D R ESPON SIBIL ITY 19 SANITY A ND THE ME TAP HY S I CS OF RE S P ONS IB ILI T Y SUSAN W O LF Philosophers who study the problems of free wilr and responsibility have an easier time rhan mosr in meeting .hrli.;;;r";"ur rhe relevanceof their work to ordinary, practical .oo..in' fnO."?, p'toropir.r,,fro .iud; ilr; problems are rarely faced with sucfr cnalengJs u, u,l, ,in.. questions con_ cerning the conditions of re_sponsibiliry .o_". up so obviously and so fre_ quently in everyday life. Under ,".rriiny, t o*iu"a one mrght question whether the connecrions berween phidil;;;;, and nonphilosophical concerns in this area are real. In everyday contexts, whe1.l3yVer.s,judges, parents, and orhers are concerned with issuesof responsibility, tfr.V t"'o*, o. think they know, what in generarthe conditions ofresponsib,ity at.. rr.i. questronsare questions of apprication:Does this or that particuiu. p..ron this or that particular condition? Is this person-mature -."1 enough, or informed enough, or sane enough to be responsible?Was he or she-actingunO.. posthypnotic sugges_ rron or under the influence of.a m.ind-imparriniorugz It is assumed, in these contexts, that normal, fully developea aautt f,"u_uo beings are responsible beings'The questionshaveio do wiih rr,.tr*. g*n rndividual fars within the normal range. " c^ontrast,philosopherstend to be uncertain about the generalcondi.,^By trons ofresponsibirity,and they careless uoont Jruijrng the responsibrefrom the nonresponsibleagents.than about d.r"._ining ,hether, and if so why, any of.us are ever responsiblefor anything ut ;ll. In the classroom, we m^r^e,h1 a.gu. ,rruiirr. fhilosoptrical concerns grow out of the nonphilosophical.ones, that they ot" ofr where the nonphilo_ *ph1:u1 questionsstop. In.this way, ,r. _,gf.il"nvince our srudenrs thar evenif rhey are nor plaeuedby the philosopfrl.ui *orr,.r, they ought to be. lf they worry about wh-ethera person is mature enough, informed enoush. S u sa n w o rf" sa n i tyandtheMetaDhysr csofResponsibir ity' . fr om R ts pons i bi r i tl .c har uttur anJ tht tmorions (l9Ej).40_61. Copyrrghr a Cambridie U";"..Ji,, p*rr'. 373 and sane enough to be responsible, then they should worry about whether that person is metaphysically free enough, too. The argument I make here, however, goes in the opposite direction' My aim is noi to convince people who are interested in the apparently nonphilosophical conditions ofresponsibility that they should go on to worry about the philosophical conditions as well, but rather to urge those who already woriy about the philosophical problems not to leave the more mundane' prephilosophical problems behind. In particular, I suggestthat the mundane iecognition thar sanity is a condition of responsibility has more to do with the irurky and apparently metaphysical problems which surround the issue of responsibility than at first meets the eye. once the significance of the condition ol sinity is fuliy appreciated, at least some of the apparently insuperable metaphysical aspects of the problem of responsibility will dissolve. My strategyis to examine a recent trend in philosophical discussionsof responsibiiity, a trend that tries, but I think ultimateiy fails, to give an acceptableanalysis of the conditions of responsibility. It fails due to what at first appear to be deep and irresolvable metaphysical problems. It is here that flrst t suglest that the condition of sanity comes to the rescue. What at requirement for responsibility-the uppJ* to be an impossiblerequirement ttrat ttre responsible agent have created her- or himself-turns out to be the vastly mortmundane and noncontroversialrequirementthat the responsible agent must, in a fairly standard sense,be sane' F R A N K FU R T, WATSON ' AN D TAYL OR The trend I have in mind is exemplified by the writings of Harry Frankfurt, Gary Watson,and charles Taylor. I will briefly discusseachof their separate proposals,and then olTera composite view that, while lacking the subtlety of any of the separateaccounts,will highlight some important insights and some important blind spots they share. ln his seminal article "Freedom of the will and the concept of a Person,,'r Harry Frankfurt notes a distinction betweenfreedom of action and (or freedom ofthe will. A person has lreedom ofaction, he points out, ifshe walk or to freedom to do-the wills he) has the lreedom to do whatevershe in store' a or open publish a book to or conservative, liberat sit, to vote of accordancewith her strongestdesires.Even a person who has freedom 1 Harry Frankfurt, ..Freedom of the will and the concept of a Person," Journul of Philosophl" LXVIII (l971). 5 20 [reprintedas Essay 16. this volume]- 374 SUSAN WOL F S A N I TY action may fail to be responsible for her actions, however, if the wants or desiresshe has the freedom to convert into action are themselves not subject to her control. Thus, the person who acts under posthypnotic suggestion,ihe victim of brainwashing, and the kleptomaniac might ill possess-Leedom of actron. In the standard contexts in which these examples are raised, it is assumed that none of the individuals is locked up or bound. Rather, these individuals are understood to act on what, at one level at least, must be called their own desires.Their exemption from responsibility stems from the fact that their own desires(or at least the ones governing their actions) are not up to them. These casesmay be described in Frankfurt's terms as cases of people who possessfreedom of action, but who fail to be responsible agents becausethey lack freedom of the will. Philosophical