Free Assholes by Aaron James

must be “attributable” to him, in current philosophical parlance. We are saying that
general
moral capacities come along with the package, but that isn’t yet to say—and thisis crucial for present purposes—that the asshole has capacities to see
specific
things in a certain situation (e.g., not to speak too loudly in public) as required of him.
    To probe further: if a sense of entitlement to cut in line were implanted in your mind by a nefarious neuroscientist, it would not necessarily reflect
your
moral views, even if it effectively prompted you to cut into the line at the post office. The action is still not yours in the sense needed to blame
you
for doing this particular deed. (We might blame the neuroscientist instead;
he
made you do it.) So if the asshole’s views are to be his own, they have to be part of his mind in the right way; they have to be owned or his own. And since they are
moral
views (about his special entitlements), they have to come along with any general capacities of moral reasoning needed for us to intelligibly ascribe to the asshole any moral attitudes at all. Philosophers call this the “holism” of the mental. In general, attitudes are always
someone’s
attitudes. (Thus Descartes could infer his existence from his thoughts, with
cogito, ergo sum
, “I think, therefore I am.”) But attitudes such as thoughts, beliefs, and feelings do not come one attitude at a time. We intelligibly ascribe any particular attitude to a person (e.g., a moral belief) only against the background of a web of other attitudes, the web needed for the ascription to make sense as part of a person’s point of view (other moral attitudes and capacities). It sometimes
seems
that we have a wholly alien thought or feeling, wholly disconnected from anything else we think or feel (e.g., a passing thought of hitting someone one deeply respects over the head), but Freud nicely explained how we can usually tell a story that makes sense of a seemingly alien attitude, whether in terms of a deeper past or things below the surface of conscious awareness. (And, yes, as Freud suggested, it might somehow be about sex. After all, what isn’t?)
    Now, even if assholes have certain general moral capacities, we can still apply Watson’s argument about psychopaths in a restricted way. If the asshole is to be properly held responsible for cutting in line, we may say, it isn’t sufficient that he has
general
capacities to reason morally. He needs the
specific
capacity to see the particular moral reasons he has not to do the particular thing we blame him for doing; he must be able to see his particular reasons not to cut into this particular line, in this train station, on this afternoon. But now suppose that some asshole
can’t
see that he is not special when it comes to line cutting, or line cutting in this particular place, or on this particular day. Perhaps that inability results from something in his distant past; he was raised with terrible beatings under oppressive rules and so now bucks against social rules, or—more likely these days—he was constantly told that he could do no wrong, that he and everything he did were completely wonderful. 15 Now further suppose we are trying to hold this asshole accountable, where this means trying to get him to understand and perhaps accept that he has sufficient reason to wait in line like everyone else. Well, in that case, ex hypothesi, he won’t get it. Since he won’t be able to understand, it will be misguided to demand that he see things otherwise, just as it will be pointless to morally argue with a psychopath and confused for Mr. Magoo to give orders to a fence post.
    What should we say here? Troubling implications loom. Could an asshole simply be making a lot of these innocent mistakes and so never or rarely be an inappropriate object of blame?Could his entrenched sense of entitlement
itself
make him incapable of seeing that he owes it to others to wait in line? Could he be