Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

7.4.3. Frankfurt’s own free will and the God Machine 
What does the God Machine affect? It could be argued that the God Machine 
affects free will. However, recall that in Savulescu and Persson’s scenario: 
‘[T]he would-be murderer never knows that her intentions 
have been changed by an authority outside of herself. It 
seems to her that she has “changed her mind” 
spontaneously – she experiences a life of complete 
freedom, though she is not free. Although any intention to 
kill or rape immediately changed, this was put down to the 
efficacy of moral education. It seemed “from the inside” 
that she had just developed an aversion to killing an 
innocent person. And no one was ever killed.’ (2012a, p. 
410-411) 
The intervention of the God Machine could be considered as
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a)
a change in first 
order desires, 
b)
a change in second order desires, 
c)
a change in second order 
volitions by changing a volition, 
d)
a change in second order volitions by rendering 
them ineffective, or 
e)
a change in the process prior to creating the second order 
volition. I will argue that the last interpretation 
(e)
is the most compelling. 
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Savulescu and Persson (2012) sometimes refer to the God Machine as changing 
intentions. However, Frankfurt demonstrates that will is not the same as intent. “For even 
though someone may have a settled intention to do X, he may nonetheless do something 
else instead of doing X because, despite his intention, his desire to do X proves to be 
weaker or less effective than some conflicting desire” (Frankfurt, 1971). Since the God 
Machine results in behavioural change, it modifies not any intent, but rather the intent 
related to the effective first order desire (will).

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148 
.
Let us consider two versions 
of how the God Machine 
operates: 
the 
minimal 
intervention option and the 
maximal intervention option. 
On the maximal intervention 
view the God Machine can be 
seen as changing 1
st
order 
desire, 2
nd
order volition as 
well as something ‘up-
stream’ from the second 
order volition. The scenario 
suggests some influence of a 
change at the roots of the 
second order volition first, because of the personal lack of awareness that a person 
changed her mind not of her own accord and second, because of the lack of 
repeatedly arising second order volition to commit gross immorality. In this case 
the freedom to have one’s own will, freedom of the will and freedom of thought (at 
least in so far as this translates into forming one’s own second order volitions) are 
all directly affected. The behavioural change follows from those changes.
On the minimal intervention view we could, firstly, interpret the intervention as 
only targeting the first order desire – the desire to kill and an associated intention 
would vanish or become too weak to be effective. This would not affect the 2
nd
order volition. I do not see this as a plausible interpretation because Savulescu and 
Persson (2012a) do not mention subjects of the God Machine interference 
experiencing akratically moral action – in this case an inability to act consistently 
with their second order volitions to make a desire to kill motivationally effective. 
The second interpretation would point to a change of 2
nd
order volition itself – from 
one of wanting to act on a desire to kill, to one of wanting to act on a desire not to 
kill. This, however, as a change on its own would be unstable, since the original 2
nd
order volition would be likely to arise again and again, at least for those potential 
offenders who acted with premeditation. Moreover, the agents described by 

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149 
Savulescu and Persson (2012a) seem to have an experience of changing their mind 
of their own accord, while the sudden, magical change in a second order volition 
would be, I imagine, phenomenologically rather bewildering. Alternatively, the 
person might have already formed a second order volition not to kill, yet was 
unable to turn that into action. For those akratic individuals, improving the 
conformity with their second order intention would be an effective intervention. 
Yet, Savulescu and Persson (2012a) clearly refer to a ‘changing of mind’ of the 
person. On this interpretation there would be no ‘change of mind’ involved, but 
rather ‘enforcing the ineffective will’. The third option, and what seems like the 
best bet to me, is that the God Machine affected the formation process of the second 
order volition.
The above analysis suggests that what was impacted directly was the freedom of 
thought and this, I think, is significant. Let us assume that the latter analysis of the 
minimal intervention view was correct. Technically (using Frankfurt’s 
nomenclature), a person’s free will would be preserved – as long as one can make 
effective the 1
st
order desire one wills to have. Moreover, the God Machine makes a 
well-informed, unbiased-by-clouding-emotions, all-things-considered judgement; 
the problem is that although the agent makes a choice too, it is an instance of 
heteronomy, not autonomy. Thus, even if the will is free and the agent has a 
perspective as well-considered as the God Machine, should they make an all-things-
considered judgement consistent with that of the God Machine, it would not be the 
agent’s 
own
free will. The importance we assign to agents’ acting on their 
own
free 
will accounts for a significant part of our intuition about the God Machine's effect 
on diminishing freedom.