problems about the conditions of responsibility naturalry locus on an analysis of this latter kind of freedom: what rs freedom of the will, and under what conditions can we reasonabrybe thought to possessit? Frankfurt's proposal is to understand freedom of the will by analogy to freedom ofaction. As freedom ofaction is the freedom to do whatevei one wills to do, freedom of the will is the freedom to will whatever one wants to will. To make this point clearer, Frankfurt introduces a distinction between first-order and second-order desires.First-order desrresare desires to do or to have various things; second-order desiresare desiresabout what desiresto have or what desiresto make effectivein action- In order for an agent to have both freedom of action and freedom of the will, that agent must be capable of governing his or her actions by first-order desires and capabie of governinghis or her first-order desiresby second_order desires. Gary Watson's view of free agency2_free and responsible agency, that is-is similar to Frankfurt's in holding that an ug"nf i, ..rponribl. lo. un action only if the desiresexpressedby that action are of a farticular kind. while Frankfurt identifies the right kind of desires as desires that are suDported by second-order desires, however, Watson draws a distinction between "mere" desires,so to speak, and desiresthat are varues. According to watson, the difference between free action and unfree action cannot b! analyzed,by reference to the logical form of the desires from which these various actions arise, but rather must relate to a difference in the quality of their source.whereas some of my desiresare just appetitesor conditioned responsesI find myself "stuck with," others are expressionsofjudgments on my part that the objects I desire are good. Insofar as my actlons can be governed by the latter type of desire_governed, that is, by my values or t Cll, Wzrson. "Free Agency," Journal of philosophy, LXXD (tg:ls),20120 Essay i 7, rhis volumel. freprinted as AND R E S P O N S i B I L I TY 3'75 valuational system-they are actions that I perform freely and for which I am responsible. Frankfurt's and Watson's accounts may be understood as alternate deveione opmentsof the intuition that in order to be responsiblefor one's actions, Tayior, charles actions. performs these mrrst be responsible for the self that in an article entitled "Responsibility for Se1f,"3is concernedwith the same intuition. Although Taylor does not describehis view in terms of different levels or types of desire, his view is related, for he claims that our freedom and ,esponsibility depends on our ability to reflect on, criticize, and revise the our selves.Like Frankfurt and watson, Taylor seemsto believe that if permanently and simply were flowed characters from which our actions given to us, implanted by heredity, environment, or God, then we would be mere vehiclesthrough which the causal forces of the world traveled, no more responsible than dumb animals or young children or machines. But like the not others,he points out that, for most ofus, our charactersand desiresare so brutely implanted-or, at any rate, if they are, they are subject to revision human by our own reflecting, valuing, or second-order desiring selves'We to the ability beings-have we human only we know, far as as beings-and bestep-backfrom ourselvesand decide whether we are the selveswe want to Beiause of this, thesephilosophersthink, we are responsiblefor our seives and for the actions that we produce. Although there are subtle and interestingdifferencesamong the accounts ofFrankfurt,Watson,andTaylor,myconcerniswithfeatureso|theirviews that are common to them all. All share the idea that responsibleagency are involves something more than intentional agency'All agree that if we control the within are just actions becauseour responsibleuganm,it is not just psychological of bur wills, but because,in addition, our wills are not any states irl us, but expressionsof characters that comefrom us, or that at that means this Frankfurt, rate are acknowledged and affirmed Dy us. For our our wills must be ruled by our second-orderdesires;for watson, that w i l l s m u s t b e g o v er n a b l e b yo u r syste m o fva l u e s;fo r Ta yl o r ,th a to u r w i ]l s in must issue from selvesthat ale subject to self-assessmentand redefinition philothese all or another, way In one terms of a vocabulary of worth. sophersseemto be saying that the key to responsibilitylies in the fact that responsibleagents are those for whom it is not just the case that their wills actions are wiihin the control of their wills, but also the casethat their at Because, sense. deeper in some selves their of control the within are be one level, the differences among Frankfurt, Watson, and Taylor may r Charles Taylor, "Responsibility for Self," in A E, Rorty, ed The ldcntities oJ Persons (Berkeley:Univlrsity of California Press,I976). pp 28 l-99 376 SUSAN WOL F S A N I TY understood as differencesin the analysis or interpretation ofwhat it is for an action to be under the con.trol of tlis deeper self, we may speak of their separatepositions as variations of one basic view about responsiuility:tne deep-selfview. THE DEEP- SELF VIEW Much more must be said about the notion of a deep self before a futy satisfactory account ofthis view can be given. providing a careful, deta'el analysisof that notion posesan interesting,important, and difficurt task in rts own right. The degreeofunderstanding achieved by abstraction from the views of Frankfurt, Watson, and Taylor, however, should