De Marco, G., & Cyr, T. W. (2024). “Manipulation Cases in Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Part 1: Cases and Arguments”. Philosophy Compass 19(12), e70009. DOI 10.1111/phc3.70009. Open access, CC BY 4.0.
Key takeaways
From the reading, NOTE-856.
- Case 1, verbatim (from Fischer et al. 2024, 98): neuroscientists “press a button just before he begins to reason about his situation”, producing “a strongly egoistic reasoning process, which they know will deterministically result in his decision to kill White”. Plum is “stipulated to satisfy various compatibilist conditions”, among them reasons-responsiveness and conformity to higher-order attitudes.
- Cases 2 to 4, by description. Case 2: Plum “pre-programmed” at the start of life, like Mele’s Ernie. Case 3: an egoistic society “instills in him the very same tendencies”. Case 4: ordinary determinism, “without any manipulators in the picture”.
- Pereboom’s argument is to the best explanation. He argues that adjacent cases do not differ relevantly, and then that “the best explanation of the Plums’ lack of responsibility for their decisions is that the decisions were causally determined by factors outside of the Plums’ control” (n. 23).
- Mid-life and original design. Plum and Sweet Sally are manipulated mid-life. Ernie is designed as a zygote, so a bypassing view cannot separate him from a normal determined agent, since nothing he has developed was bypassed.
- The soft-line worry. For any necessary condition a soft-liner offers, a new case can meet it. A natural-force case (Natalie, changed by an electromagnetic storm) has no manipulator, which answers manipulator-focused views and the worry that reactions to the manipulator distort judgements about the victim.
- Hard lines. These are Frankfurt’s (“do not depend on the origin”), Fischer’s (the intuitions track autonomy, not responsibility), McKenna’s reversal from agnosticism about Case 4 back to Case 1, and mitigation views.
- Wider reach. Parallel cases with indeterminism press libertarians too. Todd’s modified argument needs only that blame be mitigated.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-14 at the owner’s request as an alternative reading for LIT-1006, whose book is Unavailable here, and read the same day in NOTE-856. With LIT-1047 it is the record’s statement of Pereboom’s four-case argument, and THEORY-328 is filed from the two. Its Case 1 is the 2024 version (optogenetic stimulation), not the 2001 text. Of Pereboom’s cases it quotes only Case 1, and it does not report a case rebuilt to manipulate the taking of responsibility, so THEORY-121’s named refuter is still unread first-hand.