Against Moral Responsibility

by Bruce N. Waller

A vigorous attack on moral responsibility in all its forms argues that the abolition of moral responsibility will be liberating and beneficial. In Against Moral Responsibility , Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for moral responsibility. Waller argues that moral responsibility in all its forms—including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts—is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want—natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities—would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition.

Genres: Philosophy

368 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2011

Reviews

[Frank Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd give this book five stars for it's passion and for the importance of its message, but I had to refrain and give it four as there is more repetition throughout his arguments than necessary.

Waller launches a no holds-barred critique of the "moral responsibility" theory that has so debased our culture -- most obviously in our mean-spirited punitive penal system, but also in our schools and general culture of unbridled individualism that completely ignores the causal relationships that actually shape our character, personality, mind and behavior.

The buddha is said to have said, "All beings are without blame." Of course, such a statement is often mis-understood, even by buddhists as simply a "compassionate" statement, but it follows logically from the teaching of dependent origination and anatta (not-self). This simply points out -- as does Bruce Waller in this awesome book, that no man or woman is 'self created.' We are individuals, yes. BUT, we are all the sum total of all the causes and conditions that have created us. So, if we are 'virtuous,' this is because we are fortunate to have had histories that make us so, and thus are not deserving of any particular praise. And, of course, if we are anything less than virtuous -- from simply lazy and indolent to criminal -- this too is because of our unfortunate history and we are not deserving of any particular blame.

Imagine a society that has gone beyond the primitive "strike-back retribution" response and understood that the criminal behavior is a symptom and that the real causes are social, cultural, environmental and biological. The penal system itself would be dramatically different, based upon restorative justice rather than punitive.

Waller shows that giving up "moral responsibility" would not lead to any kind of break-down, but in fact would be a leap forward in civilization.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not as vertigo-inducing as some other books on this topic (like everything by Dirk Pereboom for instance) but Waller does make an excellent case for a morality that isn't centered on the self-justifying obsession with guilt.

[Matthew Adelstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is pretty good and provides a good criticism of moral responsibility. Waller does not hide the ball in his critique--very early on, he presents his fundamental argument: suppose you have two people that act differently; the cause of this is either chance (atom zigged this way or that), necessity which is itself just bad luck in the forces that shape them, an uncaused choice, which goes against Waller's hardcore naturalism, and different circumstances. But mistreatment based on this is fundamentally unfair--we may sanctimoniously declare that Dahmer really deserves to suffer, but really we are just blaming him for arbitrary genetic factors of a poor upbringing.

Waller also does an excellent job discrediting our desert intuitions. He traces their development to the strikeback intuition--a desire found in rats and chimpanzees to strike out whenever they're harmed, ideally at something like what harmed us. He traces the development of our current conception of responsibility to the strikeback response, which had to be tempered somewhat to avoid attacking babies who cause harm for example.

Waller convincingly argues against various naturalistic accounts of desert. However, in doing so, the book ends up being repetitive. There are hundreds of pages worth of "person X says Y on the topic I've been discussing, here's why what I've spent the last 20 pages saying means their point fails." One, unfortunately, misses the big picture as Waller meticulously sifts through the claims of dozens of philosophers, making similar points on the topic of his chapters. While Waller is an excellent writer, and the parts where he is laying out positive cases are fascinating, the times when he is just responding to the claims of other philosophers gets rather dull.

One limitation of the book: it seems that his goal is primarily to convince other people who agree with him on almost everything else. He dismisses dualism out of hand in a few sentences, with no argument (I found this disappointing due to my sympathy towards dualism) and assumes the falsity of theism throughout the book (I'm not at all sympathetic to theism, so I didn't mind this, but a theist would not, it seems, have been persuaded by the book).

Perhaps I'm being too harsh. The book advanced lots of true and exciting points. His account of compatibilist free will that survived his disbelief in moral responsibility was, in particular, quite clever. Many of the examples are clever: to undermine the idea that one is free when they have a higher-order approval of their desires, Waller gives the example of a willing drug addict who is so addicted that he begins to love his addiction. This person seems especially unfree.

All in all, the book says much that is true and important, but I feel it could have been shorter. If it were only 150 pages, very little of the content would have been left out.

[Nicholas DeMasi]

A profound read, I anticipate Waller's conclusions sticking with me for some time. The title is a bit incendiary, if it read 'Against Punishment' I doubt people would be quite as taken aback. This is essentially the edifice that Waller is working against, but punishment exists because of our commitment to moral responsibility, the two are inextricably linked. Doing away with one requires doing away with the other. I'm still not quite clear about Waller's views on free will and how his conception of a world without moral responsibility preserves it, but i have my own. Even if you were always going to make some decision or other the onus is still on you to make it. I can't give it a 5 because as other reviewers have mentioned Waller can be a bit of a belaborer, he makes the same arguments with the same examples several times over throughout the book, one feels a more concise version was in here somewhere. Not that I'm blaming him though.

[Chris Branch · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of all, I think the author is probably right that there is no true moral responsibility. Unfortunately, I don't think this book makes the best possible case for this position. It's dense and academic, but at the same time rather repetitive and unnecessarily wordy, lacking clear, straightforward statements. The repetition extends to providing the same quotes from other philosophers two or even three times, sometimes within the space of five pages! Waller's attempts at a casual tone with dashes of humor come across a bit stiff and condescending to me.

While his overall assertions are stated repeatedly (such as: we can have free will without moral responsibility), his supporting arguments are meandering and inconclusive. It's just not obvious much of the time exactly what point he's trying to make.

So again, I think he's right, but it's for the obvious reason that if free will is an illusion, we cannot be morally responsible for our choices. Waller, however, insists on maintaining some version of free will, much as Dennett does in his books on the subject, and this just confuses the issue rather than backing up the point about moral responsibility.

The book makes some more solid points toward the end with commentary on crime, punishment, and the retributive instinct, but again, these are mixed with loosely backed up assertions. Even if readers accept the point that moral responsibility is an illusion (while somehow free will is not!) I doubt many will be convinced that our system of justice needs to be radically changed in response to this realization.

[Jake Brockman]

Picked this and read through it in a few days.

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very nice and well argued, but also very repetitive, so I deduct a star for that