Gideon Yaffe

In the Libet paradigm, subjects move their hand at will and report when they first felt the urge to move; information about the upcoming movement was shown to exist in their brains up to 10 seconds before movement onset. These results led some to conclude that conscious decisions are not part of the causal chain leading to action. However, various conceptual and experimental criticisms were raised against this paradigm. This chapter focuses on the reliability of self-reporting intention onset. Research suggests that it is inaccurate and biased, varying considerably with the reporting method and possibly computed retrospectively from movement time. In fact, the idea of a clear onset of intention apparently relies on an intuitively appealing but increasingly challenged model of decision making. This chapter suggests that the Libet studies may be inherently flawed and that the field should not rely on self-reporting of intention onset.

The chapter seeks to better understand the prospects of Watson’s account of addiction. In particular, it is concerned with the question of how addiction can weaken the demand that the addict comply with otherwise legitimate demands. Watson answers this question by pointing to the way in which addictive desires distract attention in a way that makes it unreasonable to expect addicts to comply with legitimate demands with the same alacrity with which we expect non-addicts to comply with such demands. Demurring, the chapter argues instead that the expectation that addicts comply with otherwise legitimate demands is weakened because, for the addict, _wholehearted_ effort to comply is simply not possible.

It is hornbook law that a defendant’s guilt for a crime can be predicated on an omission to act only if the defendant was under a legal duty to engage in the omitted act. By contrast, guilt can be predicated on an affirmative action where there is no legal duty to omit the act. This chapter offers a rationale for the Duty Requirement by arguing that it shields from liability a set of wrongdoers who are not criminally culpable for their wrongful behavior. To be criminally culpable is for one’s behavior to manifest a disregard for legal reasons to refrain from that behavior. Since there can be a legal reason to refrain from behavior that includes an omission only if there is a legal reason to engage in the omitted act, people are criminally culpable for omissions only if they have legal reasons to engage in the acts they omit.

This chapter describes a view of the nature of intention dominant among philosophers. According to the position described, intentions are mental representations of future states that are governed by distinctive norms of rationality. Compliance with these norms allows human beings not to waste deliberative effort reconsidering practical questions they have previously answered and allows us to coordinate our behavior with our future and past selves, and with each other, in order to reach complex goals.

Working with the view that akratic action is action that conflicts with what the agent values at the time of action, the paper asks whether addicts act akratically. The paper offers an interpretation of the neuroscience of reward, particularly the role of the dopamine signal, supporting the view that addicts do not act akratically but, instead, act in line with what they value at the time of action. In the development of this interpretation, Richard Holton’s view of the experiments of Berridge and Robinson, and Timothy Schroeder’s understanding of desire and the dopamine system’s role in action are discussed and criticized.

Reasonable mistaken self-defense cases are those in which the defendant who harmed another had a reasonable but false belief that they had to do so in order to prevent that person from inflicting imminent harm on them. The law treats these as justifications rather than excuses. Unreasonable true self-defense cases are those in which the same belief accompanies the defendant’s harmful action, but while true, the belief is unreasonable. The law treats these as excuses rather than justifications. A moral challenge to both legal practices is considered. The legal practices are then defended from the moral challenge by drawing on Stephen Darwall’s concept of a second-personal reason, and on the idea that action that appears aggressive to a reasonable person provides second-personal reason to inflict harm on the apparent aggressor, even if that appearance is deceptive.

Manipulation by another person often undermines freedom. To explain this, a distinction is drawn between two forms of manipulation: indoctrination is defined as causing another person to respond to reasons in a pattern that serves the manipulator's ends; coercion as supplying another person with reasons that, given the pattern in which he responds to reasons, lead him to act in ways that serve the manipulator's ends. It is argued that both forms of manipulation undermine freedom because manipulators track the compliance of their victims, while neutral causal mechanisms do not. Manipulators see to it that their victims comply even in the face of forces that threaten to derail them from the manipulator's desired course. It is suggested that this has an impact on freedom because part of what we desire in wanting to be free is the availability of forms of life very different from those we actually enjoy.

Adam Kolber’s book, Punishment for the Greater Good, offers a powerful argument for the claim that retributivism is false. This paper reconstructs the argument and offers an objection. The objection involves rejecting a particular view that Kolber offers about the rationality of an intention to punish, a view according to which one cannot rationally intend to punish without a high degree of credence that punishing is justified. It is argued that this is too high a standard for the rationality of intention.

