Abstract
Alfred Mele’s zygote argument for incompatibilism is based on a case involving an agent in a deterministic world whose entire life is planned by someone else. Mele’s contention is that Ernie (the agent) is unfree and that normal determined agents are relevantly similar to him with regards to free will. In this paper, I examine four different ways of understanding this argument and then criticize each interpretation. I then extend my criticism to manipulation arguments in general. I conclude that the zygote argument is no threat to compatibilism.
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Notes
In fact, following a modification Mele makes soon after introducing the argument, I shall understand Diana to have planned all of Ernie’s actions, not just his A-ing. This is to head off at the pass the idea that, if Diana plans only one action of Ernie’s, he may still be responsible for his other actions. I shall also understand Ernie to satisfy not only Mele’s preferred compatibilist conditions on free will, but any others that have been (or might be) suggested (insofar as they are consistent with the case as described and with each other).
I shall, throughout this paper, take it that Diana manipulates Ernie in producing his zygote as she does. This is in part to bring out the similarities between the zygote argument and other so-called manipulation arguments for incompatibilism (such as that in Pereboom 2001). Mele expresses the following worry about using the word “manipulation” in this context:
Now, strictly speaking, manipulating an X (say, a human being) requires that the X exist at the time of manipulation. So my story about Ernie is not a story about manipulation, and the associated original-design argument I examined is not a manipulation argument. (Mele 2008, pp. 284–285)
(As is apparent, Mele instead refers to his zygote argument as an original-design argument.) I am unsure about Mele’s reasons for claiming that Diana does not manipulate Ernie (I personally find no problem with the idea of someone’s manipulating a person at a time before that person exists), but if one shares Mele’s worry, one may instead talk of Diana’s programming Ernie to do something, or designing him with a particular end in mind. Nothing of substance rides on whether we talk of manipulation, programming or design in Mele’s argument.
One could possibly claim that Ernie is not free because his zygote is produced abnormally, but it is not at all obvious why mere abnormality of origin should undermine freedom. In any case, if this is what makes Ernie not free, such a lack of freedom can hardly be uncontroversially extended to agents whose zygotes are produced normally. One could also perhaps claim that what makes Ernie not free is that he is produced in such a fashion as to deny him the ability to do otherwise. This, however, needs further extensive argument, both for the claim that the way Ernie is produced precludes such an ability and for the claim that such an ability is necessary for free will and moral responsibility. Furthermore, if such arguments are provided, Mele’s zygote argument is no longer doing any substantial work in establishing incompatibilism.
The following case, as well as being based on the case with which we started, is also highly influenced by Mele’s discussion of Derk Pereboom’s version of the manipulation argument. Pereboom’s “four-case argument”, as set out in Pereboom (2001), discusses four cases, some of which involve deterministic manipulation, and one of which involves simply determinism. The cases span from having a highly intrusive form of manipulation to having no manipulation at all. Pereboom claims that we should judge the manipulated agent in each case to be not free. Furthermore, Pereboom claims that what best explains this is that, in effect, such agents are causally determined. We may hence conclude that determined agents are unfree. Mele (2005) devises cases in which Pereboom’s manipulated agents’ actions are not determined and yet they are still intuitively not free. Mele concludes that what best explains the agents’ lack of freedom cannot be that they are determined. The following case is in part based on Mele’s modifications of Pereboom’s cases.
Indeed, it strikes me that such cases may provide the seeds for a positive argument for compatibilism. The rough idea being that, regarding cases in which determined agents heroically overcome their programming and choose to live lives entirely distinct from the ones planned for them, we judge such agents to be free and morally responsible despite their existing in deterministic worlds. The correctness of this judgment alone would suffice for the truth of compatibilism, but we may then attempt (just as proponents of the manipulation argument do) to argue that such agents are not significantly different regarding free will from normal determined agents, thus expanding the type of agents who can be free and determined. Of course, this further step may be prone to problems similar to those I have set out for the zygote argument. Such matters await further work.
Michael McKenna is responsible for these terms (see McKenna 2008).
See Fischer (2011) for a nice hard-line response to the zygote argument, in which Fischer argues that the programmed Ernie is free.
References
Fischer, J. M. (2011). The zygote argument remixed. Analysis, 71, 267–272.
Kapitan, T. (2000). Autonomy and manipulated freedom. Philosophical Perspectives, 14, 81–104.
McKenna, M. (2008). A hard-line rely to Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 77, 142–159.
Mele, A. (1995). Autonomous agents. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Mele, A. (2005). A critique of Pereboom’s ‘four-case argument’ for incompatibilism. Analysis, 65, 75–80.
Mele, A. (2006). Free will and luck. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Mele, A. (2008). Manipulation, compatibilism, and moral responsibility. The Journal of Ethics, 12, 263–286.
Pereboom, D. (2001). Living without free will. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Randolph Clarke, John Martin Fischer and Alfred Mele for helpful comments on this paper.
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Kearns, S. Aborting the zygote argument. Philos Stud 160, 379–389 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9724-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9724-3