Manipulation cases in free will and moral responsibility, part 2: Manipulator-focused responses.

Abstract

In this paper-Part 2 of 3-we discuss one of the two main types of soft-line responses to manipulation cases, which we refer to as manipulator-focused views. Manipulator-focused views hold, roughly, that the reason that Victim lacks responsibility (or lacks full responsibility) is because of the way the action is related to the Manipulator. First, we introduce these views generally, and then we survey some detailed versions of such views. We then introduce cases of natural forces, often taken to be a problem for such approaches in general, followed by a discussion of various sorts of cases-accidental results, lucky manipulators, and parallel cases-that present challenges for some of the detailed versions of such views. We conclude with some thoughts about the prospects for manipulator-focused views going forward.