One debate surrounding Derk Pereboom’s (2001, 2014) four-case argument against compatibilism focuses on whether, and why, we judge manipulated agents to be neither free nor morally responsible. In this paper, we propose a novel explanation. The four-case argument features cases where an agent is the only individual in her universe who has been manipulated. Let us call manipulation whose scope includes at least one but not all agents existential manipulation. Contrast this with universal manipulation, which affects all agents within a (...) universe. We propose that we find agents in Pereboom’s manipulation cases less free and morally responsible in part because they are the target of existential manipulation. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found that people’s free will and moral responsibility judgments were sensitive to the scope of manipulation: people judged existentially manipulated agents significantly less free and responsible than universally manipulated agents. (shrink)

In this article, we will identify two issues that deserve greater attention from those researching lay people’s attitudes to moral responsibility and determinism. The first issue concerns whether people interpret the term “moral responsibility” in a retributive way and whether they are motivated to hold offenders responsible for pre-determined behaviour by considerations other than retributivism, e.g. the desires to condemn the action and to protect society. The second issue concerns whether explicitly rejecting moral responsibility and retributivism, after reading about determinism, (...) would have any impact on “implicit” retributivism when recommending a sentence for a hypothetical offender. We will report the results of an exploratory study that investigated these questions. Our preliminary findings raise the possibility that a significant proportion of participants either i) may not interpret “moral responsibility” in the basic, retributive sense of the term, which is at issue in the determinism debate, or ii) may be unconsciously motivated by non-retributive considerations to judge that the offender is morally responsible, in the basic, retributive sense. If this is confirmed by future research, a wider implication would be that theorists’ arguments against retributivism are more likely to affect public attitudes to punishment when non-retributive ways of achieving important punishment goals are emphasised. Our preliminary findings also suggested that explicit retributivism did not correlate with implicit retributivism. If this is confirmed in future research, it would imply that free will theorists who wish to affect public attitudes toward punishment should, when communicating their research to the public, give detailed consideration to the implications for sentencing. (shrink)

According to manipulation arguments for incompatibilism, manipulation might undermine an agent’s responsibility even when the agent satisfies plausible compatibilist conditions on responsibility. According to Sripada, however, empirical data suggest that people take manipulation to undermine responsibility largely because they think that the manipulated act is in discord with the agent’s “deep self,” thus violating the plausible compatibilist condition of deep self concordance. This paper defends Sripada’s general methodological approach but presents data that strongly suggest that, contrary to Sripada’s contention, most (...) of the effect of manipulation on attributions of moral responsibility is unmediated by worries about inadequate information or deep self discordance. Instead, it depends largely on worries that the action is ultimately explained by factors outside the agent’s control, just as proponents of manipulation arguments have proposed. More generally, data suggest that judgments of... (shrink)

Moral psychology investigates human functioning in moral contexts, and asks how these results may impact debate in ethical theory. This work is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on both the empirical resources of the human sciences and the conceptual resources of philosophical ethics. The present article discusses several topics that illustrate this type of inquiry: thought experiments, responsibility, character, egoism v . altruism, and moral disagreement.

Determinism is frequently understood as implying the possibility of perfect prediction. This possibility then functions as an assumption in the Manipulation Argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. Yet this assumption is mistaken. As a result, arguments that rely on it fail to show that determinism would rule out human free will. We explain why determinism does not imply the possibility of perfect prediction in any world with laws of nature like ours, since it would be impossible for (...) an agent to predict with certainty any future event that is causally influenced by events outside her own backward light cone yet inside the backward light cone of the future event. This is the _light-cone limit_ and it undermines the Manipulation Argument or limits what this argument can tell us about the relevance of determinism to free will. We also respond to objections that the light-cone limit is irrelevant to the Manipulation Argument. (shrink)

Many Christian theologians believe in the existence of cases of divine hardening and divine election, where God either actively contributes to human evil or preordains it. God seems to act like a manipulator, who first covertly incites or determines people’s evil actions and then condemns those actions and punishes the wrongdoers. I raise three questions regarding such cases: (1) how can humans be responsible for wrongdoings that are determined by God via either direct involvement or predestination; (2) is God justified (...) in using covert manipulation to achieve his goals; (3) how can God judge human evil, if God predestines them or actively incites humans to commit evils? The article outlines two cases of supposed divine manipulation, discusses the general nature of manipulation and then examines each question outlined above. The argument is that the problems surrounding divine manipulation present significant challenges to especially those Christian theists that subscribe to divine determinism. (shrink)

People who judge that a wrongdoer’s behaviour is determined are disposed, in certain cases, to judge that the wrongdoer cannot be responsible for his behaviour. Some try to explain this phenomenon by arguing that people are intuitive incompatibilists about determinism and moral responsibility. However, Peter Strawson argues that we excuse determined wrongdoers because judging that someone is determined puts us into a psychological state – ‘the objective stance’ – which prevents us from holding them responsible, not because we think that (...) determined wrongdoers cannot be responsible. Two studies were completed to test the claim that the objective stance prevents us from judging wrongdoers responsible. Implicit association measures revealed that participants primed in the objective stance appraised a wrongdoer more positively, but as no less blameworthy, than those neutrally primed. These findings raise doubts about Strawson’s explanation of our tendency to excuse determined wrongdoers. (shrink)

In this article I review the core elements of Carolina Sartorio’s actual causal sequence account of free will and moral responsibility, and propose two revisions. First, I suggest replacing the contested notion of absence causation by the relatively uncontroversial notion of causal explanation by absences. Second, I propose retaining explanation by unreduced dispositions, of which Sartorio appears to be wary. I then set out a response to her critical treatment of manipulation arguments against compatibilism. Lastly, I point out that Sartorio’s (...) reasons-sensitivity condition on moral responsibility is amenable to a conception of moral responsibility that, unlike the one she endorses, dispenses with basic desert. (shrink)

I respond to the critical comments by Randolph Clarke, Alfred Mele, and Derk Pereboom on my book Causation and Free Will. I discuss some features of the view that our freedom is exclusively based on actual causes, including the role played in it by absences of reasons, absence causation, modal facts, and finally some additional thoughts on how a compatibilist can respond to the manipulation argument for incompatibilism.