be sufficient to allow us to recognizesome important virtues as well as some important drawbacks of the deep-selfview. one virtue is that this view explainsa good portion of our pretheoretical intuitions about responsib'ity. It explains why kleptomaniacs,victims oi brainwashing,and people acting under posthypnotic suggestionmay not be responsiblefor their actions,although ofu, typicatiy are. In tie cases of people in these special categoriel, '''ort the connection beiween ,rr" ug.nJ deep selvesand their wilis is dramatically severed-their wills are governed not by their deep selves,but by forces external to and independint from them. A differentinruition is that we adult human beingscan;. d;;;l; for our actions in a way that dumb animals, infants, and machinescannot. Here the explanation is not in terms of a sprit betweenthese beings,deep selvesand their wills; rather, the point is thit these beings racka..! r.r""i altogether. Kleptomaniacs and vicrims of hypnosis exemprify ,naiurJuui, whose selves are arienated from their actionsiiower anrmars and machines, on the other hand' do not havethe sorts ofseives from which acLionscanbe alienated, and so they do not have the sort of selvesfrom which, in the happier cases,actionscan responsiblyflow. At a more theoretical revel, the deep-selfview has another virtue: It respondsto at ieastone way in which the fear of determinismpresentsitserf. A naive reaction to the idea that everything we do is completely determrned by a causarchain that extends uickward beyond the times of our births involvesthinking that in that casewe would haveno control over our behavior whatsoever.If everything is determined, it is thought, then what happens happens,whether we want it to or not. A common, and proper, responseto this concern points out that determinism does not d.y ;; causal efficacy an agent's desires might have on his or her uetravior. on the contrary, determinism in its more plausible forms tends to affirm this AND R E S P O N S I B I L I TY 37"1 connection, merely adding that as one's behavior is determined by one's desires,so one's desiresare determinedby somethingelse.a Those who were initially worried that determinism implied fatalism, however, are apt to find their fears merely transformed rather than elased. If our desires are governed by something elsg they might say, they are not really ours after all--or, at any fttq they are ours in only a superficial sense. The deep-selfview offers an answer to this transformed fear ol determinism, for itillows us to distinguish casesin which desiresare detelmined by forces foreign to oneself from desireswhich are determined by one's self-by one's "real," or second-orderdesiring, or valuing, or deep self, that is' Admittedly, there are cases,like that of the kleptomaniac or the victim of hypnosis, in which the agent acts on desires that "belong to" him or her in oniy a superficial sense.But the proponent of the deep-self view wili point oui that iven if determinism is true, ordinary adult human action can be distinguished from this. Determinism implies that the desireswhich govern our actions are in turn governed by something else,but that something else will, in the fortunate cases,be our own deeper selves. This account of responsibilitythus offers a responseto our fear of determinism; but it is a responsewith which many will remain unsatisfied.Even if my actions are governed by my desires and my desires are governed by my own deeperself,there remainsthe question:Who, or what, is responsiblefor this deeperself?The responseaboveseemsonly to havepushedthe problem further back. Admittedly, some versions of the deep-selfview, including Frankfurt's and Taylor's, seem to anticipate this question by providing a place for the ideal that an agent,s deep self may be governed by a still deeper self. Thus, for Frankfurt, second-order desires may themselves be governed by thirdorder desires,third-order desires by fourth-order desires,and so on' Aiso, Taylor points out that, as we can reflect on and evaluate our prereflective selves,so we can reflect on and evaluate the selveswho are doing the first reflectingand evaluating,and so on. Howeveq this capacity to recursively createendlesslevelsof depth ultimately missesthe criticism's point' First of all, even if there is no logical limit to the number of levels of reflection or depth a person may have, there is certainly a psychological limit-it is virtually impossibleimaginativelyto conceivea fourth- much less an eighth-order.desire.More important, no matter how many levelsof self o See,e-g., David Hume, A Treutise of Human Natura (Oxford: Oxford University Press' 1967)' pp. 399-40?,and R. E. Hobart, "Free Willas lnvolving Determination and InconceivableWithout h." M i nd.43 ( 1934) . 