214 Mesh, Reasons-Responsive, Leeway Theories
A considerable amount of interesting philosophical work has been devoted to
providing further support for Frankfurt’s notion of identification.^8 We’ll not
pursue that matter further here.
9.4. Watson’s Structural Mesh Theory
Not long after Frankfurt presented the initial formulation of his hierarchical
theory, Gary Watson proposed an alternative model (1975). Like Frankfurt,
Watson was interested in accounting for free agency in terms of a mesh between
different elements within an agent’s psychic structure. He offered a model based
on a Platonic conception wherein judgment and evaluation can be a source of
motivation. Watson contends that the proper way to account for an agent who
acts freely and who identifies with the sources of her agency is not in terms of a
mesh located in hierarchies of desires. It is, rather, a mesh between different
systems within an agent: her motivational system, which is influenced by ele-
ments such as one’s appetitive desires; and her valuational system, whereby an
agent judges what she takes to be valuable, good, or desirable (1975, as reprinted
in Watson, 2003: 346–8). A free agent is one whose motivational system works
in harmony with her valuational system (347). On Watson’s account, if anything
is to do the work of identification, it is an agent’s valuational system (350). The
valuational system can, however, be plagued by motivations that oppose the
agent’s values; these motivations can result in an agent acting unfreely by acting
contrary to what she values.^9
One advantage Watson claims for his mesh theory over Frankfurt’s is that it
more accurately captures the nature of practical judgment (350). Agents nor-
mally deliberate about what to do, and about what it is best to do, not what first-
order desires they would like to be the ones on which they would act. Watson
seems plain right about this, though perhaps there is some reason to retain a
commitment to a hierarchical ingredient in a mesh theory (e.g., Bratman, 2005,
as reprinted in 2007: 213–16). In particular, some deliberation is distinctively
devoted to questions of self- formation captured by such expressions as “making
something of oneself.”
While Watson’s mesh theory differs from Frankfurt’s in the ways just noted,
there are also several points of similarity, which invite some of the same objections
raised against Frankfurt’s view. Watson’s proposal is equally susceptible to chal-
lenges of manipulation cases as is Frankfurt’s, and Watson has explicitly registered
his concurrence with Frankfurt’s defiant stance against this challenge (Watson,
1999, as reprinted in Watson, 2004: 211–13). Some might also think that the same
worry applies regarding an act’s status as free when it does not issue from a har-
monious mesh. If the harmony is not only sufficient but necessary for exercises of
free will, we get the result that there is no weakness of will insofar as this requires
freely acting contrary to one’s judgment of what it is best to do. However, this
seems not to be regarded by Watson as a problem. He has argued for skepticism
about weakness of will on just the point that agents do not freely act contrary to
their evaluative judgments about what is best to do (Watson, 1977). Nevertheless,