Cases involving clandestine manipulation pose a significant challenge to compatibilist conceptions of free will. But compatibilists often argue that they are not alone and that modest libertarian conceptions of free will are also susceptible to the problem. I take issue with this claim. I argue that agent-causal libertarian views are not susceptible to the problem. I then argue that the compatibilist cannot cite a relevant difference between agent-causal libertarian views and modest libertarian views. Therefore from a compatibilist's perspective modest libertarian (...) views are impervious to the problem of clandestine manipulation. (shrink)

Contrary to philosophical tradition, modern theorists of the mind have often downplayed the importance of consciousness. Instead, they have accounted for the mind in terms of phenomena like mechanisms, dispositions, abilities and even environmental features. One of many inspirations for this trend is a series of passages of the later Wittgenstein. These passages discuss a variety of specific mental phenomena, like searching, comparing, understanding and reading. The passages have often been taken them to show that one may exemplify any of (...) the phenomena at issue without being in any particular type of conscious state. I claim that the passages do not support this conclusion, and that the conclusion is, arguably, false. My conclusion is that consciousness may be a more important aspect of the mind than is supposed by many contemporary theorists--both Wittgensteinians and others. (shrink)

Agents have no control over the formation of their own zygote. Others may do. According to a well-known argument, the so-called Zygote Argument for incompatibilism, these facts, together with a prima facie plausible further assumption, are sufficient to prove that human agents cannot be responsible for their actions if they live in a deterministic universe. This paper argues that the lack of agents’ control over the constitution of their own zygote can undermine their responsibility only in exceptional conditions and that (...) the occurrence or non-occurrence of those conditions has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of determinism. What undermines agents’ responsibility in the situations described by the Zygote Argument is the occurrence of some specific initial conditions which may render the manipulation of agents’ behaviour possible, and not the truth of determinism. (shrink)

Intellectual autonomy indicates how human being can preserve her epistemic agency and intellectually manage and regulate herself. This epistemic value is commonly proposed against intellectual heteronomy according to which the believer is not capable of applying her epistemic agency because of internal or external impediments. Since the early modern era, some philosophers and intellectuals have supposed, implicitly or explicitly, that religious belief violates intellectual autonomy. However, the responsibilist version of virtue epistemology shows that autonomy, as an intellectual virtue, is not (...) epistemic self-reliance and independence from the other but prescribes a way to regulate one’s epistemic agency in intellectual interactions with the other. On this basis, a conscientious autonomous believer is capable of knowing and managing the variety of her epistemic relations with others. Intellectual autonomy in this sense is compatible with believing and maintaining religious beliefs. Religious belief can be autonomous if the believer find the other’s role in her beliefs as imparting knowledge, critic, model, adherent, and authority and regulate, conscientiously and equipped with intellectual virtues, the way in which the other participates in them. (shrink)

Research suggests that intuitions about thought experiments are vulnerable to a wide array of seemingly irrelevant factors. I argue that when arguments hinge on the use of intuitions about thought experiments, research on the subtle factors that affect intuitions must be taken seriously. To demonstrate how failing to consider such psychological influences can undermine an argument, I discuss Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. I argue that by failing to consider the impact of subtle psychological influences such as order effects, Pereboom likely (...) mis-identifies what really leads us to have the intuitions that we have about his cases, and this in turn undermines his argument for incompatibilism. Last, I consider objections and discuss how to empirically test my hypothesis. (shrink)

The critical aspects of deep brain stimulation are usually the focus of the ethical debate about the implantation of electrodes into the brain of patients with Parkinson’s disease. Above all, potential postoperative side effects on personality caused by DBS mark the debate. However, rehabilitation of agility and mobility by DBS can be posited against critical aspects. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to emphasize the hitherto neglected positive aspects of that technology. A detailed study of the rehabilitation of controlled (...) movements will thus be the object of this article. The possibility to move again in a controlled way will be discussed as freedom of movement. The concept freedom of movement is being linked to the observation of feelings of euphoria and joy that can occur after surgery for patients with PD stimulated in the subthalamic nucleus. This is done based on phenomenological analysis and qualitative interviews, in which the relation between freedom of movement and feelings of joy becomes clear. The aim here is to show that these feelings of exaltation express an essential feeling of freedom – a bodily felt freedom – which is grounded in movement and can be regained by STN-DBS. (shrink)

