The Path to Completion

Abstract

Attempted wrongdoing is wrong and deserves censure and sanction, provided the agent was responsible for her attempt. One conception of attempts, incorporated in the criminal law, treats them as bivalent. The important question is at what point in an agent’s planning, preparation, and execution of an offense the attempt is completed. However, bivalence fails to recognize partially complete attempts and is unable to give a satisfying account of the criminal law defense of abandonment. This essay explores an alternative conception of attempts as historical and scalar. On this view, attempts involve the implementation of temporally extended decision trees that pass through many nodes and terminate in a last act. This view rejects bivalence, because at many points within the decision tree there is only a partially complete attempt, and it provides a more satisfying account of abandonment, precisely because it can recognize attempts that are only partially complete.

Keywords: Morality, criminal law, bivalance, abandonment, decision trees, scalar, scalar completion

JEL Classification: A00, A10, K10