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LIT-991: Beyond the Moral Influence Theory? A Critical Examination of Vargas’s Agency Cultivation Model of Responsibility

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Properties5
StatusActive — read 2026-10-14 (NOTE-847) in full; worth reading as a compact argument that a free-will condition defined by what makes blaming effective cannot ground blame: to apply Vargas's counterfactual test one must already know whether blaming such agents is good policy, so freedom follows blameworthiness. Also argues that Vargas's agency cultivation model is the old moral influence theory renamed, since its responsiveness to moral considerations reduces to intrinsic motivation to act morally. Read it knowing that Vargas is read only through Harland's quotations and stipulations, that the redundancy argument works class by class, and that the abstract states unconditionally a conclusion the body restricts to Vargas's model. Filed for QUESTION-068, which is Deferred; the account is THEORY-310.
Version2
Tagsfree-will, ethics
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-847 — Harland — Beyond the Moral Influence Theory?
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-310 — On a forward-looking justification of blame, a counterfactual capacity condition calibrated to what makes blaming effective is redundant: fixing its parameters presupposes that blaming such agents is good policy, so freedom is ascribed because of blameworthiness rather than grounding it

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Harry Harland (2020), The Journal of Ethics 24(4): 401–425.

Key takeaways

From the reading, NOTE-847.

  • ACM is MIT renamed. Each of Vargas’s replies to the objections to the moral influence theory “can just as easily be made by supporters of MIT”. His responsiveness to moral considerations, which may be unconscious and “exclusively affective”, amounts on Harland’s stipulation to intrinsic motivation to act morally. It draws the line of responsible agency where MIT does, taking in some animals and toddlers.
  • Moral drifters. John and Fred internalise norms through social pressure, one false and one true. Neither is a moral agent; Fred is “a moral drifter”. There are still “good reasons for holding them accountable”, but doing so does not cultivate agency.
  • A dilemma. A richer, Dworkinian notion of agency would separate ACM from MIT, but praise and blame are not shown to cultivate it.
  • The test is redundant. Vargas fixes the relevance and proportion parameters of his counterfactual free-will test by what is co-optimal for the responsibility system. So the test cannot be applied until one knows whether blaming such agents is good policy, and then it is not needed.
  • Freedom inverted. “A wrongdoer’s blameworthiness is logically prior to his free will”. The conclusion is stated for Vargas’s model: “if we embrace ACM, enquiries into an agent’s counterfactual freedom will become superfluous”.

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-12 from the owner’s papers-feed for QUESTION-068, which is Deferred with the authenticity line, and read on 2026-10-14 in NOTE-847. The filing note said the paper criticises a responsiveness condition stated apart from ownership and argues that freedom does not bear on responsibility. The reading corrects both: the paper never raises ownership, and its conclusion about freedom is restricted to Vargas’s model. What it gives the question is an argument that, on an influence-based justification, an avoidability condition calibrated to the practice is not a further condition. That is filed as THEORY-310. Vargas’s Building Better Beings is not held here, so the paper’s reading of Vargas is unchecked.

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