Does culpable ignorance excuse?

It is widely held that if you do wrong in culpable ignorance (ignorance that you are blameworthy for), you are culpable for the wrong you do. I have long though think this is mistaken—instead we should frontload the guilt onto the acts and omissions that made one culpable for the ignorance.

I will argue for a claim in the vicinity by starting with some cases that are not cases of ignorance.

1. One is no less guilty if one tries to shoot someone and misses than if one hits them.

2. If one drinks and drives and is lucky enough to hit no one, one is no less guilty than if one does hit someone, as long as the degree of freedom and knowledge in the drinking and driving is the same.

3. If one freely takes a drug one knows to remove free will and produce violent behavior in 25% of cases, one is no less guilty if involuntary violence does not ensue than if involuntary violence does ensue.

Now, let’s consider this case of culpable ignorance:

4. Mad scientist Alice offers Bob a million dollars to undergo a neural treatment that over the next 48 hours will make Bob think that Elbonians—a small ethnic group—are disease-bearing mosquitoes. Bob always kills organisms that he thinks are disease-bearing mosquitoes on sight. Bob correctly estimates that there is a 25% chance that he will meet an Elbonian over the next 48 hours. If Bob accepts the deal, he is no less guilty if he is lucky enough to meet no Elbonians than if he does meet and kill one.

This is as clear a case of culpable ignorance as can be: in accepting the deal, Bob knows he will become ignorant of the human nature of Elbonians, and he knows there is a 25% chance this will result in his killing an Elbonian. I think that just as in cases (1)–(3), one is no less guilty if the bad consequences for others don’t result, so too in case (4), Bob is no less guilty if he never meets an Elbonian.

For a final case, consider:

5. Just like (4), except that instead of coming to think Elbonians are (disease-bearing) mosquitoes, Bob will come to believe that unlike all other innocent human persons whom it is impermissible to kill, it is obligatory to kill Elbonians, and Bob’s estimate that this belief will result in his killing an Elbonian is 25%.

Again, Bob is no less guilty for taking the money and getting the treatment if he does not run into any Elbonians than if he does run into and kill an Elbonian.

Therefore, one is no less guilty for one’s culpable ignorance if wicked action does not result. Or, equivalently:

6. One is no more guilty if wicked action does result from culpable ignorance than if it does not.

But (6) is not quite the claim I started with. I started claiming one is not guilty for the wicked action in cases of culpable ignorance. The claim I argued for is that one is no guiltier for the wicked action than if there is no wicked action resulting from the ignorance. But now if one was guilty for the wicked action, it seems one would be guiltier, since one would have both the guilt for the ignorance and for the wicked action.

However, I am now not so sure. The argument in the previous paragraph depended on something like this principle:

7. Being guilty of both action A and action B is guiltier than just being guilty of action A, all other things being equal. (Ditto for omissions, but I want to be briefer.)

Thus being guilty of acquiring ignorance and acting wickedly on the ignorance would be guiltier than just of acquiring ignorance, and hence by (6) the wicked action does not have guilt. But now that I have got to this point in the argument, I am not so sure of (7).

There may be counterexamples to (7). First, a politician’s lying to the people an hour after a deadly natural disaster is not less guilty than lying in the same way to the people an hour before the natural disaster. But in lying to the people after the disaster one lies to fewer people—since some people died in the disaster!—and hence there are fewer actions of lying (instead of lying to Alice, and lying to Bob, and lying to Carl, one “only” lies to Alice and one lies to Bob). But I am not sure that this is right—maybe there is just one action of lying lying to the people rather than a separate one for each audience member.

Second, suppose Bob strives to insult Alice in person, and consider two cases. In one case, when he has decided to insult Alice, he gets into his car, drives to see Alice, and insults her. In the other case, when he gets into the car he realizes he doesn’t have enough gas to reach Alice, and so he buys gas, then drives to see Alice, and then insults her. In the second case, Bob performed an action he didn’t perform in the first case: buy gas in order to insult Alice. But it doesn’t seem that Bob is guiltier in the second case, even though he did perform one more guilty action. I am also not sure about this case. Here I am actually inclined to think that Bob is more guilty, for two reasons. First, he was willing to undertake a greater burden in order to insult Alice—and that increases guilt. Second, he had an extra chance to repent—each time one acquiesces in a means, that’s a chance to just say no to the whole action sequence. And yet he refused this chance. (It seems to me that Bob is guiltier in the second case, just as the assassin possessing two bullets and shooting the second after missing with the first—regardless of whether the second shot hits—is guiltier than the assassin who after shooting and missing once stops.)

While I am not convinced of the cases, they point to the idea that in the context of (7), the guilt of action A might “stretch” to making B guilty without increasing the total amount of guilt. If that makes sense, then that might actually be the right way of account of accounting for actions done in culpable ignorance. If Bob kills an Elbonian, he is guilty. That is not an additional item of guilt, but rather the guilt of the actions and omissions that caused the guilt stretches over and covers the killing. This seems to me to mesh better with ordinary ways of talking—we don’t want to say that Bob’s killing of the Elbonian in either case (4) or (5) is innocent. And saying that there is no additional guilt may be a way of assuaging the intuition I have had over the years when I thought that culpable ignorance excuses.

