Chris Cho

Can manipulated agents be morally responsible for what they do? According to hard-line structuralism, yes. On this view, manipulated agents are responsible in virtue of satisfying the relevant structural conditions taken to be sufficient for responsibility. Historicists disagree, claiming that responsibility also has a historical dimension. Here, I offer a two-step defense of hard-line structuralism. The first is deflationary: I argue that the kind of manipulation that best serves the historicists entails certain structural properties that already meet the normative demands historicists invoke to justify historical conditions. The second is debunking: I argue that our reluctance to attribute responsibility to manipulated agents stems from an anchoring bias toward their pre-manipulation psychology, a bias that lacks normative justification.

Many find it plausible that acting freely requires a kind of sensitivity to reasons. Modalists define this sensitivity in terms of what S does in the relevant alternative possibilities. Agent modalists take S to be an agent, assessing their reasons-sensitivity by considering what the agent would have done in those possibilities. While intuitive, agent modalists struggle with Frankfurt cases. This has led some to a mechanism-based approach. Here, I raise two objections to this approach and defend agent modalism. I argue that (1) the mechanism approach permits composite mechanisms, leading to an unattractive disjunction, and (2) excluding the agent undermines the original appeal of reasons-sensitivity. I defend agent modalism by arguing it can handle Frankfurt cases if it holds fixed the nonoccurrence of agent-altering events. This requirement also helps address rational blind spots. Thus, I aim to rehabilitate agent modalism as a viable account of reasons-sensitivity in free action.