Abstract
One debate surrounding Derk Pereboom’s (2001, 2014) four-case argument against compatibilism focuses on whether, and why, we judge manipulated agents to be neither free nor morally responsible. In this paper, we propose a novel explanation. The four-case argument features cases where an agent is the only individual in her universe who has been manipulated. Let us call manipulation whose scope includes at least one but not all agents existential manipulation. Contrast this with universal manipulation, which affects all agents within a universe. We propose that we find agents in Pereboom’s manipulation cases less free and morally responsible in part because they are the target of existential manipulation. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found that people’s free will and moral responsibility judgments were sensitive to the scope of manipulation: people judged existentially manipulated agents significantly less free and responsible than universally manipulated agents.
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Notes
One could also defend a weaker hypothesis: we find Plum less responsible because his decision has been determined by factors beyond his control. Todd (2011) argues this is all Pereboom needs for the four-case argument to go through. We will consider this weak version of the determinism hypothesis, and the competing hypotheses, when discussing their predictions.
This response has some empirical support. See Feltz (2013), Murray & Lombrozo (2017), and Phillips & Shaw (2015). However, Björnsson (in prep) found that non-agential manipulation (by infection) undermined attributions of free will and responsibility to the same degree agential manipulation did. For empirical work that explores other effects on free will and responsibility intuitions, see, for example, Björnsson (2014), Nahmias et al. (2005, 2006), Nichols & Knobe (2007), Rose & Nichols (2013), and Roskies & Nichols (2008).
McKenna has also recently noted the existential nature of Pereboom’s manipulation cases: “We are not invited to suppose that all agents in the world inhabited by Plum (in Case 1 or Case 2) are so manipulated, nor are we to make any further assumptions that at Plum’s world (in Case 1 or Case 2) determinism is true” (2017: 583).
We also tested a closely related hypothesis regarding existential and universal determinism. We predicted that participants would find an agent who is the only individual in the universe whose behaviour is causally determined to be less free and responsible than an agent who exists in a universe in which everyone’s behaviour is causally determined.
The manipulation vignettes are modelled on Pereboom’s (2001, 2014) Case 3 and Feltz’s (2013) culture vignette, though we describe manipulation in terms of agents’ upbringing, instead of community training, to make the scenarios more accessible. One might argue that the manipulator’s presence is not robust enough in our scenarios to test the manipulator hypothesis. However, we think describing Katie as being “raised since birth to make decisions that almost always benefit her” is relevantly similar to describing her as being “extensively trained by [her] community to make decisions that almost always benefit [her]” (Feltz 2013: 56). Furthermore, even if these scenarios do not sufficiently highlight the intentional actions of other agents, our research still counts against the manipulator hypothesis, which predicts no existential/universal effect.
Strictly speaking existential determinism may not be nomologically possible, but you can grasp this idea by imagining a backwards light-cone behind each agent, such that the specific facts in that backward light-cone in conjunction with the laws of nature causally determine some agents’ actions but not others (see Ismael 2016).
Rerunning our analyses, our reported results are not impacted by including statement order as a factor.
One might worry that the descriptions of manipulation and determinism in the vignettes are compatible with these factors influencing (or failing to influence) agents’ actions as opposed to determining (or failing to determine) them. However, our comprehension checks asked whether Katie/most people’s actions are completely determined by their upbringing/past facts and laws of nature, so we were able to rule out participants who formed mere-influence judgments. Still, it would be good for future studies to test different wordings to confirm the present results.
We also found a significant main effect of moral responsibility/free will F(1,269) = 30.212, p < .001, and significant two-way interaction between moral responsibility/free will and existential/universal F(1, 269) = 11.307, p = .001. We discuss these effects in the concluding section.
Not all defenders of the manipulator hypothesis would accept this prediction. Some defenders of this hypothesis argue that manipulation mitigates free will and moral responsibility when a manipulator intends that an agent perform a particular action and then intervenes to ensure that they do so (e.g., Deery & Nahmias 2017; Waller 2014). Since our manipulation vignettes, like Pereboom’s Case 3 and Feltz’s culture case, do not state that those who raised Katie intended to ensure that she would kill Plum, these theorists would likely not defend the claim that Katie is less free and responsible in our manipulation conditions, just as they resist the claim that Plum is less free and responsible in Pereboom’s Case 3 (Deery & Nahmias 2017: 1268, footnote 12). Thus, the fact that there was no difference between participants’ judgments in the manipulation and determinism conditions does not threaten these approaches to the manipulator hypothesis. However, the fact that there was a significant difference between participants’ judgments in the existential and universal conditions indicates that these views are incomplete, for these views make no mention of the role existential and universal forms of manipulation play in affecting our judgments of free will and moral responsibility. We hope to more directly explore the ways in which intention and scope of manipulation affect judgements of free will and moral responsibility in future research. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for encouraging us to explore these approaches to the manipulator hypothesis.
Simple effects tests with Bonferroni correction were conducted on the two-way interaction between moral responsibility/free will judgment and existential/universal condition. For existential vignettes, moral responsibility judgments (M = 5.19, SD = 1.38) were significantly higher than free will judgments (M = 4.47, SD = 1.51; p < .001). However, for universal vignettes, we observed no significant difference between moral responsibility (M = 5.76, SD = 1.38) and free will judgments (M = 5.58, SD = 1.51; p = .124). Crucially, both moral responsibility (p = .001) and free will judgments (p < .001) were significantly higher in universal vignettes than existential vignettes.
But this is not to say that there is no principled difference between existential and universal cases. In (Latham & Tierney forthcoming), we explore how our responsibility practices are impacted in very different ways by universal and existential phenomena. We then argue that this is a principled difference, especially on Strawsonian approaches to moral responsibility, which take facts about our responsibility practices to be deeply connected to the nature of responsibility itself. This research can also be utilised to support accounts that take free will to be a natural kind. Anthony Flew (1955) first suggested that the meaning of the term ‘free will’ was fixed by ordinary paradigm cases, and several philosophers have recently argued that the meaning of free will depends on what paradigm cases of free will have in common (Deery 2019; Heller 1996; Latham 2019). But as Peter Van Inwagen (1983) points out, these views are consistent with it turning out that we are free even when we are all being manipulated by Martians, which he takes to be absurd. However, our research indicates that this is not an absurd implication. Participants typically take ‘free will’ to successfully refer in cases where manipulation and/or determinism is the norm, and they are less likely to take ‘free will’ to refer in cases where manipulation and/or determinism were not features of the paradigm.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank two anonymous referees, Michael Mckenna, Shaun Nichols, Eddy Nahmias, Kristie Miller and the Metaphysics Reading Group at the University of Sydney for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.
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Latham, A.J., Tierney, H. The Four-Case Argument and the Existential/Universal Effect. Erkenn 88, 2379–2389 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00458-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00458-x