Kate Girvin, Texas A&M University

Response to Aidan Peters

Kate Girvin Texas A&M University

In this paper, Peters uses neuroscientist Giulio Tononi’s Information Integration Theory of Consciousness (IIT) to defend the claim that consciousness is a “subjective experience” found within a deterministic, physical world (Peters 2022). Using the premises in Tononi’s cognitive theory, Peters postulates a causal link between the subjective, conscious world and objective, physical world to identify an alternative solution to crime and punishment, particularly its effects on the moral agent. Instead of enforcing a retributive model of punishment, Peters advocates for a radically empathetic approach to crime rooted in rehabilitative justice.

While Peters’ rehabilitative approach to crime and punishment is a potential solution to addressing moral wrongdoings, it fails to consider cases of moral luck, a term coined by philosopher Thomas Nagel, which introduces chance into moral evaluations. Briefly put, moral luck describes the unpredictability between luck and moral accountability which would assign a moral agent moral blame or praise for an action or its consequences, independent of any alleged free will the moral agent possessed. For example, two people find themselves texting and driving on their way to work. One person successfully makes it to work without an accident, while the other distracted driver hits and injures a pedestrian. Both moral agents in this scenario arguably violated a moral law, yet only one found himself in a situation where is more culpable. This thought experiment summarizes the problem with moral luck; society has a tendency to apply varying degrees of moral blame for identical behaviors, actions, or intentions based on their outcome.

My critique primarily addresses Peters’ application of IIT to crimes with an ethical component. In the final section of his essay, Peters proffers a solution to assumed causal direction that quantifies subjective information with objective information for the moral agent. In doing so, he brings attention to crime, specifically crimes committed with the influence of “social forces like poverty, systemic racism, etc.” (Peters 2022). Peters argues that a rehabilitative approach to moral wrongdoings could eliminate stigmas surrounding criminals who are compelled to commit crimes based on the social factors by which they are encompassed. He says a rehabilitative

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approach would also allow criminals to conform their actions to be more “compatible with prosocial societal values” (Peters 2022) and improve the harsh social and physical conditions of prisons.

Peters’ application could be better supported with Nagel’s theory of moral luck. Nagel argues that causation is independent of intentionality and is defined by the “luck” in which the moral agent is found. Nagel, too, agrees that moral agents have little to no free will in a deterministic world, leaving some of the consequences of their actions out of their control as well. Therefore, moral agents are only responsible for the causation of their actions that can be found within their control. This means that factors such as race, which are predetermined by one’s biology and thus out of one’s control, influence one’s possibility to encounter situations with favorable moral luck. Peters hints at race as a limiting factor in the legal system, but much of this claim is left to the reader’s interpretation. I do believe Peters is correct in assuming that race is a potential bias in the judicial system. He could have expanded on this application using Nagel’s theory, as the concept of moral luck directly corresponds to the ideas Peter is developing in his final thoughts. While I understand that philosophical analysis is highly theoretical and qualitative, a few statistics or case studies applicable to the theory of moral luck could attest to both the writer’s claim of systemic racism and deep understanding of overarching sociopolitical issues undermining our legal systems.

Further, Peters’ rehabilitative approach fails to consider that the said “prosocial societal values” are predicated upon the experiences of privileged white, heterosexual, middle-class males. Therefore, dominant group privilege likely penetrates any existing systems which would attempt to re-assimilate criminals into society after their incarceration. If a rehabilitative approach to moral wrongdoings is implemented, the program must acknowledge that privilege conditions our society to favor certain individuals with moral luck over others. Therefore, the rehabilitative programs must predicate the social “conditioning” of former criminals with respect to their class, gender, race, and ability (Peters 2022).