Gus Turyn

Derk Pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument presents a significant challenge to compatibilism about free will and determinism. Pereboom argues that because manipulated agents are no different in any relevant regard from ordinary causally determined agents, and because manipulated agents are not morally responsible for their actions, causally determined agents, too, are not morally responsible for their actions. In this paper, I offer a novel dispositional reply to Pereboom’s manipulation argument. Drawing on recent work in the metaphysics of dispositions, I argue that manipulated agents’ rational abilities are masked—prevented from manifesting as they otherwise would—by the manipulation. I argue that masking better explains why manipulated agents are not responsible for their actions than causal determinism does, as we ordinarily take masks to explain why agents are not morally responsible for their actions or inaction. Because causal determinism is not a mask, there is a relevant difference between manipulation and causal determinism, and the four-case argument fails.

According to the dispositional account of gender, to have a gender is to have some set of behavioral dispositions. Robin Dembroff (2020) levels a strong objection to Jennifer McKitrick’s (2015) dispositional view of gender, arguing that it can neither capture the extension of genderqueer identities nor treat them with the respect that they warrant. In this paper, I offer a defense of the dispositional view against these charges. I argue that accounts of dispositions tailored to deal with masks and finks—phenomena that would prevent a disposition from manifesting or change a disposition if it were about to manifest—can avoid Dembroff’s extensional worry without reducing nonbinary identities to a matter of mere linguistic convention. I offer a revision to the dispositional account of genderqueer that incorporates Dembroff’s insights about the nature of destabilizing gender binaries.

Following Talia Mae Bettcher, many philosophers distinguish between ethical and epistemic conceptions of the first-person authority that we have over our gender identities. Rather than construing this authority as explained by our superior epistemic access to our own gender identities, many have argued that we should view this authority as explained by ethical obligations that we have towards others. But such views remain silent on what we ought to believe about others’ gender identities: when someone avows their gender identity, should we believe them? Or is it enough to merely act as though we do? In this paper, I argue that mere action is not enough: we ought to believe what others say about their gender identities. I present several cases that motivate the claim that there is something distinctively wrong with merely ‘playing along’ with what another person says about their gender identity. I offer several answers for what explains why such cases involve wrongs. I argue that an adequate account of FPA cannot remain silent on belief but must instead take on an epistemic norm of FPA in addition to an ethical norm of FPA.

Dispositions can be masked: some state of affairs might obtain which would prevent an entity from displaying the manifestation characteristic of its disposition. Yet discussions of masks overlook a number of key problems, chief among them the probabilistic nature of many dispositional masks. In this paper, I highlight the manner in which past analyses of dispositional masks have been unable to solve the problem of masks. I propose an analysis of dispositional masks which focuses on this and a number of other problems, which I argue can address them better than past accounts can. I argue that some entity masks some disposition just in case that entity makes it such that the disposition is less likely to manifest, or such that it will manifest to a lower degree.

Dispositional accounts of free will provide a promising avenue for compatibilists about free will and determinism to respond to manipulation arguments, but requires an adequate account of masked and finkish abilities. In this thesis, I argue that an account of masked dispositions that addresses the context sensitivity, gradability, and dispositional quality of masks can allow dispositional compatibilists to level viable responses to various manipulation arguments. I address my response towards both Pereboom’s and Mele’s manipulation arguments.