3 79 sAN ITY AN D R ESPo N SIBIL ITY s us AN woLF we posit, there will still, in any individual case,be a last level-a deepestself about whom the question "what governs it?" will arise, as problematic as ever.If determinism is true, it implies that even if my actions are governed by my desires,and my desiresare governed by my deepestself, my deepestseli will still be governed by something that must, logically, be exteinal to myself altogether. Though I can step back from the values my parents and teachers have given me and ask whether theseare the values I really want, the ..I,, that steps back will itself be a product of the parents and teachers I am questioning. The problem seemseven worse when one seesthat one fares no better if determinism is false. For if my deepestself is not determined by something external to myself, it will still not be determined by me. whether I am a product of carefully controlled forces or a result of random mutations, w-hetherthere is a complete explanation of my origin or no explanation ai a1l,I am not, in any case,responsiblefor my existence;I am not in control of my deepestself. Thus, though the claim that an agent is responsiblefor only those actions that are within the control of his or her deep self correctly identifies a necessarycondition for responsibility-a condition that separatesthe hypnotized and the brainwashed, the immature and the lower animals from ourselves,for example-it fails to provide a sufficient condition of responsibility that puts all fearsofdeterminism to rest. For one ofthe fearsinvoked by the thought of determinism seemsto be connected to its implication that we are but intermediate links in a causal chain, rather than uitimate, selfinitiating sources of movement and change. From the point of view of one who has this fear, the deep-selfview seemsmerely to add ioops to the chain, complicating the picture but not really improving it. From the point of view of one who has this fear, responsibility seemsto require being a prime mover unmoved, whose deepest self is itself neither random ror externally determined, but is rather determined Dy itself-who is, in other words. selfcreatedAt this point, however, proponents of the deep_selfview may wonder whether this fear is legitimate. For although people evidently can be brought to the point where they feel that responsible agency requires them to be ultimate sourcesof power, to the point where it seemsthai nothing short of self-creation will do, a return to the internal standpoint ofthe agent whose responsibilityis in questionmakesit hard to seewhat good this metaphysical statusis supposedto provide or what evil its absenceis supposedto impose. From the external standpoint, which discussionsof determinism and indeterminism encourage us to take up, it may appear that a special metaphysical status is required to distinguish us significantly from other members 379 this ofthe natural world. But proponents ofthe deep-selfview will suggest The dispel. should is an illusion that a return to the internal standpoint possession of a deep self that is effective in governing one's actions is a natural sufficient distinction, they will say. For while other members of the world are not in control of the seivesthat they are, we, possessorsof effective and deep selves,are in control. We can reflect on what sorts of beings we are' we don't what change can we world. the on we make marks of sorts what on create like about ourselves, and keep what we do' Admittedly, we do not they will ourselves' revise we can as long as ourselves from nothing- But that a writes Frankfurt Harry to compiain' reason to find is hard it suggest, he peitn who is free to do what he wants to do and also free to want what to conceive."5 or to desire possible is it "ail freedom the wants to want has by This suggestsa rhetorical question: Ifyou are lree to control your actions your deiires, and free to control your desiresby your deeper desires'and free to control those desiresby still deeper desires,what further kind of freedom can you want? T H E C ON D ITION OF SAN ITY it is Unfortunately, there is a further kind of freedom we can want, which fails deep-selfview The agency' responsible for necessary to think reasonable to be convincing when it is offered as a complete account of the conditions exampie of responsibility. To seewhy, it will be helpful to consider another questton' is in responsibility of an agentwhose a JoJols the favorite son of Jo the First, an evil and sadistic dictator of the for feelings special father's of his small, undeveloped country. Because boy,JoJoisgivenaspecialeducationandisallowedtoaccompanyhisfather ani observe his daily routine. In light of this treatment, it is not surprising very much that tittle JoJo takes his father as a role model and developsvalues his father things of sorts same of the many does he like Dad,s. As an adult, chambers did, including sending people to prison or to death or to torture on the basisof whim. He is not coercedtodo thesethings, he acts according When to his own desires.Moreover' these are desireshe wholly wants to have' h e s t e p s b a c k a n d a s ks,..D o l r e a l l yw a n tto b e th i sso r to fp e r so n ? ',h i s sort of unr*"i is resoundingly "Yes," for this way of life expressesa crazy ideal. his deepest part of power that forms In light of JoJo'sheritage and upbringing-both of which he was powerless for to conirol-it is dubious at best that he should be regarded as responsible t Frankfurt, p. 16 380 SA N I TY SUSAN WOL F what he does. It is unclear whether anyone with a childhood such as his could have developed into anything but the twisted and perverse sort of person that he has become. However, note that JoJo is someone whose actions are controlled by his desires and whose desires are the desires he wants to have: That is, his actions are governed by desiresthat are governed by and expressiveof his deepestself. The Frankfurt-Watson-Taylor strategy that allowed us to differentiate our normal selvesfrom the victims of hypnosis and brainwashing will not allow us to differentiate ourselvesfrom the son ofJo the First. In the caseof these earlier victims, we were able to say that although the actions of these individuals were, at one level, in control of the individuals themselves,these individuals themseives,qua agents, were not the selves they more