Moral Agents and Responsibility
by Joseph Rowlands

Sometimes in morality, the blame is shifted from one party to another. There are different reasons for this. One justification for this is when someone is coerced. The initiation of force by a second person interferes with the victims ability to act on his own judgment. The initiator of force overrides the judgment of his victim through the threat of violence. In that case, the actions of the victim, and the consequences of those actions, are rightfully blamed on the initiator of force.

A completely different reason why responsibility may be shifted from the person performing the action to someone else is when there is a lack of volition. If you train a dog to attack people, and use it to harm someone, you are the one held responsible for the dogs actions. The dog isn't held responsible, at least not in the moral sense. You don't morally condemn the dog, or say that his actions were immoral or unjust. If the dog is vicious, it may be put down anyway, but this isn't an act of punishment. It's not intended to teach other dogs a lesson or anything like that.

The idea here is that certain living things can't be held responsible for their actions. Among human beings, this includes the mentally ill and young children. Animals, plants, and non-living things also count. Non of these are moral agents, which means none of them are held responsible for consequences they are involved with. Despite political rhetoric, guns are not held responsible for crimes they are involved in. It is the gunman that is arrested and punished.

It is in this context that some people are excused for their actions and responsibility is shifted to others. For instance, some people blame Islamic terrorism on the actions of others. The Danish cartoon fiasco was often blamed on the cartoonists for antagonizing the Islamic world. This shifted responsibility from the thugs that were killing and rampaging to people who drew some cartoons thousands of miles away. How is this justified?

Along the same lines as why guns or dogs aren't blamed for their actions, the cartoon thugs are excused for their actions by claiming that they were merely reacting. It all boils down to volition. Animals don't have volition. Only humans do. If someone lacks volition, lacks the ability to make a choice, then he is said to be merely reacting to whatever inputs that are provided to him. The cartoon thugs are said to lack volition, and like an animal, can only react to a situation that was chosen by someone else.

While the argument about volition in general is correct, there's clearly a mistake being made in applying this general principle in this way. People who believe in Islam are not animals. They are human beings. They have the capability of choosing, just as anyone else does. They can choose violence, or they can choose to live peacefully. They can choose to lash out emotionally, or they can restrain their actions and elevate sound judgment above anger. So why are they treated as non-volitional? Why are their crimes blamed on cartoonists, as if they were simply a medium that propagates the consequences?

I've seen one explanation for this. There is a confusion over the nature of volition. Some people assume that volition comes in a matter of degrees. They think of volition in terms of how easy it is to make a choice. If you are strongly emotionally motivated to choose one option over another, they would say that your volition is weak in that case. If you are calm, unbiased, and the available options are all reasonable, it is thought that you are volition is stronger in that case.

What this is actually describing is will-power. In some cases, you may desire one option so much that it is difficult to do what you think is proper. You may be a slave to your emotions, or a slave to social pressures, or a slave to your religious beliefs, or a slave to your addictions.

The problem is that will-power is not the same as volition. Volition is true or false, not a matter of degree. It doesn't matter how strongly you desire one option over another, you still have the capability of choosing either. If you choose one over the other, it was a choice. Maybe it was an easy choice, maybe it was a hard choice, but it was a choice.

The justification of shifting responsibility from one party to another is if one party lacks volition. If they really have no choice, and are merely a slave to the inputs, they can only react. And consequently, responsibility pass through them to the person or people who creates those inputs. But this doesn't apply just because a choice is tough or unpleasant. If you still have the ability to choose, regardless of how easy a choice it is, the responsibility of the choice is still yours.

So this confusion explains why cartoon thugs are given a free pass. They are thought of as irrational, true believers in their religion, and overwhelmed by anger at the cartoons. It is thought that they have no choice, or not "real" choice. And in fact, this is true of irrational people in general. If someone is irrational, they are very unlikely to choose wisely. That difficultly alone is seen as reason enough to excuse them and treat them as mere reactors.

And in general, this confusion leads to the assumption that irrational people, or people who regularly decide to act on their emotions and abdicate sound judgment, should be treated as if they aren't really to blame for their actions. Their nature is treated as a given, like that of a rabid dog, where you can't blame them. You can only accept their nature. So if someone is irrational and a slave to their emotions, moral blame is withheld. They are not asked to change. Those who are rational and responsible are asked to change their behavior to accommodate the irrational.

In foreign policy, terrorists are treated as a given, and the rest of the world is asked to self-censor or take other actions to accommodate them. Terrorist acts are blamed on the western world for inciting the violence. The terrorism is always viewed as a response, like an automatic reaction, to the actions of the west. The solutions is always that we should change our behavior because we are capable of it, whereas they are not.

To bring sanity to these topics, we have to recognize that volition is true or false. Someone has volition even if they choose to just go with their emotions. They have volition even if they are irrational. They have volition even if they are strongly motivated to choose on action over the other. They have a choice.

And with that choice, they have the ability to weigh the options. If a thug is angered by some cartoons, he has the ability to weigh the lives he would destroy against the emotional satisfaction of lashing out. If he chooses emotional satisfaction and kills people, this is reason for us to morally condemn him. It was a choice, and he chose horribly. The fact that he made a terrible choice doesn't prove he lacks volition. It only means that he uses it to pursue evil ends.

And with the recognition that people are responsible for their own choices, we can also see the folly in blaming cartoonists for "inciting" the thugs behavior. They did not initiate force. They have the moral right to believe what they want and speak their minds. There was nothing criminal about it. And the ensuing violence cannot be rationally pinned on them. The thugs who took to violence chose to do so on their own, and responsibility starts and ends there.

It is only through understanding the nature of volition, and the role of it in the area of moral responsibility, that we can see clearly when blame is properly shifted, and when it is improperly shifted.

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