Maybe.

A final obvious question is about punishment. We do punish differentially for attempted and completed murder, and for drunk driving that does not result in death and drink driving that does. I think there pragmatic reasons for this. If attempted and completed murder were equally punished, there would be an incentive to “finish the job” upon initial failure. And having a lesser penalty for non-lethal drunk driving creates an incentive for the drunk driver to be more careful driving—how much that avails depends on how drunk the driver is, but it might make some difference.

Does our ignorance always grow when we learn?

Here is an odd thesis:

1. Whenever you gain a true belief, you gain a false belief.

This follows from:

2. Whenever you gain a belief, you gain a false belief.

The argument for (2) is:

3. You always have at least one false belief.

4. You believe a conjunction if and only if you believe the conjuncts.

5. Suppose you just gained a belief p.

6. There is now some false belief q that you have. (By (3))

7. Before you gained the belief p you didn’t believe the conjunction of p and q. (By (4))

8. So, you just gained the belief in the conjunction of p and q. (By (5) and (7))

9. The conjunction of p and q is false. (By (6))

10. So, you just gained a false belief. (By (8) and (9))

I am not sure I accept (4), though.

Inculpably acting through culpable ignorance

It is widely held that:

1. Doing the wrong thing while inculpably ignorant that it's wrong is itself inculpable.
2. Doing the wrong thing while culpably ignorant that it's is culpable, assuming the other conditions for culpability are met (freedom, etc.).

I think (1) is true but (2) is false. I think that not only does inculpable ignorance excuse, but so does culpable ignorance. (Assuming, of course, that it's real ignorance: one can lie to oneself that one is ignorant when in fact one knows.)

Start with this case. Sally was inculpably ignorant of the wrongness of targeting civilians in just wars. Like many Americans, she was raised to think that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally permissible, since the bombings saved many lives by ending the war early. One morning, while an undergraduate, she culpably spent an extra five minutes on Facebook before going to her ethics class. As a result, she culpably showed up five minutes late (being late to class isn't always morally wrong, but being late without sufficiently good reason disturbs others' learning and is morally wrong, and I assume this is a case like that). Consequently, she missed the discussion of double effect and the distinction between strategic and terror bombing. Had she heard the discussion, she would have known that it's wrong to target civilians. Since she is culpable for lateness to her ethics class, her ignorance of the wrongness of the kind of terror bombing that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were subjected to is wrong. Years later, incurring no further culpability, she is still ignorant. But then one day there is a just war, and she is a drone pilot asked to target civilians in a situation relevantly similar to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She does so, believing that it's her duty to do so.

Had Sally refused to follow orders, she would have been culpable for violating her conscience--and indeed, very seriously culpable since her bombing saved many lives by ending the war early (I am assuming that this was the case in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). But in fact, Sally acted wrongly: she committed mass murder. She did so in ignorance, but her ignorance was culpable, since she was culpable for being late to the class that would have cured her of her ignorance.

Given (1), had double effect not been discussed in class that morning when she spent too much time on Facebook, she would have been entirely inculpable for mass murder. It seems implausible that whether Sally is culpable for mass murder depends on what in fact went on in a class that she missed. Furthermore, culpability shouldn't depend on arcane counterfactuals. But it could be quite an arcane counterfactual whether Sally would have learned that it's wrong to target civilians in a just war. It might have depended on fine details of just how persuasive the professor was, what effect Sally's presence in the class would have had on the mode of presentation, etc.

Moreover, it seems implausible that Sally is culpable for mass murder because of her culpability for the peccadillo of being five minutes late to class. The intuition behind (1) is that you don't get culpability out of inculpability. You likewise shouldn't get mass-murder-level culpability out of a peccadillo. But this last argument is a little fast. For while "Sally is culpable for mass-murder" misleadingly suggests that Sally has great culpability. If we accept (1), we should accept a parallel principle that the degree to which one is culpable for a wrong act done in ignorance is no greater than one's degree of culpability for the ignorance. As a result, we might say that Sally is culpable for mass-murder, but the degree of guilt is at a level corresponding to being five minutes late to class (without, I assume, any reasonable expectation that those five minutes would result in ignorance about mass murder).