deeply wanted to be. In this respect, these people were unlike our happily more integrated selves.However, we cannot say ofJoJo that his self, qua agent, is not the self he wants it to be. It lr the self he wants it to be. From the inside. he feels as integrated, free, and responsibleas we do. Our judgment that JoJo is not a responsibleagent is one that we can make only from the outside-from reflecting on the fact, it seems,that his deepest self is not up to him. Looked at from the outside, however, our situation seemsno different from his-for in the last analysis,it is not up to any of us to have the deepest selves we do. Once more, the problem seems metaphysical-and not just metaphysical, but insuperable. For, as I mentioned before, the problem is independent of the truth of determinism. Whether we are determined or undetermined, we cannot have created our deepest selves. Literal self-creation is not just empirically, but logically impossible. If JoJo is not responsiblebecausehis deepestself is not up to him, then we are not responsible either. Indeed, in that case responsibility would be impossible for anyone to achieve. But I believe the appearance that literal self-creation is required for freedom and responsibility is itself mistaken. The deep-selfviewwas right in pointing out that freedomand responsibility requires us to have certain distinctive types ofcontrol over our behavior and our selves.Specifically,our actions need to be under the control of our selves,and our (superficial) selvesneed to be under the control of our deep selves.Having seenthat these types of control are not enough to guarantee us the status of responsibleagents,we are tempted to go on to supposethat we must have yet another kind of control to assureus that even our deepest selvesare somehow up to us. But not all the things necessaryfor freedom and responsibilitymust be types of power and control. We may need simply to be a certain way, even though it is not within our power to determine whether we are that way or not. AND R E S P O N S I B I L I TY 381 of responsibility is Indeed, it becomesobvious that at least one condition contexts, we have everyday in what, lemember we as as soon form of this an agent must be responsible' known all along-namely, that in order to be we are or are not whether determine power to sane.ltis not oidinarily in our sun".Mostofus,itwouldseem,arelucky,butsomeofusarenot'Moreover' any type of power or being sane does not necessarily mean that one has like JoJo and some people' insane Some control an rnsane person lacks' complete control of have may him, resemble who lealers political actual The desire to their aciions, and even complete control oftheir acting selves. a desire is rather it of control; form another be sane is thus not a desireior couid even say way-we certain a in world the to connected be self that one's certain ways and not it is a desire that one's selfbe controlled by the world in in others. have historThis becomes clear if we attend to the criteria for sanity that to According ically been dominant in legal questions about responsibility. and he is doing what (1) knows he if sane the M'Naughten Rule, a person is wrong' (2) he knois that what he is doing is, as the case may be' right or know what one is insofar as one's desire to be sane involves a desire to world-it is a desire to doing-or more generally' a desire to live in the real by perceptions controlled) beliefs one's case, this (to in have, be cJntrolled of the world' and sound reasoning that produce an accurate conception goes for the same The response' of rather than by blind or distorted forms that one's is hope one's case, this in of sanity-only, second constituent conception of the valuesbe controlled by processesthat afford an accurate understand sanity' wor1d.6Putting these two conditions together,we may to recnormatively and cognitively ability sufficient rhen, as the minimally is' it what for world the appreciate and ognize of which There are problems with this definition of sanity, at least some unacceptable ultimately it make that follows, what in will become obuiou, of the term in many either as a glosson or an improvement of the meaning o f t h e c o n t e x t s i n w h ich i ti su se d ,Th e d e fi n i ti o n o ffe r e d d o e sse e m to b r i n g issuesof responsibility, out the interest sanity has for us in connectionwith purposeswill be servedif stylistic as well as pedagogical some and however, we use sanity hereafter in this admittedly specialized sense' not-be enough to ensure the abiiity to Strictly speaking. perception and sound reasoning may especially to achieve a reasonable normaand doing is what one of conceprton accurate an achieve realms of experience may of one's situation. s€nsitlvity and exposure lo certain ,i"" essay' I understand "sanity" to include be necessary tbr these goals- For the prrpose ofihis also "r..r.