The Manipulationist Threat to moral responsibility

Synthese 204:1-23 (2024)
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Abstract

Standard compatibilist accounts adjudicating when individuals are morally responsible for their actions are predicated on the assumption that individuals will have responsibility for the valuational structure undergirding their actions. However, I will claim that evidence from psychology and social psychology seems to show that manipulation of our valuational structure, far from being esoteric, is more common than we might pre-theoretically think. I call this evidence of manipulation the Manipulationist Threat. Given the Manipulationist Threat, I will argue that the strategies employed by reasons-responsiveness and Deep Self accounts for responding to manipulation are inadequate; they fail at either giving appropriate excusing conditions, or explaining why individuals subject to manipulation maintain responsibility.

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Kristoffer Moody
University of Edinburgh

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References found in this work

Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Mark Ravizza.
Living Without Free Will.Derk Pereboom - 2001 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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