Self Expression, Manipulation, and Morally Responsible Agents: A Compatibilist Commentary on Four Views of Free Will

Abstract

The authors of the second edition of Four Views of Free Will (2024) have skillfully captured what is at stake, metaphysically and socially, in the free will and moral responsibility debates. In my commentary on Kane’s libertarian view, I note the metaphysical merits of a sourcehood free will account that requires leeway. However, I argue that Kane’s weakening of the dual effort condition does not handle luck and branching worries and may erase some of the merits of his earlier view. In response to Fischer’s chapter, I argue in support of his compatibilist sourcehood as a kind of self-expression and ownership. I worry, however, using perspectival variants of Frankfurt-style cases, that Fischer’s attitudinal ownership conditions for moral responsibility are dependent on a belief about the obtaining of leeway control. In my comments on Pereboom’s chapter, I offer a new reply on behalf of soft-line compatibilism to incompatibilists. I argue that acknowledging certain sufficient conditions for mitigating responsibility doesn’t support, in itself, the step to incompatibilist conclusions about the Four-Case Argument (and other manipulation arguments). Finally, in my commentary on Vargas’s view, I suggest that if the stakes are too high for the imposition of certain kinds of moral treatment for libertarians then the stakes may well also be too high for such practices to be justified on Vargas’s revisionist model. The overall picture that emerges is a history-sensitive compatibilist view on which morally responsible agency requires a form of alternative self-expression and ownership.