168 Three Source Incompatibilist Arguments
wishing to resist a manipulation argument vulnerable to a slight modification by
her opponent to the disputed example. Such a modification by the proponent of
the manipulation argument just builds in the compatibilist condition that in an
earlier iteration the softline critic found to be lacking. What this seems to suggest
is that for compatibilists to answer well- executed versions of manipulation argu-
ments, they have to be prepared to take on a hardline reply. In this case, it would
seem that they need to be able to resist Pereboom’s plausible claim that in Case
1 Plum does not act freely and is not morally responsible.
How might a compatibilist proceed? Reflecting upon Pereboom’s Case 1
—especially the earlier (2001) formulation in which Plum is actively and perva-
sively manipulated moment- by-moment—it is hard to imagine how a compatibi-
list could mount a credible case for resisting the intuitively appealing contention
that Plum does not act freely and is not morally responsible. To begin, as
McKenna (2008a; 2014) has noted, the compatibilists’ burden here need not be
to establish that Plum in Case 1 does act freely and is morally responsible. Since
Pereboom’s appeal to the case was meant to elicit an intuitive reaction of unfree-
dom and nonresponsibility, and since it really is reasonable for the compatibilist
to grant that, on its face, the example does illicit such an intuitive reaction, it is
too tall of an order for the compatibilist to be expected to show that Plum really
does act freely and is morally responsible. Instead, it should be enough,
McKenna argues, for the compatibilist to cast credible doubt on the judgment
that Plum does not act freely and is not morally responsible. Thus, all the com-
patibilist needs to do is show that it is not clearly established that Plum is not
free and is not responsible for killing White.
McKenna (2008a; 2014) has attempted to do so as follows.^21 First, consider
pertinent agential and moral properties of Plum as displayed in Case 4. In this
case, Plum is just as much like an ordinary moral agent as any one of us. His
phenomenology is just as sophisticated. He is capable of feeling incredible
remorse, or instead ambivalence about killing White, or alternatively, delicious
pride. Furthermore, we can suppose that Plum had a rich history of moral devel-
opment just like any psychologically healthy person who emerges from child-
hood into adulthood. We can also allow that Plum is an agent who lives up to the
kind of emotional complexity of the sort Strawsonians highlight. He is capable
of resentment and gratitude, moral indignation and approbation, guilt and pride,
and he is richly sensitive to the significance of these morally reactive emotions
in his relations with others. He is, in this way, a full- fledged member of the
moral community, one whose standing enables the kinds of interpersonal rela-
tions out of which adult moral life arises. Now, if all of this is true of Plum in
Case 4, it must be granted that it can equally as well be true of Plum in Case 1.
The point of attending to these details is to help elicit the intuitions that are
friendly to compatibilists—to bring forth the sense that a determined agent of the
sort Plum is in Case 1 is a complex agent just like any person we might come
across in the course of our daily lives (as would be the case for Case 4).
Second, consider the initial attitude both compatibilists and incompatibilists
are entitled to adopt toward Plum in Case 4. Naturally, the compatibilist is not