Publications

For works in progress/pre-publication papers and descriptions, see Research.

Waller, R. R. (2023). Free will and self expression: A compatibilist garden of forking paths. Philosophical Issues, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/phis.12259

Free will is often understood as the control an agent exercises over her actions that is required for the agent to be held morally responsible for her conduct. This necessary control has been classi- fied in the literature as of two varieties, sourcehood and leeway control. According to accounts of sourcehood free will and moral responsibility, an agent must be a significant source of her actions for her to act freely. The action is ‘up to her’ or her own. She is the author of that action. According to leeway accounts of free will and responsibility, an agent must have the right kind of alternatives to her actual course of action in order for her to act freely. This is often times discussed as the ability to do otherwise or could have done otherwise constraint. This question of kind of control relevant for moral responsibility is related to, but distinct from, whether free will is compatible with deter- minism, the compatibility question. Both compatibilists and incompatibilists have defended the relevance of sourcehood and leeway for being a morally responsible agent. Notably, contemporary sourcehood compatibilists, for dialectical reasons, have left open whether leeway control may be incompatible with determinism.

My aim in this paper is to advocate for an enhanced sourcehood compatibilist view, one that takes leeway control to be required for significant sourcehood and so for significant moral respon- sibility. That is, I will argue for a Kane-style compatibilist view of moral responsibility. This view takes seriously that the exercise of free will is inextricably linked to self-expression and self- formation. To put it in terms of the garden of forking paths, our actual actions are the taken paths of self-expression, but the paths not walked signify our freedom of alternative expression, possibilities that ground our significant moral agency.

In section one and two, I will outline sourcehood views of moral responsibility, particularly those that hold free action to be linked to self-expression and ownership or authorship of actions. In section two, I will marshal support from my own work and others for the claim that being a source of one’s action in the moral responsibility sense requires some kind of alternatives to actual action. Specifically, I will make the case that this kind of enhanced control grounds self-expression in a way that is crucial for being an apt candidate of the morally reactive attitudes. In section three, I will argue that this kind of leeway control need not—and cannot—be of the incompatibilist formulation.

Available open access here

Waller, R. R., & Waller, R. L. (2022). “Assembled Bias: Beyond Transparent Bias.” Minds and Machines 32, 533-562.

We argue that the distinctive generative process of feature creation, characteristic of machine learning (ML), for algorithmic systems contorts feature parameters in ways that can lead to emerging feature spaces that encode novel algorithmic bias involving already marginalized groups. We term this bias assembled bias. Moreover, assembled biases are distinct from the much-discussed algorithmic bias, both in source (training data versus feature creation) and in content (mimics of extant societal bias versus reconfigured categories). Assembled bias is not epistemically transparent in source or content. Hence, when these ML models are used as a basis for decision-making in social contexts, algorithmic fairness concerns are compounded. 

This is a co-authored article with a machine learning specialist. My contribution involved: background and synthesizing the literature on algorithmic bias, situating in the broader literature and making clear the distinct nature of the bias we have demonstrated, elucidating the nature of assembled bias with examples and giving its implications for the epistemology and ethics of AI systems. I wrote or substantially revised all aspects of the manuscript. The work here is instrumental in demonstrating how AI algorithms are already impacting our decision-making and having class-like impacts on the opportunities of real-life individuals, but crucially beyond our notice. It is of basic import (academic discussion of machine-learning representation) and applied import (algorithmic justice). 

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Waller, R. R. (2022). “Taking Control with Mechanisms of Psychotherapy.” In May, J. And King, M. (eds.) Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This chapter examines the control capacities of individuals with certain mental disorders and how, specifically, their reasons-responsiveness improves with treatment. Successful talk therapy, in particular, can bring individuals with disorders of agency closer to full-blown agency. The discussion focuses, first, on Agoraphobia and Exposure Therapy and, second, on Borderline Personality Disorder and Dialectical Behavior Therapy. We can see effective techniques of talk therapy, such as gradual exposure or radical acceptance exercises, as operating on the ability of patients to respond appropriately to reasons. In this way, reasons-responsiveness is a lens through which both to better appreciate the flourishing of patients, via improved control in both moral and nonmoral contexts. The chapter bridges philosophical concepts of reasons-responsiveness with key psychiatric constructs, such as distress tolerance and experiential avoidance.

