Abstract
In the final chapter of her Causation and Free Will, Carolina Sartorio offers (among other things) a novel reply to an original-design argument for the thesis that determinism is incompatible with free will and moral responsibility, an argument that resembles Alfred Mele’s zygote argument in Free Will and Luck. This article assesses the merits of her reply. It is concluded that Sartorio has more work to do if she is to lay this style of argument to rest.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
By “compatibilism” in this article, I mean compatibilism both about free will and about moral responsibility, except when I have occasion to be more specific.
See, for example, Barnes (2015), Deery and Nahmias (2017), Schlosser (2015), Todd (2013, 2017) and Waller (2014). I mention my story here (Mele 2006) rather than Sartorio’s because mine has been in existence long enough to have prompted many published reactions and Sartorio’s appeared too recently to have done so.
References
Barnes, E. (2015). Freedom, creativity, and manipulation. Noûs, 49, 560–588.
Deery, O., & Nahmias, E. (2017). Defeating manipulation arguments: Interventionist causation and compatibilist sourcehood. Philosophical Studies, 174, 1255–1276.
Fischer, J. (2011). The zygote argument remixed. Analysis, 71, 267–272.
McKenna, M. (2008). A hard-line rely to pereboom’s four-case manipulation argument. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 77, 142–159.
McKenna, M. (2009). Compatibilism; State of the Art. In E.N Zalta (Ed.) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (winter 2009 edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/supplement.html. Accessed 16 Feb 2018.
McKenna, M. (2014). Resisting the manipulation argument: A hard-liner takes it on the chin. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 89, 467–484.
Mele, A. (2006). Free will and luck. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mele, A. (2013). Moral responsibility and the continuation problem. Philosophical Studies, 162, 237–255.
Mele, A. (2017). Aspects of agency: Decisions, abilities, explanations, and free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sartorio, C. (2016). Causation and free will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schlosser, M. (2015). Manipulation and the Zygote Argument: Another Reply. Journal of Ethics, 19, 73–84.
Todd, P. (2013). Defending (a modified version of) the Zygote argument. Philosophical Studies, 164, 189–203.
Todd, P. (2017). Manipulation arguments and the freedom to do otherwise. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 95, 395–407.
Waller, R. (2014). The threat of effective intentions to moral responsibility in the Zygote argument. Philosophia, 42, 209–222.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Gabriel DeMarco and Carolina Sartorio for comments on a draft of this article. This article was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mele, A.R. Diana and Ernie return: on Carolina Sartorio’s Causation and Free Will. Philos Stud 175, 1525–1533 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1058-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1058-y