The Significance of Choice: T T L H V
The Significance of Choice: T T L H V
The Significance of Choice: T T L H V
T . M . SCANLON, JR.
Delivered at
Brasenose College, Oxford University
tarianism, in Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 103-28. What follows can be
seen as an attempt to fulfill, for the case of choice, the promissory remarks made at
the end of section III of that paper.
[151]
152 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
2In his admirably clear and detailed defense of incompatibilism, Peter van
Inwagen observes that if one accepts the premises of his argument for the incom-
patibility of determinism and free will (in the sense required for moral responsi-
bility) then it is puzzling how people could have the kind of freedom required
for moral responsibility even under indeterministic universal causation. (See An
Essay on Free Will [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983], pp. 149-50.) O n the
other hand, he takes it to be not merely puzzling but inconceivable that free will
should be impossible or that the premises of his arguments for incompatibilism
should be false or that the rules of inference which these arguments employ should
be invalid. This leads him, after some further argument, to reject determinism:
If incompatibilism is true, then either determinism or the free-will thesis is false.
154 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
To deny the free-will thesis is to deny the existence of moral responsibility, which
would be absurd. Moreover, there seems to be no good reason to accept determinism
(which, it should be recalled, is not the same as the Principle of Universal Causa-
tion). Therefore, we should reject determinism (p. 2 2 3 ) .
My response is somewhat different. Determinism is a very general empirical
thesis. Our convictions about moral responsibility seem to me an odd basis for
drawing a conclusion one way or the other about such a claim. In addition, what-
ever one may decide about determinism, it remains puzzling how moral responsi-
bility could be compatible with Universal Causation. I am thus led to wonder
whether our initial assumptions about the kind of freedom required by moral
responsibility might not be mistaken. Rather than starting with a reinterpretation
of the principle of alternative possibilities (along the lines of the conditional analy-
sis), my strategy is to ask first, Why does the fact of choice matter morally? and
then, What kind of freedom is relevant to mattering in that way?
[SCANLON] The Significance of Choice 155
4I have said more about this version of the problem in section IIB of Free-
we not feel trapped all the time? This is like the other problems
in that what we need in order to answer it is a better explanation
of why it is proper to feel trapped and alienated from our own
actions in cases like hypnosis, an explanation which goes beyond
the mere fact of determination by outside factors. But while this
problem is like the others in its form, it differs from them in not
being specifically a problem about morality: the significance with
which it deals is not moral significance. This makes it a particu-
larly difficult problem, much of the difficulty being that of explain-
ing what the desired but threatened form of significance is sup-
posed to be. Since my concern is with moral theory I will not
address this problem directly, though the discussion of the value
of choice in lecture 2 will have some bearing on it.
I will be concerned in these lectures with the first two of these
problems and with the relation between them: to what degree can
the better explanation that each calls for be provided within the
compass of a single, reasonably unified theory? My strategy is to
put forward two theories which attempt to explain why the con-
ditions which we commonly recognize as undermining the moral
significance of choice in various contexts should have this effect.
These theories, which I will refer to as the Quality of Will theory
and the Value of Choice theory, are similar to the theories put
forward in two famous articles, P. F. Strawsons Freedom and
Resentment,5 and H. L. A. Harts Legal Responsibility and
Excuses.6 My aim is to see whether versions of these two
approaches extended in some respects and modified in others
to fit within the contractualist theory I espouse can be put
together into a single coherent account. We can then see how far
this combined theory takes us toward providing a satisfactory
account of the moral significance of choice across the range of
cases I have listed above.
5In Strawson, ed., Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action (Oxford:
306; reprinted in G. Dworkin, ed., Determinism, Free Will, and Moral Responsi-
bility (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970; page references will be to this
edition). The theory was stated earlier by Moritz Schlick in chapter 7 of The Prob -
lems o f Ethics, trans. D. Rynin (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1939), reprinted as
When Is a Man Responsible? in B. Berofsky, ed., Free Will and Determinism
(New York: Harper and Row, 1966; page references will be to this edition).
8Some are set forth by Jonathan Bennett in section 6 of Accountability, in
Zak van Staaten, ed., Philosophical Subjects (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980).
