“It was all a cruel angel’s thesis from the start”: Folk intuitions about Zygote cases do not support the Zygote argument

Manipulation arguments that start from the intuition that manipulated agents are neither free nor morally responsible then conclude to that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. The Zygote argument is a special case of Manipulation argument in which the manipulation intervenes at the very conception of the agent. In this paper, I argue that the Zygote argument fails because (i) very few people share the basic intuitions the argument rests on, and (ii) even those who share this intuition do so for reasons that are unrelated to determinism. Rather, I argue that intuitions about the Zygote argument (and Manipulation arguments in general) are driven by people's intuitions about the deep self, as shown by the fact that intuitions about manipulated agents depend on the moral value of the agent's behavior.

Fair Opportunity, Capacities, and Possibilities

Though some compatibilists deny that responsibility requires alternate possibilities, fair opportunity requires the ability of wrongdoers to do otherwise. However, these alternate possibilities are not the ones precluded by determinism. Different kinds of capacities are distinguished—actual and potential, specific and general. We should be interested in actual capacities that are relatively specific. The relevant capacities can be identified via counterfactuals. In this chapter, Pereboom’s influential incompatibilist manipulation argument is examined and rejected.

On the Compatibility of Rational Deliberation and Determinism: Why Deterministic Manipulation Is Not a Counterexample

This paper aims to defend deliberation-compatibilism against several objections, including a recent counterexample by Yishai Cohen that involves a deliberator who believes that whichever action she performs will be the result of deterministic manipulation. It begins by offering a Moorean-style proof of deliberation-compatibilism. It then turns to the leading argument for deliberation-incompatibilism, which is based on the presumed incompatibility of causal determinism and the ‘openness’ required for rational deliberation. The paper explains why this argument fails and develops a coherent account of how one can rationally deliberate and believe in causal determinism without inconsistency. The second half of the paper then takes up Cohen's proposed counterexample and his Four-Case Deliberation Argument (FCDA) against deliberation-compatibilism, which is meant to mirror Derk Pereboom's famous Four-Case Manipulation Argument. In response, the author defends a hard-line reply to FCDA but also argues that the notion of ‘sourcehood’ relevant to rational deliberation differs from that involved in free will.

Manipulation Arguments and Libertarian Accounts of Free Will

In response to the increasingly popular manipulation argument against compatibilism, some have argued that libertarian accounts of free will are vulnerable to parallel manipulation arguments, and thus manipulation is not uniquely problematic for compatibilists. The main aim of this article is to give this point a more detailed development than it has previously received. Prior attempts to make this point have targeted particular libertarian accounts but cannot be generalized. By contrast, I provide an appropriately modified manipulation that targets all libertarian accounts of freedom and responsibility—an especially tricky task given that libertarian accounts are a motley set. I conclude that if manipulation arguments reveal any theoretical cost then it is one borne by all accounts according to which we are free and responsible, not by compatibilism in particular.

The manipulation argument and Frankfurt-style compatibilism

In the metaphysics of free will, the most intense debate at this time is that between Frankfurt-style compatibilists and proponents of the manipulation argument centred around the appropriate answer to the question of whether a compatibilisticaly defined agents can be morally responsible if they are a victim of manipulation? In this paper, I aim to explain the reasons behind the dispute as well as bring attention to certain tacit assumptions that underpin the concept of the manipulation argument and that Frankfurt-style compatibilists need to reject. For this reason, my conclusions is that Frankfurt-style compatibilists must accept the counter-intuitive possibility that agents can have moral responsibility for their actions despite being a victim of manipulation.

Augustine on the Election of Jacob

This essay aims to take up the philosophical challenge of causal determination in divine predestination to human freedom by reconstructing Augustine’s relevant insights to argue that divine predestination still can accommodate our intuitions concerning freedom and moral responsibility today. Section 1 briefly reconstructs the development of Augustine’s reflections on predestination by focusing on his interpretation of the election of Jacob. Section 2 appeals to attacks from the Idle Argument and the Manipulation Argument to present the theoretical difficulties in Augustine’s account. Section 3 argues that Augustine’s teaching of predestination contains a significant but often-neglected aspect of moral intuitions: the asymmetry of moral responsibility, namely, the conditions of being praised for a good action are substantially different from those of being blamed for an evil one. In conclusion, this essay considers some possible objections to the Augustinian asymmetry thesis to show its relevance to our moral responsibility practices today.