Very well. Let's suppose that five milliturps are the level of guilt corresponding to the lateness to class. Maybe the level of guilt for the mass murder would have been a gigaturp per victim, if Sally had known that such bombing is wrong. So the suggestion we are now exploring for saving (2) is that Sally's level of guilt for an ignorant bombing run is capped at five milliturps, no matter how many victims there are. (There is something odd about having slight guilt for something so big, but I don't think we should worry about the oddity.) Very well. Consider now two scenarios. In the first one, Sally goes on a single bombing run that she knows will claim 10,000 civilian victims. In the second, she goes on two bombing runs, which will claim 5,000 civilian victims each. On the capping suggestion, in the first scenario, Sally acquires five milliturps of guilt for her bombing run. In the second scenario, she acquires five milliturps of guilt for the first bombing run, too. That's already a little strange: we would expect less culpability with fewer victims. But it gets worse. In the second bombing run, the capping view will also assign five milliturps. As a result, in the second scenario, Sally incurs a total of ten milliturps of guilt. And that seems just wrong: it shouldn't matter that much how the victims are divided up. Furthermore, the intuition being the principle that culpability for an ignorant act can't exceed the culpability for the ignorance is, I think, violated when a multiplicity of ignorant acts exceeds in total culpability the culpability for the ignorance.

We might try a modified capping principle: The culpability for all acts coming from culpable ignorance is capped in total. This has the odd result, however, that in the second scenario, Sally is five-milliturps-guilty for the first run, but not at all guilty for the second, having already reached her culpability cap. At this point it seems much more reasonable simply to suppose that all of Sally's guilt is the initial five milliturps for being late to class. She doesn't acquire a second five milliturps for her bombing runs.

It may seem to be an insult to the memory of the victims that Sally manages to murder them without incurring any guilt. But, for what it's worth, it seems to me to be less of an insult to suppose that she is innocent of the murder than to suppose that she is pecadillo-level guilty for it, as on the capping views.

Ignorance

It is a common view that if Fred could not have been reasonably expected to know that what he is doing is wrong, if his ignorance of the wrongness of the action is not his fault, then Fred is not culpable for what he did—though he may be responsible in some way other than culpability (e.g., obliged to make restitution). I am inclined to a much stronger view. If Fred does not believe that what he is doing is wrong, then Fred is not culpable for that action. This is true even if Fred knew that the action was wrong and brainwashed himself out of the belief in its wrongness precisely to escape culpability for the action. Of course, in such a case, he does not escape culpability for brainwashing himself with that end in view. But the wrongful deed that was the subject of his brainwashing does not add to his guilt. He is guilty only for the self-deceit, and he is guilty whether or not he goes on to do that further deed.

I do not know that I've met anybody else who endorsed that stronger view. But it is, I think, an unavoidable consequence of a strong denial of moral luck. Suppose one thinks, as one should, that, ceteris paribus, one incurs no more objective guilt by committing a murder than by attempting a murder. Then consider the following means of attempting murder: Fred hypnotizes himself into killing Patrick. In this case, the act of self-hypnosis is the act of attempting murder, since one does not act under hypnosis (I stipulate). If under hypnosis he kills Patrick, he has committed murder. But his murderous act was the act of committing self-hypnosis—it was an act done with the end that Patrick should die. (If this isn't clear, suppose that Fred hypnotizes Sally into killing Patrick. Then Fred's hypnotizing Sally is an act of murder, and Sally does not act in killing Patrick. But the same is true if Fred is both hypnotist and subject of hypnosis.) So if we deny moral luck, we have to say that he is no more guilty when he succeeds in hypnotizing himself into killing Patrick than when he does not succeed.

Now, suppose that instead of hypnotizing himself, Fred brainwashes himself into believing that he ought to kill Patrick, in order that Patrick may die. The act of self-brainwashing here is also an attempt, perhaps successful and perhaps not, to bring about Patrick's death. (This is really clear in the case where Patrick brainwashes Sally.) Therefore, Fred is guilty of a crime equal to murder, even if the attempt at self-brainwashing fails or succeeds but later on he doesn't carry through the deed. Suppose it all succeeds, though. Then Fred's act of killing Patrick is not a guilty act, though it is a wrongful one. Here is why. Fred has already committed an act equal to murder—the self-brainwashing with the intention that Patrick's death should result. If Fred's act of killing Patrick is a guilty act, then he has committed two acts equal to murder—he is doubly guilty. But that is multiplying guilt beyond necessity. Fred indeed is guilty of two things, but surely not of two acts equal to murder: he is guilty of one act equal to murder (namely, the self-brainwashing with lethal intention) and one act where he sins against himself (namely, by destroying his moral sense through self-brainwashing)—and he is guilty of both whether or not he goes on to kill Patrick.

The more you know...

Some things sound like tautologies, but aren't. Here is one:

1. The more you know, the less you are ignorant of.

Obviously, if you come to know p, you cease to be ignorant of p. But it may well be that coming to know p brings it about that you no longer know some things that you used to know. For, p might be a defeater for things you knew, or p might be a conjunction of unrepresentative cases that destroys some inductive argument you had (previously you knew that most mice have tails; but, completely by chance, over the past year, each day you've come across a different tailless mouse; now, you no longer know). So learning a new thing might make one cease to know a number of other things one used to know.

Is knowledge of p then a good thing, all things considered, or would one be better off not knowing that?