Chapter dzǷ: Free Will and Ethics ȂǿȀMore generally, the individual himself is the product of social forces,
operating largely through language, which conditions his thoughts, val-
ues, and activities. Recognizing the individual as a social product in no
way denies that happiness and misery, success and frustration, are expe-
rienced by individuals; there is no such thing as collective happiness dis-
tinct from and transcending the happiness of individuals. Recognizing
how society shapes its members in no way imposes collectivist or commu-
nitarian rather than individualist thinking and policies.
Ļe analogy, in brief, amounts to this: A person’s tastes are what they
are and their gratification or frustration causes him pleasure or unhappi-
ness, even though his tastes are themselves largely the product of external
influences. Similarly, a person’s character is what it is and does expose
him to admiration and praise or reprobation and blame, even though
his character, like his tastes, is itself largely the product of external influ-
ences.
Praise and reward, blame and punishment, are appropriate to the ex-
tent that they are capable in principle of influencing actions, decisions,
and character traits, inappropriate otherwise—so Moritz Schlick persua-
sively argues. Having grown up in ghetto poverty is no valid excuse for
robbery, mayhem, or murder; on the other hand, it is pointless to blame
a person for actions imposed by congenital deformity or actual insanity.
Reward and punishment, praise and blame, all implicitly acknowledge a
partial determinism operating in human affairs. (Sometimes, however, a
distinction holds between punishment and blame, as in the case of the
unruly dog. Individual or collective self-defense against criminally insane
persons, as against mad dogs, is not the same as assigning moral culpa-
bility. “Punishment” in such a case, like quarantine of a disease-carrier, is
not punishment in the fullest sense.)
Praise or blame, reward or punishment, is appropriate for an act com-
mitted freely, even and especially for one committed in accordance with
the agent’s moral character. Its appropriateness does not hinge on the
agent’s character being totally uncaused, whatever that might mean. Praise
or blame would be inappropriate if it would have no effect on acts of the
type in question and no effect on propensities to commit them.
Partialdeterminism, which responsibility presupposes, is fundamen-
tally different both from full determinism and from complete (perhaps
stochastic) indeterminism. It recognizes that causality does operate in
human affairs, as in the rest of the universe. It recognizes that how an
individual will decide when facing a particular choice may be heavily or