160 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
people other than the agent will produce a better fit in some cases, but at the price of
introducing even more considerations which are intuitively irrelevant to the ques-
tion of responsibility.
[SCANLON] The Significance of Choice 161
Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp, 124-26. The response I
am advocating here does not deny the possibility of what Nagel has called ex-
ternal criticism of our practices of moral evaluation. It tries only to deny the
incompatibilist critique a foothold in our ordinary ideas of moral responsibility. It
claims that a commitment to freedom which is incompatible with the Causal Thesis
is not embedded in our ordinary moral practices in the way in which a commitment
to objectivity which outruns our experience is embedded in the content of our ordi-
nary empirical beliefs. The incompatibilist response, obviously, is to deny this claim.
My point is that the ensuing argument, which I am trying to advance one side of,
is internal to the system of our ordinary moral beliefs.
166 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
18This idea was suggested to me by Derek Parfit in the seminar following the
8. CONCLUSION
The contractualist version of the Quality of Will theory which
I have described seems to me to provide a satisfactory explanation
of the significance of choice for the moral appraisal of agents.
ought judgments need not be intended as action guiding, and insofar as they do
guide action they need not do so by being prescriptive in form. Rather, they guide
action by calling attention to facts about the justifiability of actions facts which
morally concerned agents care about. In these respects my view differs from R. M.
Hares prescriptivism, though we would say some of the same things about free
will. See his Prediction and Moral Appraisal, in P. French, T. Uehling, and
H. Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. III (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1978), pp. 17-27.
21For more extended discussion of this issue, see Daniel Dennetts Elbow Room
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984), especially chs. 3-5. I make no claim to be
advancing beyond what other compatibilists have said about the nature of delibera-
tion and action. My concern is with the question of moral responsibility. Here I
differ with Dennett, who goes much further than I would toward accepting the
Influenceability theory. See ch. 7 of Elbow Room and Gary Watsons criticisms of
it in his review in Journal of Philosophy 8 3 (1986): 517-22.
[SCANLON] The Significance of Choice 177
Lecture 2
Responsibility and Excuses. Since Harts article others have written in a similar
vein, although they have been concerned mainly with the theory of punishment. See,
for example, John Mackie, The Grounds of Responsibility, in P. M. S. Hacker
and J. Raz, eds., Law, Morality, and Society: Essays in Honour of H. L. A. Hart,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), and C. S. Nino, A Consensual Theory
of Punishment, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 2 (1983) : 289-306. Like Hart,
Nino links the significance of choice (in his terms, consent) as a condition of just
punishment with its significance elsewhere in the law, e.g., in contracts and torts.
His view of this significance, however, is closer than my own to what I refer to
below as the Forfeiture View.
[SCANLON] The Significance of Choice 179
a seat belt depend on how one reacts (in the absence of any
coercion) when setting off in a car. Some regard it as a significant
loss when some form of coercion or even mild duress (the threat
of a fine, or even the monitory presence of a brief buzzer) is
introduced. Others, like me, regard this loss as trivial, and see the
constrained choice as significantly more valuable than the un-
constrained one. This disagreement reflects differences in the in-
strumental, demonstrative, and symbolic value we attach to these
choices.
The existence of such differences raises the question of what
is to count as the value of a choice as I have been using this
phrase. One possibility is what I will call fully individualized
value. This is the value of the choice to a particular individual,
taking into account the importance that individual attaches to hav-
ing particular alternatives available, the difference that it makes
to that individual which of these alternatives actually occurs, the
importance which the individual attaches to having this be deter-
mined by his or her reactions, and the skill and discernment with
which that individual will choose under the conditions in question.
This fully individualized value may not be the same as the value
which the individual actually assigns to the choice in question;
rather, it is the ex ante value which he or she should assign given
his or her values and propensities.
Fully individualized value is not what normally figures in
moral argument, however. Appeals to the value of choice arise in
moral argument chiefly when we are appraising moral principles
or social institutions rather than when we are discussing particular
choices by specific individuals. In these contexts we have to
answer such general questions as How important is it to have the
selection among these alternatives depend on ones choice? How
bad a thing is it to have to choose under these conditions? When
we address these questions, fully individualized values are not
known. W e argue instead in terms of what might be called the
normalized value of a choice: a rough assignment of values to
[SCANLON] The Significance of Choice 183
24Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974),
p. 214.
