192 Seven Views of Contemporary Compatibilism
agency is not defective in other ways after the intervention, a nonhistorical com-
patibilist would be forced to take a hardline reply. Mele’s historical compatibil-
ists would not, and it would be a tall order to do so, since the case of Beth seems
to strongly illicit a judgment of nonresponsibility.
But what of manipulation arguments drawing on examples that incorporate
Mele’s proposed historical conditions? Here, Mele introduces a manipulation argu-
ment that zeroes in on this question, setting out a case designed to suit the needs of
historical compatibilists, namely The Zygote Argument (2006b: 188–9). The argu-
ment features the goddess Diana, who purposefully creates a zygote that eventu-
ally becomes Ernie. At some point in his life, Ernie performs an act, A, and this is
just exactly as Diana planned it given her detailed knowledge of the universe upon
initially creating Ernie’s zygote. Here is Mele’s statement of the argument:
- Because of the way his zygote was produced in his deterministic universe,
Ernie is not a free agent and is not morally responsible for anything. - Concerning free action and moral responsibility of the beings into whom
zygotes develop, there is no significant difference between the way Ernie’s
zygote comes to exist and the way any normal human zygote comes to exist
in a deterministic universe. - So determinism precludes free action and moral responsibility.
According to Mele, what a compatibilist should say about Ernie is that he acts
freely and is morally responsible for his action (193). This is a hardline reply.
Crucially, Ernie satisfies the historical conditions Mele commends compatibilists
to endorse, since other than Ernie’s unusual start in life, he can have a history
just like any other normal person living out his life at a determined world.
Accepting that Ernie might after all be free and be morally responsible for his
action is plausibly far less costly than would be accepting that agents like Beth,
apprehended and brainwashed, act freely and are morally responsible. And this
provides one strong incentive for compatibilists to advance a historical theory.
8.7. Scanlon’s Contractualist Compatibilism
Next, we shall consider T.M. Scanlon’s work on moral responsibility (1988,
1998, 2008). While Scanlon’s views have changed over time, and while his
attention sometimes varies between the different kinds of moral responsibility he
identifies—attributive or instead substantive responsibility—he is clearly com-
mitted in all of his work to compatibilism. In his earlier book What We Owe to
Each Other (1998), Scanlon explicitly sets aside the more traditional compatibil-
ist strategy of attending to the metaphysics of causation or of human agency as a
way of executing an argument for compatibilism (251). Instead, he proposes to
show that determinism’s apparent threat to both attributability responsibility and
substantive- responsibility can be diffused by attending to how freedom of choice
and voluntariness of action are relevant to judgments of moral responsibility
(251). Scanlon then accounts for this relevance by way of his contractualism.