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    A person who acts under hypnosis, brainwashing, or genuin... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    A person who acts under hypnosis, brainwashing, or genuinely irresistible urges may not be morally responsible for her behavior.

    Moral Responsibility
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.If a person's behavior is brought about by hypnosis, brainwashing, or genuinely irresistible urges, she does not reflectively guide her behavior in the way required for moral responsibility.
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    • 2.Moral responsibility requires guidance control over one's behavior.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Frankfurt's hierarchical mesh theory holds that responsibility depends on whether first-order desires align with second-order volitions, not on the causal history of those desires.
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    • 2.A person under hypnosis whose induced behavior coheres with her higher-order endorsed values acts from her own will in the sense Frankfurt requires for responsibility.
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    • 3.Therefore, hypnotic causation does not automatically preclude the structural conditions Frankfurt identifies as sufficient for moral responsibility.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Dennett argues that 'genuinely irresistible' urges are nearly impossible to verify empirically and collapse into the unfalsifiable claim that the agent simply did not resist.
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    • 2.If the distinction between irresistible and merely unresisted urges cannot be principled, the exempting category loses the normative weight Fischer and Ravizza assign to it.
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    Moral Responsibility

    Related

    A person under hypnosis whose induced behavior coheres with her higher-order end...Dennett argues that 'genuinely irresistible' urges are nearly impossible to veri...Frankfurt's hierarchical mesh theory holds that responsibility depends on whethe...If a person's behavior is brought about by hypnosis, brainwashing, or genuinely ...
    +3 moreShow less
    If the distinction between irresistible and merely unresisted urges cannot be pr...Moral responsibility requires guidance control over one's behavior.Therefore, hypnotic causation does not automatically preclude the structural con...

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    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: moral-responsibility
    Fischer & Ravizza 1998: 35
    View source passageHide passage
    A number of factors can undermine guidance control. If a person’s behavior is brought about by hypnosis, brainwashing, or genuinely irresistible urges, then that person may not be morally responsible for her behavior since she does not reflectively guide it in the way required for responsibility (Fischer & Ravizza 1998: 35). More specifically, an agent in the above circumstances is not likely to be responsible because he “is not responsive to reasons—his behavior would be the same, no matter what reasons there were” (1998: 37). Thus, Fischer and Ravizza characterize possession of guidance ...
    Extraction notes

    The premises logically entail the conclusion (if moral responsibility requires guidance control, and hypnosis/brainwashing/irresistible urges undermine guidance control by preventing reflective guidance, then persons acting under those conditions may not be morally responsible), and this argument is clearly present in the source passage.

    Validity:

    Confidence: Clearly stated argument in the text.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit