Source Incompatibilism, Manipulation, and Basic Desert

A leading objection to the compatibility of moral responsibility and determinism (the manipulation argument) involves a thought-experiment in which a person is manipulated such that she satisfies the most robust compatibilist conditions for morally responsible agency. It seems counter-intuitive to hold this person morally responsible for what she has been manipulated to do, and so, the argument goes, compatibilism is flawed. I argue that compatibilists should maintain that agents who experience manipulation are still morally responsible for their actions provided they satisfy compatibilist conditions for being morally responsible. A key challenge to the position I defend is that even if compatibilists have grounds for holding manipulated agents morally responsible the onus is on the compatibilist to address why it seems intuitive to judge that manipulated agents are not morally responsible. To dispel this worry I suggest evaluating the assumptions underlying non-responsibility intuitions, the most important of these being the assumption that basic moral desert is not consistent with determinism. Basic moral desert is under-described in the literature. I propose that there are two distinct ways to understand the desert pertinent to our moral responsibility practices. Desert could be understood as a kind of `fit' between our moral responsibility judgments and properties of the agent and her action such that it would be fitting to claim that the agent is blame/praise-worthy. I argue that many compatibilists discussing manipulation arguments are understanding desert as a kind of fit. Alternatively, desert can be understood as a kind of `merit' such that it is fair to blame or praise the agent precisely because they are worthy of blame and praise given that they performed the act in question and were sensitive to its moral status. Theorists swayed by manipulation arguments are often thinking of desert in this second way, as a kind of merit. If I am correct that desert is understood in different ways by philosophers discussing manipulation arguments, I have identified an important sense in which compatibilists and incompatibilists are misunderstanding each other's commitments. Many compatibilists are merely trying to show that it would be fitting to blame a manipulated agent, whereas incompatiblists who are attracted to the manipulation argument are frequently proposing that it would be unfair to blame a manipulated agent precisely because the agent does not merit blame. These claims are not necessarily inconsistent. Clarifying these distinct notions of desert allows me to argue that the best compatibilist replies to the manipulation argument do establish that manipulated agents can still be morally responsible for their actions in the sense that it would still be fitting to blame the manipulated agent if she satisfied a robust set of compatibilist-relevant conditions on moral responsibility. At the same time, incompatibilists may be correct that manipulated agents are not blameworthy in the sense that they do not merit blame. I argue that this is a partial victory for both sides in the debate. The compatibilists have shown that the theory of moral responsibility that they are interested in does not seem to be threatened by manipulation arguments. At the same time, it is correct to conclude that compatibilists have failed to show that agents can merit blame in deterministic worlds.