Philippine E-Journals

Philippine National Philosophical Research Society

Zsolt Ziegler

Discipline: Ethics

 

Abstract:

I will challenge the manipulation argument, aiming to argue for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism. By examining the intuition behind the first premise, stating that manipulated agents are not responsible, it will turn out that this statement can be traced to the manipulators themselves, who intentionally set up a plan against their subjects. The second premise, which states that there is no difference between determinism and manipulation concerning responsibility, will be argued to be false. In the deterministic worlds, actions are determined by blind causation. However, under the manipulation theory, agents are determined by the manipulator. I claim that the first premise is true, but the second premise is false.