Available for purchase or through Oxford Scholarship Online here

Waller, R. R., & Brager, A. J. (2022). “I did that!; Biomarkers of volitional and free agency.” In Sinnott-Armstrong, W. and De Brigard, F. (eds.) Philosophy and Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12611.003.0007

This paper surveys the state of neuroscientific work concerning the phenomenology and neural mechanisms of intentional action as well the implications for free will and moral responsibility. Here we discuss how neuroscience of agency — how agents in fact exercise their agency — can bear upon philosophy of agency — accounts of what capacities or conditions would enable or prohibit the exercise of free agency. Further we seek to establish a new avenue in the interdisciplinary research on agency: how sleep deprivation may impact sense of agency for outcomes (“I did that!”) and initiation of voluntary movements. In drawing this connection we propose new research that bridges sleep research with well-established cognitive neuroscientific paradigms concerning voluntary action. Finally we consider the importance of such new avenues for theories of free will and moral responsibility. 

Available open access here

"Weighing in on Decisions in the Brain: Neural Representations of Pre-awareness Practical Intention" (2021). Synthese (topical collection on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Locating Representations in the Brain; editors Robins and De Brigard). 

Neuroscientists have located brain activity that prepares or encodes action plans before agents are aware of intending to act. On the basis of these findings and broader agency research, activity in these regions has been proposed as the neural realizers of practical intention. My aim in this paper is to evaluate the case for taking these neural states to be neural representations of intention. I draw on work in philosophy of action on the role and nature of practical intentions to construct a framework of the functional profile of intentions fit for empirical investigatilocaon. With this framework, I turn to the broader empirical neuroscience literature on agency to assess these proposed neural representations of intention. I argue that while these neural states in some respects satisfy the functions of intention in planning agency prospective of action, their fit with the role of intention in action execution is not well supported. I close by offering a sketch of which experimental task features could aid in the search for the neural realizer of intention in action. 

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Author manuscript available (please cite published version only)

"A Case for Classical Compatibilism: Manipulation and Perspectival Judgments" (2020). Grazer Philosophische Studien 97 (4), 575-599.

In this article the author makes the case for a hybrid sourcehood–leeway compatibil- ist account of free will. To do so, she draws upon Lehrer’s writing on free will, includ- ing his preference-based compatibilist account and Frankfurt-style cases from the perspective of the cognizant agent. The author explores what distinguishes kinds of intentional influence in manipulation cases and applies this distinction to a new per- spectival variant of Frankfurt cases, those from the perspective of the counterfactual intervenor. She argues that it matters what kind of intentional influence is at issue in the counterfactual intervention and, further, that our judgments about desert of praise (and blame) are affected by occupying the pov of the counterfactual intervenor. The author concludes that such attention to perspectival variants of Frankfurt cases sup- ports the view that compatibilist sourcehood accounts of moral responsibility require an additional compatibilist could-have-done-otherwise condition to capture a more robust sense of moral responsibility.

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Author manuscript here (please cite published version only)

Agency, Freedom, and Responsibility: A Review (July 2019). John Templeton Foundation.

An extended review of the the basic issues regarding free will and select recent scientific, philosophical, and theoretical work on free will (67 pp).

Available in context with work at John Templeton Foundation here and as a PDF here

"Science of Free Will: Neuroscience," (2023). In Campbell, J. K., Mickelson, K., & White, A. V. (eds.) A Companion to Free Will. Blackwell Companion Series. Oxford: Blackwell.

The aim of this chapter is to offer a survey of the neuroscience of free will, particularly those studies of agency related to a now famous study by Benjamin Libet. I outline Libet and colleagues’ 1983 study and its import for the neuroscience of free will. Three potential threats to the existence of intentional and free action on the basis of these studies are characterized. These threats are assessed via a tour of replications and extensions of Libet’s results. I then press an objection to the broadly defined Libet paradigm, namely that these neuroscientific studies of agency cannot generalize to conclusions about paradigmatically free decisions and actions due to the nature of actions tested in the laboratory. I conclude that even given marked improvements in the kinds of action under study in neuroscience, we ought to be wary of any strong claims regarding free will on the basis of these studies. 

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Review of The Limits of Free Will Paul Russell (2017). Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2019.

Available here

Review of Agency, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility, Andrei Buckareff, Carlos Moya, & Sergi Rosell (eds.) (2016). Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Available here

"Forking Paths and Freedom: A Challenge to Libertarian Accounts of Free Will," (2015). Philosophia 43(4), 1199-1212.

The aim of this paper is to challenge libertarian accounts of free will. It is argued that there is an irreconcilable tension between the way in which philosophers motivate the incompatibilist ability to do otherwise and the way in which they formally express it. Potential incompatibilist responses in the face of this tension are canvassed, and it is argued that each response is problematic. It is not claimed that incompatibilist accounts in general are incoherent, but rather that any incompatibilist accounts that requires that an agent have alternative possibilities at the point of a free action fails. 