[SCANLON] The Significance of Choice 187
Utopia, p. 214.
188 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
no one else to blame for her fate; she has herself to blame. We
could account for this sense of blame by appealing to a prudential
version of the Quality of Will theory: the process of deliberation
leading to a decision to climb over the fence just to see what they
are doing is obviously faulty. But the Quality of Will theory
is an account of the moral appraisal of agents, while what we are
concerned with here is the justification of outcomes. It may be
natural to suppose that a difference in the first translates into or
supports a difference in the second, but on reflection it is by no
means obvious how this is so.
Moreover, the idea of fault is in fact irrelevant here. The
intuition to which the Forfeiture View calls attention concerns
the significance of the fact of choice, not the faultiness of that
choice. We can imagine a person who, unlike the imprudently
curious woman in my example, did not run the risk of contamina-
tion foolishly or thoughtlessly. Suppose this third person found,
just as the excavation was about to begin, that the day was a perfect
one for working on an outdoor project to which she attached great
value. Aware of the danger, she considered the matter carefully
and decided that taking into account her age and condition it was
worth less to her to avoid the risk than to advance her project in
the time she was likely to have remaining. Surely this person is as
fully responsible for her fate as the imprudent woman whom I
originally described. But her decision is not a foolish or mis-
taken one.
This illustrates the fact that what lies behind the Forfeiture
View is not an idea of desert. That is, it is not an idea according
to which certain choices, because they are foolish, immoral, or
otherwise mistaken, positively merit certain outcomes or responses.
The idea is rather that a person to whom a certain outcome was
available, but who knowingly passed it up, cannot complain about
not having it: volenti non fit iniuria.
It is important to remember here that the challenge of the
Forfeiture View lies in the suggestion that the Value of Choice
194 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
The following discussion concerns issues dealt with in my reply to the voluntari-
ness objection on pp. 664-66 of that article.
[SCANLON] The Significance of Choice 199
fact, and in view of the basic moral truth that one cannot com-
plain of harms one could have avoided, the objection is no objec-
tion at all: people whose preferences are particularly difficult to
satisfy have only themselves to blame.
There are two difficulties with this argument. First, for rea-
sons I have already discussed, the basic moral truth to which it
appeals seems open to serious doubt. Second, even if this truth
is correct, the argument appears to exaggerate the degree of con-
trol which people have over their preferences. To be sure, the
argument does not suggest that people can alter their preferences
by simply deciding what to prefer; the kind of control which is
envisaged is to be exercised through decisions affecting the devel-
opment of ones preferences over time. Even so, it is questionable
how much control of this kind people can realistically be assumed
to exercise.
This leads me to look for an alternative interpretation under
which the argument avoids these difficulties while still retaining
its force. Following the general strategy which I have been advo-
cating in this lecture, this alternative interpretation takes the idea
of responsibility for ones preferences to be part of the view being
defended rather than an independent moral premise. As Rawls
says, the conception of justice which he is defending includes
what we may call a social division of responsibility. The ques-
tion is how this combination an objective standard of welfare
and the idea of responsibility which it entails can be defended
without appeal to anything like the notion of forfeiture.
The issue here is the choice between two types of public
standards of justice, objective standards of the sort just described,
according to which institutions are judged on the degree to which
they provide their citizens with good objective conditions for the
development and satisfaction of their preferences, and subjective
standards, under which institutions are also judged on the basis
of the levels of preference satisfaction which actually result from
their policies. In our earlier discussion of individual choice, the
200 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
7. CONCLUSION
In this lecture I have presented the idea of the Value of Choice
as part of a general strategy explaining the moral significance of
choice in the justification of social institutions and policies. As
compared with its main rival, the Forfeiture View, this strategy
has the advantage of assigning choice an important positive value
without exaggerating its role and significance in justification. It
remains to be seen what kind of freedom the Value of Choice
theory presupposes and how it fits together with the Quality of
Will theory to account for the significance of choice across a range
of cases. These questions will be addressed in my next lecture.
Lecture 3
can no longer enter without danger. In the one case this is the
area of excavation, transport, and disposal, in the other the area
of activities which have been declared illegal. Fourth, although
we introduce certain safeguards to reduce exposure to the risk
created, it remains the case that many of those who choose to
enter the affected area, and perhaps a few others, will suffer harm.
