Abstract
The paper focuses on the nature and moral status of manipulation. I analyse a popular account of manipulation by Robert Noggle and assess a challenge that has been posed by Moti Gorin. I argue that Noggle’s theory can fend off the challenge. The analysis is instructive in that it enables one to look more closely at the nature of manipulation. I argue, contrary to some proposed accounts, that manipulation essentially involves deception about the manipulator’s intentions. Secondly, since manipulation contains an element of deception, it is, I maintain, prima facie immoral. Finally, I analyse and explain away several examples of allegedly morally non-problematic manipulation.
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Notes
Of course, our emotions sometimes result from ignorance, misinformation, bias and prejudice, and eliminating these factors will undoubtedly make them more fitting. On the other hand, I am sceptical as to whether there are even in principle any objectively appropriate emotional responses to many situations. One reason is that our emotions also reflect our values, and if, as I believe, there is a gap between facts and values, two people may know the same facts and still differ in how they value the facts, and what emotions they find appropriate with respect to those facts. Unfortunately, I cannot argue for this point more extensively here.
An anonymous reviewer has pointed out that by focusing on the manipulator’s intent (to bring about what he considers a non-ideal mental state in his victim), we blur the difference between successful, completed manipulation and a merely attempted one. I would like to clarify that I am only interested in the latter notion. In my opinion, even if one merely attempts to manipulate, one has already met all the conditions set by the concept of manipulation. Whether an act of manipulating is successful is a matter of contingent features of the given situation and should play little role in our judgement of whether manipulation has taken place. Again, an analogy with lying is apt. An act of lying is constituted by intentionally communicating information that the communicator knows is false. Whether the addressee in fact believes the information and the act is an instance of successful lying is irrelevant. Even if the addressee is not convinced, the utterance will still be a lie.
The reviewer has also pointed out that one can always ascribe an intention to the communicator such that it is both different from the communicator’s projected intention and unknown to the recipient, and thereby establish first the right kind of deception and, consequently, manipulation. But I would like to stress that what is relevant is what intentions the manipulator really has, not what intentions we ascribe to her. Consider lying again. You tell me something that you believe to be true with the intention to inform me. But I think you want to misinform me by telling me a lie and call you a liar. That would be unjustified. A liar has to know she is communicating something untrue. What the addressee believes is irrelevant. Analogously, a manipulator has to intentionally project an intention that she does not really have. On the defended theory, one cannot just ascribe motives to communicators and call them manipulators. One has to have good evidence that they have ulterior motives. No doubt it is difficult to achieve. But it is no more difficult than proving somebody a liar.
On this point, he differs from Mills, who believes that manipulators always provide bad reasons disguised as good ones.
A somewhat similar example is provided in Rudinow (1978, 341). There, the manipulator is a wife who openly admits she wants to make her husband stay at home by acting seductively and stimulating his sexual desire.
This is related to Wood’s claim, since leaving someone with a single option that they do not favour does not usually help to sustain sound relationships.
To return to Rudinow’s example in footnote 2: the example is constructed such that the wife is also certain that the husband will not be able to resist her seduction (Rudinow 1978, 342). This is why, I maintain, she can be quite explicit about her intentions.
Perhaps it is a case that can be termed neither coercion, nor manipulation, as an anonymous reviewer pointed out. I am willing to grant that, but I doubt there is a fitting name for such a specific kind of influence.
Fortunately, others have also done substantial work in rebutting examples of allegedly benign or even appreciated manipulation. For example, Baron (2003, 49) provides a nice reply to Sarah Buss’ contention that ‘a certain amount of deception—about what one is up to, and about what sort of person one is, really—and a certain degree of manipulation—to the end of turning the beloved into one’s lover—is a necessary condition for the possibility of (at least most cases of) mutual romantic love’ (Buss 2005, 221).
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Bělohrad, R. The Nature and Moral Status of Manipulation. Acta Anal 34, 447–462 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-019-00407-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-019-00407-y