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Manipulation and Degrees of Blameworthiness

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Abstract

We propose an original response to Derk Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. This response combines a hard-line and a soft-line. Like hard-liners, we insist that the manipulated agent is blameworthy for his wrongdoing. However, like soft-liners, we maintain that there is a difference in blameworthiness between the manipulated agent and the non-manipulated one. The former is less blameworthy than the latter. This difference is due to the fact that it is more difficult for the manipulated agent to do the right thing. We explain how we can make sense of this notion of difficulty in terms of Fischer and Ravizza’s notion of reasons-responsiveness.

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Notes

  1. What follows is a simplified version of the argument. We examine the argument more carefully in the next section.

  2. See, among others, Arpaly (2006, 85), Baker (2006, 320), Demetriou (2010), and Mele (2006, 140–142).

  3. See Matheson (2016) and McKenna (2008, 148–149) for attempts to rescue Pereboom’s original case from this objection.

  4. See McKenna (2017) for a useful summary.

  5. See also Arpaly (2006, 111–113) and Frankfurt (2002, 27–28).

  6. Fischer’s remark actually concerns Alfred Mele’s (2006) zygote case. This case involves a goddess who creates a zygote in an environment such that, with the laws of nature, it is determined that Ernie, the resulting person, will do something morally wrong in 30 years. The zygote case is very similar to Case 2, which we will discuss in Sect. 7. For more on Fischer’s point, see Fischer (2011), Kearns (2012), Schlosser (2015), Todd (2013), Waller (2014) and Watson (2000).

  7. See, for instance, Haji and Cuypers (2006). Many other soft-line replies invoking various historical conditions have been proposed in response Mele’s (2006) zygote argument. See Barnes (2013), Deery and Nahmias (2017), Schlosser (2015) and Waller (2014).

  8. We use ‘culpability’ and ‘blameworthiness’ interchangeably throughout this paper.

  9. Here, we were inspired by Todd (2011).

  10. Since Fischer and Ravizza’s account focuses on mechanisms rather than agents, we should write ‘Jennifer’s deliberation mechanism’ rather than ‘Jennifer.’ The focus on mechanisms is in large part motivated by considerations about Frankfurt-style cases. Since such cases are not a concern here, we will not always be careful about the distinction between agents and agents’ mechanisms. We will also assume that Frankfurt devices preventing agents to do otherwise are absent.

  11. See, for instance, McKenna (2005, 133) and Mele (2000, 450).

  12. Coates and Swenson (2013, 631, n.3) concede that there are other ways in which a person’s degree of blameworthiness for a wrongdoing may vary. Like them, we will ignore these other ways, since they are not directly relevant to our purposes in this essay.

  13. Our story is inspired by a case proposed by Michael Smith (2003, 26), which involves an agent with very weak reasons-receptivity. In actuality, the agent fails to form the right belief about a problem; however, thanks to a fluky mental process, he does form the right belief in a very similar counterfactual situation. The lesson Smith draws from this kind of case is that capacities “are essentially general or multitrack in nature, and they therefore manifest themselves not in single possibilities, but rather in whole rafts of possibilities” (2003, 27).

  14. To be fair to Coates and Swenson, in the part of their essay that concerns reasons-receptivity, they do gesture at a view similar to the one we just expressed (2013, 641). But in our view, the proportionality test should be applied not only to reasons-receptivity, but also to reasons-reactivity.

  15. They could also be due to environmental factors affecting fetal development. But to simplify, we will assume that they are purely genetic.

  16. See Khoury (2014), for similar criticisms of Tierney’s response.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Oklahoma, 455 West Lindsey Street, Norman, OK, 73019-2006, USA

    Martin Montminy & Daniel Tinney

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  1. Martin Montminy
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  2. Daniel Tinney
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Correspondence to Martin Montminy.

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Montminy, M., Tinney, D. Manipulation and Degrees of Blameworthiness. J Ethics 22, 265–281 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-018-9274-4

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