The problem of luck is advanced and defended against libertarian theories of responsibility-enabling ability. An outline of an account of ability is articulated to explore some features of the sort of ability moral responsibility requires. The account vindicates the luck objection and suggests a novel puzzle: Libertarianism is structurally barred from answering the problem of luck because responsibility requires, but inherently lacks, an explanation from reason states to actions that preserves reliability of connection between responsibility-grounding reasons-sensitivity and action.

Some proponents of compatibilist moral responsibility have proposed an historical theory which requires that agents deploy character control in order to be morally responsible. An important type of argument for the character control condition is the manipulation argument, such as Mele’s example of Beth and Chuck. In this paper I show that Beth can be exonerated on various conditions other than her failure to execute character control—I propose a new character, Patty, who meets these conditions and is, I argue, morally (...) responsible for her actions despite lacking character control. Thus the character control condition is unmotivated. I suggest there may be an alternative basis for an historical theory of moral responsibility nonetheless. (shrink)

What is the connection between action that is caused by inauthentic antecedent springs of action, such as surreptitiously engineered-in desires and beliefs, and moral obligation? If, for example, an agent performs an action that derives from such antecedent springs can it be that the agent is not obligated to perform this action owing to the inauthenticity of its causal antecedents? I defend an affirmative response, assuming that we morally ought to bring about the states of affairs that occur in the (...) intrinsically best worlds accessible to us and that a version of attitudinal hedonism is the axiology for ranking worlds. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, contrary to recent literature, that it is unethical to create artificial agents possessing human-level intelligence that are programmed to be human beings’ obedient servants. In developing the argument, I concede that there are possible scenarios in which building such artificial servants is, on net, beneficial. I also concede that, on some conceptions of autonomy, it is possible to build human-level AI servants that will enjoy full-blown autonomy. Nonetheless, the main thrust of my argument is that, (...) in building such artificial agents, their creators cannot help but evince an objectionable attitude akin to the Aristotelian vice of manipulativeness. (shrink)

Alicia Juarrero's Dynamics in action is an attempt to bring dynamical systems theory to bear on action theory. Juarrero claims that the vocabulary and examples from dynamical systems theory can help us resolve some pressing problems in action theory, including the problems of extended action and disrupted causal chains. In the process, Juarrero calls for a return to an Aristotelean plurality of causes and a serious scrutiny of modern Humean/positivist science as she sees it. Although her book has some inaccuracies (...) and fails to convince the skeptical reader, it provides an alternative point of view from which to launch further studies. (shrink)

To what extent should an analysis of an agent’s being morally responsible for an action that he performed—especially a compatibilist analysis of this—be sensitive to the agent’s history? In this article, I give the issue a clearer focus than it tends to have in the literature, I lay some groundwork for an attempt to answer the question, and I motivate a partial but detailed answer.

In Manipulated Agents: A Window to Moral Responsibility, Alfred Mele invokes radical reversal cases in which one agent is covertly manipulated to be just like another agent in relevant respects to defend a version of the following “externalist” thesis: how agents acquire their springs of action, such as desires and beliefs, bears on whether they are morally responsible for their actions. I assess proposed rationales for the crucial verdict that agents in such cases are not responsible for their germane actions. (...) I argue for the superiority of Mele’s rationale and propose that these cases also support accepting an externalist constraint on other normative appraisals, such as those of practical rationality. Key words: Moral obligation; practical rationality; radical reversal cases; ultimate origination; zygote argument. (shrink)