Caruso, G. D. (2018). “Skepticism About Moral Responsibility”. In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. First published 18 January 2018.
Key takeaways
From the reading, NOTE-862.
- Basic desert. Pereboom’s definition (2014a: 2): an agent who did wrong knowingly “would deserve to be blamed … just because she has performed the action”, not for consequentialist or contractualist reasons. Attributability, answerability and “take-charge” responsibility survive skepticism.
- Hard incompatibilism holds that we lack basic-desert responsibility whether or not determinism is true. Against compatibilism: “no relevant difference” between natural determination and determination by manipulators. Against event-causal libertarianism: the luck or disappearing-agent objection. Agent-causal libertarianism could supply the control but “cannot be reconciled with our best physical theories”.
- The four-case argument, by structure. Three manipulation cases, the first “the most radical sort of manipulation consistent with all the leading compatibilist conditions”, each more like the fourth, an ordinary determined action. Case 2 is quoted from Pereboom 2014a: 77. Plum is “programmed … at the beginning of his life” so that he is “causally determined to engage in the egoistic reasons-responsive process of deliberation”, with “the general ability to regulate his actions by moral reasons”.
- The replies. Hard-line replies accept that Plum is responsible. Soft-line replies find a difference between the cases. The soft-liner’s problem is that any difference found “may only serve as an invitation … to revise the vignette”, so the challenge is a condition that manipulated agents cannot satisfy “in principle”.
- Luck against historical compatibilism. On Levy’s report, the actions by which agents take responsibility for their endowments “either express that endowment … or reflect the agent’s present luck, or both”, so “we cannot undo the effects of luck with more luck”.
- Optimistic skepticism. Resentment and indignation give way to concern, sorrow and resolve. Axiological morality survives. Incapacitation is justified by self-defence, on the model of quarantine.
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-862. With LIT-1045 it is the record’s statement of Pereboom’s four-case argument, and THEORY-328 is filed from the two. It is a survey written by a co-author and ally of Pereboom’s. It gives one case in his words and the others by description, so the first-hand reading of Chapter 4 that THEORY-040, THEORY-121 and QUESTION-071 call for is still not done. Its report of Levy’s luck argument is the record’s first argument, rather than an assertion, against the taking-responsibility condition of THEORY-121. It is second-hand.