-ar, conception of one's world ln other whatever it takes to enable one to devel'op in adequate construction of the term' .ont"*t.. ho*au"., this would be an implausibly broad (' 382 SUSAN WOL F T H E S AN E D EE P-S EL F V IE W so far I have argued that the conditions of responsible agency offered by the deep-self view are necessarybut not sufficieni. MoreovJr, the gap f"fi"p." by the deep-self view seemsto be one that can be filled orrfi UV u *J* physical, and, as it happens,metaphysicaily impossibre addition. I now wish to arguq however, that the condition of sanity, as characterized abovq is srrfficient to fill the gap. In other words, the deep_sg11r1.w, ,uppl"rn.nt"J'by the condition of sanity, provides a satisfying conception of responsibility The conception of responsibility I am proposlng, tt.o, ug..., *iiiit;;_ self view in requiring that a responsible agent b! abre tJgove." t iiil actions by her desiresand to govern her desires by her dee! s.rr. rn".io. uairtion, my conception insists that the agent's deep sef bl sane,and craims that this is all that is neededfor responsibleug.n.y. By contrast to the prain deep-self view, let us call this new proposal thi soie diep-sef view. is worth noting, to begin with, that this new proposal deals with the case ^It ofJoJo and related casesofdeprived childhood viciims in ways that better match our pretheoretical int ritions. unlike the plain deep-self lrr.,"". deep-selfview offers a way ofexplaining why "i"o roro o not responsibre for his actrons without throwing our own responsibility into doubt. For, although like us, JoJo's actions flow from desiresihat flow from his deep self, unrike ris, JoJo's deep self is itself insane. Sanity, remember, involves th.'ubilrty;; know the difference between right and wrong, and a person *to, .u.n on reflection, cannot see that having someone iirtur"O because he failed to salute you is wrong plainly lacks the requisite ability. Less obviously, but quite analogously, this new proposal explains why we give less than furl responsibility to persons who, though acting badly, act in w^aysthat are strongly encouraged by their societies_the slaveownersof the 1850s,the Nazis of the lg30s, and many male chauvinists of our fathers, generation, for example. These are peoplg we imagine, who falsely believe that the ways in which they are acting ari morally acceptable,and so, we may assume,their behavior is expressiveof or at least in accordance with these agents'deepservesBut their false beriefsin the moral permissibility of their actions and the false values from which these beliefs derived may have been rnevitable, given the social circumstances in which they developed. If we think that the agentscould not help but be mistaken about their values.we do not blame them for the actionsthose values insfired.t .i Admirtedly, it is oPen to question whether these individuals were in fact.unable ro heJp having mstaken varues, and indeed' whether recognizing tl," soclety would even have *:"p,ig"al.independenceorstrength "..o.r-oilnerr ofriind. This is presumably an empirical question, ::::ri-"-d the answer to which is extraordinarily hard io determine uy po;iL." ,r.rmply that r/we believe SAN ITY AN D R ESPON SIBIL ITY 383 It would unduly distort ordinary linguistic practice to call the slaveowner, the Nazi, or the male chauvinist even partially or locally insane. Nonetheless, the reason for withholding blame from them is at bottom the same as the reason for withholding it from JoJo. Like JoJo, they are, at the deepest level, unable cognitively and normatively to recognize and appreciate the world for what it is. In our senseof the term, their deepestselvesare not fully sane. The sane deep-selfview thus offers an account of why victims of deprived childhoods as well as victims of misguided societiesmay not be responsible for their actionq without implying that we are not responsible for ours. The actions of these others are governed by mistaken conceptions of value that the agents in question cannot help but have. Since, as far as we know, our values are not, like theirs, unavoidably mistaken, the fact that these others are not responsiblefor their actions need not force us to conclude that we are not responsible[or ours. But it may not yet be clear why sanity, in this special sense,should make such a difference-why, in particular, the question of whether someone's values are unavoidably mistaken should have any bearing on their status as responsible agents.The fact that the sane deep-self view implies judgments that match our intuitions about the difference in status between characters like JoJo and ourselvesprovides little support for it if it cannot also defend these intuitions. So we must consider an objection that comes from the point of view we considered earlier which rejects the intuition that a relevant difference can be found. Earlier, it seemedthat the reason JoJo was not responsible for his actions was that aithough his actions were governed by his deep self, his deep self was not up to him- But this had nothing to do with his deep self's being mistaken or not mistaken,evil or good, insane or sane.If JoJo'svaluesare unavoidably mistaken, our values, even if not mistaken, appear to be just as unavoidable. When it comes to freedom and responsibility, isn't it the unavoidability, rather than the mistakenness,that matters? Beforeansweringthis question,it is useful to point out a way in which it is ambiguous: The concepts of avoidability and mistakenness are not unequivocally distinct. One may, to be sure, construe the notion of avoidability in a purely metaphysical way. Whether an event or state of affairs is unavoidable under this construal depends,as it were, on the tightness of the causalconnectionsthat bear on the event'sor stateof affairs' coming about. In this sense,our deepselvesdo seemas unavoidablefor us as JoJo'sand the they are unable to recognize that their values are mistaken, we do not hold them responsible for the actions that flow from these values, and / we believe their ability to recognize their normative errors is impaired, we hold them less than fully responsible for the relevant actions 384 suSAN ryOLF others' are for them. For presumably we are just as influenced by our