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    The Zygote argument does not give us reason to think Bert... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The Zygote argument does not give us reason to think Bert is unfree or not morally responsible

    Free Will & ForeknowledgeMoral Responsibility
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Sourcehood conditions for moral responsibility must be evaluated at the time of action, not traced back to causal origins outside the agent's control.
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    • 2.Frankfurt's hierarchical mesh theory establishes that an agent acts freely when their effective will aligns with higher-order volitions, regardless of the causal history producing those volitions.
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    • 3.Bert's deliberative processes, values, and higher-order endorsements at the time of action are entirely his own, satisfying all internalist conditions for responsible agency.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The manipulation argument trades on an intuitive asymmetry between designed and naturally caused behavior, but Mele's own 'soft compatibilism' shows this asymmetry collapses under scrutiny when agents develop authentically over time.
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    • 2.Bert's 30-year developmental history constitutes a genuine process of character formation that meets Fischer and Ravizza's reasons-responsiveness criterion for moral responsibility.
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    • 3.An argument form that entails no agent in a deterministic universe is ever responsible proves too much and must be rejected by modus tollens, given strong pre-theoretical intuitions about ordinary responsibility.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.The historical facts about Ernie's creation (being created by a goddess, with Laplacian predictor powers, with certain intentions) are not relevant to whether Ernie acts freely 30 years later
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    • 2.If those historical facts are not relevant, they do not provide reasons for thinking Ernie is unfree
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    • 3.We have independent reasons for thinking Bert acts freely and is morally responsible: he satisfies ordinary real-life conditions and all conditions of the best compatibilist accounts
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityFree Will & Foreknowledge

    Related

    An argument form that entails no agent in a deterministic universe is ever respo...Bert's 30-year developmental history constitutes a genuine process of character ...Bert's deliberative processes, values, and higher-order endorsements at the time...Frankfurt's hierarchical mesh theory establishes that an agent acts freely when ...
    +5 moreShow less
    If those historical facts are not relevant, they do not provide reasons for thin...Sourcehood conditions for moral responsibility must be evaluated at the time of ...The historical facts about Ernie's creation (being created by a goddess, with La...The manipulation argument trades on an intuitive asymmetry between designed and ...We have independent reasons for thinking Bert acts freely and is morally respons...

    Similar

    Therefore, Bert also acts unfreely and is not morally responsible for ...84%Bert acts unfreely and is not morally responsible for his actions.82%Acting unfreely undermines moral responsibility82%If those historical facts are not relevant, they do not provide reason...79%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: incompatibilism-arguments
    View source passageHide passage
    After all, our grounds for saying that there is no relevant difference between the two is that the historical facts about Ernie’s creation (that he was created by a goddess, with the powers of a Laplacian predictor, with certain intentions, and so on) are not relevant to the question of whether Ernie acts freely or unfreely 30 years later. If they are not relevant, they don’t provide us with reasons for thinking that Ernie is unfree. By contrast, we do have reasons for thinking that Bert acts fr
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

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