Some of these safeguards (such as requirements of due process,
and careful methods of excavation and transport) have the effect
of protecting those who choose to stay out of the affected area.
Other safeguards enhance the value of choice as a protection by
making it less likely that people will choose to enter. In the
hazardous waste case these include signs, warnings, and publicity
to inform people about the nature of the risk, as well as fences,
guards, and the choice of an obscure disposal site where no one
has reason to go. Analogous features in the case of punishment
are education, including moral education, the dissemination of
basic information about the law, and the maintenance of social
and economic conditions which reduce the incentive to commit
crime by offering the possibility of a satisfactory life within the
law. Restrictions on entrapment by law enforcement officers
also belong in this category of safeguards which make it less likely
that one will choose badly. Without such safeguards the value of
choice as a protection would be reduced to an unacceptable level.
In each case, in order to defend the institution in question we
need to claim that the importance of the social goal justifies creat-
ing the risk and making the affected area unusable and that, given
the prevailing conditions and the safeguards we have put in place,
we have done enough to protect people against suffering harm
from the threat that has been created.
Now let me turn to some of the differences between the two
cases. First, insofar as the activities which make up the affected
area in the case of punishment are ones which it is morally wrong
to engage in, being deprived of the ability to enter this area
without risk cannot be counted as a morally cognizable loss. This
[SCANLON] The Significance of Choice 203
whether choice will retain its value for an individual if the Causal
Thesis is true. This is at least part of what I called in my first lec-
ture the personal problem of free will. So it seems that the
most that the Value of Choice theory could accomplish would
be to reduce the political problem of free will to the personal
problem.
The mere truth of the Causal Thesis would not deprive choice
of its predictive value: a persons choices could remain indicative
of his or her future preferences and satisfactions even if they had
a systematic causal explanation. Nor, it seems to me, need the
demonstrative value of choice be undermined. A persons choices
could still reflect continuing features of his or her personality
such as feelings for others, memory, knowledge, skill, taste, and
discernment.
This is how things seem to me, perhaps because I am in the
grip of a theory. It is difficult to support these intuitions by argu-
ment because it is difficult, for me at least, to identify clearly the
basis of the intuitions which move one toward the opposite con-
clusion. It might be claimed that what I have called the demon-
strative value of choice would be undermined because the feelings,
attitudes, and so on which a persons choices might be taken to
reflect will no longer belong to that person if the Causal
Thesis is true, but it is not clear why this should be the case. It is
easy to see that particular kinds of causal history might make a
belief or desire alien. This would happen when, as in the
implantation examples mentioned above, the special causal
genesis of a belief meant also that it lacked connection with the
persons other conscious states that it was not all dependent on
other beliefs and desires for support and not subject to modifica-
tion through the agents process of critical reflection. But it does
not seem that this kind of loss of connection need hold generally
if the Causal Thesis is correct.
One can certainly imagine a form of causal determination
which would make this kind of alienation hold generally and
208 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values
The issues raised here are similar to those which arise in con-
nection with what Hart called the definitional stop argument
against exemplary or vicarious punishment of persons known to be
innocent of any off ense.32 A utilitarian justification of punish-
ment, insofar as it is a justification of punishment, could not
justify such practices, this argument ran, because these practices
do not count as punishment, which, by definition, must be of an
offender for an offense. The obvious response to this argument is
that it is not important what we call it; the question is why it
would not be permissible to subject people, known to be innocent,
to unpleasant treatment (prison, fines, etc.) as part of a scheme
to intimidate others ,into obeying the law. As I have said above,
I agree with Hart that the Value of Choice theory provides a good
(though perhaps not fully satisfying) answer to this question.
With respect to moral blame, however, I have responded in effect
that it matters a great deal what you call it, because blameworthi-
ness, rather than any form of blaming behavior, is the central
issue. There is also, of course, a question of the desirability and
permissibility of expressing or administering blame in a certain
way, but this is a separate question and a secondary one.
In the case of criminal punishment this emphasis is reversed:
the main question is whether we can justify depriving people of
their property, their liberty, or even their lives.33 Despite the