Manifest Activity presents and critically examines Thomas Reid's doctrines about the model of human power, the will, our capacities for purposeful conduct, and the place of our agency in the natural world. Reid is one of the most important philosophers of the 18th century, but hitherto under-appreciated; through the reconstruction of his arguments, many of which have never before been discussed, Gideon Yaffe demonstrates that Reid's simple prose and direct style belie the complexity of the views he advocates and the subtlety of the reasons he offers in their favour. Yaffe's assessment will greatly profit anyone working on current theories of action and free will, as well as historians of ideas.

Manifest Activity presents and critically examines Thomas Reid's doctrines about the model of human power, the will, our capacities for purposeful conduct, and the place of our agency in the natural world. Reid is one of the most important philosophers of the 18th century, but hitherto under-appreciated; through the reconstruction of his arguments, many of which have never before been discussed, Gideon Yaffe demonstrates that Reid's simple prose and direct style belie the complexity of the views he advocates and the subtlety of the reasons he offers in their favour. Yaffe's assessment will greatly profit anyone working on current theories of action and free will, as well as historians of ideas.

Frequently, those who commit a crime forcibly are subject to greater punishment than those who commit the same crime without using force. But uncertainty surrounds the conditions that must be met for an act to be considered to have been performed with force. It is particularly puzzling that acts that are committed through threat, which are in no way harmful, are nonetheless classified under the law as being committed forcibly. This paper explains why by offering an account of a particular kind of harmless force. On the account offered, an act is performed with this type of force just in case it manifests a disposition to escalate in the face of obstacles permissibly imposed by the victim. The paper argues that conduct that manifests such a disposition causes the victim’s agency to be implicated in the wrong done to them by causing them to refrain from realizing obstacles to the wrong. Forcible conduct, therefore, invades another’s autonomy in a way that non-forcible conduct does not and is, for that reason, more wrongful.

This is the first comprehensive interpretation of John Locke's solution to one of philosophy's most enduring problems: free will and the nature of human agency. Many assume that Locke defines freedom as merely the dependency of conduct on our wills. And much contemporary philosophical literature on free agency regards freedom as a form of self-expression in action. Here, Gideon Yaffe shows us that Locke conceived free agency not just as the freedom to express oneself, but as including also the freedom to transcend oneself and act in accordance with "the good." For Locke, exercising liberty involves making choices guided by what is good, valuable, and important. Thus, Locke's view is part of a tradition that finds freedom in the imitation of God's agency. Locke's free agent is the ideal agent. Yaffe also examines Locke's understanding of volition and voluntary action. For Locke, choices always involve self-consciousness. The kind of self-consciousness to which Locke appeals is intertwined with his conception of personal identity. And it is precisely this connection between the will and personal identity that reveals the special sense in which our voluntary actions can be attributed to us and the special sense in which we are active with respect to them. Deftly written and tightly focused, Liberty Worth the Name will find readers far beyond Locke studies and early modern British philosophy, including scholars interested in free will, action theory, and ethics.

It’s not uncommon for people to try to shield themselves from blame or punishment by saying, “But everybody does that!”. This BEDT defense seems more appealing as a defense to some offenses than to others. In a neglected paper, Doug Husak describes various types of crime to which the BEDT ought, he argues, be a defense. This paper extends his work by identifying a category he overlooks. The paper argues that often the BEDT shields from blame and punishment because the prevalence of the offense in the community shows that the punisher does not speak for the community when issuing the punishment. Since the punisher’s authority depends on its doing so, the BEDT shows in such cases that the punisher should stay its hand.

The philosophy of punishment’s focus on the question of justification has left the question of definition neglected. This article explains why there is a need for necessary and sufficient conditions for punishment and offers a new account. Under the theory proposed, to inflict a punishment is to make fewer things permissible for another to do. Since not every such restriction is punishment, an account is offered of the additional conditions needing to be met. One implication of the resulting theory is that some prominent cases in which the question of definition needed to be answered were wrongly decided.

Criminal defendants cannot be punished unless found guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Under probabilistic accounts, this means that the probability of guilt given the evidence is above a certain numerical threshold, such as 0.9. Under psychological accounts, by contrast, what is essential is that a factfinder reaches a certain psychological attitude toward guilt, such as certainty or unwavering belief, when contemplating the evidence. An adequate account should provide a normative explanation for why guilt BARD warrants punishment. Psychological accounts are more likely to meet this challenge than probabilistic, it is argued. The permissibility of punishment is likely to be relative to the cognitive attitudes of the punisher, but not to the conditional probability of guilt in light of the evidence.