parents, our cuitures, and our schooling as they are influenced by theirs. In another sense,however,our characters are not similarry unavoidible. In particular, in the casesof JoJo and the others, there are certain features of their characters that they cannot avoid even though rhese features are seriously mistaken, misguided, or bad.This is so because,in oui special sense of the term, these characters are less than fully sane. Since these characters lack the ability to know right from wrong, they are unable to revise their characters on the basis of right and wrong, and so their deep selveslack the resourcesand the reasons that might have served as a basis for self-correction. Since the deep selveswe unuuoidubly have, however, are sane deep selves--deep selves,that is, that unavoidabry containthe ability to know right from wrong-we unavoidably do have the resourcesand reasons on which to base serf-correction. what this means is that though in one sense we are no more in control of our deepest selves than JoJo et al., it does not follow in our case,as it does in theirs, that we would be the way we are' even if it is a bad or wrong way to be. However, if this does not foilow, to me, our absenceofcontroi at the deepestlevel should not upsei Xsseems consider what the absenceofcontrol at the deepestlevel amounts to for us: whereas JoJo is unableto contror the fact that, at the deepestlevel, he is not fully sane,we are not responsiblefor the fact that, at the deepestrevel, we are. It is not up to us to have minimally sufficient abilities cognitively and normatively to recognize and appreciate the world for what it is. Also" presumably,it is not up to us to havelots of other properties,at least to beein vvith-a fondness for purpre, perhaps, or an antipathy for beets.Rs the pio, ponents ofthe plain deep-selfviewhavebeenat pains to point out. however, we do, if we are lucky, have the ability to revise our servesin terms of the values that are held by or constitutive of our deep serves.If we are rucky enough both to have this ability and to have our deep selves be sane, ii follows that although there is much in our charactersthat we did not choose to have,there is nothing irrational or objectionablein our charactersthat we are compelled to keep. Being sane, we are able to understand and evaluate our characters in a reasonable way, to notice what there is reason to hoid on to. what there is reasonto eliminate,and what, from a rational and reasonablestandpoint, we may retain or get rid of as we please. Being able as well to govern our superficialselvesby our deep selves,then, we are able to changethe things we find there is reason to change.This being so, it seemsthat although we may not be metaphysical/yresponsible for ourselves_for, after alt, we ala not create ourselvesfrom nothing-we aremorally responsiblefor ourselves, SA N I TY AND 385 R E S P O N S I B I L I TY for we are able to understand and appreciate right and wrong, and to change our characters and our actions accordingly. SEL F- R EVISION ' S E L F - C R E A TION , SEL F- C OR R EC TION AN D At the beginning of this chapter, I claimed that recalling that sanity was a condition of responsibility would dissolve at least some of the appearance that responsibility was metaphysically impossible. To seehow this is so, and to get a fuller senseofthe sanedeep-selfview,it may be helpful to put that view into perspective by comparing it to the other views we have discussed along the way. As Frankfurt, Watson, and Taylor showed us, in order to be free and responsible we need not only to be able to control our actions in accordance with our desires,we need to be able to control our desiresin accordancewith our deepestselves.We need, in other words, to be able to reyl.teourselves-to get rid ofsome desiresand traitq and perhaps replace them with others on the basis of our deeper desires or values or reflections. Howeve! consideration of the fact that the selveswho are doing the revising might themselves be either brute products of external forces or arbitrary outputs of random generation made us wonder whether the capacity for self-revision was enough to assureus of responsibility-and the example of JoJo added force to the suspicion that it was not. Still, if the ability to reviseourselvesls not enough, the ability to create ourselves does not seem necessary either. Indeed, when you think of it, it is unclear why anyone should want selfcreation. why should anyone be disappointed at having to accept the idea that one has to get one's start somewhere?It is an idea that most of us have lived with quite contentedly all along. what we do have leason to want, then, is somethingmore than the ability to reviseourselves,but lessthan the ability to createourselves.Implicit in the sanedeep-selfviewis the idea that what is neededis the ability to correct(or improve) ourselves' Recognizingthat in order to be responsiblelor our actions,we haveto be responsiblefor our selves,the sanedeep-selfview analyzeswhat is necessary in order to be responsiblefor our selvesas (1) the ability to evaluateourselves sensibly and accurateiy, and (2) the ability to transform ourselves insofar as our evaluationtellsus to do so.We may understandthe exerciseof these abilities as a processwhere by we take responsibility for the seivesthat we are but did not ultimately create.The condition of sanity is intrinsically connected to the first ability; the condition that we be able to control our superficial selvesby our deep selvesis intrinsically connected to the second. 