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“Revising Reasons-Reactivity: Weakly and Strongly Sufficient Reasons for Acting,” (2014). Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17(3), 529-543.

In Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza propose an account of moral responsibility according to which an agent is morally responsible for an action just when that action is the product of her own moderately reasons-responsive mechanism, where reasons-responsiveness is explained in terms of the mechanism’s regular reasons-receptivity and weak reasons-reactivity. In a review of Fischer and Ravizza’s book Mele contends that their weakly reasons-reactivity condition is inadequate, constructing a case in which, according to their theory, an extreme agoraphobic is morally responsible for his staying in his home. In this paper I modify Fischer and Ravizza’s account of moral responsibility in light of Mele’s problematic example, suggesting a refinement of their weakly reasons-reactivity requirement via a distinction between weakly sufficient reasons and strongly sufficient reasons.

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“The Threat of Effective Intentions to Moral Responsibility in the Zygote Argument,” (2014). Philosophia 42, 209-222.

In Free Will and Luck, Mele presents a case of an agent Ernie, whose zygote was intentionally designed so that Ernie A-s in 30 years, bringing about a certain event E. Mele uses this case of original design to outline the zygote argument against compatibilism. In this paper I criticize the zygote argument. Unlike other compatibilists who have responded to the zygote argument, I contend that it is open to the compatibilist to accept premise one, that Ernie does not act freely and is not morally responsible for anything he does. I argue that compatibilists should deny premise two. Diana’s effective intention to create Ernie’s zygote such that Ernie A-s in thirty years and her intervention to bring about his A-ing mark a significant difference between Ernie and normal agents in a deterministic universe with regard to how their zygotes were created that affects whether those agents act freely and are morally responsible for so acting.

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“Causation, Norms, and Omissions: A Study of Causal Judgments,” with Randolph Clarke, Joshua Shepherd, John Stigall, and Chris Zarpentine (2015). Philosophical Psychology.

Many philosophical theories of causation are egalitarian, rejecting a distinction between causes and mere causal conditions. We sought to determine the extent to which people’s causal judgments discriminate, selecting as causes counternormal events—those that violate norms of some kind—while rejecting non-violators. We found significant selectivity of this sort. Moreover, priming that encouraged more egalitarian judgments had little effect on subjects. We also found that omissions are as likely as actions to be judged as causes, and that counternormative selectivity appears to apply equally to actions and omissions.

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“Beyond Button Presses: The Neuroscience of Free and Morally Appraisable Actions,” (2012). The Monist 95(3): 441-462.

This paper addresses three questions: What are the types of action at issue in the free will and moral responsibility debate? Are the neuroscientists who make claims about free will and moral responsibility studying those types of action? If not, can the existing paradigm in the field be modified to study those types of action? The paper outlines some claims made by neuroscientists about the inefficacy of conscious intentions and the implications of this inefficacy for the existence of free will. It argues that, typically, the types of actions at issue in the philosophical literature require proximal or distal conscious decisions (or at least non-actively acquired intentions) and have the right kind of connection to reasons. It points out that neuroscientists are not studying this class of actions, as their studies focus on simple commanded actions (e.g., finger or wrist flex) and simple Buridan choices (e.g., push the left or right button). These types of actions do not require conscious control and do not have a connection to the participants’ justificatory or motivational reasons for action–beyond complying with the experimenter’s instructions. Finally, it argues that neuroscience already has the resources to study the type of action relevant for free will and moral responsibility and outlines two experiments which focus on skilled actions and moral choices that could be run using the available technology. 

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“Informed Consent: Good Medicine, Dangerous Side Effects,” with Bruce N. Waller (2008). Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics 17: 66-74.

Informed consent has passed through three stages. The first paternalistic stage lasted for many centuries: The doctor's diagnosis and healing arts were kept secret, and informing patients was regarded as professionally and ethically wrong. Second came the legal stage, when the right of patients to make informed decisions concerning their own treatment was imposed by the courts and reluctantly tolerated by medical professionals. The third informed consent stage emerged more recently: the general therapy stage. The therapeutic benefits of informed consent have been well established, and informed consent is widely recognized as an important element in sound medical practice. When patients are effectively informed and can exert knowledgeable control over their own treatment decisions and therapy processes, that enhances recovery, strengthens the immune system, promotes better pain tolerance, prevents depression, and encourages patient cooperation and fortitude in treatment, rehabilitation, and preventative procedures. As the medical community has absorbed greater knowledge of this research, informed consent has been recognized as both ethically essential and therapeutically sound: the hallmark of the current general therapy stage of informed consent.

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