Manipulation Arguments and Libertarian Accounts of Free Will

Abstract

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.

Natural Compatibilists Should Be Theological Compatibilists

“…(2008: 156) If such mundane cases are relevantly similar to cases of manipulation, the hard-liner's conclusion is not as difficult to accept as one might initially think. Second, as I have argued elsewhere-in Cyr (2016 and2020b)-it is possible to construct a parallel manipulation argument that makes use of indeterministic manipulation and that targets libertarian accounts of free will and moral responsibility. Because of this, and because any strategy for blocking the parallel argument can be used, mutatis mutandis, to block the manipulation argument against compatibilism, it turns out that worries about manipulation (like worries about constitutive luck) are worries for any account according to which we can be morally responsible, not for compatibilism in particular.…”