3 86 SAN ITY AN D R ESPON SIBIL ITY SUSANW O LF The difference between the plain deep-self view and the sane deep_self view, then, is the difference between the requirement of the capacity for selfrevision and the requirement of the capacity for self-correction. Anyone with the first capacity can try to take responsibility for himself or herself. However, only someone with a sane deep self--a deep self that can seeand appreciate the world for what it is---+an self-evaluatesensiblyand accurately. Therefore, although insane selves can try to take responsibility for themselves,only sane selveswill properly be accorded responsibiiity. TW O O BJ ECTI O NS CO NSID E R E D At least two problems with the sane deep-selfview are so glaring as to have certainly struck many readers.In closing, I shall briefly addressthem. First, some will be wondering how, in light of my specialized use of the term "sanity," I can be so sure that "we" are any saner than the nonresponsible individuals I have discussed.what justifies my confidence that, unlike the slaveowners,Nazig and male chauvinists, not to mention JoJo himself, we are able to understand and appreciate the world for what it is? The answer to this is that nothingjustifies this except widespread intersubjective agreement and the considerable successwe have in getting around in the world and satisfying our needs.These are not suffcient grounds for the smug assump_ tion that we are in a position to seethe truth about a// aspectsof eihical and social life. Indeed, it seemsmore reasonable to expect that time will reveal blind spots in our cognitive and normative outlook, just as it has revealed errors in the outlooks ofthose who have lived before. But ourjudgments of responsibility can only be made from here, on the basis ofthe understandings and values that we can develop by exercisingthe abilities we do possess as well and as fully as possible. If some have been worried that my view implicitly expressesan overconfidence in the assumption that we are sane and therefore right about the world, others will be worried that my view too closely connects sanity with being right about the world, and fear that my view implies that anyone who acts wrongly or has lalse beliefs about the world is therefore insane and so not responsible for his or her actions. This seemsto me to be a more serious worry, which I am sure I cannot answer to everyone'ssatisfaction. First, it must be admitted that the sane deep-selfview embracesa concep_ tion of sanity that is explicitly normative. But this seemsto me a strength of that view, rather than a defect. sanity rs a normative concept, in its ordinary as well as in its specializedsense,and severelydeviant behavior, such as that of a serial murderer or a sadistic dictator, does constitute evidence cf a 3 8 .7 psychologicai defect in the agent. The suggestion that the most horrendous' stomach-turning crimes could be committed only by an insane person-an inverse of Catch-Z2, as it were-must be regarded as a serious possibility, despite the practical problems that would accompany general acceptanceof that conclusion. But, it will be objected, there is no justification, in the sanedeep-selfview, for regarding only horrendous and stomach-turning crimes as evidence of insanity in its specializedsense.If sanity is the ability cognitivelyand normatively to understand and appreciate the world for what it is, then azy wrong action or lalse belief will count as evidence of the absenceof that ability. This point may also be granted, but we must be careful about what conclusion to draw. To be sure, when someone acts in a way that is not in accordancewith acceptablestandards of rationality and reasonableness,it is always appropriate to look for an explanation of why he or she acted that way. The hypothesis that the person was unable to understand and appreci ate that an action fell outside acceptable bounds will always be a possible explanation. Bad performance on a math test always suggeststhe possibility that the testee is stupid. Typically, however, other explanations will be possiblg too-for example, that the agent was too lazy to consider whether his or her action was acceptable,or too greedy to care, or, in the case of the math testee,that he or she was too occupied with other interests to attend class or study. Other facts about the agent's history will help us decide among thesehypotheses. This brings out the need to emphasizethat sanity, in the specializedsense, is defined as the abitity cognitively and normatively to understand and appreciatethe world for what it is. According to our commonsenseunderstandings, having this ability is one thing and exercising it is another-at least some wrong-acting, responsible agents presumably fall within the gap. The notion of "ability" is notoriously problematic, however, and there is a long history of controversy about whether the truth of determinism would show our ordinary ways of thinking to be simply confused on this matter. At this point, then, metaphysicalconcernsmay voice themselvesagain-but at least they will have been pushed into a narrower, and perhaps a more manageable,corner. The sanedeep-selfview does not, then, solve all the philosophical problems connected to the topics of free will and responsibility.If anything, it highlights some of the practical and empirical problems,rather than solves them. It may, however, resolve some of the philosophical, and particularly, some of the metaphysical problems, and reveal how intimate are the connections between the remaining philosophical problems and the practical ones.